Hi guys! Thank you for joining me on my site today which I am creating to discuss topics on spirituality, emotional well-being, energy work, and healthy lifestyle, so if you have interest in these topics, please subscribe to the email list or follow my social media platforms to be notified for more to come. This post is a transcript of My Personal Journey of Spiritual Awakening video on my YouTube channel, so if you prefer video format you can check out the video link included below or if you have a reading preference you will find the same information discussed in the video here in this post.
Resources Mentioned in the Video
National Crisis & Suicide Hotline (988lifeline.org): 988
Ho'Oponopono Forgiveness Meditation: click here
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Questionnaire: click here
Table of Contents
Discovering the True Meaning of Life
In today’s post, I will be sharing some about my personal and professional background that led to starting this sharing journey relating to the unfolding of a spiritual awakening that occurred in 2015 and the different stages of awakening that has been occurring since.
I will also share about professional experiences that were impacted by the spiritual awakening and the work done with others. I have worked in human services for 13 years and as a psychotherapist specializing in trauma for 8 ½ of those years. It has been such a privilege getting to accompany others on their healing paths and through that work a wealth of information has been expanded on to help do our shadow work, cultivate self-love, self-knowledge, healthy relationships, and forgiveness to name a few. My hopes in sharing this collection of information are that others may find it as helpful to support healing and growth on their inner journey.
I will note that my interests began expanding beyond a mental health framework into spirituality, meditation, and energy work which led to leaving the field of clinical social work to explore an alternative holistic path of healing. All the information discussed in these videos is not clinical advice and is circumstantial and experiential. It is not to replace or substitute healthcare services and it is always recommended you establish care with a licensed healthcare provider to address health related needs. If you would like to review the full disclaimer regarding the information provided on this site and all social media platforms, please follow this link here.
In this first post I will share the experiences around a spiritual awakening and then in my second video, it will be a part II that shares more on the kundalini awakening that occurred a couple of years after and how this path has continued to unfold to the present day. Often awakening occurs in stages so I will break that down for how it looked from my perspective.
When this occurred, I found it helpful to learn about others experiences to make sense of the changes that were happening since I had no reference for this beforehand and did not have others around me who experienced something similar.
Spiritual awakenings will unfold differently for everyone, have different causes, be at different ages, and so on, so this is just a one perspective to how this journey started and will not be a blueprint for other’s experiences. My hope of sharing this information is that it will bring insight or comfort to other’s who may have some shared experiences or for someone who is supporting someone experiencing an awakening.
Early Childhood Experiences & Upbringing
I grew up in a small rural town and was raised by one side of my family who were devote Catholics, my parents separated when I was very young so I would visit my other family throughout the year, and they are Lakota and had a hybrid of Christian beliefs and traditional Lakota beliefs and practices due to my grandparent's upbringing in boarding schools.
I attended a catholic elementary school, and a requirement was to attend church before class, so I went to church five to six times a week depending on if my grandma had me go with her on the weekend as well. Prayer was an important devotional act my family instilled at a very early age and having this church time created a built-in hour of meditation and prayer first thing in the morning from a young age and to this day as soon as I wake up my mind automatically goes into a prayer practice which is something I really enjoy about getting to have those childhood experiences.
When I was young, I couldn’t fully appreciate the religious and spiritual practices and teachings my family partook in but after the awakening occurred, I was able to take away what resonated most from these two backgrounds and create a meaningful sense of spirituality.
Later in life, I had to heal the relationship and association I had with Jesus. There were positive things I took from the catholic upbringing but there were also challenges I had around teachings and belief systems that felt discriminating. Even as a young child there was dissonance around this which created internal conflict between my perception of God being an all loving being compared to other interpretations of God being associated with condemnation, shame, and fear. Unfortunately, Jesus was the face of what I associated with the church and these teachings. But I now understand that Jesus was an avatar that was able to fully embody God realization and is a symbol of what we are here to learn in this life which is love and he was able to show us our highest potential whether we call that enlightenment or salvation.
Also, as a child I was highly empathic which had its benefits of being able to attune, connect, and make friends easily but the downside was I would feel more emotions of others than was helpful which led to undue suffering. I had a strong desire as a little girl to want to help others and for others to feel happy and loved. I would share my passion for this throughout my upbringing and my sweet grandma would try to help me by telling me often that I was not superman and could not save the world and I needed to work on not feeling such big emotions.
I know she meant well and was trying to help lighten a sense of responsibility I felt I had around this and if only it were that easy to take her advice on not being as sensitive. However, in my mid-twenties, I certainly had to learn how to work with those empathic abilities as I was entering into the career of psychotherapy, and I plan to make another post and video on ways to do that that may help others who need to find greater balance there as well.
