As I become a happier and happier person, having integrated the remaining fragments of my dissociated personality, I have thoughts that are entirely foreign to me.
I feel like celebrating.
Say what? I never feel like celebrating. Bah humbug. Someone tell me: Who is this person who’s talking as if he’s me?
Nevertheless, I feel like celebrating. I can think of several grounds for celebration – which I probably need to keep private.
Restricting my attention to myself, I want to celebrate the arrival of happiness in my life.
I feel like I’ve been through one long Cold Mountain encounter group, without the group. (1) This has been my life since I opened the blog in 2009.
The awareness path that my teachers taught me – Werner, Ben Wong and Jock McKeen, Ramana, Buddha, Jesus – has yielded such rich dividends for me. My awareness just keeps expanding and the discoveries open up new vistas. I’m definitely following the path best suited to me. I’m following my bliss.
Earlier this evening Kathleen asked me if I was ready to express gratitude for everything that happened in my life. I probably choked on my food and stammered out that I was willing.
But it wasn’t till later this evening that I actually felt genuinely able to not only be grateful for everything – for the pleasure it brought me or the lesson – but to feel happiness and a desire to celebrate my life, the outcome, and my love.
All this is unheard of in my normal neck of the woods. Or should I say “abnormal” because where I’m ending up I may soon discover is really the “normal.” (2)
I’m reconstituting, rehabilitating, and recovering myself. I’m reparenting, encouraging, and acknowledging myself.
I now feel entirely ready, willing and able to express my gratitude to everyone that has played any part at all in my life. Thank you to all of you. Look how it turned out!
Either I enjoyed myself famously or I learned a valuable lesson at all times. Either way, the journey led to this most satisfying conclusion: I’m a happy guy.
Steve? Steve? Is that you? Are you OK?
Footnotes
(1) Cold Mountain, now called Hollyhock, was a growth center in the 1970s that offered three-month resident fellowships; in essence, a three-month encounter group.
(2) This has happened before. In an Enlightenment Intensive I went through a mammoth vasana only to end up feeling … normal. I was amazed. Where I had been had not been normal!