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My past now played like an old movie, one I was no longer interested in, dream-like, progressively fading away. Old attachments, too, began dissolving – I didn’t care so much about the things, places or issues of my past (indeed, I threw away forty years of personal journals without an ounce of regret!). My previous world was gone, had died, but in its place, I started noticing – and exploring – the empty space left by its disappearance. Then, unexpectedly, in this emptiness, I begin to notice subtle and spontaneous changes in consciousness – expanding moments of silence, stillness, and timelessness, moments when it seemed as if the mystery of eternity was leaking into the everyday world. I was moving into a curious new and peaceful space – consciousness without thought, an awareness devoid of purpose, effort, agenda, point of view, or even self. These changes, which had been emerging unappreciated for some time, seemed to increase when observed, and eventually became harbingers of a new kind of consciousness and a new kind of life – intimations of spiritual transformation
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John C. Robinson (The Three Secrets of Aging)