In this article we’ll start with defining what exactly a spiritual awakening is, and when it ends. Then I’ll talk about the symptoms you might experience along the way. I’ll explain how you will feel after a spiritual awakening and finally, we’ll talk about the one essential thing you must learn and apply in your life to get yourself unstuck in your spiritual awakening.

What Exactly Is a Spiritual Awakening

But before we get there, let’s define exactly what a spiritual awakening is. It can simply be defined as the process one goes through to become spiritually awake. When someone is fully awake he or she is enlightened. In Buddhism, enlightenment is defined as the final blessed mental state marked by the absence of desire or suffering. It’s a state in which you only see Oneness everywhere and where you are a bodily representation of God in the world. One example of someone who was enlightened is Jezus.

This directly means that virtually none of us, and I mean you reading this article, including myself, is enlightened. It’s important to understand that. I saw so many comments from people believing they are awake all the while commenting on how much they are suffering. But if you are still suffering, at most you are in the process of awakening. But certainly not yet fully awake.

In the state of enlightenment good and bad disappear, suffering and desire merge into unbreakable inner peace and joy. It doesn’t mean you cannot feel pain anymore, nor pleasure. But when both suffering and desire disappear, pain and pleasure lose their meaning. And as I already mentioned in an earlier article, when pain loses its meaning it cannot hurt.

A spiritual awakening starts when someone, more often than not triggered by a traumatic event in their life, becomes consciously or unconsciously aware of their true essence as God. This awareness leads you on a path to becoming enlightened. But please don’t confuse the path with the final state. The path will absolutely take several lifetimes for most of us.

You can compare it with a dream. When you are in a deep sleep, dreaming a dream so vivid you swear it’s real, and then you wake up in the middle of that dream. You’re confused for a while, sometimes wishing to fall back asleep, and sometimes relieved that it was all just a dream.

This is exactly the same but you’ve been asleep for many lifetimes. So, the confusion can last for a long long time. Years, decades, and for some even an entire life.

The Symptoms You Can Experience During Spiritual Awakening

And that is just the beginning phase of your awakening. The fact that you’re now aware doesn’t mean you’re there yet. And, although your natural state of being is love, inner peace, and joy, you’ve created so many barriers within yourself you don’t have easy access to it. Sometimes you get a glimpse of it, just enough to keep you going but not enough to pull you out of the state of confusion.

As I mentioned before, for some it’s a purely blissful experience. They are happy to wake up and there hardly is any transition period for them. But that’s not the case for most. Most of you have problems separating and detaching from the dream. You’ve become so accustomed to the dream that it has become your identity.

And, although you now have an awareness of who and what you really are, you still identify with the dream. And you all know that we, as human beings, have a tendency to struggle big time with separating from anything we’ve become used to. So, you can only imagine how difficult it is to let go of your identity. That what you thought you were since… almost forever.

This can lead to a sense of being lost in life, of knowing that going back to your “old” life is not an option but still being clueless about where to go or what to do now. You might feel a lack of motivation and inspiration. You can experience anxiety or depression, feelings of loneliness, of being misunderstood, not fitting in, and you might want to change your direction in life completely. It’s also very normal in this phase to reconsider your ultimate purpose in life.

How You Will Feel After Spiritual Awakening

But all of that is because you are not fully awake yet. You’re still in a slumber. Because if you were fully awake, the only things you would be feeling are inner peace, love, joy, and endless inspiration, forever, regardless of what is happening in your external world, including your own body.

Something else that will happen can again be explained with the analogy of the dream. When you’re fully immersed in a dream, you believe the dream is real and that you are the subject of the dream. When you’re lucid dreaming you know you’re dreaming, you’re aware of it, sometimes you can even direct the story of the dream, but you’re still dreaming. But, when you’re awake, the dream has ended and you know you were the dreamer.

Let’s say that your path of spiritual awakening is your path to master lucid dreaming. The more you are aware of the fact that you are the dreamer, the creator, of your life, the more control you will gain over it. And the more you’ll be able to observe and direct it from a distance.

And when your spiritual awakening is completed, the dream disappears. The subject of the dream disappears. The “you”, or “I” you were in the dream disappears and you fully identify as the dreamer of the dream, the creator of an illusory life.

The Key Principle You Must Master For a Painless Spiritual Awakening

I know it’s difficult to wrap your head around that concept but I hope this analogy helps you to grasp the idea of what it’s like.

I also believe it’s important to not focus too much on that final state of awareness. It’s important to know, but it’s much more important to focus on the path. Your first steps during the process of spiritual awakening are in complete darkness, it would be useless to focus on the final destination because you cannot see where you’re going.

With each step you take, a little light will turn on, the more steps you take, the brighter your path will become and the more clarity you will obtain. And it’s your responsibility to continue to take steps. And to do this properly you need to realize one thing, these steps happen outside of the dream.

And that’s the problem with most people on this path. You’re looking at the dream and trying to find solutions to how you feel in the dream. You look at your life, your external circumstances, and the physical state of your body, and try to use it as an excuse or explanation for your internal experience. But the path to a full awakening cannot be paved there. That’s where the darkness is, no lights will turn on in the dream.

So, the key principle you must master to end your confusion in this spiritual slumber is relentless responsibility and accountability for your inner experience. You, and only you, are responsible for how you feel. And that is what I’ll be talking about in the next article.