How To Navigate A Spiritual Awakening

A spiritual awakening can be an extremely disorienting time of your life. You might feel like your world is falling apart from under your feet. But a spiritual awakening is a wonderful thing. It’s the process of shedding the ego and discovering the true essence of who you are: God.

A spiritual awakening is the awakening of your soul which opens the door to a deeper layer of your consciousness. This process can be challenging, but I can guarantee you that you won’t want to go back to how you were before.

Understanding this phenomenon can help you navigate this process much more smoothly, which is why I’m writing about it now.

Significance of undergoing a spiritual awakening

Undergoing a spiritual awakening artwork

A spiritual awakening represents an initiation into spirituality. It can be described as a profound shift in your perception, beliefs, and values.

It creates permanent (and tangible) changes in your life experience, and sets you on a spiritual pathway that you can’t walk away from.

This process sets you on a path of personal growth, and is a catalyst for the expansion of your consciousness. You can look at a spiritual awakening as a major shift in consciousness which brings you closer with your soul nature.

This means you’re at a crossroads between the physical and the spiritual constructs, and your eyes are opening to a deeper truth beyond reality. It’s to wake up from the dream-like nature of your ego, and experience a deeper meaning of your life here on Earth.

Another way to look at a spiritual awakening is that you’re breaking out of the matrix. Your have lived your life unconsciously, operating from your beliefs, patterns and programs, without experiencing true awareness. Everyone seeking understanding of the nature of their reality will go through a spiritual awakening at some point. It’s an inevitable, but necessary step of the evolution of your consciousness.

What can you expect during a spiritual awakening?

During a spiritual awakening, you can expect some challenges. This will be a disorienting time of your life where you’re letting go of everything that didn’t serve your growth as a person, and finding a new identity which aligns with a deeper understanding of your life.

People often struggle at times throughout this process, as the process of awakening can be painful. During this process, you’ll confront your demons, and all the nasty things about your life will be illuminated.

You can’t expect people to understand you throughout this process. A fairly universal experience of a spiritual awakening is to feel isolated. People who have not undergone a spiritual awakening (which is most people) won’t be able to connect on the same wavelength.

They might wish the best for you, but you’re going to feel a disconnect on a fundamental level. You might find it difficult to relate to most people, or to find support, which makes a spiritual awakening a very personal journey.

Once you really embrace it and get through the rough stages, an awakening is an extremely rewarding experience. In lack of a better word, you’re going to feel much more pure. You will feel a sense of inner peace and fulfilment that was previously missing from your life.

Your life will open up to entire new dimensions of experience. Ultimately life is going to be much more of an adventure, one which you have much more wisdom to navigate and make the most of. So the pay-off is absolutely worth it.

How long does a spiritual awakening last?

A spiritual awakening doesn’t have a specific time frame. For most people, it can take years to go through all of the stages. For other people like me, it happened instantly, and was offset by a powerful spiritual experience.

It’s difficult to say when you’ll experience a spiritual awakening, as they’re a natural product of the soul’s evolution, and everyone is evolving at a different pace, and at a different stage.

Is spiritual awakening the same as enlightenment?

A spiritual awakening is the expansion of your consciousness, which happens to anyone who’s on a journey of spiritual growth. Spiritual enlightenment is a stage of oneness with the god-self, a complete illumination and understanding of the soul journey.

Enlightenment is much more profound than awakening, and also extremely rare (as the soul needs to be at the end stage of samsara, meaning it’s extremely progressed).

What causes a spiritual awakening?

Internally, a sense of dissatisfaction or yearning for a deeper meaning in life can spark the initial stages of a spiritual awakening. This might manifest as a growing disconnect from conventional societal norms, a feeling of emptiness despite material success, or a curiosity about the nature of existence beyond the physical realm.

Sometimes, personal experiences such as trauma, loss, or moments of great joy can act as triggers, shaking individuals out of their regular routines and prompting them to seek a higher purpose or understanding.

While the triggers for a spiritual awakening vary from person to person, most people fall into one of the categories below. Here are a few common ways that offset a spiritual awakening, and set you on a course of spiritual growth.

Exposure: You stumbled upon something deeply meaningful

Exposure to new things can be a catalyst for spiritual awakening. If you have lived your life within your programs and preset conditioning, but stumble upon something that truly makes you feel something that transcends the limitations of your programs, it may set you on a new path.

