19 Common Spiritual Awakening Symptoms

In pop culture, spiritual awakenings are often dressed up like something out of a Disney movie. All sunshine, rainbows, love and light, with zero of the mess. But that sugar-coated glaze is exactly what you would expect from a Disney movie… A fairytale.

In reality, a spiritual awakening is usually a long, arduous process that makes you feel like you belong in a madhouse. And for some time, maybe you do…

After all, the process of stripping away the many layers of untruth brings you to a raw reality that is anything but normal in our society.

Especially in the early stages of a spiritual awakening when you tear down the old foundation and begin building a new one, you will likely feel like you’re trapped in a large, dark hole filled with poisonous snakes. You feel disconnected from the normal world, and that’s okay.

At times, it can be hard to identify what in the world is going on, and you may be thinking that you’re losing your marbles. That’s why I made this article to give you a roadmap. Here we’re going to discuss some of the common spiritual awakening symptoms, and hopefully bring a little more clarity to the process.

What Do You Mean by Spiritual Awakening Symptoms?

During the process of a spiritual awakening, your entire internal landscape gets rearranged. Your consciousness begins to undergo some major changes as it sheds untruth and returns to a place of purity, or higher awareness.

While you’re figuratively shaking off a lifetime worth of unconscious patterns, programs, outlooks, influences, beliefs, trauma, and identity at large, you can expect that it’s not necessarily smooth sailing all the time…

This process often offsets a string of experiences that can be blissful, to downright terrifying. These adverse effects are often called spiritual awakening symptoms, and they can be spiritual, mental, emotional, and even physiological.

In other words, imagine that spiritual awakening symptoms are signs that your old self is dissolving to make space for something deeper, more aligned, and more soul-driven.

What Does a Spiritual Awakening Do?

Oh, it does lots of things!

A spiritual awakening sets in motion a process where your consciousness slowly unravels, eventually leading to self-realization and the liberation of consciousness from the human construct.

Yes, I know. Lots of big words. But you can think of it like this.

We are all souls inhabiting people, but as we go through life, we don’t realize that consciousness doesn’t come from the mind. Sure, everything else such as your thoughts, beliefs, and so forth, are constructs of the mind, but the nature of experience itself is something deeper.

For most of us, we’ve so thoroughly identified with the human characters we’re playing, that we’ve forgot we’re just drivers. As so, we are contained by our minds, and live as humans. Nothing more, nothing less.

A spiritual awakening cracks open the human shell, and for the first time, you get a tiny little peek that you’re more than your body, that you’re something infinitely more expansive. This offsets a process of breaking out of this shell to experience a deeper, more pure form of consciousness that simply operates the human, but isn’t the human.

Each layer you peel off comes with its own set of pain and challenges, but it’s necessary to separate the material illusion from the authentic self. This is how you fully embody the highest quality of life, and see reality not through filters, but how it truly is.

This is why a spiritual awakening often sucks… at least at first. You need to lose yourself to find yourself.

After reading through this list of spiritual awakening symptoms, you might think something along the lines of “Wow Daniel, a spiritual awakening sounds crap, why on Earth would I want this”?

Completely normal reaction.

Often, when people begin waking up to a deeper truth of their consciousness, it’s not exactly the experience we want. But it’s necessary. You can either live your life unconscious and unaware, caught in the Matrix. It might be okay, but it’s also limited. Or, you can go through the hard yards and growing pains to have a much more beautiful existence.

Is It a Spiritual Awakening or Something Else?

During my time working in the shamanic healing space, and coaching people who are going through all sorts of seemingly unnatural experiences, I’ve come to understand that everyone’s spiritual awakening is different.

Because a spiritual awakening is a deeply personal experience, everyone undergoes a different journey. For some it will be long and wretched, for others it will be graceful. Usually, it gets worse before it gets better, but it will get better, magnitudes better, as long as you carry on.

There can be a fine line between a spiritual awakening, a crisis, and mental illness, which can add another layer of complication to the mix. If you’re worried you’re going crazy, you’re not alone, and it’s probably just a hurdle you need to jump to evolve.

With that said, if your symptoms are severely interfering with your ability to function, or if you have a history of trauma or mental health conditions, it’s wise to be on the safe side and speak to a trusted therapist or healer who understands spiritual experiences.

Spiritual awakenings are not escapes from reality, but they invite you to look deeper into yourself, heal what needs to be healed, and open up to higher expressions of consciousness.

Signs You’re Waking Up

With that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

Each soul is different, meaning there’s no standard protocol when it comes to a spiritual awakening. With that said, some spiritual awakening symptoms are quite universal, so we’ll get into those now.

