Enlightenment

Here is the number one difficulty with enlightenment. When you wake up, or even think about waking up, you consciously take another step farther away from consonance. The definition of consonance being in harmony. All beings with free will are out of consonance, it is a function of having free will. For a being to have the capacity to create, it must first extricate itself from flow, from harmony. This is a beautiful act of courage and expansion, the creation of spirit, the creation of the masculine. Everything in the universe is in harmony, except for human beings.
Out of that initial separation from source, comes individual expression, free will, action, movement, recognition we are separate individuals. It occurs first in our birth, our first physical experience of this, it happens again several times through out our development. This is also where this inherent drive to be connected comes from in us, the desire to be one, oneness, part of something greater than we are. A deep knowing and desire to be home again. We know what being in flow is like.
One of the primary blockages to waking up, is our own fear of moving away from harmony, standing in chaos, we have already made the first step in that movement just being physical, I believe that was so traumatic and scary, (as well as completely liberating) we resist "any more" separation, like another step might be more painful. When we are asleep, or not aware of ourselves and our patterns, we live in the past, we live in the umbrage of personality drives, subconscious patterns, and astrological aspects. The absolute truth of it is, we are here to wake up to who we are, who we have come here to be and become. It is not a question of IF we are and will be completely individually responsible, it is a question of When. It was never meant to be this painful.
Pain and struggle stem from resisting growth. As the boundaries we have unconsciously (or consciously) given ourselves cave to the pressures of our own expansion we have an ever increasing responsibility to change those boundaries. With choice we can direct the flow of growth, without choice the chips will fall where they may, with a greater possibility of increased pain. Without change and responding, we create pain and loss of freedom. We are in a crisis of freedom right now. You can feel life and the ways we have been living are choking us, individually and collectively. We are in the narrows, the liminal, this is the first time humanity has had the capacity to direct and choose our next space. Will we consciously choose a life based in love and freedom, or one of pain and struggle, there is still time to get on the right track, 2012 is still far enough away to learn how to do that... Know you are at choice to be where you are, even if you think you would never have chosen this, it only calls to your state of unconsciousness. Use that awareness of being unconscious of your choice, to be more conscious.