disillusionment

There is nowhere that the light of Truth does not touch.

Giving one's life back to Life can seem like a grand, sweeping, passionate and intoxicating moment, as the recognition that I am not in control can feel grand, sweeping, passionate and intoxicating.

Yet this moment is a moment only, one that appears to come with the exultation of Liberation.

More often than not though, it seems, this Liberation is not the final Liberation, but merely a preview of coming attractions.

To awaken to the Truth of who one is rarely, if ever, seems to be enough.

Following upon this, whether after days, weeks, months or years of blissful awareness of one's self as Awareness, comes a moment of profound disillusionment - what some might call a fall from Grace.

Disillusionment is not required, of course, yet it seems to come anyway.

Chopping wood and carrying water just doesn't seem the same to the mind after the revelation that you are mightier than the gods, because you are the space in which all of their activity takes place.

And so, it seems, there is work to be done.

As Jack Kornfield put it so succinctly in the title of his book - After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

The idea that - post-‘enlightenment' - Life simply continues as it does - is far from appealing to the ego. The newly awakened ‘spiritual ego' has all sorts of ideas about how Life is supposed to be at this point - blissful, divinely inspired, clear skies, green lights, unconditionally loving relationships, easy money, perfect health.

Unfortunately for us, expectations, by their very nature, are impossible to be perfectly met.