Spiritual Awakening Stages: Examples & What To Expect

Learn about the stages of spiritual awakening and how to navigate this difficult yet rewarding experience.

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Since beginning my own spiritual awakening, I have become obsessed with understanding the spiritual awakening stages that one goes through. This has led me to dive into piles of spiritual books, learn about developmental theories, and pay close attention to my own experiences. In this article, I’m going to try to put together everything I’ve learned so far. This first attempt will aim to merge theories to better understand spiritual awakening stages from numerous points of view.

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What Are Spiritual Awakening Stages? (A Definition)

I’m not a big fan of the term “spiritual awakening” because it doesn’t actually have anything to do with spirituality (as most people define it; Wilber 2007). Nevertheless, for the purposes of this article, spiritual awakening is defined as a particular shift in perspective that occurs during the natural development of awareness. In other words, we go through many stages of development throughout our lives. Eventually, we get to a subset of stages which are considered to be the “spiritual awakening stages”.

When Do Spiritual Awakening Stages Occur?

The thing about human development is that we are all moving along our own paths, on our own trajectories, on our own timelines. So determining when someone will reach the spiritual awakening stages is near-impossible. That being said, we can identify the stages, perspectives, and experiences that come immediately before spiritual awakening, and therefore, get an idea of where one is on their spiritual awakening path.

I’ll explore a couple of ways to see where you are in your journey in the sections below.

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Why Do We Go Through The Spiritual Awakening Stages?

Why the human experience occurs the way it does is a mystery. From a psychological perspective, personal growth is a completely natural and normal phenomenon. Famous psychologists like John Piaget and Anna Freud spent their entire careers trying to understand small pieces of childhood development. In the fairly recent past, we began to understand that human development continues beyond childhood. Psychologists now study phases of development including adolescence, emerging adulthood (basically, the college years), and aging into late adulthood.

Although this research suggests that people tend to reach certain cognitive milestones around certain ages, emotional development seems to be far more varied. You can see this in the measures of emotional intelligence. These measures, which are made for adults, show us that people vary wildly in how emotionally intelligent they are. But this is just another aspect of development. Some people are more developed, some less. And everyone can still grow more.

Spiritual Awakening Stages as Developmental Milestones
The spiritual awakening stages seem to be similar to emotional intelligence, in that we don’t know what age someone will be at when they reach a given point. We can reach this developmental milestone at any time in our lives. And we can move through these stages at whatever pace is right for us.

Spiritual Awakening Stages as The “Burning Away” of Illusion
This may sound a bit trite, but one reason that we go through spiritual awakening stages is that we must. If we are to see Truth (capital T), then we have to let go of everything that is not Truth.
John of The Cross calls this a “burning away” of illusions like the self. Hindu religions say the same thing—namely that the awakening process is needed to see through the illusion (called Maya; Wikipedia, n.d.).

A Theory of Spiritual Awakening Stages

Ken Wilber does a great job of trying to put together multiple insights about the spiritual awakening journey (Wilber, 2007). His theories highlight just how complex the journey is and why all of our paths are so different. Although this has been super helpful in my learning, I think a simpler model would be more helpful for the average reader to understand and apply in daily life. This article is my first attempt at developing this model (I’m sure there will be iterations in the future).

The Light of Consciousness in Spiritual Awakening
Overall, we can think of our consciousness like the sun. We are super bright and have the potential to light up everything—to see Reality in the light of our conscious awareness. In this metaphor, the earth below represents Reality.

Unfortunately, most of us begin our lives with a lot of cloud cover. Big billowing clouds block the light of our consciousness from lighting up the earth below. In other words, we can not see and are not aware of Reality. Some spiritual traditions call this cloud cover “the veil”.

As we develop, grow, and mature, some clouds may thin or dissolve, allowing us to become aware of other aspects of Reality. Usually, the dissolving of these clouds just leads us to be able see other clouds that were underneath. Sometimes, enough clouds clear for us to see glimpses of True reality. And occasionally, the sky clears completely (or almost completely), for example in the case of Ramana Maharshi, an enlightened sage. For him, a large swath of Reality could be seen and understood.

Spiritual Awakening Layers

There are many models suggesting that we move through different layers or levels of consciousness. In other words, certain types of clouds tend to be higher up—closer to our light—and others tend to be further down—closer to the Earth. If we begin our lives with full cloud cover, we might go through fairly predictable layers of clouds.

Basically, we burn off just a few clouds from the top layer allowing us to see some clouds at a lower layer. Maybe we continue burning off the layer closest to us, or we start to burn off the clouds we can see in the middle layers. Thus, our spiritual progress can be very different than another person’s progress.

Blocks To The Spiritual Awakening Stages

The clouds that block your light can be physical, mental, emotional, etc... They can really be anything. Therefore, dissolving them often requires some good detective work.

Here are just a few examples of clouds that might block the light and slow your spiritual awareness. These are arranged from the top layer to the bottom layer.