The Inner Calling to be of Service
After high school the calling became clear I was meant to go into human services and become a psychotherapist, so I began those educational pursuits and in 2014, I graduated with a master’s degree, we relocated back to our home state, and I got the opportunity to start a mental health program at an Urban Indian medical facility. There was a lot of new changes happening and I felt inspired to carry that into my personal life and improve my health and lifestyle.
I had a strong urge to purge physical belongings and reduced what I owned by about 90%, soon after this, I learned about the minimalist community and the correlation discussed around clearing the physical space which also clears the excess energy within the mind and helps improve mental and emotional wellness which felt affirming for the path of self-development I was going towards.
At this time, I transitioned from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet. We started doing yoga exercises and I started to have more interest in mindfulness meditation. We educated ourselves on how to reduce toxic chemicals in our food, water, and products and I felt the desire to stop or significantly reduce all recreational substance use. In hindsight I see this purifying and balancing lifestyle change was a subconscious drive to help prepare for what was to come the following year.
The Dark Night of the Soul
In the fall of 2015 is when the dark night of the soul began, and this time still marks the most difficult point in my life. There were two sudden deaths close together on one side of my family and this created a lot of change overnight and left us having to navigate and take on the responsibilities they had. There is a lot of historical and intergenerational trauma on this side of my family and on top of having to navigate so much at once, it created a lot of volatile and unpredictable experiences within family relationships.
At this time, I did not have a connection made between how my mental and emotional states could impact my physical health and I began experiencing a range of symptoms that I went to see my medical provider for. They did their evaluation and shared that I was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. They also provided me an ACE questionnaire which is an adverse childhood experiences questionnaire that assesses complex trauma from early childhood which I had seen in school but never had completed one myself. The results showed that I had a higher rating on the scale for complex trauma from childhood as well.
I knew there were challenging childhood dynamics within certain family relationships involving family violence, emotional abuse, and neglect, but I dissociated from this, and it was becoming clear how fragmented and disconnected I had become from my own trauma history. Interestingly enough, I specialized in trauma, yet I did not have awareness before this that I was experiencing post-traumatic stress or even had awareness that there was unresolved childhood trauma. I think this was a defense mechanism of suppression to help protect the psyche until I had the resources to begin addressing this and the need for healing around it.
Another layer of complexity to all of this, is that the population I was working with had similar traumas and family dynamics so not only was I beginning to reexperience these challenges and dealing with intrusive thoughts and flashbacks of what happened recently but was also having flashbacks of the childhood traumas now than having to hold space for clients who were sharing similar histories and family dynamics. It was a lot of repeated exposure, and it made it a very difficult time to navigate.
I have spoken with other therapists about this who have also shared that they notice these themes occur within their practices as well and what they have going on in their life they have clients who begin sharing similar difficulties which is validating to how our inner worlds attract and create our outer experiences.
During this time, it became clear to me how poor of boundaries, self-esteem, and assertiveness skills I had, and my safety was in jeopardy at this point so if I didn’t make a change soon it could have had some major consequences. There was what felt like endless amounts of guilt, shame, and fear arising and a constant pit of dread and flipping in the stomach that lasted several months. I got into therapy to do EMDR and inner child work, learn about codependency, and healthy boundaries which helped a lot, but the emotional pain was so intense that it led to days on end of crying, anxiety, depression, chronic stress, chronic fatigue, and eventually losing the will to live.
The Awakening
One day as I was coming home from work, I was crying really hard and praying to God to have mercy on me and allow me to leave this world because I couldn’t take the amount of pain I was experiencing and never felt anything like that before.
This wasn’t my character at all, I always had a love and appreciation for life, but this had gotten the best of me, and it felt like nothing was working to stop the intense pain that felt endless. If anyone ever gets to this point, please share your feelings with loved ones and seek professional help to support you and know this will pass and there are others out there that can help you through these periods. For quick reference I have linked a national crisis & suicide hotline that can be used during times like this for support and to ensure the proper help is received.
So Going back to this experience of feeling overwhelmed with life and praying for an end to this suffering, I got home soon after that and I was still in my car moving through this overwhelming rupture of emotion than things started to calm and I was sitting there for a while stunned by the amount of emotional charge running through me than suddenly something shifted within consciousness, and it was like time was standing still, there was no reference of time, no thoughts, no emotions, just stillness, peace, presence, and profound sense of love.
