Ahhh ... yeah ... right there ....

You know that feeling when someone scratches that place on your back where you can't quite reach for yourself? That "aaaahhhh....." feeling where the itch finally stops? Yeah. That's what this is like for me. I'm a big, furry, itchy grizzly, and I've found a perfect tree for scratching on.

One of the first assignments in my Human Studies course is to find an academic resource for our research into the questions of the human "self." Well, I found this very cool article about meditation. This is the abstract at the top of the article called "Meditation and the Cohesive Self," by Judith Blackstone, Ph.D.:

This article looks at the dialogue between some relational and intrapsychic models of psychoanalysis, regarding the autonomy of the self. The article describes how certain types of meditation—in particular, the realization process—can facilitate both the experience of internal cohesion, the sense of oneself as a separate being, and the experience of participating in a fluidly reciprocal self–world matrix. The article discusses how the experience of interiority that can be cultivated through meditation leads to the emergence of a subtle, qualitative sense of self and other; enables creativity; and increases one’s openness to other people.

And now I know I'm in the right place at the right time! Why, you ask? Because there are so many brow-wrinkling terms in the abstract alone, and yet my reaction is excitement instead of depression, I don't wish for a self-induced coma, and I'm not frustrated. I'm the bear! I'm the tree! I'm the whole forest, and I can feel my leaves unfurling. Aaaahhhh... yeah .... right there ....