Today I decided to compose a very requested (and important in my opinion) article which targets the special topic of " Awakening ". I have mentioned this term various times in my older posts, even linked it with self awareness and overthinking (you can access that info here) but I decided that the time has come to give it a proper and excessive reference on a unique article. Here we go.
To begin with, let's present the definition of the term "Awakening" as a noun:
❥An act of waking from sleep.
❥An act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something.
If we merge these together while applying this term to the spiritual domain we get the so called "Spiritual Awakening" . As mentioned in "Urban Dictionary", the definition goes like this:
Spiritual awakening refers to a shift in consciousness, an apperception of reality which had been previously unrealized. The culmination of such realizations is in the recognition of oneness with all of existence.
In my personal opinion this definition certainly describes the major frame of this process, highlights its outcome but does not include the process itself. Reaching the final destination does not happen overnight, it is not an easy peasy thing and it necessarily comes in stages. Commenting on the dual definition of "awakening" stated above, the second meaning refers to an act or moment of becoming SUDDENLY aware of something. I find this way more aptly expressed because even though Awakening takes a lot of time and energy (which means that reaching the final point does not occur "suddenly"), its beginning just kicks in at some point; suddenly enough to cause some frustration.
Occassionally, a certain experience can shake our spiritual understanding and cause a deeper analysis which itself will lead to an extended realization of things around us. However, the moment when awakening begins might not necessarily coincide with a particular event or trauma, it can just pop out randomly and that explains why most people come through a very confusing period trying to figure out where did all these thoughts come from.
In this point I want to clear out that Awakening is separate from any personal religious view. During this process you come to deeper understanding of how the world around you functions, how everything connects, you realize the deeper causes of events/choices/behaviours, you get to understand yourself better, your needs, your purpose and your journey. You start to think, doubt, question and research A LOT. As a consequence, the more you awaken and mature, the more conscious control you have over your choices and future. This is a matter of YOU, as an individual, the process takes place in YOUR conscious mind, driven by YOUR own energy manifestation and presents a common unity consisted of all the surroundings. These surroundings include all the forms of life around you ( regardless if someone is Christian, Muslim, Buddist, a mammal, a bird, a flower etc - EVERYTHING is connected with bonds that you will gradually start to notice, the most important of them, is Love). There is one truth, common for all, which is not something you believe, it is a fact, a reality you can SEE and FEEL taking place in real time around you.
I have thoroughly discussed the topic with a great number of people (who come with different background, beliefs, religious views, experiences etc) and I noticed that many people confuse the Awakening with the term "Religious Enlightenment" which is strongly attached to an energy manifestation towards religion. In fact, these two are pretty contradictory as religion itself commands you to accept/admit/embrace/believe information, points of view and/or acts that are already processed by someone else and are simply offered to you to accept them, elliminating the priviledge of self-processing them and accepting them afterwards in your own will. For instance, if you do not accept EVERYTHING the Bible says, you are not considered as a "good" Christian. How can a mean of spirituality (as so many religions tend to call themselves) elliminate the ability to process and develop judgment over information? How can a factor which blocks you from having a spiritual shift coincide with the process of Awakening, which commands EXACTLY THAT? Simply, it doesn't. Awakening itself is based on personal experience, it requires personal effort and it needs your contribution to occur and develop. No one else can do it for you nor can teach you how to do it. It is a road you have to walk yourself, embracing your dual nature and start working on it. It requires thinkingness, recognization, and a lot of active processes upon conscious control. The single term of "Enlightenment" is also a whole different story as it mostly pictures a silent mind which is not under thinkingness and procession, accepting only one nature.
Now that we cleared out what Awakening is and what is not, we can proceed further. Whatever shared here comes mostly from my own personal experience and common points i found between me and persons on the same journey. For me, Awakening was not just a bounch of thoughts poppin' out at some particular point of my life. Looking back, I can spot a period of AT LEAST 2,5 years when my overthinking gradually hit TILT, I found myself really annoyed by a lot of things around me that I either didn't notice before or I did but I was not bothered much - maybe because they were not strongly opposite to my own existence back then.
There was a lot of confusion, frustration, anger, fear, sadness on the way. Someone might think that when you start realizing things you have a default mode of acting positive or beneficially for yourself. That was not what I experienced. Specifically, the first year i suddenly started noticing things which have been there all the way, thinking deeply and coming across information that I was not ready to handle properly at that time which made me to over-react often, I found it difficult to express correctly my thoughts and feelings and I occassionally felt "lost" in a try to define myself. I was unable to understand WHY did I act in ways that I didn't really want to. Through the years I started gradually fixing this and controlling more and more myself but in general the first 2,5 years were REALLY unpleasant and uncomfortable. Thus, through the discomfort of my own self I started defining what I like and what I don't, I understood who I am, what I need, what my flaws and strengths are and most importantly who I WANT TO BECOME.
