What is a spiritual awakening?
A spiritual awakening can be recognized as a moment of insight that brings you closer to absolute truth. Spiritual awakening is a process that happens over an expanse of time in addition to being individual moments of insight.
There are many moments of spiritual awakening within the overall spiritual awakening process. The concept of enlightenment is similar. Enlightenment isn’t a fixed position but a process. We are continually enlightened through our interaction with reality. There are various degrees of enlightenment and spiritual awakening.
When new seekers speak of a spiritual awakening they are typically focused on a specific event, the moment when they realize there is way more going on than they previously believed or knew. What this looks like on the surface is unique to every person, but at the core, it is rooted in the same place.
We are continually awakening spiritually through our interactions with reality. Moments of spiritual awakening are also moments of enlightenment and vice versa. In life, our firsts in anything hold a dramatic and special place. Awakening spiritually happens continuously but there is usually a moment or series of moments that amount to our first consciously witnessed spiritual awakening.
The conscious realization that there is way more going on, that what you are is way more than you know is a shocking, exciting, scary, confusing, intimidating, and liberating experience. Beautiful truth is that your process will work itself out as needed. Doesn’t mean you will always like it, definitely won’t always understand it, but that is how it works for all of us.
There is a metaphor in a Theosophical book that says the path is like an abyss, once you are on it you can never go back. When you experience a spiritual awakening, have a profound insight, you are never the same. Spiritual awakenings reframe our perspective to various degrees.
If you are having experiences or had an experience that alters your relationship with the world around you then, in my view, you have had a spiritual awakening.
Profound truths aren’t flashy
A powerful concept to grasp early on, deeply profound truths are not flashy. We need to create a distinction between the insights that make profound changes in our lives, that inspire spiritual awakening, and the big picture, eternally profound truths.
All insights tend to be profound, they dramatically alter us. Insights are impactful emotionally, they feel powerful, they feel profound because they are. I am not diminishing the value of the insights we receive through our spiritual awakening starter pack. For example, there are truths, and then there are Truths; like there is truth and then there is Absolute Truth. There are profound insights and then there are the eternally deep and not easily approached profound insights.
New seekers are easily entranced by the flashy stories of skills and capabilities that aren’t common amongst the human species. The ability to levitate, energy healing, astral projection, clairvoyance, or the ability to conduct oneself in ways that are supposedly emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually superior to the average person. These flashy stories are not markers of deep spiritual awakening, they are shiny toys that grab everyone’s attention. The question ends up being, how long does it take a person to set the shiny trinket down and go deeper; remember profound truths are not flashy.
Profound truths are hard-fought and won, they don’t fall in our laps. Profound truths come in moments of joy & ecstasy, but they also require sweat, blood, and tears. Our ability to know beauty is reflected in our ability to know pain. The idea that letting go is easy, that allowing spiritual awakening to consume us without effort is far from accurate. When a person tries to let go they discover it is incredibly difficult to do so. It is like saying I release any expectations of spiritual awakening, I will not focus or attach any stories or beliefs, I will not conflate my experience with other peoples’ experiences.
Profound truths are attained not adopted. We can intellectually attach ourselves to concepts, we can agree with popular opinion and say they are our own but this is not a visceral knowing of truth. For these reasons, profound truths are not easily attained. Profound truths are no stranger to irony or paradoxical qualities. Profound truths are often simple in grammatical or linguistic terms, their deep wisdom can easily be degraded with each additional word or sentence. It takes admirable skill in addition to first-hand knowledge to begin to wrangle profound truth into essay form.
Why mention this, what does this have to do with spiritual awakening? If you can minimize your time in the early period of shiny trinkets you will be ahead of the pack, easier said than done. This was an attempt by me to say keep your eyes on the prize, spiritual awakening in the deep waters of the open ocean.
The shiny trinkets are scattered around the ankle-deep wading pool, the temperature is great, the odds of drowning or being challenged are virtually non-existent, and there are tons of people hanging out talking about the shiny trinkets.
When you leave the wading pool and enter the open ocean it is a whole new challenge. Safety, fun, feel good, and shiny are no longer the priority when engaging the deep waters of the open ocean.
Spiritual awakening is about realizing your truest self within all aspects of reality, it is not about becoming better than life by eliminating “undesirable” aspects. The world is filled with teachers and practitioners that believe spirituality is about becoming better than, transcending, or eliminating aspects of it; this is inaccurate but understandable. It will be up to you to figure out how it is inaccurate but understandable.