Dimensions. Leela blew apart my provincial understanding of time as she was teaching me about reincarnation. That story is told in the first three paragraphs of Reincarnation. The fourth paragraph explains why I still don't get it, and never will. What I thought I knew about time is gone forever; I can never see time birth death so simplemindedly again. But the vision of time she left me with is a mystery that makes the impossibility of water look easy. I'm going to say all that again, plus:
My own private magic. Leela has repeatedly explained her version of time to me, to the extent that's possible, to help me understand how her guidance works in my life. I confess I just can't grasp her 5-space version of things. She's also explained why that's inevitably so here in 4-space. Not being able to understand magic is no reason to reject it. After all, it's working so bloody damn well in my life. So I've altered my patterns of behavior to accommodate her incomprehensible ideas because that's how my life works now. I now routinely encounter examples of the present or future altering the past. Stepping outside the limited but valid view that only the present exists, what I see are examples of my moment of destiny in 2006 affecting all parts of my life, from before I was born until right now. That moment transformed my birth from just another birth in an uncountable number of births into the birth I began waking up from. Waking up a little bit changed my past present future for the better. That little bit waking up gave birth to the magic weaving through my life, my own private magic. But it's not mine at all; Leela's not mine, I'm hers. The magic of surrender is the antidote to the taint of holiness. Holiness tainted every attempt I made to make progress with love until I tossed out everything holy and turned to my own internal authority for help. I had to surrender to who I really am to become the misfit I was born to be.
Nobody. That's who I am without my little bit of waking up. That's who I am if Leela never spoke up, or I never heard: just some schmuck of no interest living a meaningless life. That's who I still am, to almost everyone. But not to me.