Photo credit Alice Popkorn via Foter.com
A spiritual awakening is a great big event in the life of an experiencer. Huge. Earth-shattering. Life-altering.
The experience of awakening is a quickening of consciousness. Life accelerates. One’s perceptions accelerate. Your abilities accelerate. Your sense of meaning accelerates.
It is a massive leap forward in having an awareness of your spiritual nature, your potential, and your greater purpose.
A spiritual awakening is the beginning of your great blossoming and liberation. On the outside, you may appear the same but within your psyche, new worlds are being born!
4 Stages of a spiritual awakening
Spiritual awakening may be referred to by other names: spiritually transformative experience, near-death experience, near-death-like experience, kundalini experience, out-of-body experience, after-death experience, or mystical experience. (And others yet.)
From my own experiences, I’ve observed 4 stages of spiritual awakening:
- Awakening
- Healing
- Expansion
- Integration
During the initial awakening, you, the experiencer wake up to an ultra-reality. This dramatic psycho-spiritual awakening is the subject of this post.
Top left image: Photo credit Alice Popkorn via Foter.com
What is an awakening?
Awakenings, in real-time, are typically short psycho-spiritual events though may feel like they go on forever.
Awakenings occur in different circumstances for different people but are always intensely felt and alter one’s perception of what is real and possible.
Awakenings are sudden, unexpected infiltrations of absolute truth, that override what you were taught to believe in.
Truth, by definition, is having deep knowledge of self and one’s place in the universe; an intuition; the wisdom of the soul.
In contrast, that which is deemed to be true, by society, is conceptual, based on materialism, and malleable.
The power of a spiritual awakening is that the experience makes you aware of your subtle and eternal nature, thus dismantling, in an instance, your constructed identity.
Types of spiritual awakenings
People have all kinds of spiritual awakenings from experiencing a divine light, unconditional love, bliss, past lives, religious figures, angels, spirit beings, deceased loved ones, and extraterrestrials, to transcending their form (out-of-body experience) and the physical world.
Everyone is worthy of having a spiritual awakening. You don’t have to be or do anything, in particular, to become awakened. Everyone will awaken because death itself is a spiritual awakening!
Spiritual awakenings have been noted by people who spend time in prayer, contemplation, and meditation, and those who have come close to death (near-death experience).
Nothing, however, ensures you will have a spiritual awakening before death. It’s either a part of your life plan or not.
For instance, my father came close to dying a number of times and he never had a near-death experience.
My father-in-law was a medical doctor and a yoga master. He practiced and taught yoga regularly for decades and never had a spiritual awakening. Yet, there are others who have.
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As a depressed teenager, I had a spiritual awakening. At age sixteen, I heard my name being called by Spirit. What followed was my first of many out-of-body experiences.
These were awakenings. They were stepping stones to what would be my great spiritual awakening at age twenty-one when I encountered ‘The Light’ and transcended form.
My great awakening had many ‘typical’ elements: I encountered a divine light that filled me up with so much love energy I burst out of the confines of my earthly mind.
I sensed the presence of spirit beings. I lost all sense of my physicality and individuality. I existed beyond the flesh. I merged with pure God-consciousness.
I experienced the unfathomable scope of reality and was transformed. There was the life I lived before this event and then the life following it.
Effects of spiritual awakening
There is a great surge of spiritual energy that is experienced during a spiritual awakening. It brings into motion effects that alter the course of who you will become in the world.
There are many rippling effects. The greatest pain within the human psyche is a belief in one’s separateness. An immediate effect is an overwhelming sense of oneness and healing of past hurts.
It is a grand illusion that you are not God/Spirit and not all things. Empowerment occurs when awareness is gained of the universal truth: you are eternally connected to all that is.
This, then, becomes the greatest challenge you will confront as a spiritually awakened person. To share the truth with all your sleeping parts.
To explain how wonderful and difficult spiritual awakenings can be, here is an example of the mind-talk of an experiencer:
How do I communicate my truth of unity with others?
That God is all things. And I am God. You are God. We are God.
That the light and even the darkness are God.
That the beautiful and ugly are God.
That pure love is the ultimate force of existence.
Is it necessary to share all that I have learnt from the light?
As much as I breathe. I feel I must – but how?
I want to end all the suffering. But how?
There is a spiritual purpose to everything… even suffering.
*It is worth noting, though rare, some people have hellish spiritual awakenings. Their experiences may be life-changing and eventually, life-enhancing.
How to integrate your awakening
A spiritual awakening is such a powerful experience that many experiencers will feel the need to share their experience and yet, struggle to do so.
Often there is a feeling of responsibility to pay spiritual gifts and insights forward. I strongly believe that sharing your awakening in some way is essential to you being able to grow into it.
However, be sure to choose someone you trust, otherwise, you may meet with skepticism and cynicism which can be harmful to your mental health.
An authority like a religious elder or medical doctor is not always the best person to start with. Unfortunately, they may be stuck in their heads, in dogma and conservatism.
Rather, choose someone who you believe is open-minded; a partner, close friend, sibling, or cousin. Even if they don’t entirely get it, you can share your experience and feel respected.
You may indeed be fortunate enough to have support around you, perhaps even from your elders or doctor. If not, write your experiences down, it really helps. You can even share it here.
Fortunately, there are excellent organisations and networks online, accessible to most, and committed to supporting people at different stages of their awakening journey.
These are communities knowledgeable in, and open to hearing about spiritual experiences, and understanding the difficulties you may be going through:
American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE)
International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)
Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF)
Visit these sites, join forums, participate in chats, seminars, and retreats, and delve further into the resources they make freely available.
Read books written by experiencers who have had a spiritual awakening, were transformed by it, and learnt how to make it a part of their everyday life.
“… a delightful story of a woman who has had a remarkable journey through the psychic-sphere where spiritually transformative experiences are a way of life for her. Along the way, the paranormal becomes normal and she is able to walk between the worlds melding this life with the other, heavenly side. This is a book you will want to read!”
-Jody Long
