"What is a Spiritual Awakening"

Welcome to my first blog post. Before I begin, I would like to explain to you the voice that is speaking the words that I will share with you. We may not know one another and all you may have to go on is my "writing voice" as well as the content of my posts, so I figure it may help if you have an understanding of my voice and intentions.

Before I decided to do a blog, I asked myself about my intention of doing a blog of this nature. A good friend of mine has been telling me for a while now thatI should write about living an awakened life but I have to admit that at the time that she first mentioned it, I couldn't quite decipher what the intention of that would be. However, as time passed, and as  my human self grew and matured into the awakening that was experienced a couple of years ago, I realized how much I cherished reading of the experiences of others who have also been through the same journey. Through reading their words, I came to an understanding that they were not trying to steer me or anyone else into an awakened life. Their words were completely free of any hidden agenda. They were not trying to point me to anything else other than myself. Their words were simply a guidepost. I read them many times over, but I only really heard them and felt them deep in my spirit, because I was ready. Sometimes I was more ready than others!  At times, I understood on an intellectual level what the words were saying, but my heart and spirit hadn't caught up yet, and so the words would reach a type of philosophical crescendo, only to fall flat as if the notes of the words had no soul or spirit to propel them further upward, beyond the mind. However, I always, always felt the sincerity of their words, and on a very deep level I knew that their voice was full of love, understanding and a truth that resonated in my heart and soul even though on a human level I experientially may have not yet lived that truth myself.

Whether you are on a spiritual journey, or at least consciously aware that you are on one or not, I hope that you hear my voice as a sincere one that comes from a place of Love and Kindness. Whether something resonates within you through my words, or not, and whether you are drawn back to my words, or not, just simply know that you have received a good dose of Loving Kindness that comes from a very sincere place. You are never not Loved, never Not Enough and always Perfectly Lovable ...

Okay, on to "What is an Awakening?". Some of you may be quite aware of what an Awakening is. Perhaps you have had one, and are feeling very unified from a human level with the awakening experience. Perhaps you have had one and are struggling with the concept and reality of what it means for you. Then there may be those of you who are conscious of your spiritual journey, but have not yet had the experience of an awakening. Then there may be those of you who are not conscious of a spiritual journey but yet something still drew you to this blog, at this moment in time.

As defined in the Oxford dictionary, and by the conventional mind, an "awakening " is "the act of waking from sleep". Some may add to this concept the idea that when one awakens, one becomes conscious or aware, as opposed to the sleep state where one is unconscious and unaware. When we talk about a Spiritual Awakening, we are essentially talking about the same concept, however, the awakening is no longer applied to a personal "me", as in "I awoke". A Spiritual Awakening is where one's spirit, consciousness, or awareness becomes awake to itself. This is not a personal awakening, the way that we see ourselves as a "me" from a human experience of form. The awakening happens to the Oneness that is inherent in all of existence. It is the Universal Oneness that awakens through the human form. I am sure most of you have heard the story of the little wave in the ocean which while it appears that it is separate, eventually realizes that all of the ocean is inherent within it. Although the Universal Oneness is inside every human being, it too, like the little wave, forgets that it is inherently the whole of all that is. Just as the whole of the ocean recognizes itself within the seemingly separate little ocean wave, the whole of the Universal Oneness awakens within the human form.

At the moment of conception, all the potentiality of the Universal Oneness is inside the now physical human expression of that Oneness. That universal energy is literally inside every single one of the cells that grows and forms a human being. As that being grows and is eventually born into the world, the Oneness begins to identify with the very form into which it entered. It literally falls asleep as to its’ true nature. It becomes identified with the human form and the thoughts and feelings that arise within this human form. As all of us have experienced, our thoughts and feelings have a very strong gravitational pull. For most of us, we are so identified and pulled into the thoughts and feelings that we don't even question whether our thoughts and feelings are what WE ARE. Even when we look at the way we use language, it is clear that we identify ourselves to be our thoughts and feelings. As an example, most of us use the wording "I am angry", "I am happy". We believe "we are" that which we feel. We forget that the energetic expression of a feeling is simply the felt energetic sense of our thoughts within our body. It is not what we ARE. There is a reason we call it "Feelings", for it is what we "feel", not what we "are". The next time you experience an energetic felt sensation in your body, say of anger, state "I have the energy of anger in the body". You will be amazed at the freedom you will gain when you no longer identify yourself to "be" the feeling you experience. You will no longer feel bound by it. There will be a sense of freedom surrounding it. (Keep a lookout for a future blog post on how to guide our children to be emotionally aware in my Conscious Parenting section)

Since I have devoted some time to talking about the energetic felt sense of feelings in our body, I would like to also devote some time to talking about thought. Thoughts in and of themselves have no true reality. They are simply energetic expressions in our mind of a belief system, based on conditioning, experiences, and moment by moment circumstances. Contemporary Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle talks about this energetic entity of our thought form as our "Ego". There actually isn't truly an entity called an "Ego". Any name we give it is simply just another thought form isn't it? Eckhart Tolle is simply just pointing us through words or concepts (because what other way is there on a human level to point toward these ideas?) to the energetic pull that these thought forms can have on us. These thought forms are often based in fear, shame, anxiety, sadness and a myriad of other feelings and emotions.  The "feeling" can be the basis of these thought forms, or the "thought" the basis of the feelings, and both of these the impetus to our actions.