You’re Feeling a Little Lost…

A spiritual awakening often starts with a creeping sense of dissatisfaction with life. It’s like something just isn’t clicking anymore, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Your once stable foothold of reality begins deteriorating as your eyes slowly open to a more bizarre reality than you previously found yourself in. All the things that once provided comfort are uprooted. You find yourself becoming increasingly disillusioned in the process, and might feel like you don’t fit into old structures anymore.

For lack of a better word, it feels like you’re spiritually homeless.

This disorientation, though painful, becomes a catalyst for transformation. It forces you to explore a deeper truth about the nature of your reality, and this is where things start to get really fun!

You Feel Alienated in Your Quest for Understanding

Feeling lonely during your spiritual awakening is a relatively universal experience. It’s sorta like a rite of passage, and part of the process of disassociating from the things, people, and places that were once tied to your sense of belonging.

The truth is that most people simply don’t understand what you’re going through. How could they when they haven’t experienced it themselves?

Your closest friends might brush off the conversation, and your family members may try to reroute you into familiar patterns. Generally, people seem distant, but it’s probably you. You just can’t connect with people the same way you used to, which can feel a little alienating at times.

But the good news is that this loneliness isn’t permanent. Actually, you will gravitate towards connections that are more aligned with who you are becoming, rather than who you were.

This doesn’t mean you can’t stay in touch with the people who have always been there for you. It just means you may not connect with them the same way you once did.

The Journey of Self-Discovery Begins

Now you’ve done it. You’re questioning everything you thought you knew, and there’s no going back. Welcome to the self-discovery rabbit hole. The path to self-understanding is a windy road, but it’s a good road!

The only question is… “where do I begin?”

You don’t know the answers to anything anymore, or in what direction you should be walking. This sets you on a journey of exploring both your internal and external reality to a deeper extend, in search for answers.

The pursuit of self-understanding tends to deepen exponentially. Rather than self-enquiry being something you do, it consumes you. Introspection becomes a primary force in your life, and you’re starting to see just how interconnected the inner and outer worlds are.

During this phase of my spiritual awakening after experiencing a kundalini awakening, I decided to pack my bags and travel the world, not necessarily with an objective, but just to experience. A one year solo backpacking journey has led me to a 10-year nomadic lifestyle.

As I continue down this rabbit hole of self-discovery, it has become abundantly clear that self-discovery doesn’t have an end. There are always more questions, and finding an answer to one of those questions leads to two more questions.

But… it doesn’t stop you from searching because the pursuit of learning is addictive. All you know is that you’re hungry for answers even though it’s a paradox, and self-inquiry doesn’t feel like a practice anymore, it’s a lifestyle.

You Develop a Keen Interest in Personal Growth

Whether you were interested in your personal development before your spiritual awakening began or not, personal growth and spiritual growth are two peas in a pod.

As you awaken to a deeper, more true nature of reality, you will probably find your interest in personal growth coming to the forefront. This might involve a whole lot of time researching, trying new things, and generally trying to better yourself in some form daily.

This may mean delving into books, having interesting conversations, and exploring new spiritual modalities. You feel driven to improve yourself because you are a construction zone, and the more you work on yourself, the better the reflection of life becomes.

You’re Doing a Deep Clean of Your Psyche

A spiritual awakening is like the eruption of a volcano. All of the hidden gunk in the form of emotional baggage, old memories, past traumas, unconscious patterns, behavioural flaws, and repressed emotions flush up to the surface, causing you to go through some pretty hefty emotional processes.

These processes can come on spontaneously, and they can also bubble up gradually, where it feels like you’re stuck carrying this wet blanket until you figure out how to get rid of it.

Generally, we can just shove all this crap under the surface and not deal with it. But the process of waking up means that all of this emotional residue must be illuminated.

This often coincided with a dark night of the soul, depression, overwhelm, and internal struggle. You will likely revisit past memories, decisions, failures, and mistakes for learning. Likewise, you might hate life at times and be unable to see beyond the misery consuming you.

But have trust, this is normal, and it’s temporary!

Your psyche is doing cleanup work, and this is how you work through all of that baggage that needs to go. That means sending you deep into the dark corners of your consciousness (or subconscious) to do some spring cleaning.

So, expect that sometimes you will go through the motions. This is a good opportunity to practice nonjudgment and allow yourself to feel what needs to be felt.

Sometimes… You Miss the Way Things Were

Let’s face it, you’ve spent your entire life nice and cozy in that shell. Now that you’re outgrowing the shell, it’s only normal to have some nostalgia, or to miss the way things were, when everything was cruisy and life made sense.

