NAVIGATING A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING: PROS AND CONS

Spiritual awakenings can often take people by surprise, happening often at the least opportune or expected times. Difficult circumstances like bereavement, illness, breakups or losing a job can trigger the process.

Like most big life events, there will be a soul contract for such an awakening.

Although each person is different in how they experience their own awakening, there appear to be ‘stages’ common to everyone.

STAGES OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

1. THE INITIAL ‘WAKE UP CALL’

This is where your soul stirs feelings deep inside that there is something more to life than what you thought. You may get a message from your guides through a dream, an urge to take a course on healing or feel a pull to take up a spiritual practice like yoga or meditation.

2.BLISS AND JOY

After the initial shock of awakening, a whole new world opens up. You feel the joy of unconditional love and new energies flow through and around you. At this point, you may be open to guidance from your Higher Self and Guides, as well as other higher dimensional experiences. You may just want to bask in these new feelings forever, but like all good things, they come to an end. They are, if you like, a taster of what it feels like to be enlightened.

3.DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

The next phase is what many refer to as ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, and it is the phase where everything blocking you or holding you back is dredged up to be seen, acknowledged and healed. This is the most challenging phase, and it can be tremendously difficult and lonely to navigate. Many people will need a healer’s help to address issues coming up, particularly if the trauma is carried from past lives. Often issues around egotism come up here, something I will touch upon later.

4.LIFE PURPOSE

The culmination of your spiritual journey is often the realisation and acceptance of your life purpose- what you came here, at this time, to do. Many people find that their true life purpose is very different to their chosen career path, and realigning to a new way of being can be hard. We usually find that when we align to our true path, the right opportunities and guidance will come to us at the right times, but if we fight against it, we get blocks and obstacles instead. If you have a spiritual awakening, your life purpose will involve working in service to others. For a few people, a kundalini awakening may happen during this phase. I will write about that in a future blog.

WHAT PROBLEMS AND PITFALLS COME WITH A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING?

There are a few rabbit holes to be aware of during a spiritual awakening, some of which are easier to avoid than others! The one I see most often in my clients is an inability to ground themselves in reality.

1.OBSESSION WITH SPIRITUALITY AND INABILITY TO GROUND.

As people open themselves up to spiritual subjects, techniques and abilities, it can be easy for some people to lose touch with reality. They may start to see reality as fraught with problems, and seek to escape from it into higher realms. I worked with a client recently who had fallen down this exact rabbit hole: problems in his marriage and the responsibility of looking after three children were cast aside while he took ‘ascension’ courses, meditated with crystals and escaped to tai chi classes, leaving his wife to deal with three challenging children on her own. When I explained that the anger and frustration that his wife was expressing may if fact be justified, he couldn’t see it.

We come to Earth to experience living in a physical reality, and to do so our mind, body and spirit need balance. If one or more of these is out of balance, problems will occur. To live a spiritual life we first must understand GROUNDING.

As I said to my client, you can fly high spiritually if you like, but you still need to take the bins out and drop the kids off at school!

2.SPIRITUAL SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

People often fall into the trap of thinking that because they are awake, they are better or more evolved than those who are not. They may pity or scoff at people that they see as being still ‘asleep’. What they overlook is that we are all on our own journey, and because someone else’s journey is different to theirs, they are better somehow. Any time the energy of judgement, either of yourself or of someone else, comes into play you should be seeing a red flag.

Another form this complex takes is believing that you have done all the work and that you are completely healed. Being completely healed is impossible, as most of us have thousands of lifetimes of trauma to be uncovered, and it can only be done a bit at a time. To have ‘done all the work’ would mean your ego would never make you feel superior-humility is the key.

3.TOXIC SPIRITUALITY

Toxic spirituality happens when someone completely rejects anything that isn’t ‘love or light’. They refuse to acknowledge that we live in a dualistic reality, and that dark and light are two opposing polarities we all, as humans, have. They refuse to acknowledge negative emotions, and will often suppress or hide them behind a mask. Shadow work is a huge part of healing, and of the spiritual path, and rejecting any negative traits or emotions is very detrimental to progress.

I often get clients who are desperate for help with entity attachments or psychic attacks who have contacted several different healers, only to be told by the healers that they only deal with ‘the light’.

4.SPIRITUAL RESPONSIBILITY

I have written a separate blog about spiritual responsibility here. The spiritual path can be challenging enough, but to navigate it you need the strength and courage to face your deepest fears. Only by doing this will you evolve higher and move forward. Many spiritually awakened people carry wounds of powerlessness, and although they are restricted by these traumas, there is a ‘comfort zone’ where they have abdicated responsibility. I often get clients who come for healing and expect me to ‘fix them’, instead of realising that I can point them in the right direction and offer support, but the real inner work will have to be shouldered by them.

5.LONELINESS AND ALIENATION

One of the first problems that hits newly awakened spiritual seekers is the deep feeling of alienation and loneliness that comes from suddenly seeing things with new eyes. People we were once very friendly with become distant; we realise that most conversations are superficial and sometimes our closest relationships are tested to the limits. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is trying to ‘change’ a partner to see things our way-it can be frustrating and confusing when our nearest and dearest no longer are on our wavelength, but everyone has their own path, and the best thing to do is allow them to come around in their own time.

HOW LONG DOES A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING TAKE?

How long is a piece of string? Everyone is different, and we each have our own path to follow, but in most cases spiritual awakenings can go on for years. A bit like healing, I don’t think there is ever a ‘finish line’-just a feeling that you are aware of and have worked on the issues that come up for you, and that you are aligned to and follow your true calling. There is peace, fulfilment and often joy in this, but there will always be the odd thing or two that crops up to be healed and to keep us on our toes.

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