What is Spiritual Awakening? - A Deep Analysis
Subconscious Mind to Self-conscious Mind
They’re coming after you.
They want your head.
Your blood is boiling.
Your heart is leaping out of your chest.
You run faster than you ever have before, but it’s not fast enough.
Hoping to veer them off course, you dart into an alleyway.
Instead, you find yourself in a dead end.
You see the silhouette of the assassins turn the corner.
There’s nowhere to run.
There’s Nowhere to hide.
As they approach, they pull out their blades.
You know what’s coming.
This is the end of your life.
…
Suddenly, in a cold sweat, you jolt awake.
With your heart still pounding, you breathe a sigh of relief.
It was just a dream. Thank God.
As your everyday, self-conscious mind continues to confirm its state, you calm down.
You go about your day, and soon enough, you forget the dream ever happened.
Think of the sleeping dream (subconscious) as the first layer of reality, and everyday, human consciousness (self-conscious) as the second layer.
Spiritual Awakening: From Self-Conscious Mind to Superconscious Mind
Now, open your mind to the possibility that there is an even higher, third layer of reality (superconscious), in which you become so conscious that you would view everyday, human consciousness like a dream.
Well, this third layer exists, and is precisely what the essence of spiritual awakening is pointing towards.
And yes, I know, this term “spiritual awakening” is a rather vague and loose term colloquially.
One person might label the discovery of their life purpose as a spiritual awakening, another might use the term to describe a breakthrough in a therapeutic setting, while another might label a transcendental meditation experience as their spiritual awakening.
The reason people describe their spiritual “awakenings” differently is because awakening is not a singular, one experience reveals all type of thing.
Unlike the sudden transition from sleep to the waking mind, awakening to spirit may come in various gradations and degrees.
It is likely that you will have numerous “awakenings” throughout your lifetime, with each one yielding a deeper understanding of Self.
And while everyone may experience and describe a different facet or flavor of this higher reality, the path follows a similar trajectory for all people.
And this trajectory is the transcendence of consciousness from the everyday, ego mind, which believes it is separate from everyone and everything else.
And through this transcendence, the inherent oneness of all things is revealed.
You realize your ultimate identity is not your body, thoughts, and emotions, but you are actually Infinite, you are the Universe itself, God itself, Life itself, etc.
This is not just some hippie, airy-fairy idea, either.
This is not just something you tell yourself.
This is not something to just take as a concept.
Open your mind to the possibility that you can have a direct, conscious experience in which the boundary between your sense of self (body, thoughts, emotions, etc.) and the outer world melts into one and your sense of being expands infinitely in all directions.
Let’s contemplate what that would be like.
When in the superconscious mind, the mountain in the distance, the cars bustling on the street, and the people walking on the sidewalk would be experienced as “you”, in the same way the chatter of your mind, the emotions you feel, and the sensations of your body are experienced as “you.”
Really think about that for a second.
Because your sense of self is all-encompassing, there would be no mental identification with parts of reality being “you” and other parts being “not you.”
The mountain, the cars, the people on the sidewalk, your thoughts, emotions, and impulses are all YOU.
And now that your sense of self is INFINITE, no longer fused to the body, thoughts, emotions, and feelings (the ego), you are AWAKE.
You are awake to the fact that you are the entire universe, you are source, infinite consciousness, divinity itself, now experiencing itself as human.
In this state, you would have no preference for things being one way rather than another way, for all bias is a result of a finite identity that relies on its desire, attachment, and fixation on outcome in order to experience satisfaction.
And when you have no bias, you can love everyone and everything equally.
When you have no bias, you can be authentically who you are, because you are not repressing, denying, or malforming any aspects of yourself from conscious experience.
When you have no bias, you cannot suffer, because you only suffer when reality is at odds with your bias, attachments, desires, etc.
The suffering, the sorrow, the dissatisfaction with life all came about because you believed that the human form is all you were.
And now, in moving from the self-conscious mind into the superconscious mind, you realize your ultimate identity is far beyond that of a human being.
Now, the time in which your sense of self was fused to the ego feels like a dream, for it is now radiantly obvious that you are one with all, you are everyone and everything, there is no “one” “doing” anything, there is just the universe arising moment to moment, there is no “doer” or “watcher”, there is just the present moment. Reality is pure Being.
But then, you fall back asleep into the self-conscious mind, and you are left wondering what the fuck you just experienced.