This exposure could come in the form of being introduced to a new idea that really makes you think, exploring diverse cultures, witnessing someone you know die, or chance encounters with individuals who radiate spiritual insight. All these things can play a pivotal role in awakening one’s spiritual consciousness.

Self-exploration: You discovered a deeper meaning

Moments of introspection and reflection can lead to deeper insights, which can act as a catalyst for awakening consciousness. Whether you have some big realizations during meditation, you discover new things by dabbling with mysticism or other spiritual modalities, or follow the voice telling you to explore your consciousness and ask questions. This self-exploration can lead to profound insights, which creates a shift of consciousness.

Suffering: You are forced to find a better path

One of the more common ways that people embark on a spiritual journey is when they experience something so unpleasant, that it forces them out of their slumber. Pain is a catalyst for growth. When you go through a period in your life which is extremely painful, sometimes this offsets a spiritual awakening.

The reason why this happens is because suffering forces you into the darkest parts of your consciousness, where you need to start exploring it, as anywhere is better than where you’re at. Therefore, when something in life causes a big deal of pain, this pain often illuminates a better path forward, one which they need to walk if they wish to heal.

Stages of a spiritual awakening

A spiritual awakening is often described in stages, with each stage representing a new chapter of the evolution of your consciousness. In reality, there aren’t distinct stages of a spiritual awakening, and people interpret this process differently.

Everyone’s process is different, but people often experience similarities along the journey. You might experience different stages than mentioned, or skip some altogether. It might be quick and smooth, and it might be long and endearing.

For me, my spiritual awakening was induced by a kundalini awakening which lasted a few hours. Those few hours were simultaneously the most intense, dark, and blissful hours of my life. This awakening acted as a catalyst to something much greater, and is apparent in my life today, many years later.

The stages of a spiritual awakening can be likened to our chakras, and that’s what we’re going to use as a guide to navigate a spiritual awakening. To learn more about my process with spiritual awakening, read the check out the article below.

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Stage 1: Disillusionment (Muladhara | root chakra)

Depending on what has triggered the spiritual awakening, you’re likely to feel a little off as there has been a shift in your consciousness, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it means, or why it happened.

You might feel some detachment from your usual self, or the feeling of generally being lost in life. During this time, you might experience some inner turmoil or unease, and feel disillusioned as you’re no longer finding comfort or joy in the things you used to do.

There’s a deeper yearning to explore your life and actually making something of it, and a sense that there’s a whole lot more to be found. During this initial stage of your spiritual awakening, your beliefs will come into question. Instead of just going along with things you begin questioning them.

You might start seeing things that most people don’t see, and have questions that most people don’t ask. Whatever it is, you begin to look for a new road to fulfillment, because currently you feel a little alienated.

The first stage of a spiritual awakening represents the root chakra, which is your sense of survival and connection to the physical. During this stage, it’s important to realize that you’re safe, and to detach from the innate need to ‘survive’ by conforming, working a job you hate, and doing things that you know don’t serve your growth.

Focus on grounding yourself and being present
Detach from your instant gratification and the need to ‘survive’
Focus on inner centeredness and stabilizing yourself emotionally

Stage 2: Dark night of the soul (Svadhishthana | sacral chakra)

This newfound path of inner discovery becomes more alienating the further you walk down it. You can’t go back to your old life, and you can’t seem to find your place in the new one. This leads to a period of intense internal struggle as you shed your skin and let go of everything that’s no longer serving you.

During this stage of a spiritual awakening, nothing makes sense anymore. You don’t know how to find a sense of peace in life, you’re not sure where you’re going, and everything seems to be cultivating to a point tipping point. So you feel extremely disoriented, distressed and overwhelmed and things are only getting more difficult.

But this dark night of the soul serves a purpose. It’s dredging everything up that has been rotting away in the subconscious, in an act to cleanse you where you can move forward with a clean slate.

During this stage, you will confront deeper truths about yourself, and process your deep-seated emotions. You begin to see your dysfunction, and how dysfunctional our world is, to the point it’s almost too much to handle. But as always, you do handle it, and learn a lot through the process.

Explore your creativity during this time of your life
Let go of attachments and relationships that aren’t serving you
Seek more substantial passions, desires, and avocations for your life

Stage 3: Surrender (Manipura | solar plexus chakra)

Eventually, the pain becomes too great. You’re tired of feeling this way, and there’s no escape from the disillusionment you’re feeling. So you come to a point of surrender, whether you do it willingly, or it takes you with a fight.