I went to our backyard to lay in the hammock, and I was in this blissed out trance watching this beautiful hawk swooping around in the air with these large clouds in the backdrop and it felt like the mind was being opened to these universal truths.
This understanding occurred within awareness that there was a veil between us and the spirit world that made us forget these absolute truths and the thought of how much we were grieving for these family losses became an absurd thought because it was now known we were just as close to those in spirit as we were when they were here physically.
The information was revealing that death is an illusion and there is no separation between us and others and we are still dwelling within the same spaces of those we love who have passed away. There was a profound feeling of how vast consciousness is, how deeply loved we are and how interconnected we are with all of life.
Before this state of peace, love, and understanding could be opened to, it was like I had to be walked to the threshold of total surrender of no longer wanting to uphold this old identity and way of being and in that space of asking for mercy it was like the purest form of surrender up to that point that allowed for this awakening to occur.
For the next couple of weeks, the suffering and symptoms of PTSD had lifted. I began having epiphanies that I am not my thoughts or emotions and it seemed laughable to be so identified with something so false and illusive. This revelation released great amounts of pain being experienced by the mind as it was lost in the past and in all the victimhood stories of what occurred there.
I began recognizing the world we live in is an illusion and the pain and thoughts are an illusion. I could see that we go through life repeating old conditioning and everything is a social construct created by the ego, society, family, and our cultures. I started to question why I did the things I do, why I think the way I do, why I feel the way I do. It was like waking up to the material matrix of matter we live in for the first time and this was relieving.
Self-Development & Transformation
It felt like my sense of identity was being stripped away and I was becoming a blank slate. I began learning about the bondage of consumerism and the beauty industry along with our ideals of beauty and seeking worth through this which led me to wearing plain clothing, no longer wearing makeup, reducing consumerism, and losing interest in appearances, social status, political views, and so on. I deleted my social media account for a few years too and no longer felt compelled to portray my life in a certain way to others.
On top of all of that I recognized the need to set some major boundaries and remove toxic relationship dynamics from my life. This was a very hard thing to work through because of the fear, guilt, and shame around having boundaries because of qualities of codependency and deep-rooted traumas that occurred over years and years. It took a couple of years to finally heal that level of pain and live confidently within a state of empowerment and self-determination to only accept in my life what I and everyone else deserves which is loving connections, respect, and healthy relationships.
After this awakening, I was hungry for the truth and felt the way I understood myself was no longer satisfying. I wanted to learn as much as I could about this human experience and the nature of the psyche and continued studies of this through a psychology lens and it wasn’t until the kundalini awakening a couple of years later before I began pursuing spiritual teachings.
I was receiving downloads of information on how to work through the emotions and pain through mindfulness, acceptance, feeling and expressing the emotion, cultivating forgiveness, and through surrender.
At this time, I was really excited and wanting to tell others the truth of who we are, being love, and the illusions we find ourselves in that lead to suffering so they could taste this freedom and experience this for themselves. I was using words like transcendence, enlightenment, infinite love, spiritual awakening, and expansion of consciousness which was never a part of my vocabulary before. I recognize now I sounded overbearing because I didn’t realize than that others have to have this experience within their own rights and talking about it does not create the experience for another. I read a quote you cannot talk someone into heaven, but I sure tried to no avail and later the wisdom of that lesson integrated.
This awakening was helpful to reframe the way I saw the pain and suffering of the human condition. It can be hard working in human services and seeing what feels like endless suffering and hearing such painful traumas, this can lead to feelings of inadequacy and incompetency to know how to help alleviate this pain with others. Working in this field can lead to vicarious trauma, self-doubt, and burnout which were all things being felt at the time. But now I began to see how the traumas and pain can be the fuel and catalysts that helps us potentiate to crossing this threshold from being over identified with mind, body, and emotion to knowing the self as love, divinity, and spirit.
We aren’t just suffering in vain or being punished by an unpredictable fate or an unloving god. this pain causes so much commotion and inner friction that it leads us back to our center and inspires us to heal, know ourselves, love ourselves and others, and seek the truth. There is never a time we are more motivated to seek the truth than when enduring suffering and if we use this fuel to do the work, we reap the reward.
I am not saying all traumas lead to awakenings and it was from the grace of God that I was able to experience this, but the potential is there to help us become more aware through the pain.
Healing the Past & Forgiveness
During this time, I also began experiencing visions of loved ones in spirit and we were working through unresolved hurts between us that occurred when they were in the physical world. They were providing guidance and information about why some of the things happened the way they did, and our bond grew even stronger, and I felt closer to them than I had ever before.
