Effects of Spiritual Awakening

I grew up as a typical American kid living in the suburbs, going to church regularly when I was young, and later on only going for Christmas, Easter, weddings, and funerals. Religion was not discussed at home and wasn’t really part of my life, and spirituality wasn’t even on my radar.

Which is why it was such a shock when nine years ago this spring, I experienced a spiritual awakening that was subtle, yet not. After having a seminal psychic reading, something inside me woke up from a deep slumber and I suddenly became aware that we exist beyond the world we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. I knew without a doubt we also exist as energy. An unseen field of energetic spirit that carries memories, information, and emotions.

A few years before, I’d quite accidentally discovered this thing called Energy Healing when I was looking for a way to lose weight and keep it off. I had a woman work on me for about a year, and during that time I took a class she offered on muscle testing. Using the body to determine whether something was in resonance with it or not. She taught me a bit about energy healing, but it was quite new.

When I “woke up,” a desire deep within burst into flames and engulfed me for a while. I had to know everything about energy healing… yesterday. Devouring information, I couldn’t read enough books or watch enough videos about energy healing. So many modalities out there, but which one was for me?

I took classes and workshops, learning this, trying that, and had metaphysical experiences along the way. What had been mere curiosity became burning desire to know.

Mere months after waking up, my parents began their major decline in health that lasted a few years until their deaths in 2012, ten months apart. In between handling this crisis or that, I took a class, went to a workshop, experienced energy healing, and connected with the metaphysical realm. I learned how to recognize and listen to my intuition.

As much as it was a tough time, dealing with a child who was struggling in school and hated to go, while doing things like dropping my life and flying across country to take care of my parents for a month with zero notice, getting into the world of healing was my saving grace.

Shortly after my last parent died, the Universe introduced me to a woman who would catapult my own healing into the stratosphere, guiding me to connect within and create amazing changes through the use of what she called “soul-directed” hypnosis. I like to think of it as spiritual hypnosis.

In each session, I was able to address issues and make changes within myself that usually take years or decades for a person to accomplish through talk therapy. So often it felt miraculous.

For the next four years, I worked with this hypnotherapist as life allowed. When I had the time and energy. For a few years, it was only a series of four sessions in the spring. And by the third and fourth year, recognizing the potential in my life, I had more sessions.

With each session, part of what I call my inner disconnection became reconnected with my spirit. Emotional triggers dissolved. Inner peace became more regular, even with people around me becoming upset. Life began to flow like never before.

Then one day a little over three years ago during a healing session, when we were getting to the nugget of an issue, just about the time I expected my upset inner child to let me know she didn’t trust me, causing her to split off from my consciousness years ago, she flipped the script. Instead of my inner child being upset with my adult self, she told me that I (my adult self) didn’t trust God; the God/Creator in me. The part of me that is God/Creator.

Whoa! Mind officially blown!!

Something deep within me woke up and recognized the Creator in me. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I play a major role in the creation of my life. Co-creation actually. Because I’d had so many experiences of making changes in my life from the inside out, something decided it was time to flip the switch and level up.

The next several weeks were a whirlwind of looking at the world through a very different lens. My brain and perspective changed dramatically. And with it, a very powerful energy of creation, Kundalini Energy, cranked open in my body, kicking off my spontaneous Kundalini awakening.

When it began, there were a few nights that I awoke feeling shaking like an earthquake. In fact, I sat bolt upright in bed thinking we were having an earthquake. After a little while, I realized we weren’t. It was Kundalini energy vibrating vigorously in my body.

I began to heal things simply by taking a few moments of quiet meditation, feeling into uncomfortable emotions and allowing the root of the discomfort to come up and be spontaneously healed. No hypnosis needed. As beliefs held deep within shifted and let go, a wave of emotional release would wash over me with cleansing tears, followed by a phrase coming to me. The belief that had been buried and was now dissolved and a spiritual download of information about the belief would come to me.

It was an amazing time. Seeing through the lens of Oneness. Seeing myself in everyone and visa versa. Such love and compassion.

However, as I’ve learned happens with so many intense spontaneous Kundalini Awakenings, the initial stages of bliss and Oneness eventually passed, and what I think of as major excavation began. Everything and anything that lives deep inside that doesn’t resonate with Oneness has been subject to coming up to be healed and let go. And it hasn’t been happening on my life’s schedule, when it’s convenient for me. It was like tsunami after tsunami for almost a year and a half.

Initially, I was so extremely sensitive that merely connecting to a family member when they were upset would trigger things deep in me to spontaneously rise up and be healed, complete with a burst of tears as the energy was released. At first, I couldn’t control it at all. I burst into tears after inadvertently upsetting my husband. I burst into tears when visiting a close friend. What they couldn’t possibly see or know was the tremendous shift that happened inside me, causing me to see things differently after the tears. I was changing quite significantly.

But after each shift, I’d be decimated physically and emotionally. While my brain and body integrated the new energy, I’d experience days or weeks of total exhaustion and experiences of hell.

After a while, I was able to delay the energy shift and subsequent tears until I was in a private space, where I wouldn’t upset those around me who didn’t understand what was going on (my family).

