Inherent in human nature is the quest for certainty and the sense of security that is its reward. So there is always going to be a clash between the evolving self’s aspiration for certainty and the necessity to relinquish that need in order to be able to keep moving up to higher stages without ever halting one’s vertical development. 
                The authentic self is the expression of the evolutionary imperative itself, within the human heart and mind. It is a perpetual, unending, and always ecstatic impulse in consciousness that strives only to create the future. 
                But in order for the authentic self to function uninhibitedly, the individual has to be willing to continually let go and embrace ever more of the world of form in every moment. It’s only a rare individual who actually is going to have the courage, the authenticity of interest, the fearlessness, and the liberated awareness to be able and willing to continually let go in that way and at the same time have his or her own deepest sense of confidence in the nature of being and in life remain absolutely unthreatened.
                 What I am saying is that it’s possible to be deeply certain, to have the absolute conviction that is the hallmark of enlightened awareness, together with a profoundly open and vertically aspiring self-sense or evolutionary impulse. 
                 At an existential level one can be absolutely convinced and still be vertically reaching, groping, learning, inquiring, and growing eternally.

 Andrew Cohen