Live Your Bliss

by Terry Cole-Whittaker

Introduction: From One Serious
Pleasure Seeker to Another

Everyone wants to be happy, and this desire to obtain happiness is the motivation behind our every action even if our actions prove to bring us unhappiness instead. The problem is that unless we know how to be happy, we will become frustrated in our attempts and what was first a joy can turn sour and become a source of disappointment and heartache. I know, because this is what happened to me for most of my life. Things finally changed when I was given and started applying the wonderful knowledge that I will share with you in this book.

We really can be happy all the time when we understand the art and science of being blissful and why it is essential. After all, it is the most natural way of living, and it also helps others toward becoming happy and prosperous. The world has been in a sad and mad state because we have been sad and mad—not the other way around. Most people believe that what is happening in their relationships, finances, career, and health causes their emotions. They live on a roller coaster of emotions and, over time, become jaded and cynical, thinking that there is no possibility for real and lasting love, prosperity, or pleasure. The knowledge that I want to share with you is that the outer world is a manifestation of our inner state of consciousness including our thoughts, desires, and feelings.

Especially now, we need to be as happy as we possibly can because something wonderful is coming our way, something that is dependent upon our doing our part. Doing “our part” means simply being ourselves. We are bliss personified. The happier we are, the better we feel and the more fortunate we become in every area of our lives. It is essential for each one of us to learn to access our divine, blissful nature, and then to express that nature through every decision and relationship as we move into this most auspicious time. Our happy state of mind and emotions will save the planet and bring forth the Golden Age. There is nothing to fear about the personal and global transitions that are taking place. The old is falling away as the new world is in the process of being born. We are the midwives, using our state of consciousness to aid this manifestation and transformation of the world.

Unknowingly, most of the people have been creating all the miserable conditions in the world simply by their fear and lack-based thoughts and negative emotions. They have no idea who they are as spiritual beings or the amazing creative and mystic powers they possess. All that is happening, including the corruption, war, starvation, terrorism, and other upheavals on our planet are simply a mirror reflection of our combined internal imbalance and unhappiness. I know this doesn’t fit with what we have been taught to believe is true, but true it is.

Bliss is the intrinsic nature of every soul. Bliss is the key to personal and global transformation and transcendence into this new life and new world we have been praying for. We should not be hoping for or seeking out someone to come to save us. Knowledge has been given to each of us through the spiritual teachings and sacred texts, but at the same time kept from us and controlled since the beginning by people in authority so that we would be in ignorance and thus easily controlled and manipulated into compliance. Our state of mind and consciousness are far more dangerous to earth and to ourselves than any chemicals and toxic waste. We must know that our thoughts and emotions are the very cause of what is happening and then we can, in a moment, change our future, for the future is constantly in a state of flux and is being formed in this moment by our thoughts, emotions, and activities.

When people who do not have the answers to the most important questions of life are asked about these questions, they reply, “There are no answers, and life is a mystery.” If you hear this from your spiritual teacher, I suggest you seek another teacher. Answers exist, and life is not a mystery, as is obvious to someone with spiritual vision. Everything is revealed to anyone with an open and inquiring mind who sincerely seeks and never gives up until she finds. Once we find, the seeking ends and our real life’s work begins: realizing and actualizing who we really are—gods who possess all divine abilities and qualities. Then divine energy is able to flow through us and we are able to accomplish great works. The great opera singer Pavarotti must have known this. When asked how he was able to sing so beautifully, he said, “I just open my mouth and let ‘it’ sing through me.”

When I realized and accomplished this knowledge, I started liberating myself from all the problems I had created. Imagine how good I felt after my years of frustration while experiencing the ups and downs of that mental and emotional roller coaster. We are creatures of habit, and I was in the habit of trying to be what others wanted me to be instead of trusting and being myself. When someone would say, “Just be yourself,” I didn’t know what that meant. After years of pretending to be what I thought others wanted me to be, I had to find out who I really was. This required that I be willing to live without others’ approval when necessary. Personal freedom requires us to follow our heart’s desires and fulfill our divine, glorious destinies, even if others try to discourage or stop us. As Albert Einstein noted, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

This knowledge has opened my mind to the limitless power possessed, not just by some, but also by everyone. Sometimes you may feel challenged by what you read here, but all I ask is that you expand your mind beyond what you have previously believed to be true. The value of spiritual knowledge is in the application, the experience. To this end, at the conclusion of each chapter I have added three practices—observation, contemplation, and suggested ways to incorporate the teachings into your life—as well as some prospering mantras. I like keeping a journal for my realizations. Perhaps this will prove valuable to you as well.