What is Spiritual Awakening?
Essentially, the term “spiritual awakening” is a loose label that one uses to describe the expansion of their consciousness to incorporate larger and larger wholes of reality in its embrace.
One might not have a full-blown “realization” such as how I just attempted to describe.
Again, one might label a stepping into a more authentic identity as awakening, another could label it as making a career change that expresses a greater concern for all people, another could label “awakening” as a realization from a profound psychedelic experience.
Whatever the experience, a spiritual awakening is the expansion of consciousness beyond just the self-conscious (ego) mind.
And as previously emphasized, this is not a singular, one experience describes all type of thing.
On one occasion you may awaken to one facet of the higher reality, on another you may awaken to another, deeper facet.
One of my first awakenings was the awakening to the fact that all identity is fluid and groundless, and that identity is something I have/inhabit, not something I am absolutely.
Another awakening revealed to me that egos do not have free will.
On another occasion I awoke to the fact that the entire universe is a singular, unified being.
Later I realized that consciousness is the fundamental building block of reality, not physical, material stuff (atoms).
And so, in my experience, awakening has been more of a gradual, oscillating, process between self-conscious and superconscious rather than an all-at-once type of realization.
And still, I have a long way to go, especially when it comes to embodying the wisdom.
The Fleeting Nature of Non-Dual Experiences
I notice that in many peoples’ first awakening experience (mine included), it can be so mind-boggling that you have no idea how to explain what you had just gone through.
These initial awakening experiences are often called “spiritual highs” or “peak experiences” because they are levels of consciousness so beyond our ordinary, everyday experience.
And these initial experiences are often short-lived, as the ego is quick to jump in and self-affirm its state.
And again, this is not some happy, hippie, ladada type thing.
The transition from self-conscious to superconscious can be brutal, because you are peeling away all of the aspects of your self-identity.
This transition can literally feel like DEATH, because it is the letting go of everything you believed to be true about who you are.
When I first tasted this higher reality, I became depressed, scared, and confused for some time, and briefly worried that I was psychotic, because it literally felt like I was out of my mind.
And I was “out of my mind”, in the sense I had an expansion of consciousness beyond the ego mind.
But really, this worry stemmed from fear of not being in control.
It is important to emphasize that not every spiritual “awakening” comes from a peak experience either, in fact I would say a peak experience is just a tiny part of the entire process.
As I described in a Youtube video I posted over 3 years ago, the process of awakening goes something like this:
1. Catalyst
2. Awakening
3. Dark Night of the Soul
4. Reintegration
Also, don’t take these stages as rigid and absolute either, they are just generalizations.
The Catalyst
In order for one to awaken spiritually, there is virtually always some sort of catalyst that sets the process in motion.
Usually, this catalyst is some form of intense suffering that forces you to challenge your beliefs about yourself and the world.
Suffering is the natural byproduct of consciousness inhabiting a finite identity.
When you believe yourself to be this form and not that form, you will suffer when reality is at odds with who you believe you are and who you want to be.
And so, your suffering will reveal to you the limitation of your ego structures, and essentially demands it to expand or else you will continue to be in misery and disillusionment forever.
While I have had a few catalysts in my life, probably the biggest one was when a high school ex-girlfriend suddenly and unexpectedly broke up with me.
I was completely broken and distraught by the breakup, and was sent into an almost year-long depression in which I viewed myself as mostly worthless, idealized suicide, and became more and more disillusioned with the world.
I started to ask the big questions again: Is this really all there is? Is this what life is about? What is the point of living at all? Why am I suffering so much?
Through my suffering and questioning, my rigid atheism and nihilism slowly gave way into a more open-minded, agnostic view.
I became a more open-minded human in general, taking in perspectives from a wide variety of viewpoints, developed an interest in psychology and philosophy (especially Buddhist ways of thought), and eventually explored altered states of consciousness (lucid dreaming, meditation, weed, psychedelics).
My exploration led me to a profound spiritual awakening in late 2019 (2.5 years after the breakup), in which I grasped my true nature and deepened my understanding of what consciousness and this universe really is.
Through this process, I became immensely grateful for all of the suffering I had experienced along the way, as well as the suffering I had yet to experience, and saw it all as a perfect unfolding to create the beautiful person I am today.
This same thought holds true on a collective level as well.
All of the suffering we have experienced as a species has led to the present day, which happens to be the most peaceful, well-off time in all of human history (and it could be so much better lol).
