Spiritual Awakening Misconceptions

show notes from Episode 20 of the podcast

I recently saw a video that for me was kind of disturbing because I felt it was sending the wrong message out to people.

In this video it showed a girl in a sitting yoga pose very peaceful and it said, what people think spiritual awakening is like. In the next scene it says ‘what spiritual awakening is actually like’ and the girl in the video is now jumping and squirming around on the floor like she is in the exorcist movie. To me this was very disturbing as I feel this sends a very warped view of spiritual awakening. I’ve also seen lots of memes that express this same view.

I myself did not experience anything like that and no one in my initial circle experienced anything like what the video expresses. This is because the video and many other people out there are sending out the wrong message of what this experience is like. Whether on purpose or due to their confusion or lack of understanding regarding the subject, it is still misinformed. So let’s clear the air on this.

Now while the experience of awakening can come with many different emotions and is a very personal experience, this variance is due to the individual and environment and not the awakening itself.

Firstly spiritual awakening is not a single event. Meaning that it doesn’t happen in one glorious instant that you go from ignorance to enlightenment and all your chakras light up in unison and the clouds part and you start levitating and become some all knowing being. That is not how it occurs. Spiritual awakening is a process. It can take weeks, months, it can take years, I would even argue that it is almost a never ending process.

Never the less there can be some anxiety and troublesome emotions associated with the awakening, but these are not due to the awakening itself, they come from various other things like ego and not being able to let go and deprogram yourself.

That being said I wanted to understand what these numerous people were actually going through and the reason for it. I wondered why this turmoil associated with awakening is so common this day in age as opposed to when I was first awakening. I reached out to a lot of people and got their responses and this is what I was able to gather

Thus far I have come up with the following reasons:

1.Unpreparedness

2. New social environment,

3.The emperor’s new clothes

So while The process of awakening has always been the same, it’s the times and mental perspectives of people that have changed.

Let me give you this example.

There is a small mountain which has a trail leading to an cliff face that is said to give you the view of the world that can put your life into perspective.

At the foot of the mountain is a woman who has been preparing physically and mentally for several months for this trip. She stretches, does some last minute checks and starts walking up the trail.

A short time later a man comes to the base of the trail. He went on this trip on a whim, did not prepare and is out of shape. He struggles to put on this huge backpack filled with unnecessary things and trudges onward.

The woman is making a comfortable pace and enjoying her surroundings. The trail partially blocked by some cactus on both sides and as she makes her way past them she stops to take in the aroma of their flowers.

The man is already breathing hard when he arrives at the cactus. So scared of getting pricked he is uneasy going through, a lizard frightens him and he jumps back into the cactus and his backpack gets caught as he runs away and leaves it tangled in the cactus.

Further up the woman sees a rock outcropping directly above the trail who’s silhouette reminds her of her grandmother and brings back good memories. so she takes a break under it’s shade to have a drink of water from her canteen. she spots a hawk alongside of the mt. She closes her eyes, stretches out her arms, takes a deep breath of the clean fresh air and imagines being free like the bird in the wind.

The man parched of thirst because his canteen got left behind in his pack sees the outcropping and fears it will tumble soon and kill him, He mistakes the bird for a vulture who is surely waiting for the man to die so he can pick the meat of his bones, so he scurries along without rest.

Finally the woman reaches the cliff, sets her bag down and sits to enjoy the view and reflect on the beautiful journey on the way up.

All of a sudden she is interrupted by a man crawling on his hands and knees, clothes ripped and drenched in sweat and breathing hard and saying

“oh thank goodness, please call a rescue team, this mt has been trying to kill me!”

This story illustrates how we can have a different experiences of the same thing. These two people have extremely different experiences. But the mt, the trail, the cliff were all the same, they did not change. Just like the mountain, the awakening doesn’t change, it is what it is. What was different was the individual perspective ...what is different is what you bring with you.

You have to have a mental preparation for the spiritual journey, if not your unnecessary baggage...like your ego, your fears, self doubt, thoughts of unworthiness, of judgement, of rejection, all handed down to you from other people and institutions.

So how and why do people end up being unprepared?

Because We have become a society of instant gratification. we think that enlightenment is just a youtube video away.

New flash: it’s not.

It took siddartha 6 years after leaving the palace and 45 days sitting under the Bodhi tree meditating to achieve enlightenment. Why would you think it is only a 5 minute video away?

