Getting to Know You: Unpeeling the Layers of the Soul

Anandamaya Kosha (Bliss Sheath)
The Bliss Body, being very subtle, is the most hidden part of us. Yet its subtle presence is felt as the instinctive sense that life is worth living, that to be alive is good. The emotional feeling of happiness or joy is possible only because of the existence of the Bliss Body. You're literally born to be blissful, because the Bliss Body is the deepest layer of your personal self. Separated by a thread from the universal Self, the collective wholeness of Consciousness, your Bliss Body is filled with natural ecstasy, dynamism, goodness.

Contact with the Bliss Body develops through practice, especially practices like mantra meditation or Centering Prayer that teach the mind to let go of the thoughts that hide the Bliss Body, and sink more deeply into itself. To fully enter the Bliss Body, however, we usually need to be in deep meditation. When you're in touch with your Bliss Body, you know that your nature is joyful, free, capable of every flavor of happiness from the rock-out ecstatic to the simple feeling of contentment. You're in the Bliss Body in those moments when you recognize—viscerally rather than intellectually—that love is the deepest reality, beyond mental constructions or ideas. In fact, one of yoga's greatest gifts is its power to awaken us to the inner body of Bliss.

Ask yourself now, "Where is bliss?" Ask in an open ended way, not expecting a physical answer, but opening yourself to the subtle feeling of tenderness, joy, contentment that is always present in every moment.

Let yourself feel your own bliss. Realize that it may not be possible to fully access the inner bliss right at this moment; steady experience of the Anandamaya Kosha develops through practice of meditation, asana, chanting.

Believe it or not, it is actually possible to be conscious of yourself in all these layers and levels. To be aware and present in all of the koshas is to awaken to your own life and to integrate all the parts of yourself. In that, it becomes easy and natural to sense the universal Self that expresses itself as our individual, layered self. Then, we've become like the greatest sages of the yoga tradition who are awake in all their bodies and awake to that which is beyond them.