After a month or more of inspiration literally changing my sleep and dream cycles and infusing my life with curious but incredibly pleasant and effective creative energies, I have reached a point that I have seen in books and heard in conversations and with which I am quite familiar: the return to normalcy, more or less.
Mind you, my ability to cultivate inner fire and to use it in daily tasks, improving my performance in them, is still there. I have learned good lessons, picked up good tools. I am still a different person than I was before the inspiration/MIRIAM/near-enlightenment experience came to me. But in increasing ways over the past several days, I am still myself, and I have to remind myself not to feel let down by this… quite possibly because, at some level, I genuinely do feel let down.
I have not yet reached at least a couple of plateaus, in terms of accomplishment or achievement in various areas of my life, where I thought the recent inspiration seemed tailored to lead me. Will it kick in again? I have asked myself, or What’s wrong? A large amount of reading I did during my 25 years learning and practicing zazen generally come to the rescue as I consider these questions, which are hardly worth considering. I remember my encounter, in literature and hearing talks on meditation, about “enlightenment junkies” and putting too much stock in keeping a certain experience, a certain feeling going – even when that feeling and experience are quite pleasant, exciting, and productive.
I am still, I must say again, different from the way I was before this unexpected experience, or visitor, or change in my state of mind and being occurred: POSITIVELY different. It still benefits me, and I should not cling to how it felt in the earliest days of it, nor obsess on questions about why this curious mental/spiritual visitor now seems to be walking around in the daily clothing of normalcy, to the extent I perceive the visitor here at all.
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