After the first detecting years, the conscious contribution on my self-improvement had increased to a point where I was able to consciously think and analyze EVERYTHING I had gone through in my life. My experiences, the persons in my life, my own responses, my achievements and failures, the society around me, the way the world functions, the physical and mental nature of humanity and eventually the unity of them all were topics I was actively working on, in my mind. Interestingly, every time I was processing a topic I was able to dive deeper in it, explore new aspects and scopes, spotting more "bonds" and finding more factors than the previous time. This constant search of the deeper truth of course is not necessarily a pleasant experience as it requires you to re-experience (mentally) a bounch of negative or traumatic information. In order to find the pure and clear core of things you need to unfold many layers, each one provides things you were unaware of and you need to handle them before unfolding the next layer. During this exploration, you learn to develop the acceptance of things weither they are positive or not, you learn to disengage yourself from the past, living in the present but still caring with you the important lessons you earned in order to be an efficient architect of your bright future. Through awakening you develop and adopt a lot of values and morals, some of them might have been already here before you awaken, some others might be a whole different new path in your life. For sure, you start sticking more and more to what your mind implies as "right", your way of thinking changes, your mind expands to include more connections and as it stretches to a new dimension where it forms patterns, which are applied to your response in the physical and material world.
Back to my personal experience, after the first 2 and a half years which have been a solid preparation to a radical change, I was able to really track and feel the evolution taking place inside out. Gaining a deeper understanding of everything made me a far more efficient and focused person being able to achieve more things as well as being capable of handling the "next level" faster, calmer and more effectively.
Awakening equals to change. Mental change leads to physical one, whose actions conclude to an entire life change. How? This is where I will place this tiny stone of wisdom:
Thus, once you realize who you are and how you want to live you get aware of your needs and boundaries. This is a point of no return. You can simply not ignore these discoveries you gained through your experiences, mostly the hard way. You can not return back to who you were before and live peacefully with things which -you now know- do not suit you nor promote you as a person. This is linked to yourself taking action over the factors which shape your reality. You are in charge of your own well-being, gaining more and more control over it. Your choices reflect the pattern you have developed in your mind, the one that does not accept your smile being wasted in situations that do not serve your inner peace. Of course this does not happen in the blink of an eye.
Even if you need a larger pace of time to actively take over the sources of negativity in your life, in the meantime you are still under discomfort as your mind has changed around them. Chopping off anything negative or not-suitable-for-you is another chapter of the struggle side that awakening commands. Some aspects can be easier but some others - especially those you are emotionally connected to or have been long term ones - will obviously be characterized by bigger energy consumption. It is normal to take your time, awakening is not a destination after all, it is a whole journey which you experience in your own timeline, it is meant to serve your needs so the comparison between your pace and another person's is simply useless. There is no shortcut, every level you are called to explore has its own purpose and IT NEEDS to be explored this certain way. You might not understand why at the moment, but I assure you, you will come to understand that later. You have to learn how to embrace all the different quests this route will bring.
To respond efficiently, you need to keep the highest amount of your energy for yourself, it will be your "currency" to complete the tasks required to reach the next level. A great example to clear this out, is the removal of toxicity and negativity from your life. If this description fits a person, a situation, a habit or an emotion, in any case, it is a painful process to walk away from something that has created a (false) sensation of comfort zone and/or has high emotional value for you. It will cost you A LOT of energy not only to practically cut this source off but to also disengage your emotions and mind from it. Imagine HOW DRAINED you will be, if during this process you have to deal with more annoying factors around you. This is the point when you realize the importance of a wiser energy manifestation, you clearly see that you can not afford dealing with everything on the same time and still expect to be a winner. You need to set priorities and work consistently on whatever you choose to. I once came across to the following quote : Awakening requires Isolation
At first sight, I perceived it as the aloneness you necessarily experience through your spiritual shifts as the spiritual level gap between you and the people around you increases. This condition is not entirely controled by you individually. This spiritual gap leaves more space for misunderstandings, disatisfaction and inefficient communication since the same terms have different depth for you and them so it is possible that these social beings will distance themselves from you.
