Loosely paraphrasing from the analects:
Master: "I see from your countenance that you have entered the realm of Awareness!"
Monk: "Yes, but my joy is that of one who has found a precious gem beneath a pile of dung."
Carl Jung remarked that "People who live unconsidered lives get along just fine. It is when some aspect of the Collective Unconscious treads unbidden into the realm of Consciousness that there is trouble." Neurosis is often a crisis of discovery.
"The Ten Bulls" of Zen poetically relates the struggle that even an individual with some degree of preparation has with integrating the discovered Unconscious framework of the personality with the new forming personhood of Awareness. The new creature of Awareness finds its Self a stranger in a strange land.
Meditation provides a foundation of facticity which smooths the birth of the child of the Universe.
