What is “Personal Enlightenment?”

Extracted from What’s Tarot Got To Do With It? The Fool’s Path To Enlightenment by Jim Larsen

The path to Enlightenment is personal. This is not “Enlightenment” as a
grand idea that only special people can achieve, but rather the accumulation
of efforts of each individual person in shedding the extra weight and
baggage they have picked up over the course of their lifetime and being
made light. It is about accepting, integrating, and understanding the darkness
and shadows that we each have as part of our being. It is about the
path to personal understanding and acceptance.

“Personal Enlightenment” means the achievement of what you set out to
learn and accomplish this lifetime. It means to get out of your own way
and allow understanding to enter. Whatever the lessons are, whatever emotions
and feelings you incarnated to master, whatever personal status you
are here to obtain, it means you have been successful in it. Your spirit is
that much stronger. You are that much more powerful. You have awakened.
You heard the calls to action, and you acted on them. You did not settle
for complacency, but rather chose to follow your gut and the voices of the
divine even when none of it made any logical sense.

Now your energy can be devoted to further growth and spiritual advancement.
You do not need to go back and repeat the lessons of this lifetime
again. Sure, they will come up again; both in this lifetime and future
incarnations, but you will handle them with much greater ease. Strength
it also means you are an inspiration upon the earth. People will sense in
you a certain power. You will shine forth a radiance of confidence and
knowingness that others will want to emulate. Help these people along the
path of their own life. Share your wisdom and your knowledge. It can only
help them to hear their own divine guidance and to follow the trail of synchronicities
their own divine team is laying out for them.

Remember, the lesson one person may have set out to learn may have long
since been mastered by another. Someone who has mastered one lesson
may look at somebody who is working on that lesson for their self and ask
“What is wrong with that person?” Not appreciating the effort they are
putting into getting through this to be a better person.

What they should realize is that they themselves are learning lessons all
their own. Perhaps these lessons are not as obvious problems such as drug
addiction or alcoholism, but they are indeed here for something. Perhaps
the lesson they are working on is to learn compassion or understanding for
others.