follow your bliss yoga

    Was it yoga?  Since June of 1988, when The Power of Myth aired on public television, everyone in Nathaniel's religious circles had heard the maxim, "Follow your bliss," and many, including Nate's wife's mother, were outright fans of the man who made the phrase famous, Joseph Campbell.  In the summer of 1994, on the teary day when Nate left his job working with adults with disabilities because he was not "happy" working there, his wife asked him lovingly what he wanted to do.  And he knew.  He wanted to learn as much as he could about his Amish ancestor who wore all white and built a chair for Jesus.  He wanted to write about the man who was not afraid to be different.  He had already been studying in his free time.  He knew there was a lot more he could explore.  And the idea of doing that full time for a "subbatical" excited him in a way he had not felt before.  His desire was bodily.  Dare he admit it?  There was a stirring of a sexual tinge at the prospect of going deep into that adventure of discovery.  That is what it meant for him that day decide to follow his bliss.

    He did not think of it as a yogic adventure.  He did not think of Campbell's path of "bliss" in terms of the roots of the notion in the Sanskrit word "ananda."  But looking back on how his path came into dialog with yoga, he found Campbell's wonderful explanation of his notion, and there it was:

"in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked."

    At the age of 48, as he looked back on how following his "Ananda" had lead to an ecstatic rapture, Nate was amazed.  It had worked.  Not only did he have one experience of rapture that could be interpreted in that great spiritual language, Sanscrit, he had over the years integrated yogic practices, and wisdom into his own way of life.