Navigating Spiritual Awakenings
Aloha! This blog was adapted from information shared on my podcast Your Heart Magic in the episode, Navigating Spiritual Awakenings.
To listen to the podcast and/or read the entire transcript of the episode, pop over here.
Read on for the cliff notes version of what you need to know about Spiritual Awakenings!
What Is a Spiritual Awakening?
A spiritual awakening could also be called a disruption of consciousness, or an awakening of consciousness.
Imagine that you have a certain view in which you see the world, that has developed over time by what you’ve been taught, what you understand to be true, and what you have experienced for yourself. In a sense, you might think of this as anchoring yourself to the things that feel true for you and certain.
When we anchor to ourselves to things that feel certain for us - without even knowing that we're doing it - we have created a set point that helps center us.
When an awakening happens, usually some kind of external or internal crisis occurs that knocks us off that set point.
We might find that something begins to challenge the perspectives on life we’ve created. This might impact our ideas around relationships, health, sense of purpose, career, identity, and/or our sense of reality.
When this happens, we often begin a sifting and examination process, which can shake up the old certitude of how we viewed aspects of our lives, and we begin to gain a bigger perspective for looking at the world.
Spiritual Awakenings also have a transcendent component where we begin to step outside a smaller, more limited self, and begin to grow a bigger perspective that may encompass a greater sense of spirituality, understanding of ourselves, or relationship to the world around us.
Think of the example of the caterpillar who goes into the cocoon in order to transfer and become a butterfly and you have a good illustration of the metamorphosis that can transpire in an awakening process.
How Awakenings Can Feel
A big part of spiritual awakening is the experience of loosening our attachment to how things have been because we are creating space for a bigger self and a new way of being.
This means that spiritual awakenings are usually innately disorienting. They can often feel exciting, confusing, and perhaps a little scary.
Change can be hard, especially when we are in the middle of the change and don’t fully understand where we’ll end up.
Friendly PSA: There is no official checklist for what an awakening might look like or what you might experience. The following is not intended to be a diagnostic list to determine if you are having a spiritual awakening! :)
Instead, it is a range of feelings, sensations, and experiences that may provide a reference point for various emotional, psychological, and physiological experiences one might have during an awakening process:
Feeling restless and discontent with life, but not quite certain why; you might find yourself thinking something like, “I know there's something more for me. I feel like I should be doing something. But I don't know exactly what that is.”
Difficulty putting words to your experience because it can be difficult to describe a new experience when we don’t have a previous experience to draw from or the right vocabulary to connect to our experience.
Feeling nudged or drawn to new ideas, perspectives, or symbols that intrigue you, though you can’t understand why
Seeing the same signs, numbers, or symbols everywhere or feeling your attention keeps being drawn to certain number patterns, signs or symbols
Things feel messy – you don’t yet understand the transformation you’re going through (again, think of the metaphor of the caterpillar into the butterfly).
Feelings of uncertainty and questioning beliefs and what you thought was once true
Somatic or sensory experiences (for example fatigue or feeling restless or like you’ve dissolving or outgrowing something).
Whatever the individual’s experience, it is accompanied by having your worldview challenged or disrupted, which acts as a catalyst for going through a sifting and evaluation process.
This could come from an external disruption/crisis, a sense of internal crisis/reckoning, and/or both.
How Do We Navigate Awakenings?
Here are a few key points to help with orienting yourself during an awakening process:
Stay curious and remember you are on a journey.
There is no immediate gratification during an awakening process. Awakenings are not about seeing the bigger picture and reaching the destination right away. Instead, they are about allowing the process to unfold and trusting your soul to guide you through the change.
Lose the expectation that it's going to look a certain way or be done at a certain time –
Soulful transformation has its own timetable and process – our job is not to control it, but to try and lean into the process and trust.
Be a collector of information.
Keep a journal, write down what you're experiencing, and write down the changes you might be experiencing with yourself. Make notes of what you're feeling and what's coming up for you - the things that you're questioning in your life.
Resist the urge to interpret the data too soon.
Remember you don’t know what you don't know. Or where you’ll be at the end of this process.
Releasing interpretation allows us to have a lot more grace and surrender for our process of change, for our process of awakening, and coming into this new perspective of self.
Draw inspiration from others.
Look to people who've been through something similar or an archetype, character or story that you relate to, or that you resonate with.
These can all be good mirrors that help us connect to something happening inside ourselves so we can identify themes that we might find on our own journey.
Draw inspiration from yourself.
Reflect on your own life and times you’ve been through a big change where you felt scared and uncertain, and reflect on how you made it through or what you might go back and tell your younger self.
Use this to tap into the wisdom you already have inside of you about knowing how to navigate growth and change.
The Gifts of an Awakening
Last, I’ve found that there's often a gift at the end of this kind of process.
So, when we come to more of a completion, and we are kind of settling into this new way of seeing things, I've often found that our gifts open in some shape or form.
This could be a gift of feeling immense hope, or abundant joy, or a sense of encouragement in your heart. It could also be a new gift of talent of deepening intuition or seeing the world through a bigger lens of light.
But I've always found that when we allow ourselves to go down into the abyss, to dig through the mud, and to develop those roots - and to do that unlearning process –
That there is often light that is found on the other side, and there is new life and new growth that is found on the other side.
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