Buried Treasure

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Enlightenment

Enlightenment is simply another name for normalcy and sanity. The enlightened person has resolved his psychic splits and emotional fragmentation. His inner darkness has been transformed into spiritual light. That light is the basis for his conscious connection to the Oneness. If he had not first gone through the process of redeeming his darkness and recovering his light that enlightenment would not be possible.

The Psyche’s Buried Treasure

Spiritual evolution and eventual enlightenment depends on making the choice to confront the negative side of our psyche. The negative side of our psyche is where we hide our buried treasure. Buried treasure is what our unconscious pain really is. When we raise it up to consciousness and heal it, it is no longer hostile and antagonistic to our conscious goals and intentions. Instead it is reintegrated into our psyche as lessons we have learned. Trauma that has been overcome is no longer a cause of suffering but a source of wisdom. It makes us more powerful because it closes the gaps in our being. Turning psychic darkness into spiritual light is the basis of  evolution and enlightenment. It is also the essential task of the transformation process. We find the fuel we need to climb higher on the evolutionary highway in the negtive regions of the unconscious. Mining the negative is a fruitful endeavor that leads to higher consciousness.

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War!

The choice to pursue conscious confrontation as the only viable path to wholeness and enlightenment intensifies the internal war between the light and dark elements in the psyche. The process of conscious  confrontation forces us to look at what is healed and true about us, and what is unhealed and only rationalized within us. It compels us to choose between accepting responsibility for our actions so we might change ourselves, and assigning blame to others for our deeds so we need not face ourselves.

Liberty vs License

In other words, Enlightenment demands responsibility. Enlightenment is not a license to permit the negative side of our nature to run roughshod over our lives. Enlightenment is liberty and there is great of difference between liberty and license. The former  is the product of discipline and responsibility. The latter is the result of a lack of self control. Think Lindsay Lohan when looking for an example of a person who has given in to their negative side and granted it complete license in their lives. The result is a life out of control, great gifts casually tossed aside, and a trainwreck heading toward complete dissolution. It is an all too familiar refrain in our morally depraved and challenged times.