Blissed Out

When was the last time you felt bliss?  Not happiness or contentment, but actual bliss.  Be sure to exclude sex because that’s too easy.

A recent episode of Radiolab explored this very question (although not with the sex qualifier).  In the show they discussed the story of Aleksander Gamme  - who had been on an  expedition in Antarctica.  As he traveled to his destination he left packages of supplies and occasionally food for his return trip.  As he made his way back he had forgotten at which of the drops he had left the food at. He was wondering if he had any food left and he was very hungry. That’s when this happened after he had not eaten in two days:

For those of you too lazy to watch the amazing video, he did find food in his last drop.  Cheezdoodles, to be exact and his response is classic. He is blissed out on junk food.  His expressions (especially those when he is just staring with his mouth agape in shock) are priceless.

Anyway, back to the question about bliss....when I first heard it, I just kinda pushed it in the back of my head as I was listening to the podcast and grading some quizzes.  Later on I starting thinking…when was the last time I felt “bliss”? I thought of the typical answers – when I got engaged?; at my marriage ceremony?; when my kids where born?  Nothing stuck though. Sure, I was happy in all of those moments but Cheezdoodle Bliss? No, not really.

It seems like if bliss can exist at all - it could only begin when your sense of self awareness becomes lost in a blissed-out moment.   In most big moments like getting married - you're too self-consciously aware of "the moment"  to be in bliss. I recently watched the DVD of our wedding and I look extremely uncomfortable and on the brink of tears.  Although I don't remember feeling exactly that way, I do remember being super-aware of everything like my brain was trying to record and store that moment forever. It wasn't exactly bliss.  

Then it came to me as I was driving home from work. I remembered the last time I experienced bliss. In fact, I could even recall the date (11/10/12) and even down to the exact moment.  

Here it was:





So you might guess I am an Aggie from watching the above video (class of '99).  The interception clinched an upset of the #1 team in the nation.  Texas A&M hadn't been this good in decades. When the season finished we were ranked in the top five for the first time since 1956.  When the season started most Aggies would have been happy with a winning record, which made everything that followed a little bit sweeter. Even before this particular game, I knew this team was special. When I witnessed the interception, I jumped up and down in my living room and laughed like a high-pitch hyena. My 6 year-old daughter told me that my laugh was "terrifying". Terrifying or not and as temporary as it was....it was...bliss. 

It struck me that sports offers these spontaneous, unconscious, self-forgetting, moments.  Isn't that what mystics enter in meditation, worship, prayer, etc. Religions offer individuals ways to subsume themselves into a larger consciousness or understanding.  You can forget and feel forgiven, come before the divine and forget your burdens, worries, fears, sins, insecurities and just...be. 

Whenever I am at church and I see people do this  I wonder - how can they be doing this? How do they turn off the part of their brain that feels foolish or self conscious? Granted I wasn't raised in a church that did this so that explains a lot. However, it's not just raising the hands in the air - it's everything. I always feel like the kid in class who doesn't "get it" (or maybe everyone else is just faking it). 

I've always craved to have a religious experience like that and yet my self seems to always stand in the way.  I'm over thinking, over analyzing and I just can't make my brain stay still. I could blame my culture and the fact I was raised on corn syrup, I have ADD (no, not really but maybe) or watched too many cartoons growing up, but I think this problem is larger than culture. Getting over ourselves is a problem all humans have encountered. You might even say that's why religious practices were created - to create possible fleeting moments of bliss. 

Today, we're less religious and more distracted. Maybe that's why there are so many sports fans and sex fiends -- we're addicted to the rush of feeling bliss. It's the only way we know how to forgot our selves.