Another brief biographical nugget. (This one also shared with many.)

When I was a child, younger than school age, I had several flashes of memories from before I was born. There was a sense of golden luminosity, an infinite love and wisdom, and of being home. There was also a sene of communication taking place, possibly about this particular life.

These flashes would happen most frequently when I was outside in the garden during the summer, seeing the light filtering through the leaves of the trees.

Looking back, it is funny - although very understandable - how I didn’t make any connection between this and religion as a kid. The only forms of religion I had been exposed to had a distant and abstract cardboard-feel to it, and this memory was vivid, alive and rich. And not even just a memory, but also alive and present in the timeless now.

A small biographical tidbit which illustrates a more universal dynamic.

As a child, I would often wake up in the morning with a deep longing. And I would get up and eat a strawberry jam sandwich (my favorite), be with my parents, read Donald Duck comics, and do other things to try to still or satisfy the longing, but nothing worked.

Then, as there was the initial (Ground+soul level) awakening in my mid-teens, I realized that this was what I had longed for. I knew - somewhere in the background - that this is what I am, and longed intensely for it. I was finally home, and finally, I knew what home was.