Painful acknowledgement (ICA)

This is experienced when an individual faces the reality of life without illusions; when the awareness of separation from himself and others, both created and simply fated, overwhelms his life. It may be compared to the experience of Oedipus Rex when he realizes who his mother and father really are.

In the ICA New Religious Mode, in the arena of acting out one's freedom (the life of prayer), the first formal aspect is the struggle with repentance for one's sinfulness or confession. At the first phenomenological level this occurs when one encounters the burden of one's own existence.