I certainly don't have epiphanies every day. They have been scattered around at odd times in my life. I also have different kinds of epiphanies.
There is the kind of epiphany where for a moment I get a glimpse of the whole, like when for a brief moment I see that the entire universe is engaged in a Great Dance.
There are teeny tiny epiphanies where I suddenly see what is REALLY going on. Like I used to be very in favor of the peace talks, but when Arafat walked out on Oslo after being offered like 99% of what he said he wanted, I realized that my perecption had been fatally flawed. It was click click click, OMGosh some people don't want peace. How can that be true? But it's true. Click click click I suddenly saw the middle east problem as the ugly evil thing it really is, and how the peace talks were actully making things more violent.
And then there are the really odd little epiphanies, if that is even the right word, when I feel to my core the gears of the universe turning, when I sense that I have done something pivotal and life altering. For example, there was a time when I set up a meeting between a particularly significant rabbi and the cardinal of vienna. Me? I'm a nobody. But I got two major somebodies to meet and talk, and somehow, something inside of me just sensed that by arranging this meeting I had altered the future into a different course.
My most recent epiphany? Lets just say that when I was very young, I made a bargain with G-d. I told Him I would go through whatever I needed to go through, no matter how painful, if He would make me into a saint of goodness and wisdom. Well G-d took me up on it. (Indeed this was one of those moments where I felt the gears of the universe changing.) Fast forward to about two years ago. I was in the middle of a serious depression (I'm bipolar), and I mean the kind of screaming pain and madness depression where you pray to die in your sleep just so that the pain will stop. I was in a Yahoo chat room and someone came in who was very suicidal, doubting G-d, all the usual. His question was why should he love a G-d that has sent so much pain into his life. I felt this deep peace and calmness and replied, "Because every morning, the sun comes up again. Because kittens bat little jingly toys around on the floor. Because the sound of the birds singing is so lovely." It was a brief moment of clarity, it left as suddenly as it came. But then I was amazed that I had said what I said. Somehow, in the pit of hell, I had seen heaven. For one moment, I had been wise. And yes, all the pain I've gone through to get to that moment was worth it.
