Can you have more than one awakening? Here is what I know:
The First Awakening
“Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10
The first awakening shows the ultimate truth that who you are goes beyond these.
This is where the ego starts to falter.
The first stirring in you that feels like coming from the fall, out of a thick haze into clear sight.
The ego will try to fight this realization; it wants you to get back into your old life/habits and start thinking like before.
It is about the heart
“Love one another, as I have loved you.” – John 15:12
The heart awakening can be downright challenging to confront as it asks us to view this world through a compassionate lens versus a judgmental one.
Love, when the heart has opened, is less about attachment and more about brotherhood with the divine spirit in all beings everywhere.
And you realize this love that you have been searching for outside of yourself has always been inside.
The old wounds get triggered, not to punish you but to be released and healed.
You start opening up to your vulnerability, letting love into the darkest corners of your soul.
It opens you up to releasing judgment of society, being impersonal enough to look beyond appearances and only try to connect with the humanity in others.
This can commonly be the place where an individual begins to experience a soul prompting of oneness with others (human, animal or nature).
And love expands beyond romantic love, beyond one specific relationship.
You may even feel a deep interconnectedness with all of life and the unity within diversity.
It is about shadow work
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” – John 1:5
The third awakening is frequently accompanied by actual shadow sides.
It is called shadow work because it requires us to touch those dark spaces within us that had made a home there since way before our spiritual awakening actually started.
It’s incorporating all of you — even the parts, especially the parts you wish weren’t there.
This is called the shadow awakening, and it will typically come during a period when you feel like you are super advanced spiritually.
It reveals to you that there are still some undertheiced behaviors, repressed traumas or suppressed fears that have to be acknowledged.
This is easily the toughest stage: it can pop out of nowhere to hit you in your feelings-parts and send you spiraling back into rage or heartache.
These are the times when one needs spiritual practice, like meditation, mindfulness, and self-compassion.
You begin to see what reality is.
The void doesn’t scare you anymore since you know that it is just half of everything.
The more you integrate this shadow, the more light and wisdom you can also hold.
It is about unity consciousness
““There is a God part in you. The consciousness. The pure Self.” – Amit Ray
Following the deep dive into shadow is the next awakening, which is unity.
This is the place you are not in black and white of right or wrong, light or dark.
This unity consciousness is telling us that we are all interconnected.
The illusion of division dissolves away.
This is when judgment begins to fall away.
You begin to view life through the eyes of compassion.
Situations that would have made them angry or frustrated before, they now laugh at.
You learn not to try to make everything happen when you want it but to relax and release your need for anything or situation.
Energy work and healing modalities are appealing to many during this phase.
Divine Purpose
“Many are called, but few are chosen.” – Matthew 22:14
This awakening is not out of ego but driven by the soul to activate its divine mission.
It may show up through synchronicity, a door opening or a sudden inspiration.
Initially, this might seem a bit tricky since the ego normally comes in, asking for control and interpreting this call through worldly callings such as wealth, fame etc.
But the more you listen further, and maybe this is something that took me time to understand personally — living your purpose is actually for the greater good.
When this occurs, a revival will enlighten you in the direction of your life.
You realize that the quest you are on is benefiting the collective human condition.
No it’s not, far from burdensome; the responsibility seems to deepen.
In this phase, many of us are asked to teach, heal, create or step into leadership in our special way.
You see how your unique gifts are no longer all about you, and this great shift in perception allows you to use them as the catalyst for the healing of others and the planet.
It is about the crisis
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” – Psalm 23:4
Spiritual awakenings can be soft. However, they are brought on by deep crises, a collective ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’
This is not a sign to go backward but an opportunity to push even more forward.
The Dark Night usually comes after you have already cleared quite a lot of your s##t. It sucks — it really, truly does — but it is needed.
It really turns your world upside down and demands that you release attachments, beliefs and patterns that are no longer in alignment with the highest good for all concerned.
But the Dark Night is a passage, a sacred transition from one level of consciousness to another.
It is about the inner peace
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” – John 14:27
At some point in the spiritual journey, you get tired of seeking validation on the outside.
It is simply a re-connection back to peace within yourself without the need for approval from others.
You understand peace is not on the outside but within.
The outside world might still be chaos, but it stopped altering your internal state by that point.
It is that which means being emotionally strong. You become less reactive and more grounded in inner stillness.
You slowly grow out of the need to seek happiness outside yourself because you learn that real satisfaction comes from the inside.
During this stage you are engaging with the world from a place of wholeness and purpose instead of need and fear.
A far-reaching thankfulness generally accompanies this awakening of inner calm.
You get uplifted by every moment and start to see beauty and value even in the most trivial aspects of life.
I’m Bulgarea Candin Stefan and I have started Spiritual Whirlwinds to pass my learnings from my spiritual journey. Spiritualwhirlwinds.com provides a space of spiritual awakening with guided meditations, e-books, mantras, and pendulum readings.