On the metaphysical side of things...
There have been times in my life when, through meditation or ritual or just for no apparent reason at all, I have experienced what Ganesh Rajagopalan calls "the other dimension," a different reality. I have been in a place where everything is made of light. I have been in a place where time was nonexistent. That may sound strange to some, others may relate. The point is, though, that in my "regular" life, neither of those qualities are prevalent if they are present at all. So being in "regular" life, the world can seem very dense, and slow, and dull. That doesn't mean I don't experience beauty and inspiration, I do, but it's all pale compared to being light in a place that is all light. "Regular" life can be depressing when remembering these other experiences.
When I was in my late teens I was living in San Anselmo, California, renting a room in a house. The guy whose house it was, in his mid 30's, told me he'd had an experience 10 years earlier, a spiritual awakening, and since then he'd been waiting for it to happen again. He had a job, but he did that job and he waited. That seemed really sad to me at the time, it still does. I don't see myself as waiting. I do see myself sometimes as trapped in a place that is slow and thick and dull, not joyful or ecstatic, but tolerable, and sometimes just barely so. I know others who have similar experience. Today I am thinking that part of the task is to learn to live in the slow thick dense dullness without being diminished by it.
