If you’re reading this you likely feel called to pursue a spiritual inner journey. Spiritual awakening is not an easy thing to pursue and it will be challenging and frustrating at times.
All seekers who search wide and far will find what they’re looking for in the glorious “spiritual awakening”.
It can be a daunting task figuring out how to start this massive spiritual undertaking. It’s hard to know where to even begin with all of the information dumped on us at every turn we make.
This will be a complete guide for beginners who want to embark on an inner journey to spiritual awakening.
Everything you need to know to start your spiritual awakening journey is here for you.
So let’s begin.
What is Spiritual Awakening?
Before we dive into how to have an awakening we need to determine what an awakening even is.
A spiritual awakening is a term that refers to the process of experiencing existential truth by shifting or expanding your consciousness.
Awakening is fundamentally something you must experience with your awareness.
It is not a concept you can grasp with your thinking mind.
Types of Awakening
There are all kinds of awakenings you can have. What type of awakening are you pursuing? Let’s get specific.
Nondualism
The most general form of awakening that most seek for their first inner journey is a non-dual awakening. This is the experience of unity with everything around you.
In a nondual awakening nothing is separate from anything else in your awareness. Your sense of self vanishes. In this profound perspective shift everything in your awareness is all part of one thing. Including your body and thoughts.
You no longer own or identify with your body, mind, or thoughts in a nondual awakening. You simply observe them
Other forms of awakening
There are a couple other awakenings you can have that can be trickier to experience including:
- Kundalini awakening
- Samadhi
- Complete ego death
For this guide we’re going to focus on having a nondual awakening.
Why Pursue Awakening?
You may say “well why should I go through all of this work for awakening?”
Something inside of you intuitively knows that awakening is the path forward for your life. There’s something inside calling you towards this experience. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this.
Benefits of Spiritual Awakening
Awakening will allow for a more peaceful and expansive life. After awakening you create space between your awareness and life’s drama. You don’t get as stuck in the suffering around you after waking up.
There are many benefits people report after having a spiritual awakening including:
- Greater love for self and others
- Detachment from the suffering of life
- The mindblowing experience of awakening itself
- Alleviation of depressive symptoms
- Increased peace and tranquility
Everyone will of course experience different things, but most find that the problems that once troubled them are less bothersome after awakening. Awakening creates some cushion between you and your suffering.
Preparing For Awakening
Before we embark on the journey and practices of awakening there are some things we should prep with.
Setting an intention
The first thing we should do is set an intention. Figure out your “why”. Do you simply feel called to this experience? Are you attempting to live a happier, more expansive life? Do you want to evolve spiritually?
Find your why and set an intention that the next phase of your life will be for waking up.
WHAT STAGE OF YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY ARE YOU IN?
WHAT STAGE OF YOUR SPIRITUAL JOURNEY ARE YOU IN?
Discover the 6 stages of awakening and find out where you are in your journey.
Writing this down will help solidify this intention into reality.
Don’t underestimate the power of simple intention. Your subconscious self takes these things very seriously.
Optional preparation
There are some things you can do that may help with the process of waking up spiritually that aren’t necessarily essential.
Here are some things you can do to optimize this journey:
- Optimize your diet for spiritual awakening (yes, really)
- Create a sacred space for meditation, mantra, and other spiritual practices
- Seek community/ find an awakening buddy
These are some additional things that will help the process, but aren’t essential.
How To Have a Spiritual Awakening
Here we go, now we’re getting into the meat of it! These are the things you can actively start doing to have a spiritual awakening.
Some of these things will be techniques while others will just be tips. All are not in any particular order.
Meditation For Awakening
Cultivating your conscious awareness is a foundational and non-negotiable part of the path to awakening.
You must start some sort of mindful practice to grow your ability to use and tap into your conscious awareness. Whether you start a meditation habit or bring mindfulness to a daily activity, you must be practicing mindfulness.
I recommend you start up a simple mindfulness meditation habit for just 10 minutes everyday to start.
A shift in our consciousness is how awakening happens. This can only occur if you’re strengthening and expanding your awareness.
Self Inquiry
A particularly potent form of meditation for spiritual awakening is self inquiry meditation.
Self inquiry meditation adds an extra step to regular mindfulness meditation. Self inquiry adds a simple question to your practice, “Who am I? Who am I really?”
This facilitates deeper and deeper self reflection during meditation. This question helps the meditator continually turn their awareness back on itself.
Working With a Guru
If you want to properly wake up and do it fast, then you should find an awakening coach, teacher, or guru.
There are people who dedicate their lives to helping people wake up and they can be really good at it. Find someone who can guide you in this experience and you wil
Signs and Symptoms of Awakening
As you begin to wake up and having deeper spiritual experiences there are some spiritual awakening signs that you are close to a consciousness breakthrough.
You will begin to feel these as you come close to your awakening:
- Clear and vivid consciousness
- Increased synchronicities
- Letting go of things/people of a lower vibration
- Dissociation from your body
- Increased feelings of connectedness
- The present moment becomes easy to access on command
The moment of awakening itself will happen in as an instantaneous shift in awareness, but you will experience some warning before this happens such as the symptoms listed above.
Awakening Common Challenges
There are two major challenges that beginner seekers face on their journey to spiritual awakening.
Resistance
The first of these challenges is encountering resistance in spiritual practice.
The shift in awareness necessary for awakening can sometimes feel scary to jump into. During meditation practice you can feel yourself getting close to an existential edge in your awareness.
As you feel this possibility of awakening you strangely feel fear and resistance causing you to jump back into your limited (but comfortable) level of awareness.
to bypass this you must dive head first off this metaphorical cliff of consciousness. Any time you feel resistance or fear, that is your cue to surrender into whatever shift wants to happen.
Impatience
Another extremely common challenge in the journey to awakening is the feeling of “come on already! I’ve been meditating for months!”
The moment of awakening can come more naturally for some and may take longer for others.
Though it can feel like it’s taking forever to actually happen, if you keep practicing and diving deeper into your awareness you eventually will have a spiritual awakening.
Conclusion
The journey to awakening is so exciting to embark on. There’s so much beautiful consciousness to discover through awakening. It truly is the most profound experience of my life and I will be a forever spiritual seeker because of it. Though awakening can seem daunting to jump into, with enough practice and dedication anyone can have a profound spiritual awakening. Best of luck on your journey seeker!
Hi, I’m Ryan. I’m a meditation teacher, spiritual seeker, and founder of nurtureyourspirit.org. I’m glad you’re here! I founded Nurture Your Spirit because of my love of meditation, spirituality, and spiritual awakening.
