7 Stages of Spiritual Awakening: A Journey to Higher Consciousness
The spiritual awakening journey looks different for all of us. However, there are 7 stages of spiritual awakening, that manifest similarly. It’s hard to distinct by yourself on which step you are. But with this guide, you will navigate your journey with ease.
The Call to Awaken: Feeling Lost, Yet Drawn to Something More
Have you ever felt lost in life? Truly lost? Not just about career choice, buying a new car, preparing for a hard exam. It’s about feeling lost in life as a whole. As if no matter what you do, there is no path ahead.
It’s a harsh state, but this is the first and necessary stage of the spiritual awakening journey.
At the same time, you start to feel drawn to something. But you can’t yet name it. This manifests in various ways.
Maybe you feel the need to return to religious practices you have withdrawn from. A strange pull towards practices like meditation. Or you read books, that you found boring beforehand.
For each of us, the call to spiritual awakening journey looks different. The pattern is similar: the feeling of lost, mixed with desire for something more.
But how that manifests, depends on your surrounding, upbringing, friends, values, beliefs.
With time, at the first stage of spiritual awakening, you start questioning things. Does life really have to look this way? What if your beliefs are wrong? Why you can’t find answers to questions, that are bugging you lately?
At that point, it’s impossible for you to comprehend those things. That leads to frustration and another stage of spiritual awakening journey: The Breakdown.
The Breakdown: A Challenging Stage of Spiritual Awakening
In my opinion, this is the hardest part. The Breakdown is that stage of spiritual awakening journey, where you can’t find answers for your questions. Yet, at the same time, you feel the weight of them on your shoulders.
That stage of spiritual awakening manifests with:
- An overwhelming flood of thoughts;
- Problems with focus, anxieties;
- Feeling of lack of sense in life.
This is when it’s so comforting to have a mentor to guide you through this time. If you are currently on stage 1 or stage 2, it’s a great time to search for one. It doesn’t have to be a Tibetan monk or shaman taught in old ways—though they could help for sure!
But my guess is: you won’t find them easily, and then trust them. It’s best if at that stage you can find someone whom you can trust, who would guide you through.
Who can be that person? There are a lot of places to look for. It might be your older sibling or friend, who’ve been through his spiritual awakening journey. Priest that inspired you when you were younger. Teacher whom you admired and still have good relations with.
Nevertheless, The Breakdown will be painful for you. It’s a necessary part of the spiritual awakening journey, but even knowing that, the pain will be exhausting.
When you start making sense of that suffering, that’s when you reach another stage of spiritual awakening.
The Search for Truth: Exploring Your Spiritual Awakening Journey
My mentor once said, that:
The suffering and the pain are not the same. Suffering is pain, that you cannot learn from.
Existential pain, that is part of every spiritual awakening journey, is a great teacher. Of course—it demands a lot of you. You have to challenge your old beliefs, convictions, way of living.
Sometimes, you risk loosing people around you, who won’t understand what’s happening to you. Your entire life might be turned upside down.
And that’s good.
The Search for Truth begins, when you start looking for answers. You won’t find them immediately, yet slowly, and steadily you realize, that you don’t have to. It will take some time, but it’s part of the life.
The pain you’ve felt before is still there, yet now it works as encouragement to ask yourself questions.
Why do you feel that pain?
What can you learn from it?
Where do I start looking for answers?
Those are simple questions at first glance, but with time, you grasp their true meaning. At that stage of spiritual awakening journey, you turn frustration into curiosity.
Which leads you to another level.
A Glimpse Beyond: The Awakening Moment That Changes Everything
There are 3 different ways, this stage of spiritual awakening might look like.
- Spontaneous awakening – usually involves learning from someone. It highly depends on what influences you the most. Maybe it was a speech by some spiritual guru, that changed your perspective? You’ve attended a life-changing lecture? Or you met someone inconspicuous at a party, and then had a conversation that made you understand everything?
- Awakening through deep emotional experience – it’s deeply personal and happens during intense life experiences. Deep love, profound loss, sudden change in life, powerful moment of gratitude—all can change you. It’s not purely intellectual, yet it pushes you through and shifts your perception on life.
