The return movement in a person’s life, the weakening or dissolution of form, whether through old age, illness, disability, loss, or some kind of personal tragedy, carries great potential for spiritual awakening—the dis-identification of consciousness from form.

As consciousness explores and creates itself it moves slowly up the staircase of awareness. It is not that one who is in deep darkness and ignorance suddenly plunges into brilliant Light and total responsibility as they lift from the physical body. That would go against the Divine contract of consciousness creating its own reality.

Yet the ego is just a very sophisticated mask. It is a mask that is worn by individuated expressions of the universal self to create an illusion of selfhood and individuality that is separate from everything and everyone else. In this sense, the ego has an extraordinarily difficult job: it must convince God (the universal self) that it is not God.