For whatever this 'sign'ifies to 'you', SD, I (the 'David' you know) was/am very 'heart'ened to 'hear' your present perception/attitude regarding the Life 'you' are (presently) living.
In my experience/view etc. 'Spirit' is 'bouyant'. If and as someone isn't 'dragging' it 'down' by struggling, yearning, hating, etc., etc., etc. that things aren't to their 'liking', IT will nature-ally stop 'drowning', begin to rise, float in and move with the 'river' of Life.
Be as 'you' (presently) are. Stay out of Its way. Just watch what is happening (to 'you'). Being what they are, which is the Essence of Life, Love and Joy are 'bound' to (and so I predict they will) re- emerge, in re-fresh-ed resurrection!
From the same chapter as my earlier quote:
"If you aren’t aware of the attendant possibilities for negative ramification, you might simply expect our higher degree of Intelligence to be an unqualified blessing. However, the fact is, we each run the very real risk of sinking and drowning in a psychospiritual hell of our own making until we learn to float and swim in the boundless flow of conscious*ness that results from our developing to the point where we partake of ‘the fruit of the tree of knowledge’.
Unlike creatures with lesser capacity, we grow past the stage of simple innocence. Whether we personally want to or not, all but the most feeble-minded among us develop and savor a vast range of ideas about what is ‘better’ and what is ‘worse’, as well as ‘how much’ better or worse a specific other condition or circumstance would be, as a result of our capacity for logical comparison and imaginative projection. Not only are we therefore more intensely, and in many more ways, motivated to try to attain and hold on to what we decide is better and to try to avoid and secure ourselves from what we decide is worse, no matter how good our present situation may be, we keep conceiving of and so desire to actualize and experience ever higher ideals. Concomitantly, because we ‘see’, again by way of projection and comparison, how far present actualization and expe*rience fall short of the higher ideals we desire, we suffer disappointment and dissatisfaction,a in proportion to the intensity of our fancies.b Such suffering disposes us to construe our current condition and circumstance negatively, as ‘not good’ or ‘not good enough’. This sets the stage for the sequence of sometimes quite tragic ‘acts’ in the drama most of us know as ‘the human predicament’.
Unless we recognize the ultimately unrequitable nature of and stop getting emotionally caught up in the various kinds of desire-pursuits which the above-mentioned comparison-with-conceptual-ideal process tempts us into, disappointment and dissatisfaction ‘color’ our perceptions of ourselves and others, as well as the nature and prospect of Life Itself. The judgments we make and the philosophies we construct and live by consequently become pejoratively biased. And we then naturally behave and influence events in quite detrimental ways, deludedly thinking that we are being ‘realistic’ and living lives grounded in truth.
In trying to come to terms with the suffering they experience and witness, for example, many, often quite elaborately, rationalize that they and/or others must in some way be deficient and unworthy of the ‘goodness’ they desire; or, if their self-esteem remains intact, that what they’ve been given or are getting in terms of personal experience and opportunity is unjust or insufficient, in one way or another an unfair or ‘bad’ deal. Those who presume that suffering is a consequence of personal deficiency and unworthiness tend to over-submissively accept and put up with what they then believe is ‘deserved’ misfortune in their own case; also, to the degree they project similar ‘justification’ outward, to condone neglect and ill-treatment of others who they consider ‘undeserving’ as well as do so themselves, without being conscious that they thereby really betray and violate the Spirit of Life. Those who don’t cotton to the idea that they or others are deficient or unworthy, on the other hand, if and to the degree they don’t recognize that unhappiness is subjectively determined, tend to ‘righteously’ rebel against and struggle to preclude experience of disappointment and dissatisfaction to the point where they allow their desire for whatever they consider to be (more) ideal to blind them to the harm that they do and the penalty-exacting repercussions they set in motion when they zealously try to make the flow of the stream of Life conform to their wishes—issues vital to ecosystemice balance and healthy communal development are then blithely overlooked and ignored.
Whichever such variety of deludedness (or mixture of them) people get caught up in, there’s 'hell' to pay. As long as it is not properly diagnosed and dispelled, the jaun*dice engendered by disappointment and dissatisfaction keeps on compounding itself, since individuals then either actively or passively collude with and participate in unwholesome treatment of themselves or others in the world around them. Though they may temporarily enjoy some degree of personal or vicarious gratification along the way, they thereby directly or indirectly (by way of repercussion, since we are all inter*connected) help increase the level of their unhappiness and discontentment. This makes it even harder for them to positively appreciate and lovingly respond to the flow of Life and circumstance as they actually are, so they spiral downward into an ever more infernally convoluted, negative-attitude driven condition. Ultimately, if nothing interrupts and reverses such progression, the spell of Negativity may become so great that it completely “blind[s] their eyes, and harden[s] their heart[s]” (John 12;40) to the wonder and potential for creative development inherent in Being.
Every developing soul encounters this ‘problem’ many times over—it presents itself in a variety of guises as we proceed. The more intelligent and sensitive we become, the more subtly discriminating and refined the ways in which we conceive that we, others and situational circumstance would be more ideal. And, because we can then also more imaginatively envision and more inventively pursue their actualization, we become more prone to getting caught up (or ‘lost’) in yearning for and lusting aftera such conceptions of ‘greater’ goodnessb and, because it appears pale in con*trast, to not appreciate and so not lovingly act to enhance what is; in the extreme, to denigrate and disparage it as having no inherent goodness and value at all. (Aside from the forementioned yearning for and lusting after ‘greater’ good*ness and denigration and disparagement of what is present and available, there are other indicators that one has gotten ‘stuck’ in terms of the problem: If and as pro*longed or intense enough disappointment and dissatisfaction is suffered as a result of not having one’s ideal-based desires fulfilled, one may become cynical about and unenthusiastic, avoidant and sloppy in relation to apparently ‘ordinary’ matters one must deal with, as well as reactively loath and even grow to hate and want to destroy aspects of Life one considers non-ideal altogether.)
The ‘solution’, in each and every case, lies in becoming aware of how fixation on particular ideals and derivative experience of disappointment and dissatisfaction cut us off from perceiving, relishing and creatively dealing with the exquisite Isness of Being and Becoming that is Ever-Present and Ever-Ongoing in ourselves, others and the world around us, and therefore diligently identifying and choosing to emotionally decathect from and transcend such personal fancies and aversions and associated conditioning. Only if and as we stop holding onto particular likes and dislikes and jettison negative attitudes deriving from consequent experi*ence of disappointment and dissatisfaction do we rediscover and revive what was lost when we emerged from the simplicity of naivetéd—the paradisiacal state enjoyed by Adam and Eve before they ‘fell’ from 'grace', in the Garden of Eden."
Much Love and Joy!) felt and 'beamed'  youward, fellow-Spirit crone/woman/child.
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