Writing on living a deliberate life, focused on building businesses rather than cabins by ponds. Content about strategy, life, and philosophy all building to being more deliberate and living a more amazing life.

Observe your bliss

I don’t know whether my consciousness is full or not, I don’t know whether my being is proper being or not, but I do know where my rapture is.

Joseph Campbell

I once found myself at the bottom of a gold mine. A real gold mine. A 4,500-meter-deep gold mine. It was hot and humid and stank of ammonia; Dante himself could not have described a better version of hell.

I was there to observe.

I knew nothing about gold mines (even today, I know maybe two things), and that was the point: to observe without judgment. Describe what is not what should be.

It was the first step in an innovation program, with the goal to reinvent underground mining by removing people: observing what “is” without judgment and with fresh eyes. Miners who know what they are doing can’t do the observation because they bring too much knowledge… they see what they know.

Reinventing yourself (AKA escaping being stuck) is essentially an innovation project. It starts the same way, with observation, sans consultant rooting around your brain with a notepad and a camera.

You

have to provide the fresh eyes. You have to do the observing.

Yeah, you can talk to others, but you are the only one who truly knows everything there is to know about you. It’s a challenge due to the same curse of knowledge. You know all the hidden things.

Like the time my teacher told me I was stupid.

Or when I told the trick-or-treaters (and, ahem, my wife) that we were out of candy even though I had a whole stash of the stuff hidden in the back of the pantry. I’m not proud.

Mostly, it’s the bad stuff. That voice of recollection is your ego, and its biological role is to keep you alive long enough to have babies. It doesn’t give a damn about your well-being. So it’ll dredge up whatever it can to help you avoid risk, real or perceived.

And change is risk.

It will also distract you with everything you should be doing, your obligations, the rules you’ve created, the boundaries you’ve established, your beliefs, and on and on. We pile on judgment, the expectations of others, and memories of everything we’ve ever done.

Here is probably where I should quote the Buddha, or Jesus, or something, but what I learned I got from Joseph Campbell.

His explanation is grounded in Sanskrit, which is one of the world’s great spiritual languages.

In Sanskrit, there is a word: satchitananda. There’s no translation, but it means the true nature of reality, the source of all existence and our true identity. Think of it as our reality, we are satchitananda.

It consists of three parts.

Sat translates to being or existence.
Chit translates to consciousness.
Ananda translates to bliss (Campbell says rapture, but he means it in the bliss sense, not the go up to heaven sense).

So, actual reality is existence (that we exist), consciousness (that we are conscious), and bliss (we are bliss).

The way Campbell puts it is:

“I don’t know whether my consciousness is full or not, I don’t know whether my being is proper being or not, but I do know where my rapture (bliss) is.” Or, I can’t tell whether I am fully conscious, I don’t know if my existence is correct, but I do know what I like.

To observe is to let go of what you know, of your obligations, and of how you define your existence, and focus only on your bliss; what makes you happy, no more than that, what makes you blissful.

Pause to think about that for a second: observe only what makes you blissful. Really let everything else go, what do you see? This might take time and quiet. And a bit of courage.

For me, it was, is, scary to let go of the shoulds and expectations. It makes me feel untethered. What I like is simple: I enjoy writing and mountains.

So we’re selling the house, and I’m pursuing a degree in English.

Reinvention takes time. You observe, you take a step, you observe again. Our innovation project took years to show results and is still ongoing a decade later.

You don’t wake up transformed. The trick is to start, observe what brings you bliss, and take steps in that direction.

Even if it’s absurd.

Even if you just admit that you are hiding some of that candy because you want it for yourself.

Jeff Loehr

Here’s a snippet of Campbell

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By Jeff Loehr · Launched 7 months ago

Writing on living a deliberate life, focused on building businesses rather than cabins by ponds. Content about strategy, life, and philosophy all building to being more deliberate and living a more amazing life.

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What I Learned 4,500 Meters Underground