1. It is part of our materialistic thinking, that once you "have attained" you will be forever happy. Nothing is further from the Truth though. First of all the purity of motivation plays a decisive role. If your quest is fuelled by ambition, it will stay the driving force, even after having attained. Your Enlightenment will be serving you, rather than the other way around. It will strengthen the identification with self, resulting in an ego, compared to which your old ego was only a shadow. This is a first and major hurdle.

2. It is thus a fairy tale, that once you are Enlightened you are automatically purified of all "worldly attachments". You better consider Enlightenment as a special "wavelength". If you listen to the BBC it doesn't mean other wavelengths - radio Paris, Moscow or Berlin - are not there. Or to put it more precise: various wavelengths have temporarily disappeared into the Universal Space. After "having returned" (some of) the old frequencies still appear to be functioning though. Sooner or later you will be confronted by them, like after my ten years of uninterrupted bliss. 

3. A "spiritual identity" may be the greatest danger on the Way. Once you have identified with the true Self, Enlightenment, unity, harmony and love, there is every danger that you do not allow your shadow entering your consciousness anymore. You have identified with the positive, excluding the negative. Because everything is depending on this new identity - your status, position and success - negativity (anxieties, fears, hatred, pain) is becoming a threat. You become "an apostle of light" fighting darkness. By projecting your negativity into your shadow, the latter will become stronger and stronger though. Sooner or later it will erupt.

The biggest trap possible: clinging to Enlightenment

4. The challenge for everybody awakening is to acknowledge the fact, that parallel to the true Self there are bits of pieces of the old self left, which still have to become integrated into the New Identity. It requires courage to face this challenge. In a way it means going back to zero, coming down from your celestial realm. Again joining common souls and just like them working hard on integrating the various aspects of self - therapy - can be a "humiliating step". It is crucial though. Not attainment, but the purity of self, which determines the transparency with which IT will be shining into the world is decisive. E.g. Augustine was Enlightened, but his self remained "polluted", hence his distorted message to the world.

5. At this crossroad the temptation is to cultivate the New Self on the expense of self-integration. Here the "masters of the east" are usually not a good example. For instance their philosophies have two major errors. One is their duality - denying one major aspect of reality in favor of the other - the other the axiom that Enlightenment is the alpha and omega. Both are excluding "the world" denouncing it as "lower", maya, and illusion. A deep schizophrenia will be the result, one in which you stubbornly pursue your "spiritual quest" unaware of the fact, that you are moving deeper and deeper into trouble. The irony is, that these hopelessly schizoid people/teachers consider themselves the saviors of an alienated world.

6. The greatest danger though is that a very strong emotional complex - fear, hatred, insufficiency feelings etc. - will not be integrated. That complex will suck all the energy freed by your Opening Up. The former may become uploaded and grow to misshapen proportions. The more openness the more his unwelcome guest is benefiting from it. A battle between Light and darkness is unavoidable. Soon the latter will dominate the unlucky searcher. Your inner Space - peaceful, transparent, empty and thus helpless - has no answer to this misfortune. Sooner or later it will come to a turning point in which the "counterpart" is taking over. The entire system suddenly changes from love, peace and harmony to bitterness, self-pity, hatred and destructiveness. There are many examples in history of those people. Rulers, dictators like Adolf Hitler for instance. 

7. Once Enlightened, you have to take up your cross. It means to still embrace those parts of yourself which were once denied, rejected, suppressed or excluded. Everybody has his/her own loving Mother within. It should be a natural outcome of your attainment: the realization of your true Self, which is Love. Embracing your own inner stepchildren will be a necessary exercise in order to be able to embrace others and their suffering. How, on the other hand above-mentioned "apostles of love" can ever love others, while still hating the most vulnerable, denied and rejected parts of themselves? Walking around with a "heavenly smile", pretending "love" and "harmony", while being so dark, rotten and troublesome within? Hypocrisy all over the place. Please, don't do that (...).

8. Accepting your own shadow is the first urge of those who opened themselves up to the infinite Source of Love within. It is ITS logic. First IT embraces which is most close, while subsequently drawing concentric circles. After having included parts of your old self, IT will (actively!) include the ones who are most near to you: your lover, wife, husband, friends and neighbors, after which the "rest" will follow. It is like sunrise. Its warmth first reaching the sea, then the shore, then the dunes, then the forest and then the village, nothing being excluded. The wave of Love is all embracing. So, it is not that "wisdom teaches you that there is Nothing, while Love teaches you there is everything" and that "your life somewhere flows in the middle", as some teacher has said, but rather the unity of both: Being Nothing you are everything.

9. The message here is, that Enlightened Ones also have their tough time regularly. To them facing rejected parts can be painful too. All others who pretend otherwise are simply trying to spread a (their) myth into the world. The more an Ikarus you try to be the more painful your fall. Fortunately few manage to hide the truth all their life. Stories about recent Enlightened teachers illustrate what I mean. If you acknowledge the (often painful) fact, that despite your Enlightenment you are not perfect (surely Whole but that is another thing) and never will be, then you are saved. Gratefulness of not being separated from the world will take possession of you. It becomes clear to you, that this is even the core of your existence: being part of both Heaven and earth. Without having united those two elementary aspects of life, you will never be able to be a messenger between the two worlds or to fulfill your mission.

See Emotional self-integration, Optimal Vitality Care, e.g. Guasha purification and Zen fasting sesshins.

Without "taking your suffering upon you", you may never
really able to love