The Bliss Mistress Guide: Dissolving Into One

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”-Ben Okri

As my fingers are tapping out the keystrokes of this piece on a sweet summer Sunday morning, listening to Sleepy Hollow on WXPN 88.5, the Paul McCartney song “Everyday”, covered by The Fifth Dimension is wafting through the airwaves. A bopping along to the rhythm of life song, a different take on the music, a reminder that I can take something marvelous and add my own flavor to it, as they did. Although I have heard it said that there are no original ideas, since we are part of the collective unconscious, each of us has the opportunity and perhaps even the obligation to use our Divinely Human and Humanly Divine gifts and talents. I am grateful that I came into this life with the burning desire to communicate. My mother used to say that I began speaking at 6 months of age; and she would add with a wink and smile: “And you haven't stopped since.” As I gaze heavenward, I say: “Momma-cakes, I still haven't and I have no plan to do so any time soon.” That leads me to the central focus of this story.

When my mom went into hospice care in May of 2010, she and I took a hand in hand journey to the ultimate end of her corporeal existence the day after Thanksgiving. One of the mixed blessings of being by her side half a dozen times over the interceding months; wishing I could have just remained there for the duration, rather than needing to come back here to work, is that I had the time to write my book, entitled The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary. Laptop open, typing to the beat of the oxygen pump and her sometimes easy, sometimes labored breathing. She had told me at one point that she wanted to read the book when it was complete. I laughed that she needed to live a whole lot longer, since I had miles to go before the book was ready for prime time. Instead, I read a few chapters to her. She told me that she liked them and initially, I thought it was the same mother's pride for her little girl's crayon scribbles that she had exuded when I was 6. Then it occurred to me, as I read them through the eyes of love, rather than my own sometimes inner critic/monkey mind chatter, that this was good stuff. I would often read the chapters out loud, as if to an audience and do my best to be objective. Not always easy when I have read them a million times over and had lived them out for years. Wondering if other authors go through this process, I polished and tweaked, updated, re-wrote and tossed ideas in and out of the mix. Not unlike experimenting with recipes in the kitchen. Feeling a bit like Goldilocks...too much, not enough....ahhhh...just right. By the time she had passed, I felt competing emotions...wanting to complete the book to honor her and my father who had always encouraged my writing as well, and not having the energy to do it. Tidal wave sadness at times, along with the gotta get things done, break on through to the other side intention were competing with each other. What I learned is that they can be companions rather than competitors.

Fast forward to February and I meet a women who is an editor who has adopted my book and is now midwifing it to its birthdate sometime this Fall. I sense that my parents were the matchmakers that brought the awesome Pamela Maliniak into my life. As I anticipate the day that the book is actually in my hands, it feels surrealistic, like a dream. And yet, I can look back at other experiences like the interview with His Holiness The Dalai Lama that ran in Wisdom in 2008 and recall a time when that felt just as fanciful until it actually happened. Yesterday, I was relating the story of how it came to be, from seeds planted 20 years earlier, to a new friend that I met at a high school graduation party. I was garbed in the same sun dress that I had worn for the interview on that meltingly hot July day three years ago.

Beginnings and endings are part of the same circle of life. Why do we fear both of them, when we can embrace them? I choose to do the latter, since they do dissolve into one.

Edie Weinstein, a.k.a. Bliss Mistress is a Renaissance Woman who embraces life to the ultimate and encourages people to live rich, full, juicy lives. She is a colorfully creative journalist and sought after motivational speaker, interfaith minister, social worker and PR Goddess. Edie writes a daily blog for Beliefnet called The Bliss Blog http://blog.beliefnet.com/blissblog