Who did God create you to actually be? To spiritually awaken is to awaken more fully into the awareness of who you truly are. It’s about honoring your real self as opposed to the self you think you’re supposed to be. It’s about stretching your human potential, which allows others to do the same.
The way I describe a spiritual awakening is by breaking it down into 5 stages. Let’s get into it..
Stage 1. THE NUDGE.
This is the stage in which we’re mostly living “asleep” – i.e., unconsciously – meaning, without awareness of what’s really driving most of our behavior. It is also the stage in which we first realize that something else, both missing and attainable, exists.
Before we acknowledge the nudge, we are living as a false self and we don’t even know it. We are mostly concerned with getting through the next 24 hours and don’t seek many answers beyond that. We want to fit in and be accepted, typically within man-made constructs.
Who we believe ourself to be, without peeling back all of our layers, is who we defend and oppose to others.
We might not realize it, but we prefer to control our experiences in this stage. The more we’re able to control, the more we’re able to avoid dealing with our underlying emotions. The paradox is that our emotions likely rule us, our actions and reactions. Yet from somewhere deep inside we choose emotional avoidance without realizing how this choice impacts our reality.
Until something nudges us awake.
It’s a push, a catalyst. There are traumatic catalysts such as death, divorce, addiction, sickness, an accident, a breakup or pandemic. There are gentle catalysts such as a meditation, conversation, book, seemingly passing thought, relationship or person who inspires you. There are other somewhat intense catalysts such as through a healing experience, like breathwork or plant medicine. In whichever way an awakening is conceived, it cracks you open to something outside of your perceived reality.
The nudge is always the beginning. It’s less about a physical act and more about a voice that always existed but went unheard, until now. Now, you feel a type of surrender. And so, it begins. An awareness that inevitably grows. A discovery that there’s something else to this life experience, and it’s available to you (yes, you!).
Stage 2. MAKING CHANGES.
In the second stage of a spiritual awakening, your mind outplays you enough to where your current life can no longer contain your level of awareness and, therefore, you feel called to make a change. Leave the relationship. Quit the job. Make the move. Take the trip. Sign the papers. Join the group. Attend the event. Sell the house. Start. Ask. Whatever it is, you’re doing it. You’re in the game. Some get radical. Your speed is your choice.
In stage ✌🏼 of making changes, you ask some of the meaningful questions you need to ask in response to stage 1. While you don’t have all the answers yet (you might think you do!), you decide to act in some way, shape or form. It’s likely messy, weird and scary. But you wouldn’t be on the adventure of a lifetime if it wasn’t.
Just knowing this type of journey even exists is something to be immensely proud of. Most people never get here.
In stage 2, a thoughtful response to your circumstances takes precedence over a typical reaction to them. Reacting was what you did unconsciously back in stage 1. You’re learning to move away from that now. It might feel like you’re a mere hatchling, naked and vulnerable, emerging to create a new reality for yourself.
Maybe it’s awareness around how you show up for yourself or for others, distance between you and a particular situation, a new job or relationship, serious plans to take charge of your health, or (my favorite) a smaller gap between you and your joy. Whatever it is, something shook your typical state of being, and you’re voluntarily creating a change in response.
It’s an eerily exciting time.
Stage 3. BACK AND FORTH.
New territory has been entered, and you’re trying to navigate it.
You’re tapping into your intuition which serves as a compass except that sometimes, it seems to be made with frosted glass; you are sure the direction is there, and you cannot fully see it.
There’s new energy to work with and that was expected, but it is awkward, no less.
You’re creating a new narrative for your life’s story.
Transformation is not easy, which is why a spiritual awakening is an emotional time.
It may be more apparent than ever that there are parts of you which are destructive, and there are parts of you which are clear, calm and wise.
You understand that your choices hold much power. You are enlivening that power but results either feel unguaranteed. Some level of disturbance, confusion or uncertainty exists, internally and/or externally.
It’s the longest and hardest stage of awakening.
Your relationships can be met with judgement from both sides.
The revitalization you initially experienced has been interrupted. At certain times, you might wish you can go back to the way things were. Other times, you experience previews of the goodness your life could contain more of, so you lean into the sparkly vision for your future once more.
It goes on like this. Stage 3, aptly named the stage of back and forth, is ultimately marked by a swing between moments of intense clarity and moments of inflexible resistance.
