What Is Spiritual Awakening and Why Does It Sometimes Feel Like You're Taking Steps Backward?

So what exactly is spiritual awakening? And why does it sometimes feel that you’re taking steps backward on your spiritual path? 

 

Spiritual awakening is a powerful experience — it’s a call to wake-up from a sleepy state. “Sleep” here means forgetting who you truly are, and living from autopilot programming, and the limiting stories that keep you from experiencing your magnificence. Let’s explore!

How Awakening Can Come and
5 Signs That You May Be Getting Your Wake-Up Call

In the first stage, you begin to see that you may not be who you thought you were.

  1. Often, awakening is predicated by an event that has you question your ideas about who you are, and how your life is unfolding.
  2. You may realize that you have a counter-to-happiness pattern and realize that how you’re “doing life” is no longer working for you.
  3. Perhaps you have something “unusual” happen to you that you can’t explain using your current concept of reality.
  4. You may start to question the meaning of life, your choices, and your purpose.
  5. You have a lot of things that are working well, yet you’re not as happy or fulfilled as you long to be. You have a recurring feeling that something is missing.

With any of these events, you will most likely be nudged to seek out a spiritual teacher, like yours truly. And even though it may not feel like it — this could be a very exciting time, and why I do what I do. If you answer the call; this is when the real journey begins. YOU are being called!

 

What The Path of Awakening and Mastery Can Bring You

Sometimes, people label this first part of awakening, a “midlife crisis”. But, what’s important to remember is that a spiritual awakening, or midlife crisis, if that’s the term you prefer, is (potentially) a life-changing turning-point event. What you choose to do with it can open you up to powerful new insights into your very soul, your true wise nature. The other option is to go back to sleep. Can you see why it’s an exciting time? Do not make yourself wrong for feeling what you’re feeling!

If you follow your inner promptings toward evolution and expansion, and learn how to gracefully navigate this new path …  you meet and become more YOU.  YOU live as a SOUL SELF, rather than as someone who experiences herself as limited, incomplete, or “less than”.  On this adventure,  you also discover the deeper nature of reality.

  You bring more of YOU out to play.

Which means that you get to experience yourself and life, as the Amazing, Powerful Being that you are, that is, if you are willing to learn how to navigate this new way-of-being and doing. And we all know that this isn’t something we’re taught to do as children, unless we chose to be born into a family of spiritual teachers, who have followed this path themselves.

As you awaken, you will naturally need to shed some ideas about who you think you are, and what you thought life was. If you follow the spiritual path, you’ll step out of the ordinary, finite sense of self, so you can begin to embody a wider, infinite sense of Truth or reality. You see the loving support that you truly have access to!

And so it is!

As you continue on the path, you also become aware that life happens through you, rather than to you. You hopefully allow yourself to be guided out of victim consciousness, and into soul-centered creatorship. As you live in a present, on purpose way, soul-to-soul partnerships are no longer a lofty concept. They can be your predominate daily life experience. And as you continue to walk the path of awakening, you start to see how easeful and rich life is. You are using what you’re learning, and feel so much love for yourself and life!

Because these are such exciting discoveries, this is also when many people want to share their discoveries with others. It’s important to remember here that depending on where you are on your path, this may not be easy for you. You may not yet have the language to describe what you’re experiencing.

And if you attempt to communicate or discuss what you’re going through  with someone who hasn’t moved through this experience, or they don’t have the consciousness to understand it, you may start to think there’s something wrong with you. But, nothing could be further from the truth. This can be beautiful time for YOU! Do not give up, or go back to sleep! As is true on any new journey, we don’t know what we don’t know. This is where the nurturing guidance of an experienced guide and teacher, who has navigated the path before you is absolutely priceless. Here’s a small part of my story of awakening if you’re curious. 

As you expand your awareness of how you specifically, are creating your life experiences, you create the opportunity to move out of victim consciousness (blame, helplessness, judgment etc), and into creator consciousness. You’ve now opened up the opportunity to live on purpose, rather than from autopilot reactions, and past programs. You’re on the Path of Mastery! As your awareness and skills grow, you can choose with confident purpose, in partnership with Soul, the non-physical, broader and wiser part of YOU.

As you advance through your journey, these experiences are no longer concepts, or something you’ve read about in a book, or watched on the YouTube video. The more awake, the freer and happier you become. You shed unwanted patterns. You are no longer easily triggered. And as you continue to advance, you no longer take things personally. You stop judging and blaming yourself and others, and become more peaceful and masterful. YOU are happily and powerfully in the driver’s seat of your life. You let others be where they are, while YOU embrace and love from who YOU are. Resistance, and the need to prove yourself, and push against others will and can cease.

Stepping Backward or Something Else?

The stages of spiritual awakening and mastery aren’t always linear. Sometimes you may even feel like you’ve taken a step or two backward. And that’s okay, because that tells you something. There may be moments when you revisit something you thought you had learned.

We can feel like we’re moving backward, when there’s a need to expand something in a particular area. This need is not arbitrary, nor is it created by an outside force. The need to revisit or go deeper — is always, 100% of the time, created by you, by a request you’ve made, or an intention you have chosen. This is true, whether you are aware of that intention or not. Good, now you’re aware that you made a choice.

We are always choosing. So, an essential part of creating amazing experiences is learning to choose really well, from higher, clearer, more present levels of awareness, from Soul. This is a natural part on the spiritual path of creative mastery.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you see yourself as a person of positive influence, and decide that you want to have a bigger impact, maybe as a healer, coach, thought leader, or in some expanded role in your work, or within your family. Maybe you are answering the call to be happier, and more fully soul-expressed. Those choices will naturally require inner growth, if you want to attract and gracefully hold that desired experience. Otherwise, you’ll struggle, feel like an impostor, get frustrated, make wrong, want to give up, and keep distracting or stopping yourself etc. etc.

You’re not broken. You're being called to evolve!

Your heartfelt dreams and desires will always call more of YOU out to play! Your goals, aka choices, whether conscious, or unconscious are the core tools of a creator. Exciting isn’t it? Your choices create purpose or struggle, easy or hard … and they are evolutionary tools as well. Your choices are the basic building blocks of your reality.

So, as you expand through your choices, you will naturally see some behaviors and habits of thought that weren’t previously visible to you. For example, many people who choose to expand their level of influence, discover a habit of judging or blaming themselves or others, as they grow and evolve. They find that even though they’re acknowledging what they created in some areas, they’re blaming a past partner, or their parents, or teachers in other areas. Perhaps they come to see that their desire to help others was really about a need to feel superior or feeling needed. But this doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. And this doesn’t mean they can’t still have positive influence. This is one of the natural ways that the self, seen as only personality — might compensate for feeling “less than”. Can you see that in order to have a higher level of impact, she or he is going to need to upgrade where they are choosing from?

There’s always a self-created cause and effect from choice. We are called to evolve into our heartfelt dreams and desires. We evolve as a Self, as we learn how to navigate our spiritual path.

If I can help you navigate your path from self to Self, I am here to help you do that.  

Walk in Beauty,

Elari Onawa

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Elari Onawa 

Life On Purpose Guide & Author Of Just Believe: How Faith In Yourself Shifts Everything 

I’ve been coaching and leading Life On Purpose and Self-Discovery programs since 2003. Prior to that, I led large organizations for 20+ years, helping them align with their dreams and goals. And then I said yes and followed my soul’s promptings.  If you’re ready for more fulfillment and joy, if you want to embrace more of your higher aspects,  and connect with the loving support that is available for you  … I can help you have that! Take a powerful online program, or schedule your 1:1 session here.