Make no mistake about it – enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.
– Adyashanti
That is my experience as well. The main priority of life, at least in an process of clarification (aka “enlightenment”), is to bring what’s here into conscious awareness. Mind aligns more closely with reality, and that means stripping off identifications. Sometimes, it’s a relief. Other times, there can be a life-and-death struggle against this stripping away. And it’s always destructive. A destruction of identifications, of mind identifying with and as images and thoughts.