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Spiritual awakenings rarely occur like the flick of a switch. Wouldn’t it be nice if you suddenly knew all the secrets of the universe, and all your problems instantly vanished? Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way…
Generally, a spiritual awakening is a long, arduous process of unraveling all the layers of untruth, dredging up your deepest dysfunction, and working through lifetimes’ worth of accumulated junk. Imagine it as if you’re shedding your skin… the layers of mind, conditioning, programming, habits, and persona that is all you have known.
The truth is, going through a spiritual awakening is difficult because it slowly strips you naked and pulls you far from your realm of comfort. You begin taking the road into the uncharted territory of consciousness, which can feel strange and unfamiliar, especially because we live in an unconscious society.
With that said, as long as you follow the process with grace and continue stepping deeper into your spiritual growth, the process of awakening will bear fruit in ways you probably can’t yet imagine.
What is a Spiritual Awakening?
A spiritual awakening is the process of shedding illusion, confronting truth, and expanding into a higher level of awareness. Think of it as the process of slowly excavating your soul from the murky human condition and living in alignment with consciousness rather than mind.
Many of us are in the process of spiritual awakening, but very few are truly awakened. Full awakening leads to complete self-realization, a state of being free from the constructs of duality, or self, and existing in the purest states of consciousness without any extra baggage.
While most of us can entertain this perspective, we fail to fully embody it because we’re simply not far along our journeys. But enlightenment isn’t the goal here. There’s a very long road ahead for all of us until we reach that point, however, the pudding is in the process.
We’re interested in the process of expanding our awareness to bring about positive changes in all aspects of life. The more we embrace our unique spiritual journeys, the deeper we step into the evolution of consciousness, where major transformations will slowly unravel over many years.
How Many Stages of a Spiritual Awakening Are There?
A spiritual awakening is a spiritual phenomenon, not an exact science. Different philosophies, traditions, and belief systems have different understandings of what a spiritual awakening is, how it happens, and what transformations take place during one.
We tend to define a spiritual awakening with distinct stages of the evolution of consciousness, from living in utter ignorance, to the goal of full illumination. With that said, there is no universal number of stages that occur during a spiritual awakening. The process is actually more akin to a continuum of change, where the stages overlap and there are no distinct borders.
With that said, most spiritual awakenings follow a particular rhythm, which is why we tend to characterize a spiritual awakening in stages, each with unique experiences and challenges that are often faced during different parts of the process. While no two awakenings are exactly alike, many spiritual seekers encounter similar experiences throughout this process.
It’s important to note that the stages are not as linear as we make them out to be. It’s natural to shift between different stages, depending on what your soul needs to progress. For example, it’s not unusual for people to have transcedental experiences during this process. People may feel like they’ve figured it all out, only to return to periods of healing and struggle.
Naturally, the process fluctuates, but the aim is to continuously step forward and eventually learn everything we need to learn so that we don’t need to shift back into previous stages of the spiritual awakening. In saying that, spiritual growth is cumulative.
This means we carry our progress to our next incarnations. To reach true transcendence, it takes many lifetimes of cumulative experience, wisdom, and trial and error. Even though you should strive to grow as much as you can in this life, don’t expect to reach full illumination in this life (but that’s not to say you can’t have incredible, transcedental experiences on the journey!)
These stages often mirror the journey through the chakra system, both figuratively and literally, as the chakras are important energetic centers in the subtle body. Although there are simularities to a kundalini awakening, a spiritual awakening is a different process. Therefore, in this article, we will use the chakra system as a general guideline for the stages of a spiritual awakening.
Stage 1: The Unraveling of the Self (Muladhara)
The first stage of a spiritual awakening is often characterized by a feeling where something is a little off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Life tends to lose its color, and a creeping sense of dissatisfaction sets in. The things that used to give you a sense of stability, such as your career, your relationships, or particular habits, start to feel empty.
This growing sense of disillusionment forces you to question life in ways you never have, as if a deeper part of you is whispering, “There’s more to this”. You might feel lost, unmotivated, or detached from who you used to be, and perhaps longing for the days when life made sense. Even if everything looks nice and dandy on the surface, something inside of you just isn’t clicking anymore.
The first stage of a spiritual awakening is often when the self-discovery journey begins. Thereโs a deeper yearning to explore your life and make sense of it, which is when people often make big changes in their lives. During this initial stage of your spiritual awakening, you will begin to question everything. Instead of just going with the flow because it’s normal, you begin to see just how deeply dysfunctional society is.
