Every seeker wants Enlightenment. Most people perceive that to be a state of ongoing bliss and oneness and believe that after that, life is easy and simple forever after, because of the eternal expansion into the beyond.
While it is true that there is something called “the enlightenment experience” which has all of these characteristics, the true enlightened life is something quite different. The bliss is not the emotional experience we can know through the ego. It is beyond that.
This truth is revealed overtime, bit-by-bit as we grow into who we are and loose our ego identity.
Some parts of the learning are guaranteed; 
We have to first recognize who we are beyond our mind and body to the point that a shift of perspective, of context occurs, but then we have to crash and come down from the enlightenment high. We need the courage to admit that every experience wears off, even after a few years, that clarity can be lost again and that identification with the mind can come back. That nothing is permanent and that to reach higher peaks we need to pass through different valleys.


Failing is an essential part of the path. When we have spiritual success our ego grows side by side, when we fail, it is diminished and is ground down.

How to support yourself in this act of self-love?
 
We come to a master or a spiritual life because we want to be free of the chains that bind us to our past. That hinder us to be spontaneous, alive and passionately present in our own life. Mostly we want to feel better and finally be happy.
 
Then we hear the teacher say it all the time: “Let meditation be on top of your laundry list”. “Make meditation your first priority”.
Why does it seem so important to have a daily regular practice of meditation? And why does it appear so difficult for many?
 
Every human being has a consciousness but unless it is nourished, unless it is awakened, nourished and supported it will not grow. It will remain only a seed, a possibility.
An average person may have only a few seconds a day of consciousness, of being aware of himself.
A seeker seeks to be conscious every moment of the day.
So our consciousness is not something that grows automatically as we grow older. It is not part of our biology. Existence leaves that up to us.
We either expand it or not. We either spend time to nourish it or not.

Trust is an absolute necessity for our spiritual development. Without it, it is difficult to even enter the path and transformation will be nearly impossible.
Transformation means that something changes into something else. Copper turns to gold. After transformation the copper is not the same anymore and it cannot know the gold until it becomes it. In the same way the butterfly cannot know itself while being a caterpillar.
In other words, we don’t know yet exactly what the new more evolved version of ourselves will be. We have no idea what will happen when we let go of our old familiar ego structure.

I use the word trust here in the sense of basic trust. This is something else than psychological trust, which is based on trustworthiness.
Basic trust means that we have the feeling that our life naturally unfolds and evolves in the right direction.
That whatever happens, it will always be good, even though we don’t know yet what it will be.
Basic trust seems to be a pre condition for us to let go into the unknown and not knowing.
Not knowing is one of the most difficult things for our ego while for the awakened part in us it is the most natural state.