In my opinion, it is also very important to, wherever possible, clean up all the areas of one’s past where one’s actions have led to either directly or indirectly hurting other sentient beings. Otherwise, there will be no inflection points that mark a significant change in our ability to create and sustain free attention.

Initially, understanding the process of how one creates unconscious identities can be like moving within a complex labyrinth. This is the starting point of a spiritual pilgrimage that will require a psycho-spiritual integration on all levels. For this, one is deliberately creating the identity of being a pilgrim.

The task of the pilgrim is to enter the mythical labyrinth and discover the centre of one's being by undergoing a challenging process of transformation. This journey includes facing our fear of the unconscious. It is a journey of rebirth and resurrection, aptly named the 'Serpentine Path' toward wholeness – a wholeness I refer to as a state of being pristine blissful awareness, whose sole undivided purpose is to be in service to and for others.

Yet the journey is not complete when reaching the centre. One must then return to the periphery again and bring the light of awareness back into daily life, practicing compassionate empathy. Any time strong resistance is experienced, one must re-enter the labyrinth and do so until such time when there remains only silent awareness – the awareness that recognizes the emptiness of all things and acts with compassion for the welfare of all living beings regarding their health, safety, and psychological wellness.

“Even with good-enough upbringing and the consolidation of what might be called a good-enough self, according to the Buddha’s logic, there will still be disquiet, confusion and insecurity because we are all instinctively struggling to be something (independent, solid, coherent and self-sufficient) we can never be. Even in healthy personality development, we emerge from childhood defending against the underlying truth of how contingent, provisional and dependent we actually are. The persistence of such feelings, far from being a symptom of parental failures (even if there have been such failures), is actually the seed of wisdom. Fighting against them only rigidifies our defences and isolates us further. Acknowledging the emptiness that frightens us, whatever its source may be, is the key to a deeper, and truer, understanding. The emptiness that we fear is not really empty. When it is successfully turned into an object of awareness, it reveals itself to be vast, luminous and reassuringly, albeit mysteriously, alive.”

― Mark Epstein, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life

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