Spiritual experiences, the transformative kind, are also known as spiritual awakening. They happen to all kinds of people and in many different circumstances.
The most widely reported spiritual experiences result from being near death (NDE) or from using hallucinogens. I’m not here to talk about those ways.
Rather, simpler and healthier ways. Whether these lead to you having a spiritual awakening or not, doesn’t mean you won’t gain some benefits, regardless.
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Spiritual experiences enhance your understanding of where you fit in the entire scheme of things. This doesn’t necessarily make life easy. Often, the opposite is true. Why?
Because when you have a remarkable experience of consciousness, a lot of people don’t. You feel compelled to share the experience and yet a lot of people don’t want to listen.
So, you spend lots of years working out what to do with the immense energy and insight you’ve received because you know it’s incredibly meaningful and can help people.
You know that if people truly understand how much they matter, how connected they are, and how powerful and limitless they are, they could live with less fear and conflict, and the whole human experience on this planet could be a better one.
I’m someone who had a spiritual awakening, over many years, starting at age sixteen, but it happened to me spontaneously. I didn’t feel at the time that I contributed to the spiritual experiences I had but now with age, I think that perhaps I did.
You may be interested to know under what conditions spiritual experiences happen, so I’m going to tell you in the plainest way I can think of, no fluff. How it happened to me. In no particular order…
10 ways to have a spiritual awakening:
- Suffering
- Prayer
- Contemplation
- Creativity
- Counselling
- Travel
- Nature
- Meditation
- Clean-living
- Losing Religion
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1. Suffering
Spiritual awakening arises from great suffering when life humbles you. Dark nights of the soul. It’s painful. You fight against change. But there is no avoiding it. Ask anyone. Suffering is the flame of renewal. Losing your way, again, only to be revealed unto yourself.
The dissolution of the ego and the resurrection of a higher self can’t be faked or hurried. It is very much a process. Cycles of vulnerability, depression, and surrender. Climbing through backway passages into yourself. To deeper soul-knowing and transformation.
2. Prayer
Amen. With heartfelt intention and daily application. Prayers are heard, received and actioned in heaven. Prayers are express mail of the spiritual kind and enter the hearts of spiritual messengers through God. The more you mean it, the more the answers come.
Asking Spirit to reveal the truth to you is essential to receiving wisdom through spiritual experiences. Some part of you must sincerely and intensely desire to heal. God’s light will heal every crevasse of your being. Believe, and you will see. Seek, and you will find.
3. Contemplation
You will enhance your chances of having a spiritual awakening by focusing daily on the divine. This is how I live. I experience the divine in everything and everyone, all the time. Develop self-awareness, love and compassion through acts of contemplation.
Place your focus on the patterns, signs and synchronicities around you. Pay particular attention to your breath, thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This fine-tunes your ability to perceive spiritual reality and entities. Wisdom states are then open to you.
4. Creativity
Creative people are spiritual people. They feel deeply. They are intuitive. They possess self-awareness, naturally. If you are not a creative type, you may like to spend some time with creatives and observe them in their flow states. When they are creating spontaneously.
This is exactly the state where there is a remarkable convergence between human and divine. Engaging in regular creative practice is the surest way to bring on spiritual experiences. Even if it’s regular dot painting. It will teach you how to detach from your mind.
5. Counselling
Making sense of the mess that can be life, in the safety of an experienced guide – a counsellor – can set you free. Personal growth matters. Working with a psychologist, spiritual healer or master will help you to transcend restrictive patterns.
Seek the help of a counsellor who has been where you are. Who can identify your core triggers. Who can open the door to a higher way of being. By unwinding coils of fear, shame, guilt, grief, and anger you will heal and give rise to a spiritual awakening.
6. Travel
By putting yourself into new cultures, situations and environments you open your mind, heart, and senses to different stimuli, people, and possibilities. The result of which is the flourishing of feelings, imagination and connectivity. Also, dreams and manifestations.
It is no coincidence that many of history’s great masters and creatives walked a lot and travelled afar so they could experience the vastness of their potential. Many pilgrims have been transformed by long journeys to foreign lands with moral and spiritual purposes.
7. Nature
The fingerprints of God are everywhere in nature. Truths galore. You only need to step outside and look up at the sky to feel in awe of existence. Awe is a feeling worthy of the Gods. It’s an expression of gratitude. Spiritual experiences come with feelings of awe.
Your soul’s nature is calm, peaceful and beautiful…reclaim those parts of yourself by being in nature, regularly. Give attention to the deep exhale of being-ness. That is God. Right there. In breath, I am. Exhale, God. Nature is giving you I am. It’s a powerful exchange.
8. Meditation
In the Light and the Silence is the eternal Breath. Think of your breath as a ribbon that connects you from this world to the spiritual world. In meditation, you can travel along your breath into the spiritual world. The breath becomes so very deep and so very slow.
Be as still for as long as you can, and then some. Spiritual awakening happens when the inhaled (I am) breath and exhaled (God) breath merge as one so there is no distinction between them. It takes great skill to develop the patience required to master this state.
9. Clean-living
You are a spiritual being having a human experience. Your body enables this. Therefore, it’s sacred. Even if it’s ill, injured or limited. It has the capacity to receive light and healing and to give light and healing. Living a clean life supports your spiritual mission.
You can self-care and self-love by fuelling your body with nutritious food and drink. Animal or plant-based. Find what suits your body type. So you can live, sleep and dream well. By increasing water intake you will receive spiritual messages more effectively.
10. Losing Religion
You were brought up to follow your parents’ or community’s beliefs. At some point, usually in your teen years or 20s, you may question those beliefs. This search for truth, identity and belonging can lead to spiritual experiences which take you away from traditions.
When I had my first spiritual experience I was in the throws of questioning the faith I was raised in. Then, my spiritual awakening resulted in me losing my religion, having gained the insight that God too is without religion. It was a liberation of body, mind and spirit.
Spiritual experiences are not for everybody. That’s OK. It doesn’t mean anything if you have them or don’t have them. You’re equally valued either way by the powers that be.
However, if you do have them, they change you, forever. They turn you inside out, and upside down. I think, in the best way. You live awakened to spiritual reality, every day.
Often, spiritual awakening happens spontaneously and takes years to integrate. Keep to your spiritual path with a focus on the divine, and the magic will come.
God smiles at the blood
trickling from my toes
Eager – as the sunrise,
rugged rocks,
sprays of ocean.
Colours of a carnival
at the edge of the world
where I stand with angels,
beauty awakens
welcoming me home.
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