Society now desires the end product so much, they bypass everything needed to get there with time. They want the end product, but don’t want to do steps 1-8 to get there.

They fail to comprehend that the beauty is in the journey, not the ending.

people are rushing to an awakening without any knowledge of self and then the only contact they have for support is the Facebook group they belong too and we all know how Facebook advise goes

This brings about the next reason which is The social environment or lack there of.

We live in a technologically connected, social media, trend following world.

A world Where we are all connected but lost the ability to connect to an individual. Where we have social media, but are socially awkward. Where we share likes, but don’t know how to offer real support.

When you awaken, you begin to see people for who they truly are, you tear away the veil of falsehood about not only others, but ourselves and our very way of life. And this is where the turmoil, rage, anxiety, depression and all other negative aspects are coming with today’s awakenings. One person I reached out to said it perfectly, they said ‘

At first I was delighted. Everything felt so easy flowing, top of the world. Untill I noticed I could feel me and other people being on different frequencies. People that used to 'fit', all of a sudden don't anymore.

A sense of loneliness, anger, wtf am I doing here and why are we all contributing to this nonsense??

I felt very alone. It's like the mask has fallen off of people and I can now see, and sometimes it's not a pretty sight.”

The world we live in is all fake, people are fake, Instagram is fake, Snapchat filters are fake, etc, etc..... it is. When you a awaken and see this fake world for what it really is, people must feel like they just took the pill in the matrix and having your mind blown. No wonder people who have grown up in this society are having such a time coping with an awakening.

I am thankful that I was fortunate enough to started this path in a pre social media, internet era and that my circle of friends were also moving in that direction. Due to the lack of internet I was able to pay more attention and listen to my higher self without all the other distractions. We had to physically seek out others of like minds to converse with and search for information and teachers.

IOur awakenings were gradual and in the process of knowing and illuminating ourselves we would then be able to attract people into our lives and develop relationships that would help us grow.

This then brings me to the next issue which is the emperors new clothes. This is a _________ in which people are making statements about things that aren’t necessarily true but are doing so because everyone else is doing so. This used to be prominent in the art galleries when ppl would look at the painting of an ink spot on a white canvas all discussing how deep it’s meaning was.....no it’s an ink spot. This has reached epidemic proportions these days.

Put simply, we live in a world of trend following and people feel like they don’t want to be left behind. So there are those who see a trend occurring and want to be on the forefront without actually knowing. This is why you have people buying mala beads as fashion accessories, getting Tibetan prayer tattoos, or saying ‘namaste’ cause it sounds exotic

I reached out to several people that had made comments in forums or posts about the issues they stated they were having and there were numerous responses that you could tell were not genuine. Responses like ‘I don’t know I just do’ or ‘I can’t really explain’ numerous also that would not respond at all.

They were just saying they were having those issues on social media posts to be inline with everyone else, to not feel left out. What this creates is a situation where people who are awakening without some sort of direction, get online, they read these comments and everyone agreeing and then wonder if they should be feeling this too. That perhaps they are doing it wrong if they are not feeling these emotions. That for some reason awakening should be some torturous endeavor as opposed to a wonderful transformation.

Having said all that, it doesn’t negate the genuine emotions people are having or heightened sensitivity that comes with an awakening. Especially if you are an empath, do light work, or healings. These can all be draining an your emotional and spiritual states. It comes with the territory. But the more you work with it, the more you are able to shine and dim at will, the more natural it becomes. My clan mother and teacher once told me that you don’t need to shine all the time, as a matter of fact, learning how to control and dim your light is just as important. She taught me the lower vibration energies are like moths, when they see a light amongst the darkness they immediately are drawn to it. That same way when our light shines bright, we can attract negative energies and entities. She taught me methods to control my brightness. To be able to turn it down as to not reveal myself like when traveling to places with large groups of people, or to turn it up so brightly as to be able to cause a disturbance to auric fields.

This is the importance of being able to connect and find a mentor. Lessons learned that cannot be achieved through a facebook forum.

Whatever is the cause, if you are experiencing any turmoil, look into the root cause. If you see any videos like the one I mentioned, pay no mind to them. Don’t allow someone’s misconceptions about awakening dictate what it should be. And if you are having a hard time, reach out to someone, myself included using the contact info and help is only a reach away.

As always may you be one with the universe and may the universe be one with you. And until the next episode make every moment count

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