As someone who has been on a spiritual path, I see a great need in this world for the process of awakening to be recognized. Humanity will not be mature until we not only cease legal discrimination and protect ecosystems; but also until we recognize each person’s birthright to live his/her life to the absolute fullest, to be true to his/her path to maturity however conventional or unconventional it seems, to have an unmediated relationship with God, and to express his/her timeless inner wisdom whenever it comes through. Each of us belongs here. Each of us is here not because society or anyone approves of who we are or how we live, but because Spirit wants to experience this lifetime. Each of us, whether aware of it or not, is contributing to life becoming fully conscious of itself through the play of manifestation. Each of us has a role that no one else can take on in this great play of life.
In this article, I focus specifically on the situations of those of us who have had experiences of awakening, or glimpses of the depths of reality. These can come not only through prayer, formal meditation, or situations involving death and dying, but in virtually any circumstance. When we awaken, we experience ourselves as the timeless One Life or Spirit. Our reference point of “I” shifts from being an little individual temporary person to being God expressing Godself through a form, though we might have completely different ways of communicating this or have no clue how to talk about it. We come to know our nature as vast, whole, peaceful, wise, intelligent, open-hearted, unconditionally loving, eternal, infinite, pure, formless, spacious, fully alive, completely present, and/or one and the same as the Source and destiny of everything that ever was and ever will be. We see that life is truly beyond anything that even the most brilliant and most creative language or manifestation can capture.
This shift does not care who we are or where we come from as people. It can happen whether we are young or old; cool or uncool; rich or poor; liberal or conservative; indigenous, traditional, or modern; urban or rural; male or female or gender-non-conforming; straight or gay; monogamous or not; sexually active or not; religious or atheist; saints or sinners; or highly regarded or infamous. It does not regard successes or failures. It does not regard race, current values and beliefs, past personal history, cultural background, geographical location, language, roles, personality, relationships, physical appearance, health, stability of livelihood, abilities and talents, educational attainment, level of familiarity with spiritual materials, or the presence or absence of a spiritual teacher in human form. Indeed, awakening can be said to be the most democratic of all things in the universe.
In my case, I as a person am a 23-year-old woman from Indiana who dropped out of college after a major awakening at age 20, during my third year as a biology student. The event that triggered it was the death of a friend; at her funeral, I experienced a total acceptance of the temporary nature of all manifested forms and bodies. I was at peace with my own mortality and knew that life is meant to be lived to the absolute fullest. It is not meant to be taken for granted. After two days of experiencing this deep peace, I returned to school and felt as if I had been dropped there from another world. Nothing felt rigid or absolute anymore. Over the next two months, I experienced acute sensitivity to the energies of spaces and people and much disorientation. There was a period of intense self-examination during which I pulled apart every thought, perception, action, and reaction I could and saw it for what it was and where it came from.
What followed was a profound conscious glimpse of the Source that made it even clearer that there is no “I” apart from life and that life is everything and everyone. Indeed, life is literally infinite. In this hole created in the realm of time and experience, I saw that all possibilities and everything we commonly perceive as separate are One. I knew that life (God) creates the realm of differentiation, time, and experience in order to know and express itself through it. I knew that every struggle, tragedy, mistake, and shortcoming without exception is destined to be transformed into a greater strength as life evolves through form. We humans are a species through which life can fully come to know and see itself. What I have just described is absolutely beyond words.
After this, I entered a long period of adjustment. I left school. I traveled and explored many forms of spirituality and other resources. The disorientation and sensitivity continued and frequently prevented me from functioning. I often felt like I became everyone and everything I encountered and lost myself in a pattern that wanted to identify with and grasp something—anything—lest it be annihilated. There have been many hardships and challenges as well as insights that deepened the initial realizations.
We are living in a time when more and more of us are having spiritual awakenings. There is a greater need than ever for widespread awareness of this phenomenon and the adjustment process that usually follows. It is easy for these to be misunderstood and for the experiencers to be subject to much unneeded struggle, rejection, mistreatment, and pain. The following points highlight some common changes experienced in daily life and areas where mindfulness is especially needed:
The experiencer becomes less preoccupied with past and future and lives for the present moment. External circumstances become preferences, not absolute needs.
The ego of the experiencer dissolves as it is seen to be based in falsehood, sometimes not without major struggles for its survival or control in the process. Understanding naturally replaces fear in all areas where fear exists.
Nothing internal or external is seen as a problem to be feared, despised, and fought. Rather, everything is as it is and has its nature. Nothing manifest is absolute. Effects arise out of causes, and all identifications, thoughts, emotions, and experiences have a fleeting nature.
Identification with the body also diminishes, and the body comes to be seen as a vehicle instead of a self. Fear of death is lost as death is seen for what it is.
Many mistakes are made. The experience of awakening and adjustment process are often not immediately understood for what they are. Old patterns can disguise themselves in new forms.