This time was what many call the dark night of the soul. It’s tough. Beyond tough. It’s a time of holding on for deal life, using every tool you have, and praying. A lot. Or meditating. It’s a time when sanity is on the brink and just making it through the day is a feat. It’s a time when many experience all sorts of what’s called ascension sickness. Side effects of a shit ton of energy movement in and out of the body.

With every inner disconnection reconnected, with every old belief let go, the body goes through an energetic shift. The DNA is changed. How it is expressed changes. Muscles and other physiology go through changes, and there is pain. Pain that isn’t indicative of injury, but of the body self-repairing.

I’ve had months of my lymph glands here or there aching, and muscles that never bothered me suddenly aching for a week or three and then being fine again. Some major shifts brought on flu-like symptoms. Chills and sweats without a fever. Stomach rewiring, making me incapable of eating for a few days. (And yes, if something became worrisome, I went to my doctor).

With my energy field experiencing so much shifting, changing, and rewiring, integrating the change has been a whole lot of not fun. Exhaustion. Foggy head. Feeling off-balance. Inability to focus a thought. Experiencing times of fear, anxiety, and paranoia I could simultaneously recognize as not my truth. Because I recognized them as not my truth, I was able to watch really uncomfortable thoughts run through my head without feeling the need to act on them. And eventually they passed.

It’s sort of like having a jar of water with mud on the bottom and using a spoon to scoop out some of the mud. Yes, you’re removing some of the mud to help clarify the water, but the act of scooping up the mud stirs it up, making the entire jar of water appear dirty until things settle out. Integration is waiting for the water to clear up.

The worst has been not feeling like me. I can’t describe it any other way than to say that the internal connection we all have to ourselves, the connection we have when we’re five and when we’re eighty-five that lets us know who we are inside, was gone. It was like I didn’t know who I was because I couldn’t feel me. At first, it was terrifying. And as months passed, it became merely uncomfortable.

As miserable as it is to sit in a pot of sweat, looking at the world through a lens of anxiety, those times seemed to pass and don’t come visiting very often now. But what hasn’t left me in over two years has been exhaustion and a mind that is foggy, muddy, and unfocused. Yes, there have been a few days when clarity came back for a few days, or a few hours a day. Things are improving there very gradually, but it’s not back full-time yet.

And guess what you need to be able to sit and read a book? The ability to focus on it for more than a minute or two at a time. After spending a lifetime voraciously reading book after book, it’s been a shock to the system to not be able to read more than a few paragraphs. In the past three years, I think I’ve read either 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 books. So not me.

And you may have noticed a dearth of posts on this blog. Not only has reading become exceedingly difficult, but so has writing. Ideas pop into my head and immediately disappear. Ideas and inspiration spark a post, and a paragraph or two into it the information highway that is normally free-flowing and running on all cylinders becomes a mudslide, paralyzing all flow. The number of drafts sitting in purgatory is disheartening.

That said, now that I’m about three years and three months into this crazy spiritual Kundalini awakening, things are evolving. They’ve been evolving all the time, but I’m definitely over the worst of it.

Looking at the experience from the 30,000 ft view, it’s rewiring me to see and experience the world very differently. Through eyes of non-judgment and compassion. Not only that, but it’s brought my healing journey to a level I never knew was possible.

Growing up had it’s challenges, and two familial relationships in particular were fraught with dysfunction and pain. One that’s been healed to a point that it feels quite complete, is my complicated relationship with my mentally ill mother. I’ve healed from the pain of it, letting me remember our lives together without feeling anger, sadness, or other painful emotions.

The one I’m still working on is separating my life from an abusive brother. And hopefully, I’ll be completely free from him in the next several weeks.

About three years ago, I healed to the point that I was able, for the first time to recall so many dysfunctional things that transpired between my brother and I without becoming thrown into feelings of rage and powerlessness. And two years ago, another spontaneous inner shift in perception caused the desire to continue our relationship to dissolve in a healing I didn’t see coming.

Suddenly, I no longer wanted what I never had. I never had a loving, caring brother, and I realized (like a sledgehammer blow) that he was never going to change. All attachment to him just left. No anger, no sadness, no regrets, no emotions whatsoever. Just done. Freedom. And in that moment, I knew I had to take steps to disentangle from him.

I have a feeling that once I officially have nothing to do with this brother, another part of my inner child that’s been buried down deep, terrified to be known, will finally feel safe enough to come up and reconnect. A very young part who had to disappear in order for me to survive. I can’t wait to see how life changes. I’m so ready to be through with exhaustion, disconnection, and a muddy and foggy mind.

What constantly blows my mind is that I had a spiritual awakening in the first place, never mind two. I didn’t grow up feeling like something was missing in my life. I’ve never been religious or a spiritual seeker. The only thing I’ve ever wanted was for my son to be less miserable and for me to not eat away my feelings and to feel better. Looking for things to help us feel better led me down this crazy path of spontaneous spiritual awakening. Who knew?

And who knows what’s to come? Time will tell.