We have a long way to go.
The Awakening
And so, the catalyst inevitably leads to some sort of expansion of consciousness in the individual, some may call it an “awakening.”
If you look at virtually any “enlightened” being, their story almost always has some intense suffering.
The Buddha walked his path after experiencing the brutality of life outside the palace he spent his entire childhood in.
Eckhart Tolle was about to kill himself before he had his awakening.
If we look at humanity as a whole, it was only a decade or so after the most brutal war in our species’ history (WW2) that a new, more world-centric consciousness began to have a significant impact in the collective.
This consciousness was defined by togetherness and harmony, sought to liberate humanity from greed and dogma, create equal opportunity for all, and strived to work towards the well-being of all life.
Think: The 1960’s counterculture movement, hippies, climate change activism, social justice activism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ rights, present-day liberalism, Spiral Dynamics green
In a way, this was basically a collective awakening.
Because awakening is the newfound realizations, awareness, and way of being that comes from consciousness inhabiting a more expanded state.
Is it not obvious now that higher consciousness (world-centric) emerges from the chaos that lower consciousness (ego-centric, ethno-centric, nation-centric, etc.) causes?
And this ONLY happens through suffering revealing the limitations of our ego structures, forcing all of our beliefs, identity, ways of thinking, behaving, and relating to the world to come into question.
Anyway, you can keep having deeper and deeper awakenings until your separate ego consciousness comes into full union with the universe/the one/God…but I won’t get too deep into that right now.
But as consciousness expands, you are stepping into a new identity.
You are stepping into a more expansive worldview, and into a radically different paradigm of living life.
This comes with numerous challenges and backlashes from the ego, which leads to the Dark Night of the Soul
Dark Night of the Soul
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believe in and thought that you were.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan
Dark Night of the Soul is what occurs after an awakening, and it represents the shedding of the previous conceptual frameworks, belief systems, behavior patterns, relationships, and habits that are no longer in alignment with the newfound awareness.
This process can be brutal, and for some it can last multiple years, for shedding an old identity is literally like DEATH, because you are letting go of who you thought you were.
The awakening has collapsed the house of cards that your ego has spent its entire existence crafting, and now you must redefine and rebuild yourself again.
Dark Night of the Soul is like a spiritual surgery, but instead of having anesthetics to numb the pain, you are completely conscious for this surgery, and your rebirth is tied to how deeply you fully feel your suffering throughout this process.
In my experience, after a series of awakenings in late 2019, I was quite depressed, scared, and confused for a few months afterwards.
There was a part of me that worried I was going psychotic, because my newfound realizations went beyond the logical, rational, dualistic scientific mind that had shaped me so strongly up to that point.
And as I gradually began to realize that what I had experienced was a spiritual awakening and not a psychosis, I knew that it would be impossible to live a “normal” life and fit in with everyone.
I realized that I would have to let go of many friends I had made up to that point, would not live a life of the status quo, would be viewed as “out there”, weird, wacky, or even insane by many people, would probably experience loneliness often because not many people would understand me, and I also knew that creating a career in alignment with this stuff, without compromising my integrity, would not be an easy task.
This was very hard for me to cope with initially, and I thought: Why me? Why does this have to happen to me? I don’t want this. Truth is too scary.
This Dark Night of the Soul also brought back nihilism into my consciousness.
While, yes, I had realized my ultimate identity is not Wyeth, but rather one with all, I was thinking: So what? Why does knowing this even matter? I’m going to die one day anyway, what’s the point?
Yet I knew deep down this was a perfect unfolding, this was my ego putting up defenses in response to its inevitable annihilation.
Eventually, through time and doing what I felt is right, I stopped being in so much pain after these awakenings and felt myself to be a completely new person.
Reintegration
One of the most crucial aspects of Dark Night of the Soul is to fully feel everything you are experiencing.
Because the ego wants to protect us from pain, its natural tendency may be to deny and distract itself from what is happening.
And so you will be drawn to things like scrolling social media, watching TV, drugs, alcohol, or anything else that takes your attention away from the work that, deep down, you know needs to be done.
And so, any activity that brings you into direct contact with your feelings, emotions, bodily states, and intuition is going to be your best friend during the Dark Night of the Soul.
These are things like:
Stream of consciousness writing
Doing art (painting, drawing, writing, etc.)
