So something happened in October. Since then I haven't said much about it. I want to be even-minded about it.

I'll say this: many a time I found myself overwhelmed by the feeling "what have I done to deserve this happiness". It's tongue-in-cheek, I know. It's not about 'deserving'. It's subjectively to me the culmination of practice.

It's not practice, practice, practice and someone rewards me with something because I 'deserve' it. It's practice, practice, practice and the practice itself finally leads to a realization, an awakening that completely shifts the theoretical teachings into reality.

Buddhism plainly teaches a perspective of reality, an enlightened perspective, but being taught that perspective doesn't do anything if it's just intellectual understanding. You can intellectually understand it without going through a fundamental shift in perspective. But from practice, once that fundamental shift is experienced, it's visceral and totally different from the intellectual version. It's emotional.

One landmark in processing the shift that happened in October was the "fear of losing it". I felt I had attained something and was afraid that one day I'd wake up and it would be gone. My feeling was that if I can lose it, then I never genuinely had it. And I did go through a string of . . . "bad days" when I seriously thought I had lost it. I touched something and then lost something.

But then feeling "bad" at a Starbucks on one rainy day of an entire month of rainy days, I realized that I hadn't lost anything. "It" was still here, and "feeling bad" was totally a part of it. When you "get it", that doesn't mean everything is hunky dory, wine and roses bliss here on in.

When you "get it", "feeling bad" is a part of it, and truly understanding the nature of "feeling bad" is a part of "getting it". "Feeling bad" is in the nature of our perceived reality. "Feeling bad" is normal, and there's nothing "wrong" with it. Accept it as it arises and reality has shifted.

Another landmark in processing what happened in October was to wait until it stopped being extraordinary. Wait until I stopped feeling joy that I wondered what I did to deserve it. I'm a human being, I'm living a life; what "realization" is still here when I come down from that high and the stink being an ordinary human being manifests.

I'm still squirming into that skin. It's not uncomfortable. In recent weeks, my life and lifestyle has trended back towards what was ordinary before and I've been watching and observing how I treat that in light of feeling something fundamentally shifted for me.

That's a work in progress, but something definitely has shifted. Something has changed. And some things need to be tested. Interactions with people possibly need to be tested. I'm feeling alcohol consumption might need to be tested, but I'm still feeling out the parameters of that test.

If I were to stop drinking, I'd have to devise a clever theoretical basis to aim towards and accomplish that. I know I can stop by myself with a certain motivation to which I can dedicate myself to stop, but figuring what that is will take cleverness. It's not merely a matter of physiological addiction, although shades of it may have its impact.

The ongoing process involves being confident that I've accomplished or attained something, while at the same time challenging and doubting what I think I've accomplished or attained.