There are certain moments in day-to-day life which dispel all the FUD (fog, uncertainty, doubt) born of the multi-valent relationship between the soul and the world. They ar emoments of clarity, or peace, or calm, or just simple quiet certainty.

For me, some of these moments occur when I am adrift on the deep water off the California coast, discussing important issues with harbor seals or cormorants. I have described several of these expeditions in the MOAB thread. Others occur, for examploe, when I listen to Bruce Murdoch's heartfelt CD, when I help another personm ore than they expected, or when I am reading an especially lucid passage in Einstein's humble explanation of his Special Theory, which I am wrestling for about the twelfth time in my life to understand. He revered lucidity, and I have to say he walks the walk thereof. When I listen to my daughter play an impossible series of 16th notes on a trumpet solo, or catch an especially good couplet from the Muse and get it down in a song, or write something I believe, as I am doing now.

When these moments occur, I feel I am doing what I "ought to be" doing. This is not a feeling I get when I am performing normal duties such as holding down a job, picking up prescriptions at the corner drugstore, or arguing poltiics. These are moments of integration, when the shards re-unite into a peaceful and centered whole.

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