Feelings of grief often accompany the loss of identity as you step forward into new paradigms, beliefs, hobbies, and a sense of belonging. A sadness can creep in that doesn’t seem tied to any particular event, but rather it’s the soul mourning what it’s outgrowing.

Small Talk Becomes Even More Mind-Numbing

Although small talk may have always been a drag, you might find that during a spiritual awakening, talking about subjects that provide no inherent value feels like talking to a brick wall. Not saying there’s anything wrong with some banter, but you’re hungry for depth in your conversations because it just feels so much more wholesome.

What’s interesting about this transition is that you begin to realize just how full of shit most conversations are, while you probably never really noticed it. While perhaps small talk once had more of a ring to it, it just doesn’t inspire you anymore.

Actually, it bores you to death.

Yes, we all know it’s necessary at times, but as you seek more substantial conversations, you begin to see that it’s pretty rare to find people who match that same frequency, often making it more refreshing when you do.

You Feel Existentially Bankrupt

You would think that a spiritual awakening brings about a deeper sense of meaning, because that’s the whole point of it, right?

While that’s true, especially once you’ve oriented yourself, a common spiritual awakening symptom is that for some time, life will feel completely meaningless.

At times, you may feel completely defeated and wish you could call it quits. Exhaustion will set in, and you will pray to the universe, wishing for these weird times to end. Sounds crap, I know, but it’s actually a good thing.

This loss of meaning is sorta like a recalibration mechanism.

Your sense of identity is detaching from the old paradigm, creating this icky middle ground where you feel no meaning at all. It’s like you’ve got one foot in the door, and another in the drain, and for some reason, your hands are tied behind your back while wearing ill-fitting clothes that are giving you a skin rash.

But in saying that, spending some time in this dark pit also forces you to calibrate towards higher paradigms.

You Care Less About Pleasure, and More About Substance

As you deepen your descent into the unknown, you tend to find yourself separating from material pleasures and becoming more drawn towards substance.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with watching Netflix and enjoying a beer now and then, after all, it’s the little things that make up life. But see these things for what they are.

short-lived pleasure.

And it starts to get old. You don’t see the value in drinking or fooling around anymore. Sex starts to feel bland without the spiritual connection. Doomscrolling on social media just feels depressing. Pastimes that used to consume your time become empty shells.

But you haven’t blown a fuse, it’s all good!

You’re just not so interested in pursuing things that lead to dead ends. Because of this, you might begin to value silence or time alone a lot more than you once did. You may notice just how good it feels to be in nature, or feel a pull to work on bigger projects and ambitions.

Substance is the new go, and it feels so much better than empty pleasures.

You Form a Healthy Detachment From Materialism

Previously, you lived your life by shoulds. You should work hard to secure a good career, you should follow the track laid out before you. Should is an ugly word, because it’s rooted in a lie.

While you should be a particular person with a particular life, you begin to see through the social conditioning that so many of us are ensnared in. This tends to lead you off the beaten track to carve out a unique, more wholesome life for yourself.

Your lifelong chase for wealth, clout, and status begins to deteriorate. It’s not that you suddenly hate nice things, it’s just that you see… they’re not necessary. Why waste away this opportunity with meaningless crap when there’s a human to be experienced?

I’m not saying that you can’t still pursue material things like wealth or status, but they’re only tools to help you create a better reality for yourself. They’re not controlling your life anymore.

Death Stops Feeling Like Such a Burden

Most of us are dictated by the fear of death, but now death starts to feel like a get out of jail free card.

While it’s completely normal to have some fear around the process of dying, or of suffering, death itself starts to take on a new meaning. It becomes something that is intriguing, rather than horrific, and you begin to see the beauty in it, that it’s just a transition.

But other people won’t entertain the conversation.

Western society will still hold a stigma, making it out to be something that must be avoided at all costs. This erosion of the fear of death brings you a sense of freedom you can’t quite describe, knowing that all of this is temporary. And this newfound sense of impermanence feels great!

Information Is Coming In!

Moments of insight hit you out of nowhere. It’s like your inner knowing gets activated all at once. You might be reflecting, meditating, walking through nature, or just going about your business, and sometimes things will just click!

While going through a spiritual awakening, it’s not unusual to get hit with moments of profound clarity. Maybe about a situation you’re going through, maybe regarding an existential question.

It feels like something beyond the rational mind is at work. These downloads often come with a sense of deep knowing, like remembering something you forgot you knew.

You Begin to Feel Perplexed by Life

Once upon a time, life was simple.

