Post Cards Monthly posts on Art Fiction Writing: Katherine Mansfield: How to live life in BLISS

How to live life in BLISS

If you want to learn to live life in bliss, which everyone can, there are many things that you can do to get there.

I will give a list of some of the things Katherine Mansfield evidently did, from looking at her journals, letters to her editor and husband John Middleton Murray and stories.

She was conscious and mindful of the beauty of life

She noticed the signs in life around her that are meant for her alone

She heard her intuitions

She wrote down her insights into things

She was constantly evolving and changing

She took care at recording life around her, the birth of wasps, while watching a wasps nests for instance, with the Wonder of a child

She worked at becoming affectionate, open, trusting and intimate was honest and sincère with her husband, and the two enjoyed deep honesty

She cleansed her conscience by being true to herself, trying to become the best she could be.

She lived life bravely saying and once said “We resist, we are terribly frightened…I believe the greatest failing of all is to be frightened. ‘Perfect love casteth out fear’ When I look back at my life all my mistakes have been due to fear”

Sincerity is the key to self-knowledge and to be sincere with oneself brings great suffering. We have to explore the Fantasy and fear are covers… and Gurdjieff said that ‘until a man uncovers himself he cannot see’

“It’s only the fairy tales we really live by. If we set out upon a journey, the more wonderful the treasure, the greater the perils and temptations to be overcome”

What can the stories of Katherine Mansfield teach us about love consciousness ?

Katherine Mansfield was a great writer living between 1888 and 1923. She was who Virginia Woolf said « I was jealous of her writing… the only writing I have ever been jealous of »

Looking at the story called ‘BLISS’ that was written by Mansfield three years before the end of her life, we learn of the story of a woman of thirty, Bertha Young, who discovers that her husband is having an affair.

Most women would scratch out his eyes.

But we understand, as the story evolves how this character has learnt to see life differently. She has completely dissolved her self-defences of this kind.

How do we know the character lives in a state of bliss ?

Firstly Bertha is full of joy and gets happiness just from taking ‘dancing steps on and off the pavement’ and like Gene Kelly in singing in the rain facing the police inspector, is grevious not to be able express it without being ‘drunk and disorderly’

Bertha values the simple things of life. The colours of a bowl of fruit.

She notices a pear tree in full blossom ‘not a bud nor a faded petal’ and she feels it symbolises her inner state.

Pearl Fulton, her guest for dinner that night, connects with her silently, also noticing the pear tree.

Just that connection, the noticing of the pear tree bring the two women together and this connection and magic brings happiness to Bertha

However it becomes evident that Pearl Fulton is having an affair with Bertha’s husband.

Yet rather than feel anger or any other ego driven response, Bertha feels a sense of unknown, yet her faith in the pear tree remains. The story ends with the pear tree

‘as lovely as ever and just as still’ as if to represent her inner state, the chaos of her outer discovery has not caused any inner change.

The books symbolise show a state of conscious loving.

Unconscious love is that ‘lightening strike love’ where passion, jealousy, possession and all those things are rife, because we are not prepared for love.

Love consciousness is a way of loving. Gurdjieff, who was Mansfield’s spiritual teacher, said

‘He who can love can be; he who can be can do; he who can do is’

He also said:

“To love one must first forget all about love. Make it your aim and look for DIRECTION

. As we are we cannot possibly love”

To sum him up : we have to work hard to be lovers.

You have to be willing to go beyond all your ego-defenses to full unity. Also to make a commitment to going all the way with your own individual creative expression and observe the emergence of your defensive barriers every day, communicating about them honestly.

Mansfield was interested in the teachings of Gurdjieff. Her writing is often very child-like in its freshness.

“We must destroy our buffers. Children have none; therefore we must become like little children”

This is similar to the teachings of the Vedas, who said of humans ‘In bliss they were conceived, in bliss they live, to bliss they will return’

What is the difference between falling in love unconsciously, as if struck by a bolt of lightening, and consciously embracing love’s gift with full knowledge that this is what your soul craves, what you live for, what you will put foremost in your life?

In India the ecstasy of conscious love is called ananda or bliss consciousness. The path to love ends with the full realisation of this phrase ‘eternal bliss consciousness’

In the state of bliss, everything is loved. We were born in bliss but the state gets obscured in the chaos of everyday life

Gurdjieff said: “If our consciences were clear, and not buried, there would be no need to speak about morality, for consciously or unconsciously everyone would behave according to God’s commandments. Unfortunately conscience is covered up with a kind of crust which can be pierced only by intense suffering; then conscience speaks. But after a while a man calms down and once more the organ becomes covered over and buried”

And of course, in Isiah 48, v. 10 there is the line

“I have refined you in the furnace of affliction” which also mirrors this sense.