Recently I’ve been contacted through my presence on the internet by some classmates from grammar school and high school. This is good, as these connections sort of fell away, but not because I intended them to.
These reunions got me thinking about who I was at these different stages in my life and my family situation at the time. I feel like I’ve become an entirely different person, not just grown-up, but someone who has reconciled with past issues and healed emotional wounds.
Of course this is just a subjective experience. I can’t exactly describe the ways in which I’ve changed and to what degree.
A dear friend has said, after years of therapy, that we never can actually eradicate our neuroses, so the only hope is to make peace with them and accept them.
It’s when we get to this level of being able to relax into who we are that we can decide to stop trying to get better, attempting to fix the broken bits, or even puffing ourselves up with importance.
In way of being, it’s more likely that we can meet the innermost I, what Vyn Bailey calls that which is “more truly me than anything I can call mine.”*

Drk-darsana-saktyoh eka-atmata iva asmita

False identity results when we regard mental activity as the very source of perception.**
*Patanjali’s Meditation Yoga, translation and commentary by Vyn Bailey.
**Patanjali’s Yogasutras, translation and commentary by T.K.V. Desikachar.