What A Spiritual Awakening REALLY Looks Like

How Does A Spiritual Awakening Start?

Many people are currently going through a spiritual awakening. But what does a spiritual awakening look like? On the one hand, it can be an amazing experience as our minds open up to a much broader perspective of the world and reality. On the other hand, it can be filled with many challenging experiences.

A spiritual awakening can begin with a dramatic event or subtle shift and small changes over time. You may be faced with inner turmoil and a sense of dissatisfaction or disconnection from the world. This results from one or more of the following.

Natural awakening – A slow, subtle process of awakening that occurs naturally. It can be triggered by spiritual practices such as journaling, meditation, mindfulness or yoga.
Existential crisis – This is known as the dark night of the soul. A person begins to question the meaning of life and reasons for being. The experience can include periods of depression or a life-changing experience.
Traumatic experience – Such as abuse or an accident. This event profoundly impacts our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It requires healing over some time.
Major life-changing events – Include job loss, the death of a close one, relationship breakdown, or financial crisis. These events change the very course of your life.
Near-death experience – An experience where one nearly dies can cause people to question their lives.

What Is A Spiritual Awakening?

Spiritual is that which relates to regions beyond the three-dimensional nature of Earth. It can also be known as ethereal, metaphysical, mystical, supernatural, unearthly or celestial.

Awaken is to come into awareness of something.

Spiritual awakening is becoming aware of that which relates to regions beyond the three-dimensional nature of Earth.

A spiritual awakening is a call to ascend to higher consciousness and a deeper level of awareness and knowing. Spiritual awakening is the process of questioning the point of life beyond just your personal experience. It is the process of connecting to something greater than yourself, discovering what it is and beginning to know and embody it.

Spiritual awakening is seeing the world and reality for what it is, in both the darkness and the light. Or both the negative AND the positive.

Learn more… “The 5 Stages Of Spiritual Awakening | Where Are You At?”

Benefit | Finding The Light

For many, spiritual awakening can begin with wanting more in life, getting curious and asking big questions. We begin to explore concepts of God, the meaning of life, the source of our existence, what happens after death, what exists beyond our reality, and many more.

We may start to read, explore and discover concepts and ideas about creativity, universal laws, the law of attraction, God or the Creator and how energy influences everything. We may start to discover truths about how our potential expands beyond what we thought we were capable of.

When we find the light, we realise everything is connected, and we are One.

When we find the light, we see more possibilities for life than we ever could have imagined. At the same time, as you begin to know the light more you will see equal amounts of the dark. If we are attached to the light and do not want to look at the dark, this will cause pain and suffering and prolong the awakening process.

The benefit is in finding the light. The challenge is in finding the dark.

Challenge | Finding The Dark

Many begin to see aspects of the dark after the light, and it can be a real comedown after such a high. For others, they see the dark first, as they are dissatisfied with their life and the world. For these people, they will move into the light when they have moved through the dark.

The dark is not necessarily evil, negative or bad. The dark is the shadow. It is those things that exist but have been hidden from sight and the light.

The shadow is the aspects of ourselves and society we have hidden, suppressed and repressed. They are the parts that we have been holding back and need to be exposed and seen. Continuing to suppress and ignore these aspects will only cause prolonged suffering. The way through the darkness and back to the light is to look at it, confront it, see it for what it is and face it head-on.

During a spiritual awakening there is a period and process of oscillation between dark and light. We stay in the dark, then move to the light, then back to the dark again. We see and understand it at a deeper level. We come out of this oscillation when we lose emotional attachment to the dark and the light, and can allow both to exist.

You raise your vibration when you see both the light and dark aspects of yourself and the world and allow them for what they are. Then you can change the world.