Something cosmically and spiritually wonderful is happening now. It is happening to us, through us, and as us. It is truly magnificent, and it is something not to fear but to celebrate. Stephen Hawking has said, “The usual approach of science to constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the models to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” The answer is: for your ever-increasing bliss.

From the chapter “Entrance into
the Realm of Divine Pleasures”

Never believe what others are saying or predicting, no matter who they are or the position they hold, unless you want their predictions to come true. The fluid future is in a constant state of reordering itself to reflect our individual consciousness and the collective consciousness of all humans on the planet. More often than not, a prediction or dream only reflects the intention and attitude of the person making the prophecy—that is all. Basic metaphysics tells us that we are cocreators through our thoughts, desires, words, and activities. These creative abilities give us more power than anyone’s prophecy. No one has a more direct line to God than you do, regardless of their public relations plan to build their credibility in your mind. I determine what’s right for me by what my conscience, God within, is telling me, and also by holding up the prophecy and statement to the light of divine logic and the laws of nature to reveal the truth of the claim.

From my research, I have concluded that our future is wonderful, more wonderful than one could possibly imagine. Although something wonderful is always happening, there is an extra boost of good fortune coming our way. Scientists are noticing many anomalies in the solar system that seem to point to something enormous taking place in the cosmos and influencing our solar system and Mother Earth. Perhaps you have read about the Mayan calendar coming to an end, the prophecies of end times, and the doom and gloom of the predictions of Nostradamus, the astrologer. But are these true?

First of all, endings are always in progress, making way for new beginnings, just as beginnings give way for endings: this is how material energy works. Everything in the universe operates in cycles. Each cycle of action starts, continues for a while, and then stops as the next cycle starts, continues for a while, and stops. One cycle flows into the next, just as spring flows into summer, summer into fall, fall into winter, winter into spring, and so on. One thought flows into the next thought, and one moment into the next. Our physical bodies go through cycles because they are made of earthly, material elements. The universe goes through major and minor cycles, but each cycle works by the same principles.

According to Vedic cosmology, we are currently in the Kali yuga—the winter season of a minor cycle. Yuga is Sanskrit for “cycle.” The Kali yuga marks the end of a larger yuga cycle, just as winter is the end of a yearlong cycle of earth seasons, but also the precursor to spring—new life. We are preparing for the advent of the next golden age, the Satya yuga, the age of goodness and opulence abounding. You can witness the process of cycles in your garden. But souls do not go through cycles of material energy; only the outer garments of matter that drape our soul bodies go through these cycles. This is why I suggest to my students that they do not identify their bodies as themselves, or they will suffer as the material body goes through these cosmic cycles. We are at the dawning of a new golden age that is appearing before its appointed time for some divine reason, perhaps a special dispensation by the grace of God and heralded by the avatars Lord Jesus two thousand years ago and Lord Caitanya only five hundred years ago.

Within a few years, at a time indicated by the end of the Mayan calendar, our solar system will line up with the center of the galaxy, as it does once every twenty-six thousand years.

The Golden Age Is
Upon Us, Rejoice

Five hundred years ago—a few years before the time when Nostradamus (1503-66) was predicting catastrophic earth changes, wars, and horrific events, including the destruction of the earth—Caitanya (1486-1534), a holy man from India, prophesied a ten-thousand-year golden age, a time of spiritual renaissance when unconditional love, beauty, and rejoicing in the opulence of all good fortune and mystic powers is celebrated.

Nostradamus predicted only violence and suffering, which in itself is strange and suspect. Why would I choose to believe in anything that I do not want to have happen, when, by doing so, I use my mystic powers of manifestation to create it? I have placed my faith in the prophecies of Caitanya, not in the prophets of doom and the lords of chaos, who must have our agreement and faith in order to manifest anything. We have nothing to lose by agreeing with Caitanya’s prediction, and everything to gain; we have nothing to gain from believing the predictions of the astrologer Nostradamus and other prophets of doom, and everything to lose.

