The road to enlightenment requires a life dedicated to self-study, accepting the minor tragedies of life as an ineluctable part of the human condition.

There exists a universal order that we each play a distinct role in carrying out. Light always struggles to emerge from darkness. Each of us is the bearer of our own lantern. We find ourselves when we realize our place in an interconnected world. The struggle to pierce the darkness that shrouds us from realizing a state of perceptive awareness is the biggest part of both our individual story and our communal storyline.

All roads taken lead us only to ourselves.

We can only come to terms with our own place in the world by compassionately commiserating with the pang of longing that our brethren experience.

It is ultimately the ebony of our pain, our blackest monuments, which lead us to seek an enlightened way of living. We are unable to hear the voice leading to our own salvation until we fall into the depths of an abbess manufactured by living a heedless life. From this state of floundering in the gloomy lagoon, we can awaken to find the light bearing the seeds of truth that will redeem us. Looking inward, we overcome stubborn resistance, and we revivify long lost and forgotten powers. The experience of soul-searching perspicacity transfigures us. We might even feel as if we died a spiritual death and then we were reborn. From our dark pit, a shaft of light emerges.

The self is a subjective entity created by our thoughts and deeds. All sense of happiness and emotional wellbeing turns upon how a person organizes their stream of consciousness into a creation and development of a positive or negative self-image.