Lost satori

I don't remember the year. I had already graduated college, went to grad school, dropped out of that, and went back to college to get a second degree in computer science. I was taking a class during the summer session. It was the first class in computer programming, and was supposed to be one of the hardest classes at school. But I freakin' loved it. I loved writing code. But there were times when I had trouble with an assignment, and this was one of them.

Try as I could, I couldn't get the program to run right. I had given up on it, and went to sleep, even though it was due the next day. But I had a dream that night in which the solution came to me. I awoke with a start, right after the dream, must've been 3 or 4 in the morning. I typed in the code as I dreamed it, and Voila! It worked!

Later that day, after class I was walking back to my car. I can still see myself as I was walking through the parking lot. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I experienced a flash of insight. Call it a moment of enlightenment, satori, whatever. But I understood everything. I looked at the people around me, and I sensed the connections between us all, and how we all were one. The illusion of separateness was wiped away, and true reality revealed itself to me. Everything made sense.

It was such a wonderful feeling, I wondered how long it would last. No sooner had I thought that, it slipped away. As if trying to grasp it, own it, made it disappear.

That feeling must've occurred over 20 years ago, and the whole thing lasted no more than 10 seconds. But I have never forgotten it. I may not think about it every day, but nary a week goes by when it doesn't cross my mind at least a couple of times.

I tried desperately to get back to that feeling at first. Meditation, self-hypnosis, etc... But try as I might, I never did, and I gave up long ago trying to replicate it. Probably just as well.