This is the first time I recall, as described in my 2013 self portrait I mentioned the other day for my passage about music and memories/nostalgia (https://medium.com/p/7bdac6f1510e):
"I had arrived in PA [rehab in 2012] hoping to find an understanding of God that meshed with my conception. I sought out counseling from a member of the spiritual staff whom I call Mystical Meredith. I explained to her that I had bounced around between agnosticism and the belief that God was akin to the Force from Star Wars — the psychic energy emitted by all living things... I told Meredith that I believed in the existence of souls because I had spoken to the souls of dearly departed through a psychic, and I asked her how God fits into this — asking her, “Is there a hierarchy of souls with God at the top?”
Before answering me, Meredith asked me why I thought I used substances abusively. I answered that I thought there was an irreconcilable conflict between my conscious and subconscious minds over things I had done, or not done, over the past few years, and I drank and drugged to run away from rather than resolve this conflict.
Meredith explained that the conflict was not between my conscious and subconscious, but between my mind and my soul. Meredith’s conception of God, or the Great All, and how we and our souls fit in, is that when our souls leave the Great All to take human form we contract with the universe to experience certain painful things on Earth that are not spiritual so we can learn what is spiritual (love, kindness, compassion, charity, etc.). At the end of our conversation, I was crying. I thought at the time it was the emotion of having a quest for understanding realized. I believe now it was something a bit different. I think more layers of paint should be applied to this canvas before that brush stroke reveals itself.
... [to much later in the essay]
In Delray I would wake before dawn and go running barefoot on the beach with the moon, Venus and Orion keeping me company, feeling connected to the universe. Realization of connection to the universe — that is why I cried with Meredith."