Experiencers often become highly sensitive to energies and dynamics. Positive energy is felt as alive and nourishing, while negative energy is felt as toxic and degrading. The “how” of things becomes more important than the “what.” The thinking mind ceases to dominate, and the heart opens.
The experiencers come to value honesty, ethics, humility, gratitude, openness, awareness, responsibility, diversity, equality, harmony, health, balance, cooperation, compassion, unconditional love, wisdom, genuineness, integrity, joy, peace, creativity, and respect for all life.
Experiencers frequently manifest much more curiosity, creativity, and/or divergent, non-linear thinking than before. The nature of art, poetry, music, and scripture is understood. The nature of true intelligence is seen and valued. Profound creative insights and other forms of ingenuity can come in.
Experiencers commonly express heightened intuition and/or various abilities we tend to call psychic. Synchronistic coincidences become common, and intentions and wishes are made manifest more quickly. If fully seen for what they are, these are regarded as completely natural to life and not personal.
Those who have had awakenings often need to release energy, experience phases of disorientation or lowered ability to function, spend long periods of time alone doing “nothing”, meditate and read a lot, communicate from their place of perception, and/or not focus much on those things regarded as important in a “normal” human life.
While it is essential for experiencers to learn to recognize all dysfunction so that they cease to identify with it altogether and are not affected by it, there are some phases in which they can be very vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed by others’ projected negativity. It is not always easy for the experiencers to remove themselves from negative people and spaces.
Many people are so completely identified with their conditioning and sense of self that they miss the light wherever it appears. They are skeptical of the possibility living in peace, seeing human nature as pure and free, or seeing all problems as temporary by their very nature. They scoff and project negativity at anything they do not feel they understand with their minds, and they regard anything they fear as if it should not exist. If anything is Satan, it is this—a limited and temporary form pretending to be God, everything, absolute, or at the very least superior. It is unconscious, present to some degree in almost all of us, and not who anyone really is.
It is easy, in some stages, for those who have had spiritual awakenings to think other people are more aware than they actually are. People are sometimes trusted when they cannot be.
Relationships with partners, family, friends, roommates, classmates, coworkers, supervisors, and others in everyday life can be challenging. Those based on personal neediness and dysfunctional patterns can fall apart quickly if mutual honesty, respect, and genuineness are not brought in.
Experiencers tend to become more and more oriented toward unconditional love. This love is not personal; it transcends the personal and is far stronger and deeper than anything personal. It is the love of God.
In a society that emphasizes material success, values competition, judges people, neglects and stigmatizes the vulnerable, fears that which it does not understand, and is not very open to examining itself, it is not difficult to imagine the struggles faced by people who have had spiritual awakenings. There is still much that needs to be addressed before we truly express justice. It is still very easy for those who experience loss or change (as well as others who do not identify with common ways of thinking or conform to a status quo) to fall into poverty, debt, discrimination, victimization, illness, alienation, and rejection from opportunities to make a living. Humanity will not be mature until the least of us, the most extreme outsiders, and the most alienated are respected as full human beings with equal dignity to those who have the highest status. Justice, freedom, peace, and democracy will not come into this world until all embrace mindfulness and take responsibility for what they create and project. It serves animals to be controlled by self-centered survival instincts, but it does not serve humans.
All of us, regardless of who or where we are, have the right to face our own challenges, know for ourselves how life works, mature on the human level, and grow spiritually however we feel genuinely moved to do these. Making mistakes and facing appropriate consequences for our actions must not be stigmatized if our lives are to be lived to their fullest potential. We must embrace struggle and at the same time stop creating needless hardship and suffering. Evolution accelerates greatly when it is conscious.
We will be truly wise when we do not regard any individual, collective, or other form as infallible or absolute, and when we are able to approach everyone from Adolf Hitler to Jesus Christ with understanding, empathy, honesty, and compassion. Everyone and everything—no exception—is us, including and especially God. Both hatred and blind following are aspects of unconsciousness. They divide us internally and externally and prevent us from living our lives to the fullest. They are not of love, but of the ego. It is a sign of dysfunction when openness, unconditional love, and transcendence are not allowed. When these are present, the infinite unconditional love of Christ, God, and Buddha is brought out much more fully.
Although awakening is not personal, each individual experiences it in a unique way. There is no right or wrong way to awaken or right or wrong experiences to have after awakening. Not everyone is ready to awaken in this lifetime. No experience is superior or inferior to its alternatives—each of us is given exactly what we need in our situation. No emerging pattern or experience after awakening, however unconscious or sinful, negates what has been seen or changes the fact that the God/life/Spirit is everyone and everything, contains everyone and everything, and is the Source and destiny of everyone and everything.
(Phoebe Lackawanna is a gifted artist whose work is divinely inspired. Her art gallery can be viewed at Phoebe’s Art Gallery. Phoebe currently resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. To contact her, please e-mail Peaceloveandart89@gmail.com.)