Either way, the only way out is to go through, and when you surrender to those dark feelings of isolation and helplessness, that’s when you see the light. That’s when you let go of everything that you’re holding onto, you’re purified, and are reborn on a new journey.

During the surrender, you let go of attachments. You let go of needing to be someone, needing to have a nice house, or fancy job, or to please everyone else in your life. These expectations that were either self-imposed, or imposed by other people disintegrate, and you discover a deeper meaning of your life experience.

As the surrender is associated with the solar plexus chakra, which is your sense of personal power. You need to activate your inner strength, determination and willpower to surrender to your demons, and allow yourself to be overcome with everything you don’t want to face.

Develop the courage and inner strength to let go and embrace the next chapter
Trust in the process, and be confident that you’re on the right path
Stop protecting your personal identity and dysfunction, and let the transformation happen

Stage 4: Integration (Anahata | heart chakra)

After surrendering to the pain, you come to a point of acceptance. This is the calm after the storm where you pick up the pieces and start anew. It’s time to start rebuilding your life in a much better way. Instead of living by your patterns and programs, your consciousness is opening to a higher awareness.

After illuminating all the things holding you back and showing you the path forward, the integration stage of your spiritual awakening is where the real healing begins. No doubt you’ve removed a lot of stagnant energy and cut a lot of cords, but now it’s time to implement the changes into your life, and start paving a better path for yourself.

So you embark on a journey of healing and personal growth. This is a beautiful stage of the spiritual awakening, as healing is a beautiful process, and you benefit so much by doing it. You’ll do the shadow work and look into your traumas. You’ll implement practices and dip into other healing modalities.

As the integration stage corresponds with the heart chakra, it’s important to align with your values and intentions with your heart. The heart is much more powerful than the brain, so this stage is really here to help you become more heart-centered, align you with your soul nature, and nurture you to become a better person.

Focus on cultivating love, forgiveness and compassion for oneself and others
Cultivate your intuition, and focus on your feelings rather than your thoughts
Practice plenty of self-love and self-care.

Stage 5: Exploration (Vishuddha | throat chakra)

Since doing the heavy work, you’re well on your journey of self-exploration. During this stage of your spiritual awakening, you’re putting spiritual insights into practical actions, and walking the talk. You understand the infinite depth and complexity of consciousness, and begin aligning yourself with your authentic desires.

You feel like the dust has settled where you have much more clarity, and can start integrating these new understandings into your life. A heightened sense of interconnectedness usually accompanies this deeper understanding of self, and insights about how you can be a better person.

Now you really begin to explore your reality and make the most of it with this newfound wisdom. So you embrace it, and free the authentic self. This usually leads people to pursue spiritual practices, seek knowledge, and help other people.

This stage of a spiritual awakening corresponds with the throat chakra, which is all about expression! It’s more important now than ever to really align with your authentic self, and seek to express that part of who you are.

Be authentic with who you really are, and stop trying to fit in
Focus on your self-expression, and be more in tune with how you feel
Express your creative nature, and discover what value you can provide to humanity

Stage 6: Transformation (Ajna | third eye chakra)

This stage of a spiritual awakening is when you notice tangible changes in your consciousness, perception, and belief systems. You’re opening up to new layers of information, and becoming much more receptive to other dimensions of experience.

You begin to identify in a different way, in which spirituality has been fully incorporated into your life, and occupies a much bigger presence within your life, desires, and ambitions. You notice a stronger connection with spirit, and are beginning to see through the vale.

At this point, you’re starting to explore your spiritual gifts and realize your true calling in this world. You have a more substantial desire to utilize your gifts and experiences to provide value to humanity, as you understand that being in service is synonymous with being aligned with your true nature as a soul.

As this stage of your development corresponds with the third eye chakra, it’s important to focus on deepening your awareness and tuning in with the spiritual dimension. Meditate regularly, introspect often, and pay attention to the teachings you are receiving in life.

Deepen your awareness of spirituality and the spiritual body
Encourage spiritual insight via intuition and meditation
Foster your imagination to develop vision of your future

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Stage 7: Embodiment (Sahasrara | crown chakra)

The embodiment stage of your spiritual awakening corresponds with the crown chakra, and signified a deeper immersion and balance between the material realm and spiritual realm.

At this stage, you’ve fully embodied the lessons and teachings of the spiritual awakening process. While your feet are planted in reality, you’re tapped into other realms of experience, where they occupy a big part of your life experience.

