[Avoireeideree]

I'll try to boil down a lot of background into what I hope is a fairly short paragraph, and I hope the inherent clumsiness of the English language doesn't make the following impenetrable. I also am not sure where to post this; since I am a "beginner" on this forum this subforum seems apt.

I've been a practictioner/seeker/whateveryouwanttocallit for more than 20 years now, mixing in Buddhist practices with Taoist ones and my own idiosyncratic peculiarities (which have changed during this time-initially I was more into neopaganism and nature appreciation); this does not do it justice by a long shot, but I hope it is sufficient. Recently, due to a confluence of events both internal and external along with a persistent mindfulness that I've been deliberately cultivating with respect to several ongoing threads/issues in my psyche (nonattachment, compassion for various people in my life, and a bunch of other, more specifically personal stuff), I've had an epiphany of sorts, an almost ecstatic persistent joy has slowly flooded my consciousness over the past month.

I truly feel that this is yet another one of my not-so-little turning points, that I may very well not ever go back to the way that I was even a month ago, tho it certainly isn't that different; to put it simply I've finally managed to put attachments to several ongoing issues aside while simultaneously making certain commitments to action both inner and outer.

Fast forward to today; after a day at a local sporting event, I drove home along the coast (I live in Florida) with the bright sun setting in the west. As the sun set and dusk slowly took over, a certain numinous (for lack of a better term) quality took over my perceptions of the colors in the sky and sea and in the shadows as well. It actually has been with me for several days now, but it took the sunset to make said perception fully conscious. It's like the colors and the textures and even the darkness are more...vibrant and deeper. I recall colors looking like that when I was a child (my very first memory in fact is that of a sunset, when I was 10 months old, when I imagined seeing a tiger in the clouds). Even my apartment looks different.

I am thus curious about the connection between this and my other recent epiphany, and whether this is a common occurence or if I am going crazy or what they hey is going on. I tend to be a pretty solo practitioner but felt in this case that my curiosity is overcoming my attachment in this regard (or at least that is my excuse ). My hope then is that someone might be able to clue me in a bit.