After going through the energy drainage i mentioned above, I also recognized that the isolation works the other way around too. When you decide that something in your life drains more energy than it provides and thus it doesn't promote your growth and wellness you TAKE CHARGE and isolate yourself from it. It is a conscious choice you make because you have stated your worth and value of your journey, you have set the process to fix yourself as a priority. Some time later I figured out that these two perspectives are just the two sides of the same coin and are connected all around. During your awakening, you change and get more solid to what defines you, which in turn, stimulates the interactions between you and the persons in your life. The outcome of these interactions will play a double role: those who do not function with the person you are trying to be will distance themselves on their own AND you will also consciously isolate yourself from those who -by your judgment- do not belong to the life you want to create since they cause troubles in your journey to reach it. It is a ying-yang connection, they both exist to form the necessary balance whereas they cooperate together just like communicating vessels.
Throughout my journey, 4 years after I started changing I could feel in various ways that this particular journey started getting more and more enjoyable, shifting up was less and less painful since I was able to handle better whatever i had to face. A year later I could see the benefits kicking in my life in every possible aspect of it. The explanation is really simple: the stronger you build a vessel, the better it responds to the stormy sea and the more pleasant, steady and calm its journey is. Not only the bad times were paid of but I can now clearly see it was the most valuable investment I have ever made. Not only because of what I gained up to now, but also for what I am able to feel right now and all these things I will earn in the future as I keep going through this journey. It is a system after all, the more fuel and work you put in, the more productive it gets.
I bet most of those who will read up to this point will have linked this process to a negative experience (at least during the first stages). I will not sell butterflies to your ears, things will be challenging, rough times will happen BUT spiritual awakening is not just that. It comes together with the expansion of your emotional understanding too. This means that you may feel the sadness deeply through unfolding, understanding, accepting and explaining your past BUT you will also feel the joy, satisfaction, gratitude and tons of other positive feelings WAY DEEPER TOO. You will start finding happiness, positivity, value and sources of strength and courage in things you would have never imagined before. And guess what: This will take place in the present, in real time around you. This will be something to cheer you up and keep you going throughout the process, fuel you up and gradually upgrade the quality of your life.
Imagine waking up and feeling happy just by the smell of fresh coffee in your kitchen. Imagine taking a hot shower and feeling blessed for the privilege to enjoy this luxury while embracing the relaxation of the warm water running on you. Visualize yourself walking and making eye contact with a kid or an elder, smiling at them and earning a wider smile back. Shape in your mind how heartwarming will be observing a happy couple playing with their kid in the park. Try to help a person in need and observe the gratitude in his eyes while trying to sense all the happiness, care and surprise this person experienced. When you learn to absorb love and warmth from daily, unlimited sources around you, you feel the need to share it. In order to do so, you are driven to perform actions of love transmition which in return will offer you this love back, multiplied in the form of appreciation, smile, emotions, experiences etc. Targeting your energy for positive purposes towards the right receptors will give you far more than you could ever expect or ask for.
Life is meant to be shared, but not with everybody. Isolating yourself from what is not meant for you is equally important as surrounding it with anything/anyone that will interact with you in a mutual beneficial way. At the end of the day, once you awaken, everything is connected and the puzzle can now make sense.
You are the captain of your life, you have the brushes to paint it the way you want to be. You are allowed to experiment, you are allowed to make some drafts, you are allowed to take your time to improve your skills in order to get this painting to life just the way you want it to be. It may be frustrating, disappointing, exhausting but finding out the clear picture in your mind and throughout your experience selecting the proper "brushes and dyes" is essential and it's the only way to make your human experience in this life, a piece of art. Don't worry if the society does not seem to appreciate it, it is YOUR art, made with a lot of hard work and pain, it is your proudest achievement. It is a magical thing and you should reserve the entries in this exhibition for those you will appreciate it themselves and earn a sight of it. Remember that all the glorious artworks have been doubted by the majority yet got appreciated by the few who had the ability to understand. These are the people you need in your life. Trust yourself, believe in your journey, embrace every step of it and keep going. Things will fall in place, i promise. In the meantime, vibe high, shine your light and let those on the same frequency come and find you. You can then use your brushes and dyes together. ❤😉
Thank you so much for your time reviewing this article. This is one of my favourite so far and I hope you were able to enjoy it as much as I did while composing it. I am sending tons of healing vibes around you and If you spot yourself in any stage of this infinite journey, I am by your side and I am so proud of you coming this far! Stay strong! Feel free to leave your feedback, contact me and share the vibes with anyone you want. Till next update, take care, smile more and stay tuned!
Hugs,
Irina
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