- The path of quiet awakening – contrary to the previous ones, this is more gradual. You can’t pin down the one awakening moment. It’s characteristic to more introvert people, who prefer to think over spirituality on their own, without external push.
Of course—it’s possible that in your case, this stage of spiritual awakening will be the mix of the above.
For example: you met someone, whose beliefs changed the way you look at your life. But you gradually thought the conversation over, challenging your own views and values.
There is no telling how Glimpse Beyond will manifest in your spiritual awakening journey. However, I’m sure it will be an exciting story!
Inner Healing: Releasing Fears, Wounds, and Limiting Beliefs
From the 5th stage of spiritual awakening journey, your journey might change a little bit. There is a high chance, you’ll circle between 5th, 6th and 7th step. Why is that?
The Inner Healing is not something, that can be done in a single day, week, or even month. You need to heal things, that hold you back the most. Sometimes, you might need help from someone to recognize and identify those things.
Simultaneously, you have plenty of tools to work with. Meditation, journaling, self-hypnosis—learn more about them and try them on in practice. Of course, as always, you can mix them up.
At this stage of spiritual awakening, you are ready to face your old fears and wounds. It’s still a painful process, but now you know how to change pain into a teacher.
However, there is a little, yet deadly trap here: relapsing.
You won’t heal everything in one go. It’s absolutely normal, and you should go on with your spiritual awakening journey. Yet sometimes, you might be hit by something, that pushes you back.
Then, you’ll feel like the whole journey was pointless. That the process of Inner Healing failed, and you will never go further.
Let me assure you: it’s normal to go back to Inner Healing. You can’t predict everything and plan your whole life. I even believe you shouldn’t do that. Thus, it will be normal to find yourself in new situations, where old, hidden triggers might appear.
Don’t let that discourage you. There is absolutely no reason why you should give up because of that. It’s normal to come back to that stage of spiritual awakening, and heal once again.
All you need is courage and faith in yourself. Inner Healing might take a long, long time, yet with each obstacle gone, you will blossom even more beautiful.
Aligning with Purpose: A Transformational Stage of Spiritual Awakening
This is the part of your spiritual awakening journey, when you see the answers to your questions. Moreover, you see the reason behind WHY those questions first appeared in your life.
Aligning with Purpose is sometimes a stage of spiritual awakening that is hard to distinct. There are many reasons behind that, such as:
- You’ve already started aligning on your spiritual awakening journey;
- Through Inner Healing, you better understood your goals and cleared the path ahead;
- The Breakdown “forced” you to align earlier;
- Finding your purpose was actually what started the whole journey;
- You found and aligned with goal thanks to your mentor beforehand.
Personally, I believe that Aligning with Purpose is a process, that happens simultaneously to the previous ones. But only after Inner Healing, you are ready to truly appreciate your purpose. That’s when you fully align with it, and go forth with courage.
However, for some of us, Aligning with Purpose might be a long stage of spiritual awakening. After all, finding the own path isn’t something easy. Maybe when you started your journey, you didn’t have any goals, purposes.
And they didn’t show on the way, as you became more and more enlightened.
If that’s the case, don’t worry—it’s absolutely normal. You’ll align with your purpose sooner or later. Don’t force it, don’t chase it. If you are this far on your spiritual awakening journey, your purpose will appear.
Spiritual Embodiment: Living Your Spiritual Awakening Journey Every Day
The last stage of spiritual awakening journey is when you live your life in harmony with your mind, body, spirit. You aligned your purpose with your every day life, and day by day proudly forge your path.
Meditation is no longer a boring “responsibility”—it’s your daily habit, that you are excited about. Self-hypnosis supports your efforts to burgeon and blossom. The way you speak, think and act is in harmony with your inner needs and desires.
Even when you still need Inner Healing, questions appear, or you feel lost—you know what to do and how to find yourself.
If you’ve reached this stage of spiritual awakening, congratulations! Now, you may show others how to grow and manifest their best lives. Not because you are cocky or arrogant. You do this, because you genuinely want to help others.
And as a beacon, you light others people paths, on their way to Spiritual Embodiment.