Meditation
Spending time in Nature
Following excitement
Following curiosity
Following your heart
Going to therapy
Hiring a life coach
Doing substances with the intention to fully experience/be yourself
Hanging out with new people that resonate with you
Intaking new perspectives (books, podcasts, YT videos) that resonate with you
Ultimately, though, your heart knows the way.
If you lean into your intuition, and are doing what you feel is the right thing, you will not be led astray.
Sometimes, you have to do the hard thing and leave that job, or that relationship, because you know it is not in alignment with who you truly are.
Trust the process.
Accept yourself for where you are at.
Life will lead you to the next insight, which will lead to the next step that needs to be taken.
Through time of continually doing this, you will become further established in your new identity, and you will look back on your previous self and view it like a previous life, almost like a dream.
This is how I feel about my prior self now.
Long gone are the thoughts of: Why me? I don’t want this. This is too much.
Now, I have more appreciation than ever for how life has unfolded, am happier than ever to be alive, and have never loved and accepted myself and the world more than I do right now.
Of course, like anyone, I have a lot of work to do and things to integrate.
The oscillation between insight, Dark Night of the Soul, and Integration is happening within you all the time, on both a micro and macro scale.
In a sense, I have been going through a mini Dark Night of the Soul in recently stepping into the identity of a life coach.
This has triggered all sorts of reactions from my ego: I’m not good enough. I’m too young. Why would anyone trust me with their life? I’m not a good enough listener. My mind is too jumpy. I’m not wise enough.
During this process, I have allowed myself to fully sit with these feelings, rather than just shove them away and barrel forward like my prior self would have done.
And I know that to integrate this new aspect of my identity into my way of being in a healthy manner, I have to build confidence through developing competence through doing lots of coaching, practicing the skills in day to day life, learning from other coaches, and going through a coaching certification program.
Typically, Dark Night of the Soul refers to paradigm-shattering realizations that demand a completely new mode of being from the person, but of course this happens on a smaller level as well, such as this story of becoming a life coach.
You go through this cycle of catalyst, insight, backlash, and reintegration all the time.
Start noticing it.
Collective Dark Night of the Soul
The Dark Night of the Soul manifests in the individual as the conflict between two (or more) aspects of the psyche.
One aspect is the new, more authentic identity while the other is the older, prior identity that is no longer in alignment with the new identity.
This same mechanism holds true on a collective, societal level between groups of different worldviews.
To provide an example, think about the Civil War that occurred in the 1860’s in the United States.
At this time, there was a growing awareness in the collective that slavery was immoral, and that it should be abolished nationwide (awakening).
It was easy for the Northern states to accept this, but difficult for the Southern states to accept this because their economy depended upon slavery for its survival.
And so, the two sides became more and more polarized, and eventually the tension rose to the point that a war broke out.
Now, the human collective psyche was in battle!
After a few years of fighting, the North wound up victorious over the South, leading to the abolition of slavery nationwide.
However, the Southern economy was completely broken and decimated (Dark Night of the Soul), for they had relied on slaves for so long.
To help the South out of their Dark Night of the Soul, Congress implemented a series of acts and policies, which came to be known as The Reconstruction, so that the South would be better able to function in this post-slavery reality (Reintegration).
Of course, this Reconstruction Era did not solve all problems, racism was still rampant, but nonetheless it was a significant move towards wholeness/unity within the human collective.
My point in sharing this historical story is that, to the ultimate reality, there is no difference between the battle that plays out in one’s individual mind between conflicting self-identities, and the battle that plays out in the collective between conflicting group-identities.
Consciousness is beckoning forth an expansion, a move towards greater unity, wholeness, and love.
Will you accept this expansion? Or will you deny it?
Will you choose love? Or will you choose fear?
Your individual response to these questions will determine the entire course of your life and the degree to which you awaken in this lifetime.
Our collective response to these questions will determine the entire course of humanity’s future and the degree to which our species awakens.
Your heart knows the answer, but your attachment to ego is not so quick to choose it.
Godspeed!
My Offers
If you want to take your life into a new, expanded way of being, consider checking out my 8 Week Spiritual Fitness program.
It is an 8 week program designed to skyrocket awareness, increase self-understanding, Self-love, and catalyze your life purpose.
It is also highly affordable.
If this interests you, head to the Coaching tab of my website to learn more.
Before applying, watch the entirety of the video on the program first.
That’s all I have for today guys.
I wish you all the best in your life journeys and in the process of your awakening!
- Wyeth