soaking in Siddartha

"I hoarded money, I squandered money. I acquired a taste for rich food, I learned to stimulate my senses. I had to spend many years like that in order to lose my intelligence, to lose the power to think, to forget the unity of things. Is it not true, that slowly and through many deviations I changed from a man into a child? From a thinker into an ordinary person? And yet this path has been good and the bird in my breast has not died. But what a path it has been! I have had to experience so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. But it was right that it should be so; in my eyes and heart acclaim it. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace - to hear Om again - to sleep deeply again and to awaken refreshed again. I had to become a fool again in order to find Atman in myself. I had to sin in order to live again. Where will my path lead me? The path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it."