The right direction?

I scribbled this note to myself three days ago.  I'll retype it here.

Jack Kornfield writes (in A Path With Heart, p. 263) that the way to tell if your spiritual path is headed in the right direction is: "With a loving heart we must ask: Am I becoming more isolated, obnoxious, lost, or addicted? Am I increasing my suffering? Are clarity and freedom growing in me? Is there a greater capacity to know what is true for myself, to be compassionate and tolerant?"

Fair enough.  Let me try a quick pass at these questions.

•  More isolated?  That's the only one that worries me, because I live alone and it's so easy for me to get that way.  (Pick almost any post at random, but for example this one.)  But I don't feel lonely.  I talk to people at work.  I talk to people at my UU Sangha.  I even talk to you all, though I suspect that at this point nobody is listening.  I don't know ... they are little things, but as I say I don't feel lonely.
• More obnoxious?  How would I know?  (smile)  Ask somebody else.
• More lost?  Again, I don't feel lost.  Even though I don't see far ahead (see for example my comments about career planning, like here; or more generically my comments about work, like this one), it doesn't feel to me like I am adrift ... the way it used to feel for many years with Wife.
• More addicted?  Notwithstanding my remarks yesterday here, I'm drinking a lot less than I used to when I lived at home with Wife.  And somehow even when I drink now I don't seem to enjoy it as much.
• Suffering?  I think I'm overall happier than I've been in a long time, but that may be just the separation and have nothing to do with (e.g.) the meditation.
• Clarity, freedom, a capacity to know what works for me?  Again, I think so .... 

Why am I so reluctant to admit that I'm headed in the right direction?  It sounds like bragging.  But maybe it's worth remembering a comment Debbie made to me many months ago.  I was taking a class on how to put the Dharma at the center of your life, and one week we read a chapter from Kornfield on spiritual maturity.  The assignment was to think about the ten facets of spiritual maturity that he describes -- ten virtues, in effect -- and then to identify: which ones do we already live today, and which ones do we still have to work on?  These are qualities like non-idealism, kindness, generosity, patience, inclusiveness, and so forth.  Anyway, I told Debbie that I was having trouble with the assignment, for exactly the same reason I mentioned just now: it seemed like I was bragging about how great I am for achieving these virtues, and that always makes me uncomfortable.

Her reply framed the whole thing very differently.  She said she found these virtues to be things she was grateful for, because they were qualities that she could relax into or take refuge in, and living that way made her life a lot more pleasant.  Not an achievement at all, but a blessing.

Wow.  Interesting.  I have to remember that ....