Learn more… “What Is A Dark Night Of The Soul And How To Get Through It”

My Awakening | Challenges And Gifts

My spiritual awakening feels like a long, drawn-out process over the last decade, if not even longer. I did everything I was told for most of my life in terms of studying hard, getting good grades, a career, and a good job. There was always something niggling in the background, striving for more, like something was missing.
I struggled to hold down a job for the long term. I would master it and then get bored and move on. I struggled to be understood by friends, family, partners and colleagues in the workplace. I was often frustrated and felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Trying to be what I was supposed to be so I could be happy.
In my 30s as I realised I could not keep living my life like this for the next 50 years and started searching for more. This took me down a path of personal development and new ideas. I realised that life could be so much bigger and more than what I had been told. I began to see the light.
I tried many things in the pursuit of happiness and success. I eventually burned out with chronic fatigue and lost much of what I created – my work, wealth, health, and many friends. I went into the darkness and a dark night of the soul that lasted many months and recurred for many years. I saw the darkness and corruption of the human-made world and what it is. I could see why I would never be happy in it and I did not want to be a part of it. But I couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.
For another 6 or 7 years, I bounced between the light and the dark, seeing the good and the bad. The dark always overshadowed it as I tried to extract myself from the human-made systems of reality. I knew I had a mission to help people, and I kept trying to move into this work. I did not realise I had to help myself, complete my evolution and to an extent embody the experience before I could help others do the same.
2020 and the global events that occurred (which we cannot always mention) caused me to dive back into a dark hole. After some more personal introspection, soul searching and more major life changes, I eventually came out of it for what I believe is the last time. It feels completely different. I finally feel at peace with whatever unfolds, personally and collectively.
What has changed? I can finally see the light in the darkness and the darkness in the light. I have finally (mostly) unified the dark and light aspects of myself and reality. I no longer need to oscillate dramatically between the two. I am the two and can appreciate them both for what they are. I can appreciate them both at the same time. I can be in the light and see the dark. I can see the good in the darkness and I can see the darkness in the light.
The gifts of spiritual awakening are on the other side of acceptance and allowance of the struggle and the process of bringing them closer together. The person I am now is only because I moved through this process. A spiritual awakening is like the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It is only through struggle and the necessity of pushing through and out of the cocoon that a butterfly is born. It does not resist. It faces the challenge head-on and does what it has to do. It knows it will get to the other side.

What Spiritual Awakening Feels Like

Going through a spiritual awakening and seeing the light and possibilities of reality can be exhilarating, inspiring and enlightening. You see the world differently and want to share it with everyone you meet and know.

In this sense, you are energetically vibrating at a different level to many around you, and it can feel like no one understands. People may look at you strangely and draw away, not understanding what has gotten into you or what you are talking about.

So too, awakening to the darkness can also be isolating. People around you may not understand why you are depressed, sad and disconnected. Many may pull away because they cannot see what you see, do not understand or do not know how to help, or you may pull away because you want to be on your own.

The process of spiritual awakening is often something experienced on your own. It may include periods of isolation, disconnection, loneliness and aloneness. You explore the darkness and try to navigate what is happening to you on your own. It may include periods of euphoria and total connection to nature and everything as you explore aspects of the light.

Spiritual awakening can be a chaotic, confusing and contradictory experience as you oscillate between waking up to the world’s darkness and then the light.

Navigating Awakening

I realise my spiritual awakening took so long because I did not understand what was happening. I resisted it a lot for much of the time. I was trying to overcome the darkness and hold onto the light.

Knowing what I know now, if I had to go through this again, I would do it differently and give up to the process. I would not resist and fight the darkness nor strive for the light. I would aim to reduce the oscillation process as much as possible and bring the two together as quickly as possible. This is the ultimate outcome.

When you can see the darkness but you can work through the emotional response. You can see the light but you release the attachment to it.

I would remind myself that everything is temporary, and merely an experience. I would attempt to look for the good in the bad and the bad in the good. I would try not to chase a reality or hold onto anything. Instead, attempt to live in the present, understand and allow the experience and know the gifts are exposed in moving through it to get to the other side. For me, it is only now, years later, that I can see the gifts of experiences that at the time I resisted but had to happen to get me to where I am today.

I would help people by telling them the same. I would say to you the gifts are there and waiting. They will be yours when you embrace the process of spiritual awakening and choose to open up and experience it all, the darkness and the light.

It’s just temporary. It’s not you. You are totally safe as you move through this process.

Your experience and how you do it is up to you.

The choice is yours…

…Liz Watt