You thought you had a good grasp on how this thing works. However, now you’re seeing things from a different angle and almost can’t believe the absurdity of the world.

The many mysteries of life become more compelling. Conspiracy theories are more intriguing. You begin to connect the dots between cultures, religions, traditions, and so many things you never considered before. An endless universe, weird intelligent monkey things that have taken over the world.

Your curiosity expands, allowing you to view reality through the eyes of a baby, full of wonder, mystery, and general confusion.

Likewise, you begin to see just how much we don’t know about life, like it’s a giant jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to solve and failing dramatically. This whole life thing just becomes perplexing in every sense of the word, and it’s a frame you just can’t unsee.

You’re Starting to See the Bigger Picture

The way you both see and interact with the world is changing dramatically. Once upon a time, the world was linear, perhaps even a little mundane. Now, truth is taking on a new meaning, and you’re connecting the dots.

Every belief, religion, philosophy, indigenous tales and folklore, astrology, divination tools, spiritual modalities, conspiracies, and so much more have some reason why they exist.

Not saying they all do… Yes, there’s a lot of bullshit out there too. But you start seeing connections between things that once seemed so irrelevant, like your mind has been pryed open to a world of possibility, and it has become so much more three-dimensional, for lack of a better word.

Energies Have Become a Thing

While negative people and dense environments used to drain you, you’ve never quite felt it as viscerally as you do now.

You have become more attuned to the energy in people and places. Negative environments feel suffocating. Loud places, superficial people, and cluttered energy become hard to tolerate. On the flip side, time in nature or with aligned souls becomes deeply nourishing.

For this reason, you find yourself drawn to things that feed the soul, and keep an arm’s length from anything that gives you the ick, which turns out to be a lot of things.

You Feel a Pull Towards Deeper Alignment

You’re no longer willing to live out of integrity with your soul, and begin making small (or big) changes. This could be changing jobs, ending relationships, moving cities, etc. You make these changes not because it’s easy, but because staying misaligned is now unbearable.

As you develop spiritually, your intuition becomes your new guide. Logic stops being your main compass (although it’s still a necessary tool), and you begin trusting your gut feeling more than ever because you see that it leads you down the path of fulfillment and authenticity.

Likewise, your trust in yourself, in the universe, in god also takes a turn for the better. As you learn to surrender to the universe, you allow yourself to go with the flow of your heart, because it usually leads you in the right direction.

You Are More Deeply Embodying Higher Paradigms

I’m not saying that you were a cold, close-hearted person just because you weren’t awake. We all know that people can be lovely, and people can be cold-hearted, regardless if they’re awake of not. But it’s normal to begin understanding people a little better, and gravitating towards higher vibrations like love, gratitude, and compassion.

This often leads to increased empathy as people become more three-dimensional to you. Perhaps you’re just getting better at seeing through the masks that most people wear, but regardless, you see the faults, flaws, and human touches that make us individuals.

Likewise, people’s pain becomes more visible to you. You don’t need to be a therapist or psychologist to understand why people act out, how they respond to their pain, and why their self-expression is a mirror to their experience of consciousness.

You Start to See Through the Facade

The funny thing about a spiritual awakening is that it’s like the happy mask over humanity falls off. It’s like pulling off that big, beautiful carpet you’ve always admired, and watching all the roaches scatter.

The truth is that humanity is deeply dysfunctional. While that dysfunction was covered with a cloth, you now see much more clearly than you used to. It’s like putting on HD glasses. You see everything to a deeper extent, and it’s not all bad.

There’s also a lot of beauty you never noticed. A lot of incredibly heart-led people, a lot of awe. But you can’t help but see that, for the most part, society is also astoundingly inauthentic. What once seemed normal now feels like a grand performance, and you’re the only one watching it!

You see it in politics, media, business, social norms, and day-to-day social interactions. As if our entire society is manufactured, you see through the cracks in the stories society tells. Most people are wearing a mask, and society as a whole reflects this.

For Once, You Feel Free

Usually, without even being aware of it, the pressure of abiding by certain systems, structures, and emotions has built up over the years. When we’re caught in them, sure, there’s a certain ease that comes from ignorance, but we don’t realize just how much of a toll these things take.

This is why people follow authorities unquestioned, under the guise that they know best. It’s why people play out the same patterns again, and again, and again. Unconsciousness is a burden, and it keeps you trapped in suffering.

Now, you have a choice. There is some separation from you, and these systems. The beautiful thing about this is that you’re not trapped by these things anymore. You’re more of an observer, and even though truly breaking free is hard work, you see it much more clearly.