I also began seeing smaller traumas and hurts that occurred that were unresolved and required attention. These memories would come into awareness around being hurt by others and where I needed to forgive and then the opposite occurred where I began seeing times where I was the one to hurt others and needed to ask for forgiveness and apologize.
I allowed these past memories to play out and watched them and processed through the physical charge of emotional energy then I would offer the others forgiveness for what happened. For those that I was responsible for hurting, I did the same thing and then used Ho’oponopono which is an ancient Hawaiian mantra of "I am sorry, please forgive, thank you, I love you."
This was all occurring through visualization, and I would call on parts of their consciousness to join this healing space with me and give this offering. I would also see them doing something they loved and being at peace in life and would envision a pure ray of loving energy from my heart to theirs offering them unconditional love.
Some relationships it is not relevant to do this because we need to move on, find closure, or there are safety concerns but in the relationships where it felt safe to reach out to others even those I hadn’t spoken to in years and may have hurt in childhood, I began reaching out to them and offering them an apology, I didn’t expect to receive forgiveness because that is each person's own right and within their own timing of when that is appropriate for them and their healing but it was something my heart was lead to do.
To those I reconnected with, I received grace and forgiveness, we were able to talk about our parts in the experiences and create healing within that relationship and reconnect for a bit of time. It was worth swallowing any pride that may have tried to show up to stop this process and it was humbling.
To those it wasn’t appropriate to reconnect with, the work was done internally no different. I plan to make a video going into greater detail on cultivating forgiveness so if that interests you, please subscribe to be notified when that comes out.
Spiritual Depression & Trauma
I want to note too that all of this inner healing work expanded over a couple of years, and it wasn’t all easy and mystical feeling. The downfalls of the spiritual high came a while after and the post-traumatic stress symptoms began to occur again, the need to deal with the various traumas that continued to be revealed, and the need for ongoing healing of child and adulthood experiences.
The dark night of the soul itself too felt traumatizing because of how low I felt but having the awakening experience gave a new sense of faith and perseverance.
After the awakening there was spiritual depression to work through because the thing about this high vibe state is it did not last. I would return back to normal experiencing with only the memory of how good it felt, and this led to confusion, grieving for this state of divinity, feeling lost, and as if I had fallen from the gates of heaven.
There would be moments of self-blame around oscillating between these high and low states feeling like I had done something wrong to fall from this grace, or hadn’t meditated enough, healed enough, and so on. I would become overly identified with the thoughts and emotions again although I remembered the illusive nature of them, it didn’t stop the suffering and sense of separation they created.
There were very low moments of feeling totally disconnected, confused, and wondering if I was crazy and if any of this even happened. Then I would have moments of joy, clarity, understanding, and peace and could recognize again the illusion of thought, emotion, and a sense of separateness.
It took quite a long time to learn that this is a typical process of moving back and forth between these states and it doesn’t indicate we have done something wrong. It reminds us that we need to keep learning, healing, and evolving from our pasts, fears of the future, and understanding our life lessons. These higher states of consciousness show us what our future holds and what is possible but in order to seek the gates of heaven and dwell within divinity we must be willing to continue these pursuits and efforts through healing, self-knowledge, willpower, meditation, intention, and concentration.
The pain and suffering were still a part of the life experience but over time there was increased ability to be a witness to it rather than being totally identified with it. There was also a willingness to go towards the pain purposefully to address it.
All of these years later the healing work continues to arise, and we heal on a continuum, so it seems like similar patterns repeat in our lives around certain challenges but each time we address them we are healing a different aspect of the problem and working to heal to the deepest degree possible.
Post-Awakening
The first three years after the awakening were off and on very difficult times and it was interesting to see all of the suffering continue to arise within its own timing while also having a deep sense of love and gratitude for life. It’s like you continue to feel the pain of the small self but know the truths of the higher self which continues to be the case although the pain does heal over time and those lower states of consciousness do not last as long as they did before, and you know deep within these moments of ignorance and suffering that they will pass.
After awakening, life continues to unfold with new challenges, joys, losses, sorrows, and traumas which give us the opportunity to continue evolving and growing. We must use our will, intent, and desire to continue pursuing and cultivating this path to reach our highest potential.
I will also note that not all of the lifestyle changes and interests remained the same after the initial awakening, there have been changes in lifestyle, diet, interests, and forms of self-expression that lead to living more authentically to the inner calling within. I’ll expand more on that in the next video so for now we will end here and if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to the email list and join me for part II as I go into the next part of this spiritual journey that led to a kundalini awakening and leads us up to the present day.
Thank you for joining me today on my post about this personal journey of spiritual awakening and I wish you peace and happiness and I will see you in the next post!
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