This term is thrown around a fair bit when we get into the sphere of “Spirituality”. An immediate reflex within me is a warning. I don’t believe they are the same for all people, I don’t see that they lead to some sort of prolonged state of peace and joy, and I believe that it takes work and discipline to navigate one.
Initial spiritual experiences can be fairly memorable and overwhelming. Feelings of heat or energy moving in ones body, states of connectedness, oneness, and bliss are fairly common. I’ve even heard stories of people who are temporarily hearing voices or receiving vivid dreams and deep wisdom.
I would say that some of these experiences can be pleasant and some can be scary, especially if spirituality is not your thing and all of a sudden stuff like this is happening to you.
What I would call “peak spiritual experiences”, such as deep peace, bliss even spiritual gifts such as psychic skills can be quite addictive in their nature. We want to hold on to these profound states and stay with them. This is unlikely to happen though and part of what I would call real spirituality is realizing the fluctuations of the human experience and not clinging on to one way of being.
And a spiritual awakening can and probably will cause huge fluctuations. One moment may be bliss, the next an astonishing wave of anger or hopelessness. We welcome the change in emotions, deal with them as they come and then come back into a state of balance. It is this that really defines a spiritual master, the ability to bend with whatever the universe throws at them, then recover to a state of balance. If we are looking for a single state of being, for everlasting peace and bliss, we are very likely to end up disappointed.
I can’t even say for sure that what I am going through is a spiritual awakening. I would say though that it is an awakening of sorts. I mentioned that after “The crumbling” and starting to work with my teacher that reality was very much shoved in my face. After a while of disabling the monster and working with my emotions it was easier to see objective reality and some of the issues I needed to face. This I spoke of in “Stuck Emotions”.
Before that, my emotional state and reactions to life events were very subconscious. Things just happened that would send me on an emotional roller-coaster ride. I often lived way out of balance and indulged in habits that would help me avoid or suppress emotions. I still do to some extent, but that is where I am at on my path at the moment. I do not feel ashamed about it although I do accept that it will take a little more work and discipline on my part to move forward.
I often felt like bad things just happened to me. This is very much where the monster took control of me and up till recently, when my teacher really kicked my arse, it still did. This I spoke of in “The Pity Party”. Now, looking back, I would say that many experiences I had was because my energy was out of balance and I didn’t know how to roll with it, deal with it and come back to balance. I would say that this is a mechanism of the universe, it will keep giving us an experience until we learn from it and use it for our spiritual growth. I am certain that this is why so many people seem to encourage the same experience in their lifetimes. This could be a number of things whether it be poverty, abusive partners, bullying or being bullied. All functions of the universe, a ‘call to action’ if you will, so that we can change our ways, find our power, set our boundaries and become more spiritually strong.
I must have been a slow learner, actually, scratch that, because it was a judgement. The universe works on a different time scale to us. We can keep getting taught lessons through the course of many lifetimes, for me I guess this is a lifetime of some very deep lessons, I may have reached that point where this is the sink or swim moment. Very scary indeed and I am grateful that I have help. My point is that lessons keep repeating themselves until we have that breakthrough moment. It can often take an unpleasant experience to induce these moments or awakenings. It may be an injury, a breakup, bankruptcy. Unfortunate but hey, we only ever learn the hard way right?!
So the spiritual awakening can happen spontaneously, through an unpleasant experience or indeed because a person will seek it out. Perhaps someone has felt the need for peace and or something deeper in their lives so they take a path of meditation, yoga, prayer etc. I believe this can and does lead to spiritual awakening. It wasn’t my path, although I did practice yoga before and during my awakening.
Because many of us have in our minds the concept that a spiritual awakening should be bliss, enlightenment (whatever that is), and generally lollipops and sunshine. A spiritual awakening where none of this happens can be extremely disconcerting. An awakening can often lead to spells of depression, lethargy and the grim reality that you have a shit load of stuff to work on and bring to the surface. I definitely experienced some of this, indeed it is why I’m shy to call what I am going through a spiritual awakening. I believe I still have got a fair bit of effort to put in before I can really say that I’m awakened.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you all again that that is where I am coming from with this blog. A very imperfect bloke on this long and challenging path. It’s all I can do and I will not condescend my readers by pretending I have all the answers and that I have this thing down. I don’t, I still struggle. If that can be a comfort to some and show them that there is work to be done but they are capable, then I will be happy with that.
I would say ultimately that a true spiritual awakening is the ability to see objective reality, the way things are, without it being filtered through our own ego/monster created concepts. This gives us the chance to attend to the issues we have. Working through these issues will be part of the awakening process. Once we have dealt with our issues and worked on releasing the stuck emotions it is highly likely that we will experience more profound natural states of connectedness and contentment (balance). We can also work on our energy consciously at this point, when we master this then our lives will change in very deep ways including how we relate to others, and how we flow in a more natural way with what the universe has in store for us.
Lets end this post with a recap:
Spiritual awakenings take many forms
They can be triggered by different experiences
They can be brought on or experienced spontaneously
They can and will have emotional highs and lows
An awakening may only be the start of a long path
Discipline, work and learning energetic skills are vital for navigating an awakening.
As a fairly new bloggist, I’m always hoping for some interaction and feedback from readers. If you have any experience of spiritual awakenings please get in touch and let me know if anything on my site rings true for you.
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