You recognize some profound spiritual truths, and see the interconnectedness of all things. During this stage, you’ll feel a deep sense of peace, stillness, and fulfilment in your life. Your cup is full, so you want to spread your joy and wisdom to other people, and help them throughout their processes.

The final stage of a spiritual awakening corresponds with the crown chakra, which is the connection to god, and the divine. Continue exploring spirituality, seeking wisdom, and giving back to humanity and other people. Remember, getting through a spiritual awakening is not the end of your spiritual journey. It’s just the beginning, but now you can really enjoy it, and the experience of life that you’ve been gifted with.

Focus on raising your vibration and try to make the world a better place
Dedicate your life to the service of humanity and all living things
Continue studying, practicing, and mastering spiritual knowledge

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Signs of a spiritual awakening

There are many signs you’ll experience during a spiritual awakening. Below are some of the common symptoms that people experience when they’re undergoing a spiritual awakening.

Feelings of being lost
A sense of disillusionment and alienation
A feeling of abandonment and loss of faith
You feel like your life has been a lie, and there’s something more
A sharp increase in curiosity, especially about the nature of your existence
A deeper questioning of your belief structures and perceptions
An illumination of the human condition
The realization that everyone is faking it (and actually pretty miserable)
Insights and understandings about your spiritual nature
A general disconnection from self and ego (and embodiment of soul)
You start reflecting more, and paying more attention to your internal processes
You generally become more introspective
You start paying more attention to your triggers and dysfunctions
Your journey of healing becomes much more intense
A general disassociation from your identity
You may not know who you are anymore
Changing interests, motivations and desires
You stop finding pleasure in the same activities and hobbies
Find that you can’t connect with the same people
Deeper connection with your intuition
Cultivation and connection with spiritual abilities

Insights into a spiritual awakening

After going through a spiritual awakening, there’s some deeper truths about the nature of reality that you’re going to have much more clarity on. Here are some of the realizations that people tend to have after going through this process.

Understanding the impermanence of life

People who go through a spiritual awakening tend to let go of the permanency of life, and embrace their mortality. They realize that they are a soul having a human experience, and that death is just part of the process that we’ve all been through countless times before.

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We’re a tiny figment of a much bigger system

You understand that our universe is a tiny slither in a much bigger system. This system is composed of many different dimensions, teeming with different spirits and entities.

A simplified explanation of the spiritual realm

The world is teeming with spirits

There’s so many fun furry companions on this planet, but there’s a lot that exists beyond our perception too. Spirits, entities, energies. There are more layers to reality that we can’t see, and there’s a lot of intelligent life within these layers that either have a direct or indirect with reality.

There’s much more to this life too

When you go through a spiritual awakening, you start to see the cog works operating underneath society. You see that there’s a whole lot more at play that’s kept from the public (or just not seen). The government is not your friend, and they’ve certainly got agendas which go much deeper than people would generally expect.

Deeper awareness of your soul nature

By realizing your true soul nature, you understand that you have already been through every experience imaginable. You are infinitely wise, and have the ability to tap into this wisdom. You know that your soul is much more powerful than your mind, and by cultivating a deeper connecting with it, you can tap into some very interesting things.

Major shifts in perception and belief structures

Your belief structures and perception of the world drastically changes. This involves your existential beliefs, your beliefs about people, reality, the system, yourself, and pretty much every aspect of your life experience. This broadening creates much more room for you to play around with, and you begin to understand just how complex our universe really is.

Healing is a gateway for transformation

You see that everyone has layers of trauma. Whether it’s your own trauma, intergenerational trauma, or trauma from your lineage, part of your contract for being here is to take on dysfunctions, and to heal those dysfunctions. Most people don’t realize how much they’re wounded, but you’re doing the work, and understand that healing is the key to an amazing life.

You are a creator

After embodying your true nature, you realize that you are a creator being, and you have the ability to manifest any life you want for yourself. No more playing the victim, no more blaming other people, or the universe. Being a part of god, you have access to this creative power to manifest whatever you want, so you make your life count, and create the life you actually want to have.

Service is happiness

From all the inner exploration, if there’s one thing you understand, it’s that darkness corresponds with suffering, and love corresponds with happiness. With this wisdom, you set yourself on a path of service, to help improve humanity and other people’s lives in some form. You know that being at service and experiencing love is highest vibration you can experience, and what is the most important goal of one’s life experience.