I like doing icebreakers at work in all my core meetings. How it works is each meeting, one person gets to ask everybody else a question. And the idea behind it slowly but steadily you get to know the other team members. Also, I have found that the question that people ask says a lot about them.

This week’s question was, ‘If you could instantly become an expert in any skill, what would that be?’ There were the usual answers like Carpentery, Music, Absorb Knowledge etc. The answer that came to my mind was meditation without any hesitation. And one of my teammates asked me what would that look like. It is an excellent question – what does being an expert in meditation look like? My answer was that it could go two ways: I could go somewhere in an isolated area and live the rest of my life in bliss, or I could teach meditation if that is what it calls.

Describing the actual state of bliss is problematic because it is a stage beyond mind, thought, and words. So, how would one describe that which cannot be described – you can only experience it. Even a teacher can only point to the way and provide helpful suggestions as they have travelled on the path. But each of us to walk on the path ourselves.

And one of my other teammates made an astute observation that my answer was the only one that chose happiness. And I thought about it for some more time and came to the realization that ultimately everything leads to joy. Even music or doing woodwork or physics and maths will eventually lead to the same state – why? Because there is nowhere else to go. This is what the saying means, ‘All roads lead to Rome.’ It’s like saying all the waves in the ocean can rise as high as they want, but ultimately they will go back to the ocean. So we may choose to meditate, play music, we will all go back to the source.

When you think of Mozart, Einstien – all good works of art or discoveries or inventions have come from that space. You can’t produce something beautiful or essential without tapping into that space. Why do you think millions of people sit around watching tennis because the players are tapping into that meditative state.

So, the moral of the story does not matter what you do, but if you do it honestly and master it, you will end up in the same state as bliss. What does it mean to master something truly – it is understanding its depth and experiencing it. Use that as a portal into the beyond. And that usually involves space – a state of not-doing also called being. Einstein was considered to be slow by his teachers. And the only job he could get was at the patent office, where he had a lot of time doing nothing, which resulted in the genius we know of – which also explains why his quotes are more spiritual than intellectual.

What is your portal to the bliss that will take you beyond mind and matter?