I have just returned from a very relaxing vacation where I have taken a complete break from social media and limited my computer time.
This is the eighth summer in a row that I have done this and every year I find it more effective for me to re-focus and maintain a feeling of calmness. When I think of this period I am always reminded of Joseph Cambell’s idea of a ‘Bliss Station’ described in his book The Power of Myth (highly recommended)
He describes a Bliss station in this way:
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
Basically, a Bliss Station is a special place or time where we disconnect from the world and reconnect with ourselves. It doesn’t have to be fancy but it needs to be yours.
My place is in my kitchen which looks out onto our balcony and the rooftops of the neighbouring properties in Stockholm. The time is early before the world has gotten up and started to move around and things are silent. I have just woken up and my thoughts are sharp and are un-disturbed by the digital noise of my life. My french bulldog Abbe snores gently in his bed nearby. This clarity gives me a chance to write and think freely. My authentic self can emerge here.
View from my Bliss Station
I listened to an interesting interview with Francis Ford Coppola and he sums it up well:
Choose the time that’s good for you.
For me, it’s early morning because I wake up, and I’m fresh, and I sit in my place. I look out the window, and I have coffee, and no one’s gotten up yet or called me or hurt my feelings.
The easiest way for me to get distracted or frustrated is by picking up my phone first thing in the morning (I sleep with the phone in another room). And even on the rare occasion, I don’t get frustrated, my time slips away and my brain is scrambled.
The new heroin addiction is connectivity, says V. Vale.
The only solution is not one that most people want to face, which is to become lovers of solitude and silence… I love to spend time alone in my room, and in my ideal world the first hour of every day would be in bed, writing down thoughts, harvesting dreams, before anyone phones or you have any internet access.
What’s clear to me it is healthiest if we make a daily appointment to disconnect from the world so that we can connect with ourselves and who we are. It is not so important to focus on if it is time or place, but to create some routine that allows the real you to emerge.
Where is your bliss station? Campbell asked.
You have to try to find it.
Good luck