This is the beginning of your spiritual awakening when your foundation begins to crack and your Muladhara (root chakra) opens up. Located at the base of the spine, this chakra is the Earthy chakra that’s tied to constructs like survival, safety, and the material world, which is why people tend to feel so ungrounded during this stage. Itโs also where deep karmic patterns and emotional baggage are stored. When this energy wakes up, those patterns surface, often shaking up your reality to make space for something deeper.
You start questioning everything, including your beliefs, your identity, and your values. You begin to see through the faรงade of the life youโve built. And while that can feel unsettling, itโs also necessary. These cracks are the entry point to transformation. This process of inner alchemy sets you on a new path towards deeper authenticity.
Signs Youโre in Stage 1 of a Spiritual Awakening
- Feeling lost, disillusioned, or confused, even if everything looks fine on the surface
- Disinterest in material constructs such as your job, image, routines, hobbies, and habits
- A deeper questioning of life, consciousness, and why you’re here.
- A sense of detachment from your old self or social circle, causing you to feel destabilized
- A loss of fulfillment or joy from your normal routines
- A craving for deeper meaning, truth, or fulfillment
- A growing desire to discover your true self and move towards authenticity
How to Navigate This Stage
- Ground yourself: Practice mindfulness, spend time in nature, and focus on being present with the experience, even if it’s uncomfortable.
- Reflect deeply: Deep introspection provides insights and helps you understand what’s happening. Don’t shy away from self-introspection, but lean into it and encourage learning.
- Let go: During this process, it’s important to let go of habits, roles, and relationships that no longer feel aligned, and begin shifting towards things that make you feel more fulfilled.
- Explore new paths: Begin searching for what creates a spark or makes you feel fulfilled. Embark on your soul-searching journey, and try to figure out what resonates with you more deeply.
- Trust the unraveling: Although disorienting, this is a sign of positive life change, so trust the process and avoid the temptation to squeeze yourself back into familiar, but unfulfilling habits.
Stage 2: Shedding the Layers of Untruth (Svadhishthana)
The second stage of a spiritual awakening is marked by inner chaos, emotional purging, and spiritual isolation. After the cracks form in your old identity, you may find yourself pulled into a deep emotional undercurrent as a lot of buried traumas, fears, and dysfunctions bubble up to the surface, often leading to a Dark Night of the Soul.
It seems that this newfound path of inner discovery becomes more alienating the further you walk down it. This leads to a period of intense internal struggle as you shed your skin and let go of the things that are no longer serving you. This period can feel like you’re existentially bankrupt, and can’t see the light in your life anymore. You may feel overwhelmed by it all, or depressed, and can’t find the exit, only the path deeper into it.
Although this is generally the most difficult part of a spiritual awakening… it’s also a crucial period of transformation where you’re shedding all the layers of crap that no longer serves you. As your Svadhishthana is activated, like a volcano, all the junk from the inside spews into conscious awareness, creating a thick, dark blanket over you for some time.
Imagine that this stage of a spiritual awakening is dredging everything up that has been rotting away under the radar. You can’t heal the deeper dysfunctions and unresolved barriers preventing you from embodying your truest, most authentic self if they’re not illuminated. Therefore, this stage forces everything up to the surface where it must be dealt with.
This stage aligns with Svadhishthana, the sacral chakra. This energy center governs our emotions, relationships, creativity, and subconscious patterns. When Svadhishthana begins to awaken, it stirs the emotional body, which triggers unresolved wounds, traumas, fears, and insecurities that have been buried beneath the surface.
During this stage, you might feel like youโre grieving something invisible, like an old version of yourself is dying. This loss of identity can be deeply painful, and often comes with feelings of existential fear. The world may feel cold or even meaningless for a time, and yet, this emotional collapse is a necessary part of the purification process where false attachments begin to dissolve.
Generally speaking, the more junk you have stored physically, mentally, and emotionally, the longer this process of shedding will be. This stage is the descent into the underworld, like death before the rebirth. It strips away the illusions, attachments, and coping mechanisms that are unconscious. Though it may be one of the darkest phases, itโs also one of the most important.
Signs Youโre in Stage 2 of a Spiritual Awakening
- Emotional overwhelm and the surfacing of many painful emotions and traumas
- Feeling spiritually disconnected, abandoned, or like you’re in the void
- Feelings of emptiness, depression, or existential despair
- Loss of identity or deep questioning of your place in the world
How to Navigate This Stage
- Surrender to the process: Allow your faith to rise and trust that it’s all happening for a reason.
