Hi Brent. I'm confused about what an awakening is. Is an awakening the culmination of a period of learning and trying to wrap one's mind around new ways of understanding until old beliefs and perceptions finally fall away? Or, is an awakening a sudden shift/profound glimpse? The reason I'm asking is because Adyashanti, for example, teaches as if it's something a person can learn, but his biography describes a sudden shift in perception.
An awakening includes a sudden shift in perception or profound glimpse into something beyond the five senses and the mind. It can happen spontaneously to someone that doesn’t have any spiritual background, practice or intention. This however, is rare. It can also occur to those that have some sort of spiritual background and intention. This is common.
With an awakening, included with the sudden shift in perception must follow the necessary phase of integration and embodiment where the relative human being must actively allow this shift a chance to be expressed in their life.
If we take into account both the sudden shift and the necessary phase of integration, I would say that together, this is what awakening really is. It’s a verb. It’s ongoing. It’s not just a sudden shift or glimpse. It must include the continuous phase of integration and embodiment. Awakening is a verb!
Adyashanti is a teacher but he isn’t offering anything that you can learn. You must reconsider his message and see that he’s inviting you to unlearn. The paths leading up to both his awakening involved unlearning.
“If you want to know something, go elsewhere. If you want to un-know everything, then sit and listen.” - Adyashanti
This path isn’t about finding new ways of thinking and understanding. It’s about letting go of our conditioned ideas so that we can see things as they already are, without our beliefs and ideas getting in the way. There’s nothing to learn.
Guest Post by NuHu Therapy: Experiencing a Kundalini awakening or spiritual emergency can feel overwhelming and isolating. At NuHu Therapy, we offer grounded, trauma-informed support to help you integrate your spiritual journey and find your way forward.
Sometimes those that are called to be lightworkers hold themselves back with feelings of insecurity and unworthiness. You don’t have to be perfect to begin this work. In fact, the greatest lightworkers weren’t perfect themselves. There is an ascension happening on the planet. People need your healing and support as they awaken. Get to work!
Ongoing series of questions and answers to do with various topics related to the spiritual journey of awakening, enlightenment, and Self-Realization.
Twin flames have been marketed to the spiritual community as “the One” on spiritual steroids. Some believe the twin flame relationship to be the most ideal and perfect relationship there could possibly be. But, the fact of the matter is that many go through great suffering trying to make it work.
This over obsession with postures has nothing to do with the Self-Realization or Heart-centered consciousness that this path is about embodying. The only true asana is the asana in the Heart.
This is the healing journey of the Divine recognizing the Divine in all. This is the journey of love. There’s no healing without facing our wounds directly. The shadow doesn’t dissolve unless we cast light upon it. There’s no way around this. To release the conditioning that no longer serves us, we must face it all directly. This transformation doesn’t happen in the background or periphery. It happens in our very Heart. It’s felt directly.
Spiritual awakening, enlightenment, and Self-Realization experiences can leave us in states of transcendent consciousness. We can feel as if the physical world and our bodies are secondary. But it’s important to return back to the world. To make my point, I speak about Jesus, the Buddha, Zen, and some of my personal experiences as a teacher.
After spiritual awakening, the limitations that hold us back from really allowing immense amounts of Shakti to flow through our nervous system comes in the form of emotional blockages and trauma, known as vasanas in the Yogic tradition and samskaras in Buddhism. Resting in samadhi in meditation is absolutely critical at this point in order to allow our consciousness to expand and be integrated.
Though there are many kinds of awakenings, some more profound than others, they are all awakenings to the same Truth. Essentially, they are all insights in some way or another into what is not True or what we are not. There are many things that aren’t True and many things that we are not, and so there may be many awakenings before one comes to know what actually is True.
There are so many spiritual teachers and guides out there. How can we be sure that we’re working with the right ones? For someone seeking spiritual guidance, healing, and support from others, it’s absolutely imperative that discernment is cultivated and practiced on an ongoing basis.
If you have had a particular realization, insight or awakening and you have integrated it into your everyday human life, then you are in a position to offer guidance to others within the realm of what you have realized and integrated for yourself.
The question of whether eating meat is compatible with spiritual development, Self-Realization, enlightenment, and deep states of meditative consciousness, such as Samadhi, is a good one. I suggest that one should be open and willing to eating meat, if that is what their system is intuitively asking for. Meat has immense grounding benefits that are sometimes essential for those working with Kundalini awakening.
