Are you going through a spiritual awakening?
- Are you feeling stuck?
- Are you lacking direction?
- Are you feeling lost?
- Are you struggling with clarity in your decision making process?
- Do you want to leave your 9-5 job? Maybe you already have
- Are your relationships changing?
- Are you starting to think that you might be going ‘crazy’ as no-one else thinks like you?
- Are you seeing things you can’t explain?
- Are you hearing voices?
- Are you wanting to heal your past to move forward?
For whatever reason you have been guided here. You may be going through a spiritual awakening and the questions above are some of the ones you may be asking yourself.
What is a Spiritual Awakening?
When people come to see me, it is often because they have been through the more traditional channels of seeking help and advice. They have spoken to their friends and family who think they are going crazy. They have been to see the DR, who may want to prescribe anti depressants. They don’t want to be medicated because they know drugs won’t fix what is going on for them. It isn’t normally a health issue. Often people come to me at the very beginning of their spiritual awakening, when they are going through what is coined the Dark Night of the Soul. A spiritual awakening occurs when external structures and realities crumble around us. Often this is triggered by the death of a loved one, the loss of a job and/or the breakdown of a relationship or marriage. It is like someone pulling the rug out from underneath you and you have nothing to cling onto. Except yourself. There is only yourself to turn to and initially this can scare the bejesus out of you. Questions come up such as
• How am I going to cope?
• How can I get through this difficult situation?
• What do I need to do?
• Who can I talk to?
• Am I going crazy?
As we have been spending a lot of time by ourselves recently or with less people, more people are beginning to wake up. What does this mean? We are becoming more in tune with our inner intuition, our psychic abilities that we all have as we have less external bumf distracting us. You may have had vivid dreams, you may have begun meditating and started to see/feel or hear things which you can’t explain. You may have begun noticing synchronicities, seeing the same numbers, hearing the same songs. You may be beginning to trust yourself more than external influences, or maybe you don’t even know who to trust anymore. All of the things that used to make sense don’t anymore.
There are various stages to an awakening which I have listed below
The Stages of a Spiritual Awakening
Stage 1 is probably the most confusing time. You have no idea what the hell is going on. You’ve never heard of an awakening. You just know you don’t feel quite right and things don’t sit with you as well as they did.
Stage 2 is when the realisation hits that you need to get out of this hole you are currently in. How do you do that? By finding other people who have been in it, by talking to them, beginning to practise meditation, healing, yoga, journalling. Start to listen to what your soul wants you to do.
Stage 3 is acceptance. You are mastering the art of practising various tools that are keeping you on track, mentally. Emotionally you still may have up and down days. These will always be with you as you start to adapt to the rhythms of natural life, not the work life you may have been conditioned to. You accept that you are on a different path to the one you maybe thought you were going down
Stage 4 is when you have worked on yourself and feel in a good place, you then can share your own awakening story with someone else who maybe needs to hear it
Stage 5 is the realisation that this is just the beginning. Like an onion as you heal, there is more to be healed, more to be learned. The spiritual journey is an exciting one, if you allow it to be as well as having its more challenging moments. It is how we choose to respond and how much we are willing to heal ourselves in order to heal others in order to heal our children and our planet.
If you don’t feel you are going through a spiritual awakening right now and you have got this far then it is always good to have this awareness for if and when it does happen to you or someone close to you. Rather than labelling them as crazy you may be able to recognise it and either support them through it or let them know what ‘it’ is. The more we recognise it as a thing, the less likely we will need to medicate against something that is a natural occurrence within our human existence.Often preluding our initial spiritual awakening is a Dark Night of the Soul.
What is a Dark night of the Soul?
Originally penned by 16th century poet, Saint John of the Cross, this term describes a spiritual crisis in the union towards God. Now, many of us today aren’t informed or aware of this Dark Night of the Soul so when it happens it feels more like the shit has hit the fan. We have no concept of what is going on so we struggle through it, until we happen across a blog or a YouTube video that just happens to mention that what we are experiencing is similar. The symptoms of the Dark Night of the Soul are similar to depression but can we distinguish between the two? I feel that with the Dark Night of the Soul it is indicative of a spiritual transformation taking place. With depression there is a struggle to get out of the abyss. With the Dark Night of the Soul, there is a faith or a belief, no matter how small that something bigger and grander than us, will pull us out. Whatever it is, it can feel for many like we are the only person in the world going through this at the time. We’re not. I had no idea when I went through mine what it was or what resources were out there. Please know you don’t have to go through this alone. I have set up a group for anyone going through ‘stuff’ called Consciousness Arising which you are welcome to join. It is a safe community where you can ask questions and feel safe to do so. ( Insert link for membership group)
What are the symptoms of a Dark Night of the Soul?
Please note this list doesn’t cover everything, most of these are how I felt going through my own experience
- Wondering what your purpose is in life
- Some people say they see/hear the Devil
- Your soul feels torn between what it ‘has been taught’ to do and what it feels it wants to do
- Your life may not feel like yours anymore, instead it is controlled by work, a partner, family
- You question your own existence
- You question life itself, how did we get here? Why are we here?
- You cry, a lot
How can you get through a Dark Night of the Soul?
Here is a list of things that may help
- Meditating
- Journalling
- Drinking herbal teas
- Speaking to Angels
- Spending time outdoors in nature
- Sleep ( AKA a spiritual practise)
- Allowing yourself and everything around you to fall apart
- Screaming and roaring outside
- Beating a drum
If you are looking for some 121 guidance on your own spiritual journey then check out my Journeying Together page to see how I can work with you and guide you along your soul path
The Journey 