Remember, each of us has only one vote, and in order to pull something off on a global level, the masses must be convinced. Historically, they were convinced by fear and the prophecies of Nostradamus, an adept astrologer who understood the cycles of the cosmos. The only thing that is predestined is the predetermined mindset of the people. You say, “But his prophecies came true, so he did know.” Anything is possible when you get large numbers of people to agree with and believe in your prophecies. People who want these prophecies to appear to be true interpret them in that light. Others, up to no good, commit acts of violence in the ways and at the times predicted, and these appear to be those prophecies coming true. Our only problem has been: WE HAVE NOT KNOWN WHO WE ARE AND THE POWERS WE POSSESS. Someone who controls your mind and emotions controls your actions and thus your life and what happens to you.

Instead of being actors, and doing what they feel guided to do based on love and spiritual truths, most people are reactors who believe everything they are told when it comes to future disasters and conditions of lack and limitation. But when it comes to eternal truths about who they really are and what is possible for them, they do not believe, and they call the prophets of love and good fortune fools. We tend to parrot what we have been taught by people parroting what they have been taught, and on and on. It takes a brave heart, a courageous person to learn and apply sacred teachings regardless of what the masses are programmed to believe. This is why there have been so few great souls. Every soul is greatness personified and a genius in potential, but many are latent in actualization.

Lord Jesus and Caitanya were not harbingers of fear, but bringers of the light of sacred knowledge and the solution to all problems, great and small, and bringers of the unconditional love of God and others. Lord Caitanya, like Jesus, taught people who we are as spiritual beings and how to attain supreme pleasure of the soul while still in one’s current body. He taught us about the superior spiritual world of eternal life, where death does not exist and neither does poverty or any other material-world problem. This spiritual world he called Vaikunta, a Sanskrit word meaning “without anxiety,” and it offers unlimited soul pleasures beyond what is possible in the lower-frequency realms of gross matter. We ascend to the higher realms when we graduate from the lower realms, and we graduate when we know who we are. At that time we become God-conscious and are fully engaged in being our true selves.

Caitanya, like Jesus, performed amazing miracles, which you can read about in Caitanya Bhagavata by Vrndavana Dasa Thakura and in other books about him, if you are interested. Historians say Caitanya’s seven-foot-tall golden body was beautiful beyond description. He led a spiritual revival in India that is still recognized and celebrated by Vaisnavas, his followers throughout the world who practice his teachings. His message was simple: sing the holy names of Mother/Father God with love and devotion and enjoy ecstatic, supreme pleasure, the goal of life. He was called the Golden Avatar, because his advent into the world ushered in the dawning of the golden age of heaven on earth. Lord Jesus, in prayer, asked that, “as it is in Heaven, so it would be on Earth,” as this was his mission. This is what is coming, not what the lords of chaos have been claiming, unless you choose to believe them. Each of us has free will and can choose to believe whatever we like, so choose your best options.

You Can Trust Yourself

Remember that, just because many people believe something, that does not make it true. We must always compare whatever we read, hear, or believe with the truth of our conscience. Does it feel good and right in your heart? Our conscience is Our God Within (Emanuel), who is guiding and giving us new revelations. And we must trust our conscience above and beyond anyone or anything else. We feel the truth. We have always known it, but we have been told that we do not know what’s true, and that only they, whoever they are, know. When we follow the advice of others, unless those people demonstrate by their behavior what we want to attain, we become as lost and bewildered as they are.

That religion is the purest which gives us the purest idea of the sweetness, beauty, mercy, and grace of God/Goddess. We must explore beyond the cultural, political and religious programming that is protected by force and threats of ostracism, ridicule, and punishment, including eternal hell. The highest spiritual teaching requires an absolute conception of our own spiritual nature. Help from on high is always available to us when we ask.

On Sunday, December 6, Terry will deliver a talk called Live Your Bliss at the 9 and 11 am services of the Center for Spiritual Living at 1613 Lake Drive in Encinitas. At 1:30 pm, she will lead “A Workshop for Self-Evolution and Manifesting Whatever You Need and Desire,” in order to inspire the release of all negative thoughts and emotions in the service of your divine destiny. Tickets are $35 in advance online (seasidecenter.org) and $45 at the door. You can also call (760) 753-5786, extension 848.