The Secret To Finding Bliss
The more-than-transient experience of bliss that comes from an inner state of wholeness and well-being emerges from immersion in the present moment. The secret to finding it is just outside your door.
More than twenty years ago, I started making a summer pilgrimage to a peaceful lakeside community that was built around spiritual nourishment, mental rest, and embracing nature. For a few hours or days, I would escape all my worries, disconnect from work pressures, and slip into a state of delicious bliss.
And then, it would be right back into the daily grind. The hassle of the morning commute. The drama of my relationships. The constant barrage of information that kept my brain in a twenty-four-hour hailstorm.
A lot of books have been written about how to create peace, joy, happiness, and well-being in our lives. In other words, bliss. I read a lot of them. To be sure, they offered helpful advice. But my years of escaping to a little Eden of serenity had taught me one thing: bliss isn’t a physical state you can paste onto life with the right diet, the latest yoga technique, or even a vacation to paradise. You can experience relaxation, for sure. Better health. Even lower your blood pressure.
The catch? These remedies only deliver a momentary bliss that disappears as soon as we step back into the chaos of real life.
True bliss — the kind that remains in us like a reservoir to be tapped — is an inner state that comes from a sense of well-being and wholeness that we can only achieve by immersing ourselves fully in the present moment.
Encountering Nature as a Sensory Meditation
I stumbled on a secret to true bliss a few years ago when I began foraging to create nature assemblages as artworks. Foraging demands deep attention and slowness. Any step could reveal a cache of fragile mushrooms, a magnificent shell, or a perfect feather.
When I went into the wild places to hunt for nature’s treasures, all my senses opened: I heard every crunch, rustle, and insect buzz more acutely; scents bombarded me — the crisp ozone of a waterfall, rain dampened earth, and intensely sweet lilacs seized me with their pungency.
Even textures demanded a bigger vocabulary: picking up and handling seashells, and acorns, and autumn leaves, I became more aware of contrasts: light versus heavy; smooth versus coarse; cool versus warm. Simply through touch, I could read the seasons.
Seeing with the eyes of an artist, I discovered the vastness of nature’s color palette: the source of every color I ever imagined. Robin’s egg blue. Sunflower yellow. Dandelion fluff white. I could spend an afternoon simply naming all the colors of green in a meadow.
Immersed in the wild fostered mindfulness; a kind of sensory meditation. Anxiety fled; calm flowed in; worries dissipated. I slipped into a timeless space where minutes became hours. Tranquility wrapped around me in sounds and sunlight; enchantment and awe sprouted like wild raspberries I found along a hidden path and the gem-colored dragonflies that perched on the prow of my kayak as winged navigators.
All of nature conspired to illicit what I often found so elusive: joy. Joy in simply being present. In being embraced by nature and drenched in beauty.
Nature’s Gift of Wild Bliss
Here is the secret: Nature not only gifts us with bliss, but with wild bliss! In its deserts and wind-swept plains; high peaks and ancient forests nature beckons, seduces, and nudges us to attune our senses and experience the ingredients of bliss: awe, enchantment, tranquility, joy.
Wholeness and well-being unfold when we mindfully encounter nature with our senses. E.E. Cummings in his poem, “I Thank You God Most for This Amazing Day,” ends his praise of nature with the declaration “now the eyes of my eyes are awake; the ears of my ears open.” I grasp these words more fully each time I go out into the wild: I see from an inner place that recognizes the oneness of all creation; I hear from an inner place that is attuned to nature rejoicing in its aliveness. With unhindered, exuberant bliss.
Nature As Wisdom Teacher Points the Way
Our deep attention to nature ignites transformation within; a metamorphosis from living life in a mechanistic way, to living rhythmically and cyclically as it occurs in the natural world. When we pay attention, the trees and mountains and waters divulge their secrets for bliss: groundedness, resilience, adaptability, and interconnectedness. In the created, wild world there is wholeness and well-being. Bliss that is not transient and fleeting, but inherent.
Awakening Your Senses to Bliss
Finding your wild bliss isn’t as mysterious or elusive as you might think. It simply requires your deep attention. Mindfulness in the moment.
Open the door. Step outside. Close your eyes and breathe. What scents drift on the breeze?
Listen. Can you count the varieties of birdsong? There is a symphony all around you. Chirps, trills, caws, and whistles; twitters as playful as piccolos and deep, resonant coos as haunting as an oboe.
Touch the ground; the leaves on the tree; the powder soft sand. Nature’s textures will talk to you — can you decipher their language?
Open your eyes and let your attention be completely engaged. There on the tree limb is a bright red cardinal. On that rock is a tiny snail slowly but purposefully traveling to its destination.
Nature speaks. Heals. Guides us towards wholeness and well-being, the only true form of bliss that is lasting and transformative. It is beckoning now. Can you hear?
Elle Harrigan is a contributing writer for the Religious Naturalist Association and hosts the Instagram community @livingwildwisdom focusing on mindfulness, creativity, and spirituality through encounters with nature. A Certified Intuition Practitioner (CIP), she is currently working on a personal growth book that focuses on the power of nature to unleash our inner wisdom.
