Your Very Own Epiphany
The value of an epiphany doesnt lie just in some new or exciting insight. You might be walking down the street and pass a stranger. Your eyes meet, and for some reason there is a connection. It isnt sexual or romantic or even a suspicion that this person could mean something in your life.Instead, the epiphany is that you are that stranger your experience merges with his. Call this a feeling or a thought, it doesnt matter which its the sudden expansion that counts. You are flung outside your narrow boundaries, if only for a moment, and that makes all the difference.You have tasted a hidden dimension. Compared to the habit of shutting yourself behind the walls of ego, this new dimension feels freer and lighter. You have a sense that your body cant contain you anymore.Another example: When you watch a young child who is playing with complete focus yet totally carefree, its hard not to feel a tug. Doesnt the childs innocence seem palpable at that moment? Cant you feel in yourself or yearn to feel the same delight in play? Doesnt the childs tiny body seem as fragile as a soap bubble and yet bursting with life itself, something immense, eternal, never to be defeated?Each epiphany is a sudden glimpse of freedom in which the underlying experience is directly confronted, without interference. One looks at a beautiful woman and suddenly one sees beauty itself. Or one looks at the sky and suddenly one sees an infinity beyond.No one else, however how much you love and adore the person, sees the true significance of your private epiphanies. The secret belongs to you, with you, in you.Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).
