What Is Spiritual Awakening?

Here is one description: For some, it comes quickly. For most, it is a slow, incremental, ever-growing realization like the unfolding of a flower…a knowingness begins to come into focus…that is the awareness that you are the life behind the form. Bit by bit, the identity that you automatically have in the back of your mind without thinking about it of being a man or a woman — this primary identity slowly takes a back seat and gets replaced by a primary identity that feels more real, ongoing and less fleeting — the life force/presence/awareness that uses the body of a man or woman.

In addition, you understand that ultimately, that same life is behind every other form. So when you see another person, animal or plant, in the back of your mind, you know that the same life force that gives them life and animation ultimately is the same life force behind your body. It is as if you are noticing for the first time the screen as the backdrop to a movie, or silence as the backdrop that makes a sound possible, or the space between objects. You incrementally begin to focus on, and identify more with the one life behind all forms.

Some by-products of this realization are a deep sense of well-being, a trusting in an intelligent, universal design, and thus a releasing of any inner argument with “what is”. Both global and personal challenges are seen to be the process of life’s profound built-in self-correction system, which is a movement toward evolution and growth to become more conscious and aware of itself. There’s an appreciation and acceptance of however the present moment presents itself, and more of an awakening to thoughts or subtle beliefs (ego’s clever tricks) that try to pull you out of the one and only present moment. If you are the one life behind the numerous forms, that means you are always secure and lack nothing, because there is no ‘other’. Therefore, subtle fears become replaced with a growing compassion, and there is a quiet celebration of the vastly different flavors that the Oneness has become.

There is a recognition of the historical teachers that gave expression to this truth, a teaching that is now being communicated by a growing number of current individuals. Adyashanti describes being human as “the greatest slight-of-hand card trick” and that the awakening of this “trick” begins first at an intellectual level, then drops to the level of the heart, and finally the gut.

For me, there is a humble understanding that this awakening process will become much deeper and richer as identification with what’s relatively ”more real” continues. With it comes a growing peace and desire to share it with others.