There was a time when I was closer to God.

During that time, I woke up in a state of near bliss.

All of my senses were clearer and more finely tuned. Every beautiful sight, every wonderful fragrance, every sensual touch wasn’t just nourishment to my starving soul; they were pieces of my soul coming back together to make me whole.

My thoughts were as clear as ice and focused on love and kindness and miracles. Every thought was like an epiphany. I understood…everything. There is really no way to describe the feeling except nirvana. It was a wonderful way to live.

It lasted exactly one day.

My one day of enlightenment was during a period in my life when I was trying very hard to reach that state. It was a very spiritual time for me. I think, like love, personal religions sometime ebb and flow. And that particular time in my life was at a high tide of my spiritual evolution.

Some people say that we are created in God’s image, but my thought is that we all are actually a piece of God, set down here on earth to do what we will. Since God is the best of everything—ultimate love, beauty, intelligence, possibilities—each one of us has inside us the potential to be all of those things and to experience all of those things.

Heaven isn’t just within us. Heaven is a piece of us. Joys R Us.

Since all of those great things are already inside each and every one of us, why aren’t we all walking around in a state of constant nirvana and bliss?

Is there something that we can take or something that we can add to our lives to help us get there?

The answer is no.

What we need to do is take things away.

One of the many books I read on my spiritual search said that part of our problem was Eve’s fault. When God punished Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He put this cloak around the God-ness in them. The cloak is primarily the ego (for lack of a better term) and it is woven from fibers of insecurity, negativity, self-righteousness and other un-godlike qualities. It is the place where the constant negative chatter goes on in our heads—the constant chatter that says, “I’m not okay. You’re not okay. Life’s not okay.”

To break through that cloak, we need to conquer our ego…which is sort of a Catch-22.

It takes a godlike personality to not be affected by the ego, but we can’t attain our godlike qualities until we begin to control our ego. And therein lies the rub.

To make things even more difficult, our bodies need to be at their best to be able to access our God-ness. To be at our best, we need to get rid of all the things that block our optimal health: alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, caffeine, lack of sleep. Maybe even excess sugar, fat and red meat. And again, our ego craves those things. “Life’s not okay but alcohol, cigarettes and drugs will help.”

As complicated as all of this sounds, these were my beliefs back then. And for one single day, my attempts at ego-control and perfect physical conditioning all combined to allow me to reach what I was seeking: a state of complete mental and physical peace and perfection. I felt better than I ever thought was humanly possible. And the feeling left me in one day.

That day was well over 15 years ago and since then I have been trying in vain to return to that superior state. It is frustrating to know that I have the potential. To know that bliss is right outside my reach and not quite be able to figure out the combination of ‘ifs, ands or buts’ that will get me there.

Do I need more meditation? More vitamins? More sunshine? More sleep? Do I need less of all of those things? Are the current stresses in my life too omnipresent to truly quiet my mind? And how does menopause fit into the equation? Is the mere act of trying so hard to get there and feeling frustration about my failure keeping me from arriving at nirvana’s door?

Or was the whole thing not really anything I did, but something that He did? The ultimate He. Not the God in me but the God out there, dangling the vision of the blissful life that could be, if I only keep seeking it—seeking Him.

I’m not really a religious person. I don’t go to church or pray or read the bible. But I do spend an awful lot of time trying to get closer to God. Because I’ve been there. And I sure miss the bliss.

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Assistant Ed: Michelle Margaret/Ed: Bryonie Wise