(continued from previous post) besides feeling the admittedly non-specific feeling of "real," I was also experiencing gratitude, the feeling of being grateful to be alive, grateful to be able to experience the moment.  An interesting thought, yes?  Being grateful implies a benefactor, usually.  Which is not precisely the right word, but you catch my meaning, I hope.  I can accept gratitude without a benefactor, I think; as a state of mind, like feeling content or bored or proud.  After all, you can feel proud of someone when you have absolutely no claim to have helped with whatever is making you proud of them, so why can't you feel grateful to be alive without having anyone to be grateful to?  But still, gratitude of the other sort, the sort that definitely feels a sense of connection to the source of life, is more what I was feeling at that particular moment.  Does the existence of the feeling have any validity as proof of the source?  Maybe not for anybody besides the person feeling it, but it means something to me, anyway.

and after that grammatical and logical tangle, I'm signing off.

AB