- Engage in deep inner work: During this period, you will do some deep inner work and revisit many traumas and childhood wounds. Use this time to work through them, don’t avoid the pain.
- Allow yourself to cry: Crying is a purge and form of purification, as are other emotional outlets. Therefore, honor your emotions during this period and calibrate with the way you feel. Don’t suppress or bypass the pain you are feeling, because that’s how you learn, by feeling it.
- Practice self-compassion: Nurture your inner child, you need to hold your own hand here
- Know this is temporary: You are not broken, youโre emptied of years of crap that has been stored up.
- Engage in spiritual practice regularly: Find outlets, whether it’s yoga, meditation, breathwork, or other modalities, and explore various practices. Spiritual practice is your grounding anchor during this time.
- Encourage the process of shedding: Seek teachers, healers, learning, and growth to speed up the process of healing. The more trauma you have, the more healing is required.
Stage 3: Stepping into True Embodiment (Manipura)
After the identity collapse of Stage 2, a quiet but undeniable shift begins to occur within you, and the fog starts to lift. This is the first period where you feel like you’re coming out of the darkness and can see more clearly than ever.
This stage is characterized by the awakening of Manipura (the solar plexus chakra). This energy center is the seat of your sense of personal power, self-worth, and will. Now that youโve stripped away many of the layers of illusion, that fire can rise inside and propel you deeper into self-embodiment, where you feel like you have more power and control over your life.
This is the first stage in which you begin to see the light of the spiritual awakening. It can take many years, even lifetimes to work through the layers of illusion and karma during the awakening of Svadhishthana. With that said, these stages of the spiritual awakening do overlap. The process of healing continues, as does growth and learning, but generally, people feel like they’ve done the hard yards by this point and can enjoy the journey a little more.
At this stage, you begin to understand your true calling in the world, leading to a deeper sense of purpose, direction, and self-empowerment. When following your calling, you begin to separate your true will from what society, family, or past conditioning told you was right. You may feel inspired to set new boundaries, take more risks, and do things your way with your newfound inner stability.
During this stage, you’re stepping into alignment with your deeper purpose, even if itโs still blurry. That alone ignites a new level of courage that was previously dormant, as you are opening your consciousness to many new concepts, ideas, and layers of information previously unseen. The Manipura stage sets the foundation for authentic self-expression and spiritual service in the stages to come.
Signs You’re in Stage 3 of a Spiritual Awakening
- You begin to feel more aligned and drawn to a particular path in life, even if you don’t know why
- You have a newfound sense of purpose and direction, which creates a stronger drive
- You feel more self-empowered and aligned with a deeper truth
- You feel energized to change your life circumstances and take on new challenges
- You feel increased clarity around your values
- There’s a fire in your belly, and the development of a stronger gut instinct
How to Navigate This Stage
- Take inspired action: Keep the momentum going and work hard towards your new goals.
- Follow your calling: Pay close attention to your intuition and follow the path that lights you up while stepping away from systems and programs that feel draining.
- Ramp up your spiritual practice: This is the time to step deeper into spiritual practice and pursue the path that resonates deeply with you.
- Rebuild your confidence: Practice discipline, getting out of your comfort zone, and trusting the process
- Avoid spiritual ego: This stage can inflate your identity, so stay humble and open to new lessons and teachings without getting a big head.
Stage 4: Stepping Into True Alignment With Soul (Anahata)
Once youโve reclaimed your power and begun aligning your life with authenticity, something softens. You stop needing to prove yourself and start feeling a quiet pull toward love. This isn’t infatuation like you might feel when you’re entering a new relationship, nor the sort you need to be recognized for, but a deeper, silent connection with everything around you.
True love.
This stage of the awakening process coincides with activating the Anahata (the heart chakra). Anahata governs our capacity for love, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and connection. You have a more substantial desire to utilize your gifts and experiences to serve others, as you understand that being in service is synonymous with being aligned with the true nature of your soul… divine love.
This isn’t the spiritual bypassing sort of service either, where you slap a persona over your dysfunction and pretend to be all love and light. No, this is the authentic desire to serve god, because now you understand that living in service to a higher power is the ultimate joy.
During this stage, your awakening becomes less about you and more about connection. You begin to understand a lot of spiritual concepts, and things start to click a lot more. This is the point where your evolution starts expanding into collective evolution. A heightened sense of interconnectedness usually accompanies this deeper understanding of self as you continue to learn how to be your most authentic self.
