After a high Thursday night and early Friday morning, I am up and euphoric. Not worried about anything, lazy and just kind of floating. Not taking control of anything because what is coming to me is great.

Then after lunch in the early afternoon, I feel a dip lower—and here is where I realize the difference between what I used to do and what I want to do moving forward. I used to think that my emotions were necessarily sinusoidal. But I believe now that is a fixed mindset and not necessarily a fact of life.

Because the greatness comes from all different directions. I dip lower now sitting in my office chair after last night with Lily. But I needn’t live only in that linear. I am surrounded with friends and my body is healthy and ready for exercise and there are books and music for me to lean into and adventure as soon as I take the first step and beauty if I’ll only see it and all this is always around me.

There is also always meditation for me to return home to my Self and, what’s more, subtle, is that the dip is not necessarily a dip in any particular direction with an associated value judgment; in other words, the dip is not necessarily “bad,” if I just watch it and look at the dip on the bridge of its nose and in between its eyes and meet it with empathy.

The dip might be otherwise understood as an opportunity to take in more; whereas, when I am focused on something on the up and up, something “good,” whether it be love, beauty, art, pleasure, or anything else that occupies the whole of my conditioned dualistic attention, I am consumed by it fully. The dip is an opportunity to refocus, to have another “good” fill my attention. Yet this is still of the natural, conditioned, dualist world. On the spiritual level, the same question remains: How can I fill up with all of it always? How can I, figuratively, stay up in tree pose, focusing on my drishti, being One with all of it.