Since my experience of the awakening a couple of years ago, I have come to realize that most of our actions come from a place of self-protection of the very thought forms that resulted from a painful feeling or emotion at a very early stage of our lives.  Later on as we matured and wove stories through words, these also gave rise to a painful feeling or emotion. As babies, we have the ability to experience the energetic felt sense of instinctual self protection way before we have the ability to have conscious thought, as our capability to experience emotion comes before our ability to have and understand spoken language. As humans we are wired for survival. Anything that may threaten that survival such as physical danger, starvation, lack of attachment to a caregiver, or abandonment, will elicit the energetic felt sense of fear. The part of our brain called the Limbic System (which comprises the lower part of our brain at the back of the neck) which ellicits the Fight or Flight instinct as well as intense immediate feeling of anger meant to protect our very physical survival, is fully developed when we are born. However, the part of our brain called the Prefrontal Cortex (which is behind our forehead), which consists of the Right and Left Hemisphere that govern emotion, intuition, images, words, planning and organization, develops throughout our early years all the way to 25 for females and 27 for males. Therefore, the actual physical act of being birthed can elicit fear in the baby (coming from the well developed Limbic System), as well as any experiences or any energetic felt sensations that the baby takes on through its’ Mother while still in the womb. Quite amazing isn't it!?

On a human level, we are first connected to our body, which is where our emotions live. The capacity to have conscious thought or even an awareness of ourselves as separate beings from our caretaker, develops as our brain matures. As our brain matures and we begin to give words to our experiences and the things around us, we begin to use these words to weave stories around the emotions we experience in our body. These stories are based on our experiences and the conditioning that arises as a result of these experiences. As our thoughts have a very strong gravitational pull, we begin to strongly identify with those thoughts and believe ourselves to be those thoughts. Although base feelings such as fear may have been in our body prior to thought, it is now the thoughts that can give rise to the experience of the energetic felt sense of those thoughts in our bodies. These stories can become so unconscious and ingrained in our psyche, that before we are even aware of them on a conscious level, they have already resulted in a felt sense in our body, or that which we call a "feeling".

After a Spiritual Awakening, on a very deep level Oneness no longer easily identifies itself with the energetic flow of feelings and thoughts. It "knows" that the feelings and thought can be expressions of the Oneness but it no longer "identifies" itself with them. This can be a hard concept to understand. In the world of absolutes, no-thing, no experience, no felt energetic sensation is ever separate from the Oneness that is. Everything is not only an expression of the Oneness that is, but is also the "Oneness Itself". However, if we are to understand some of these concepts from a human perspective and from a human understanding of things, we have to let go of absolutes.  I am doing my best using words to explain that which is beyond words... Bear with me...

After a Spiritual Awakening, even though Oneness becomes awake to itself and is no longer identified with the energetic felt sense of feelings or thoughts, because we are still operating through the form of a human being, complete symbiosis of human form and Oneness has still to perfect itself. On one level, there never is a separation of the human form and the Oneness that is (and the Oneness that awakens to itself recognizes this), but on another level, we cannot deny that our awareness or consciousness of that symbiosis from a human form experience has yet to catch up to the awareness inherent in the "Awakening of the Oneness". You may have to read this last sentence over again. This is a lot to take in!

There are some individuals throughout history who have had an experience of awakening that was what we may call a full awakening. What this means is that the human form did not have to play catch up with the Awakening of the Oneness. The Awakening happened, and the individual never got caught up and identified with the thought and feeling state again. This does not mean that the unique personality of the individual or the thoughts and feelings ceased to exist, but just that the moment thought arose, there was an instantaneous dis-identification with the thought.  A feeling could still be felt in the body, but there was no identification with it. It could simply be felt and let go of. Indian sage Nisargadatta Maharaj and contemporary teacher Eckhart Tolle come to mind as an example of this full Spiritual Awakening. Spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, calls this full awakening an Abiding Awakening. However, as Adyashani also so wonderfully expresses in one of his brilliant books, "Don't count on that being you"...

Thank you for being a part of my journey of sharing my experience of an Awakened Life. If you are called to return to my writings, I welcome you to check in at least once a week. I will endeavour to post every Monday, and some weeks it may be even more frequent than that.

My first writing was about "What is an Awakening" and my next post will be about "What does an Awakening Feel like".

With much Love and Kindness,

Izabella