During this stage, you begin to feel moments of real presence. Synchronicities show up. Your emotional walls start to crumble. And underneath them? Compassion, vulnerability, and a sense of unity thatโs hard to explain. You may also begin to feel a call to serve in some way, which might lead you to become a healer, teacher, guide, or simply someone who uplifts others through your presence.
Signs Youโre in Stage 4 of a Spiritual Awakening
- You feel much more unconditional love for people, animals, or even strangers
- You feel a deeper sense of interconnectedness and compassion with everything
- You’re more calibrated with soulful expression and desire to experience more ‘higher’ emotions
- You have an undeniable draw towards being at service, helping, education, or healing
- You crave more authentic relationships
- You tend to value silence, stillness, introspection, reflection, and things like that
- Your spiritual practice becomes more devotional or heart-centered
How to Navigate This Stage
- Start living with intention: Everything you do should have intention behind it. Make sure all of your actions, decisions, and behaviors are conscious
- Step more into your heart space: Consciously shift towards embodying feelings like love, compassion, gratitude, and joy.
- Step deeper into authenticity and vulnerability: Allow yourself to come out of your shell and shine for who you are. Don’t worry, people will recognize this light when they see it
- Dedicate yourself to be at service: Whether you’re doing it for your family, society, or the world as a whole, having a deeper drive to be of service to a higher power will help you actualize this stage
Stage 5: Stepping Into the Expression of Soul (Vishuddha)
This stage marks a shift where you begin expressing your truth to the deepest levels and embodying your creative power. During the awakening of the Vishuddha (the throat chakra), you find calibration between the internal dimensions and external dimensions, where there is no discrepancy in your expression and ability to create. All things from the internal begin manifesting outwards via ideas, truths, abilities, art, systems, and so forth.
During this stage of a spiritual awakening, you have already healed everything that’s training your consciousness and preventing you from full embodiment. Here, you no longer shrink yourself to fit in or try to be someone else to appease others. Things that aren’t aligned with you are like a foul odor that you, and bring an unwavering feeling of dissatisfaction. Your soul is yearning to express itself purely, and this tends to manifest through art, writing, teaching, dancing, public speaking, or simply living in a way that reflects your true essence.
This stage of a spiritual awakening can feel incredibly liberating. Speaking your truth might mean losing people who were never really aligned with you to begin with. You might be met with resistance from those who prefer the old version of you, but thatโs all part of the process of stripping away all that is not in alignment with your glowing, creative radiance.
When Vishuddha awakens, you begin to feel a sense of integrity between who you are inside and how you show up in the world. There’s a whole lot less performance and rather rawness. This is when people radiate a certain charisma, warmth, or joy that can be felt by others because you’re being authentic and others recognize it. During this stage, you develop a much more powerful ability to manifest, which is why vision and discipline are essential to ground your creativity.
Signs Youโre in Stage 5 of a Spiritual Awakening
- You feel a strong urge to write, speak, teach, or create in some form
- You don’t tolerate dishonesty from yourself or others, and live in deeper resonance
- You set clear boundaries and communicate them with clarity
- Youโre drawn to creative outlets to express your soul’s nature and bring beauty into the world
- You begin attracting relationships and opportunities that feel aligned with your soul
- Your ability to manifest becomes much stronger
How to Navigate This Stage
- Embrace being a creator: Self-expression manifests through artwork, dance, singing, writing, conversations, and creation in general. Embrace your creative essence, and don’t hold back.
- Ground your creativity: Make sure that you ground your creativity to bring systems, structures, and beauty into the world that can serve others too.
- Practice conscious communication: Let your words reflect your truth and your compassion. Only speak in alignment with your truth, even if others misunderstand you.
- Donโt fear being misunderstood: Your truth wonโt resonate with everyone, and thatโs okay. Your job is to stay authentic, not to convince others that you’re someone you’re not.
- Step away from things that don’t serve you: Gravitate towards people, places, systems, and vibrations that are aligned with you, while stepping away from those that aren’t.
Stage 6: Opening Up to the Psychic Dimensions (Ajna)
The 6th stage of a spiritual awakening opens up the psychic channels, where you begin to notice tangible changes in your consciousness. During this stage, you open up to new layers of information and become much more receptive to other dimensions of experience.
This is the stage of a spiritual awakening that aligns with the activation of Ajna (the third-eye chakra), the center of intuition, inner sight, and higher perception. As ajna awakens, it’s like putting on glasses for the first time and seeing how much more detail was always there that you just werenโt tuned to. This stage opens the door to higher awareness that feels less like thinking and more like seeing.