Here’s something that nobody really speaks about - all of the deepest spiritual poems, books, wise words and best art only come forth during what could be called spiritual highs. These exalted states come and go, even for some of those who have a very high level of realization. It’s very, very rare to find someone that’s always turned on and ready to spew pure beauty and wisdom.
One does not become enlightened. The word become implies some sort of transformation happening in the future. There is no future and you cannot become something you already are. Instead, we can refer to it as the realization of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the lasting realization of who you really are. One may have glimpses or awakenings revealing their true nature. These glimpses may often be fleeting. To realize enlightenment is to abide in the default state; to remain there.
There are many chakras throughout the body, but the main system consists of seven. They are the areas within the body where the energy is most highly concentrated. They are also called energy centers. The chakras each correspond with a colour of light, just like the seven which are seen in a rainbow or a prism.
Sexual energy is the most powerful energy within the body. It’s creative energy, not limited to simply procreation. It fuels creative genius that can be expressed through art, music and intellectual pursuits. It also allows one to be charismatic, confident, physically strong, and attractive overall. As well, it gives one increased focus and concentration which can be used in spiritual practices.
There’s something that’s orchestrating all of this life that we experience. There’s an intelligence that governs it. It’s obvious, but even to deny this is part of the beauty of it all.
The spiritual path is about recognizing that our individuality is not an isolated thing. There is no separation. Though it may appear as if I am completely different than another, if we inquire deeply enough, we come to see that just like all rivers share the same source, all beings share the same source as well.
With an awakening, included with the sudden shift in perception must follow the necessary phase of integration and embodiment where the relative human being must actively allow this shift a chance to be expressed in their life.
Unconditional love is like a flood. Once we open our heart, it’s like opening the flood gates. Love pours out, pushing to the surface all of our personal and collective trauma, fear, karma, and conditioning. All sorts of personal and collective memories, feelings, and suppressed baggage can begin to surface to be washed away in the flood of unconditional love that we’ve unleashed.
On the path, there’s only two words that are truly important. There’s only two words that will always remain relevant for every being, whether human, spirit, alien or inter-dimensional. There’s only two words that can never be transcended or left behind.
I have known no greater force than that of the Kundalini Shakti. Her compassion, grace, intelligence, and love leave me humbled in awe, drowning in blissful devotion.
The simplest way of expressing the essence of a dark night of the soul is that it is a time that involves a deep and painful feeling of being abandoned and left alone, as if God/the Divine has forsaken you.
Consciousness is expressed through the relative body-mind organism. This means one’s physiology is directly involved with meditation. You can observe this very easily by taking note that when you meditate, your metabolic rate automatically begins to shift. Your heart rate and breath begin to slow down. These are biological functions all related to the nervous system. This directly shows that meditation, Samadhi, and spirit/consciousness are all involved with the biology of the body-mind organism.
Be easy on yourself. On this spiritual path, you are supposed to get caught up in ego, in emotions, in feelings of anger, sadness, resentment, jealousy and all of that. You’re supposed to react in selfish, outdated ways. This is how all of the deep seated trauma, pain and conditioning surfaces to be healed.
This issue of teachers potentially becoming exploitative and destructive has to do with the misunderstanding that once a person has a certain spiritual realization, they no longer have any wounds to heal or deep things to overcome. This isn’t true.
Everything in life is balanced—yin/yang, night/day, male/female and so on. Included within these balanced pairs of opposites is this one—desire/object of desire. If you truly desire something in your heart, then it must exist within the world for you to have. Your desire is a reflection of its future manifested reality.
Every single piece of emotional and mental debris began to surface to be loved and healed. I think I cried every day for three weeks straight. I was puking, gagging, and my legs turned to jelly. My whole body vibrated with this cleansing energy day and night. All kinds of deep traumas, insecurities, fears, beliefs, and collective wounds began to surface to be examined and healed. My faith was tested in each moment. There are no words to describe the intensity of the emotions that I felt.
One can sit with discipline and a strong will and inquire into the nature of reality and come to certain realizations and conclusions. One can use the mind to awaken out of mind. However, one cannot use the mind to awaken the Heart or Kundalini Shakti. The Heart and Kundalini Shakti have their own intelligence that is far beyond the mind. They awaken on their own once the mind is out of the way.
Spiritual awakening can create energetic instability with many challenges, such as depersonalization/derealization (DP/DR), Zen Sickness, Emptiness Sickness, psychosis, mania, insomnia, and more. I share some ways I ground myself to prevent energetic imbalance.