Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

awakening; the same with Nisargadatta, and even
more so with Robert. Joshu supposedly struggled 40
years before his first awakening, and then had 60 years
of 16 great enlightenments after that. Did suddenly
something happen so that now adays there are
thousands of Ramanas, Nisargdattas and Roberts
around, or only those who think they are?
The descent into all the energies and qualities of
the Self we had to kill off to gain functional “sanity” in
the “real world” of convention is a developmental
process in its own right, just like the progressive
stages of development of the psyches of the infant,
toddler, adolescent, and adult, but now in a
transcendental direction of returning to the totality of
our true selves. This is done by shedding all the
conventions and regaining those parts we buried, yet
still retaining the defensive structures that allowed us
to cope and function in this artificial world in the first
place.
The struggle always remains how to go deeper into
ourselves yet retain an ability to function in the
common world of insanity and insensitivity that we call
modern life.
You see, true Self-Realization means one becomes
ever more sensitive to the world that we buried in
order to stay sane, and that world is not the one
presented to the average, non-spiritual person. We live