You tend to become deeply in touch with your intuition. Inner guidance gets louder, and you start feeling drawn to things without knowing why, which could manifest as books, people, teachers, places, or practices. Likewise, you see things not from a perspective of rational or logic, but a deeper knowing that can’t quite be explained.
The awakening of Ajna is a stage when people often develop extrasensory abilities such as astral projection, clairvoyance, clairsentience, telepathy, and so on. Visions become much more frequent, and you may find yourself perceiving spirits, beings, energies, and other spiritual elements that exist beyond the material.
You become fully in tune with a deeper intelligence at play in your life, where spirituality is no longer something that you have faith in, but it becomes an inseparable mesh of reality, one that you experience at every moment.
Signs Youโre in Stage 6 of a Spiritual Awakening
- Your intuition becomes remarkably sharp, which feels like knowing
- You begin channeling information and connecting to higher sources of information
- You experience synchronicities, dรฉjร vu, and moments of heightened perception regularly
- You begin developing spiritual abilities, gifts, or siddhis
- You find that the veil between the material and spiritual has thinned dramatically, leading to a more unified experience of consciousness rather than being separate planes
- Spiritual practice becomes extremely powerful and tangible
- You may feel like you’re waking up within the dream of life, observing patterns from a higher vantage point, and don’t feel fully embodied in the material world
How to Navigate This Stage
- Trust your inner vision: Stay centered in your inner knowing, even if others donโt understand it logically or rationally. You will feel a pull towards certain things and away from others. Trust that internal guidance.
- Stay grounded in your body: Psychic sensitivity can make you feel detached from reality. Regular grounding practices are essential to find a balance between the etheric world and the material.
- Discernment is key: Learn to distinguish between the mindโs projections and genuine spiritual insight.
- Avoid spiritual bypassing: Donโt use intuition or higher knowledge to escape your emotional work or human experience. Wisdom comes through wholeness.
- Find a good teacher: As you begin to open up fully to higher realms, it’s wise to seek out teachers who are familiar with this process and can help you understand, navigate, and utilize the experience of expanded awareness.
Stage 7: Stepping into True Self-Realization (Sahasrara)
At the culmination of the spiritual awakening journey, you enter a space that feels less like a destination and more like a homecoming to your true, infinite nature. This is the stage of a spiritual awakening, which aligns with the activation of Sahasrara (the crown chakra).
Your sense of separation dissolves, and your consciousness merges with something far beyond the self, allowing you to truly understand the bigger picture. At this stage, youโve fully embodied the lessons and teachings of the spiritual awakening process.
The seventh stage of a spiritual awakening is about being fully embodied in your spirit. While the aim is not to detach from the material, you’re no longer bound by it. The crown chakra opens you to the infinite, but also roots you in the material world, where you can see all things through a higher lens. While the mind is a tool, you operate purely from spirit. You donโt believe in oneness, you live it. You don’t believe in infinite love, you are it.
At this stage, you’re fully realized. This doesn’t mean you’re any less human… but you see the bigger picture. Everything just makes sense, and this innate wisdom is often accompanied by the highest expressions of joy. People see you as a magnet and tend to seek counsel from you, while also basking in your presence. Likewise, you seem to manifest things into your life seamlessly.
The ego isnโt destroyed here. Itโs just seen clearly and no longer mistaken for who you are. The need for control fades and is replaced by the highest levels of trust. During this stage, youโll feel a deep sense of fulfillment in your life. Your cup is full, so you naturally want to spread your joy to other people and help them throughout their processes.
This is the stage where spirituality isnโt something you practice. Itโs who you are. You live in presence, connected to the source and grounded in wisdom. You see life as sacred, and yourself as a vessel for that light. At this point, there is no distinction, it is all just consciousness, a concept most of us struggle to wrap our heads around.
What Happens After a Spiritual Awakening?
You may want to note that just because you’ve gone through the 7 stages of a spiritual awakening doesn’t mean that you’ve reached an endpoint and the spiritual journey ends, or stops progressing. Likewise, it’s important to note that we never reach a point of mastery because there is always more to learn and higher to evolve.
Simply put, we wouldn’t still be here as a human incarnate if we were fully enlightened. Even ascended masters who came to Earth to help humanity, even Jesus, Buddha, and many other saints, gurus, sages, seers, and shamans, still had more to learn.
The spiritual growth journey never stops. There may be more healing, and deeper levels of consciousness, practice, and proficiency to reach. There are always new skillsets and abilities to hone. There is always more you could create, or contribute to the world.