Something is wrong. You’re wondering if this is really as rewarding as you thought it would be. You’re second-guessing yourself, and all of your choices to date. But still, little miracles show up, and the small voice encourages you to keep going.
Ah ha moments and shifts in perspective act as mini awakenings within the larger unfolding. As long as you keep traveling along this road of higher learning, you’ll emerge from stage 3 stronger.
Eventually, you will find a way back to your true nature. You’ll get honest with yourself about the limits of your resources. You’ll decide to use what you do have (internally and externally) to serve your highest good and therefore, the highest good of all people—where Spirit has been calling you toward from the beginning. ✨
Stage 4. INTEGRATION.
A pivotal time.
You transcended from the difficulties of stage 3 and find yourself on a more straight-forward path. Of course, there will always be problems and triggers and steps back in life, but at this point, the path is teaching you to let go of what’s not serving your best self. You may have already been undergoing a process of letting go – after all, that can be seen as the crux of what a spiritual awakening is – but this is the stage in which you are most aware of how important it is to truly free yourself from what limits you.
It’s like all the nuggets of wisdom and truth that you picked up along the way come together, and their sole purpose is to help you finally embody a new and improved version of you.
There are more changes, but they are more inspired now. They are taking you in a better direction.
During the process it took to get here, you had to have found yourself at the peaceful center of your being at least once. You experienced, on a soul level, what it’s like to feel whole. This redefining of how you understand yourself to be, which is essentially, imperfect yet still perfect, helps you see others in the same light.
If you unidentified with your gift of empathy or compassion, this is the stage in which it may return and even be stronger.
It doesn’t mean that everyone gets access to you or that there’s some sort of increase in responsibility. In fact, you have your very own, very personal set of boundaries, perhaps for the first time.
An advanced interpretation of stage 4 makes clear that more than anything else, it is a grand unlearning.
A simplification.
A more singular focus. On the remembrance of who you always were, even when you weren’t, and the conscious choice to honor that.
Your pain is integrated into your purpose.
The result is a less convoluted mind and a clearer path forward.
It can feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.
You are able to create the things you visualize with so much less resistance.
Coming from stage 3, this feels pretty surreal.
Stage 5. LIMITLESS CREATION.
Congrats my love, you have arrived.
You are no longer a victim of your past, unconsciously repeating patterns of behavior because that’s what you learned in the early stages of life and beyond.
You have reached a state of being that allows you to create desired outcomes with a fair amount of ease.
You’re living in alignment with your personal truths.
Of course, there will always be problems and times we get triggered.
But within stage 5, when these things happen, you can navigate them more easily, and you can return to a secure position at your fastest rate yet.
There is very little that can make you forget who you are and what you want.
You trust yourself. And you are less affected by what goes on around you.
If you ever took on personal development, you’ve likely heard that everyone is acting from their own level of awareness, that literally none of their behavior has anything to do with you. This is true, it always was and always will be, however it’s easier said than understood—especially if you still have open wounds. Part of the beauty of stage 5, is the understanding coming up in a full-bodied way, which is very different than a knowing in your conscious mind only.
In stage 5—
You’re less interested in holding on to what limits you, as you’re now magnetizing what will expand you.
You live life on your terms.
When you have a vision of something you desire, there’s no question that it can absolutely become real. After all, you’ve already impressed yourself with what you’ve overcome and accomplished. There is no limit to what can come next.
In this final stage of awakening ~
You know you went through a profound experience, and you wouldn’t change it for the world. For as hard as it was, the result is completely worth it.
You are no longer naïve or asleep. Seeing things for what they are is your norm.
You operate in the world from a higher level of understanding.
You have an inner peace that didn’t exist before.
A freedom from personal suffering.
You’re embodying your true, divine nature, and you know that it has been a transformation of the highest order to get here.
You feel proud and grateful that you followed the nudge to your God-given purpose and destiny.
If stage 4 was surreal, stage 5 is the closest thing to heaven on earth.
It’s a coming home.
I salute everyone who chooses to stay the course of an awakening. The world would be a profoundly better place if we all did.
A spiritual awakening is real art. It is messy, beautiful and perfect. There is no rule book. And know this—wherever you are on the path, you are exactly where you need to be.