Layer 1: Physical blocks: Unhealthy diet, poor body image, unhealthy exercise routine. etc...
Layer 2: Emotional blocks: Anxiety, emotional reactivity, anger, etc...
Layer 3: Self blocks: Self-esteem, self-expression, achievement, etc…
Layer 4: Love blocks: Lack of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, etc…
Layer 5: Social blocks: Poor communication, listening, boundaries, etc…
Layer 6: Mental blocks: Poor critical thinking, learning, analyzing, intuition, etc…
Layer 7: Soul blocks: Lack of play, authenticity, spirituality, etc…

Keep in mind that these are clouds, so they are odd-shaped and overlap in various configurations—they are not really separate things. For example, a difficult social relationship can harm your self-esteem and vice versa. This is why an integrated approach to addressing all these blocks is usually needed. Even then, different clouds dissolve at different rates for different people. So, our experiences are as unique as patterns in the sky.

It’s also been shocking to see that some people can get glimpses of Reality while maintaining a significant number of clouds at lower levels. It seems that it only takes one strong beam of light to kick-start awakening. However, if you want to see more of Reality—or you want a less tumultuous awakening process—keep working on dissolving your other clouds.

Perspective Shifts During The Spiritual Awakening Stages

Our perspectives change depending on what the predominant type of cloud is that we are shining on. Each time we burn through enough of a layer, we’ll begin to see ourselves and reality in a different way. Some of these perspectives are listed below (and correspond to the layers above):

I am my body
I am my emotions
I am my actions
I am my outcomes
I am my mind
I am my patterns
I am awareness

In addition to these perspectives, there are usually smaller shifts in perspectives that happen between the layers. I’m talking about all of this as if the stages are solid—for clarity—but it’s really more of a continuum with constant ebb and flow. Storms can come in and clouds can reform. Clouds can clear up randomly or move about. It’s a wild ride.

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Stages of Spiritual Awakening

Technically, our entire lives could be considered to be one long spiritual journey. However, there is a period of the journey that is generally called “spiritual awakening” that involves specific experiences. These are:

Pre-Awakening
Before becoming aware that we are awakening, we are likely to experience the dissolving of some of our most dense clouds. For example, we might develop weird symptoms or sicknesses that can not be explained (physical clouds), we might suddenly feel anxious without an identifiable cause (emotional clouds), we might realize that our lack of self-love has kept us miserable (self clouds), we might finally forgive someone (love clouds), a toxic relationship may finally end (social clouds), we might stop resisting the guidance of intuition (mental clouds), or we might embrace our spirituality by starting a meditation practice (soul clouds).

None of these experiences in themselves necessarily guarantee that we will soon begin to awaken—we may still have many more clouds to clear. But, people who do awaken almost always experience some of these things first. We can just never know when the last clouds between us and seeing the reality beyond are in the process of dissolving.

Illumination
Suddenly, we may experience what is referred to as rapture, or intense joy, exhilaration, or ecstasy, often accompanied by goosebumps all over the body (Sayadaw, 1994). There is a gap in the clouds, and for the first time (at least the first time that we can recall) we see a true glimpse of reality. This may last for moments, months, or more—it varies. Although this is just one stage of the spiritual awakening journey, this is the stage that most people call their spiritual awakening.

The Dark Night of The Soul
According to John of The Cross, The Dark Night of The Soul is a phase of passive purification that involves the “burning away” of the self, personal willpower, and all attachments so that True Reality can be revealed. (This fits our cloud metaphor nicely!)

Within The Dark Night of The Soul stage, there are sub-stages as well. These stages are:

Dissolution: The fading away of the joy and ecstasy we experienced during the illumination stage (Ingram, 2018).
Fear: Realizing that everything ends and everything in the future will end.
Misery: All thoughts, emotions, and experiences (all clouds) seem empty and unsatisfying.
Disgust: We can not take delight in even the most desired of objects (or the most beautiful clouds) (Vipassana Dhurs Meditation Society, n.d.).
Desire for Truth: It becomes crystal clear to us that there is no comfort, no joy, no happiness in anything. So we stop wanting anything.
Re-observation: Whatever issues (clouds) we haven’t fully looked at will come into view for us to dissolve with the light of our awareness.

Equanimity
At this stage, we begin to surrender (Ingram, 2018). We can not make the clouds dissolve any faster than they want to. All we can do is shine our light on them—bringing them into full awareness—and wait for our light to vaporize them. We may not feel good, exactly, but we are okay. It is what it is.

Transcendence
Eventually, the clouds do clear and the light of consciousness finally shines on Reality. We see the Truth.

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Final Thoughts on Spiritual Awakening Stages

It’s difficult to integrate the many models of spiritual awakening to better understand what the stages are and where we are in our journey. In this first attempt to put together multiple models from Buddhism, psychology, and integrative spirituality, I have aimed to create a somewhat broad guide. Hopefully, this helped you get a better understanding of the spiritual awakening stages so that you can better navigate your own journey.

Spiritual Disclaimer

Although meaningful knowledge can be found through spiritual insight, we humans filter this knowledge through our own mental frameworks. Even the best, most advanced spiritual teachers have access only to reflections of Truth, which still maintain some distortions. My truth may not equal your truth which may not equal another person’s truth. So, always check in with your Self or intuition to verify whether the spiritual information you receive resonates with your Truth.

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References

Ingram, Daniel. (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book - Revised and Expanded Edition. Aeon Books.
Sayadaw, M. (1994). The progress of insight: a treatise on satipatthana meditation. Buddhist Publication Society.
Vipassana Dhurs Meditation Society. (n.d.) Retrieved 6/21/2024 from https://www.vipassanadhura.com/
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Maya. Retrieved 7/25/2024 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion)
Wilber, K. (2007). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Shambhala Publications.

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