Spiritual Awakenings – What they are, Why they occur, and How they happen

Steve Taylor, a British psychologist, researcher, and author who specializes in the intersection of psychology and spirituality has written a wonderful new book about spiritual awakening – Extraordinary Awakenings – When Trauma Leads to Transformation. Taylor defines spiritual awakening as follows: “Spiritual awakening is simply a shift into a more intense and expansive state of awareness. In awakening, it’s as if the filters or boundaries that limit normal human awareness fall away. At the same time, awakening is a higher-functioning psychological state  – a state of enhanced well-being and freedom from psychological discord, in which people live more authentically and creatively.” 

In Steve Taylor’s research, he identified two different forms of awakening experiences based upon the types of trauma people experienced – Spiritual Awakenings and Spiritual Transformations. 

Spiritual Awakening experiences via Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) – “PTG is based on the idea that different types of trauma – such as bereavement, serious illness, accidents, oppression, and divorce – may ultimately lead to significant personal development. Research has shown that around half of all people experience some form of personal growth after traumatic events. In the long run, they feel a new sense of inner strength and confidence and of gratitude for life and for other people. They develop more intimate and authentic relationships and have a wider perspective, with a clear sense of what is important in life and what isn’t. They are brief glimpses of wakefulness that can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours – perhaps even a few days. In these moments, our awareness expands and intensifies. Our perception becomes more intense and vivid, our inner life becomes more expansive, we feel a powerful sense of connection with other people and with the natural world, and so on. In intense awakening experiences, we may feel as if we are lifted out of ourselves, into oneness with all things. We may become aware of a dynamic spiritual force – whose nature is bliss or love – that pervades all things and all space. However, after a certain amount of time, our normal psychological structures re-establish themselves, and we lose this heightened awareness – or, you could say, we fall back to sleep. For many people, awakening experiences are the beginning of a spiritual journey. After their first glimpse of wakefulness, they feel drawn to spiritual paths and practices as a way of returning to the more intense and expansive state they experienced. As a result, they may gradually cultivate an on-going state of wakefulness. “

Spiritual transformation, which is a much deeper, permanent change where the ego has been dramatically reduced in size and scope and the soul takes back leadership of the self. Taylor categorizes this as Transformation through Turmoil (TTT):

“With TTT, we investigate the miraculous phenomenon of how intense psychological suffering can bring about a sudden and dramatic shift into a new identity. In TTT, human beings, all of whom have experienced the worst predicaments that human life can offer (War, Incarceration, Addiction, and Suicide) but have responded to their suffering not by breaking down, but by shifting up to a higher – functioning awakened state, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. These experiences illustrate how limited our normal human state is. The term awakening implies that we are normally in a state of sleep. And this is what everyone who experiences TTT discovers: that what we think of as normal is an aberrational state that creates psychological suffering and presents us with a false vision of reality. Awakening gives us access to a fuller, higher-functioning state in which life seems easy and we feel home in the world. Essentially,  TTT is about ego-dissolution. In situations of intense stress and turmoil, the ego-self may suddenly give way under the pressure, like a building that collapses in an earthquake. Or it may slowly fall away and eventually disappear through a process of detachment, as psychological  attachments are broken down, like a building that collapses after enough individual bricks have been taken away. For some people both of these scenarios may simply lead to a psychological breakdown, but for a minority, the breakdown of the ego heralds a “shift-up” to a higher spiritual state…a latent awakened self emerges, like a phoenix. TTT is different from born-again religious experiences – those experiences are usually conceptual experiences in which a person’s belief system changes and they adopt a new lifestyle based on those beliefs. TTT is about letting go of beliefs rather than adopting them. This is probably why research shows that born-again religious experiences are usually temporary, whereas TTT is invariably permanent.”

What’s so interesting about this book is that it shows how spiritual awakenings and spiritual transformation can happen to anyone. The people Taylor has studied were not spiritual seekers, but average people from all walks of life that had gone through traumatic situations, which in the case of Post Traumatic Growth (bereavement, serious illness, accidents, oppression, and divorce), many of us will encounter in our lifetime. The traumas associated with Transformation through Turmoil (War, Incarceration, Addiction, Suicide) however, are less likely to be experienced by a broad range of people but in turn have a higher intensity in their ego-dissolution effects on an individual. 

Powerful Transformation Occurs When there is a Breakdown of the Ego

What one experiences from PTG in contrast to TTT could be considered a spectrum from mild spiritual awakening experiences to deep permanent changes and a more profound dissolution of the Ego and expansion of one’s soul or Higher Self. The ego is like a brick wall that a person builds around their soul upon incarnating into material form. The “ego-wall” is a result of the mental conditioning a person takes on from the moment they are born through what they are “taught” by parents, care-givers, teachers, other humans, and overall societal and cultural “norms”. This mental conditioning increases once a child goes to school and ultimately becomes a “working-class” citizen upon finishing their “schooling”, or as some may say, “mind-programming”.

In fact, it is precisely the dissolution of the ego and other psychological attachments that Taylor points out are what PTG and TTT facilitate for each person’s spiritual awakening experience:

“…in my research, the most common – way in which ego-dissolution can occur is through the breakdown of psychological attachments…a psychological attachment  is a mental construct that builds up our sense of identity and gives us a sense of security and well being. Under normal circumstances, we are attached to a lot of mental constructs, such as hopes and ambitions for the future, beliefs about life and the world, our accumulated knowledge, our accomplishments and achievements, our appearance, and so on. At a tangible level, we may be psychologically attached to possessions, social roles (as spouses or parents or professions), or to other people whose approval and attention we crave. These attachments are the building blocks of our identity. We feel that we are “someone” because of our hopes, beliefs, status, jobs, relationships, possessions, and so on.

However, in times of crisis and turmoil, these psychological attachments break down. In fact, this is usually the root cause of psychological turmoil or depression; we feel lost and desperate because these attachments have been taken away. We have lost the hopes, status, and beliefs (and other attachments) that held together our identity. As a result, we feel empty and fragmented, and full of discord. We are stripped down to nothing, naked, and desolate, as if we have been destroyed. But we are also paradoxically close to transformation. Now that the old ego has dissolved away, there is an empty space within our being. As a result, there is an opportunity for a higher self to emerge into that empty space with our being. All the time, this higher self was latent inside us, fully formed and waiting for the opportunity to awaken. But while the old ego in place, there was no space for it. But now it’s free to rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of the old ego, and to take over as our normal identity. “

Essentially, a spiritual awakening removes the boundaries of our ego self with the rest of existence – we regain the awareness of our inter-connectedness to all life, seen and un-seen. With that renewed connection, comes a much deeper understanding and appreciation of all aspects of our reality. 

Many of the trauma’s studied by Taylor forced the person to go into a state of Solitude (a loss of a loved one or imprisonment) which allowed them to spend more time to go within and examine their inner world, thoughts, and beliefs. He found that solitude coupled with the breakdown of the ego (and other psychological attachments to the Self), propels people to go within and contemplate and connect with a higher level of existence than their ego-personality construct. It provides the conditions for them to connect with their Higher Self (their soul at its fully expanded, multidimensional state) and thus reconnect to the Creator itself. It is then that the person elevates their consciousness to Divine levels and regains the powers of the Creator that are rightfully theirs.

All the people in Steve Taylor’s research demonstrate to some extent a consistent set of characteristics associated with their awakening experiences. He’s categorized them as follows:

The Characteristics of Wakefulness.       [**contrast with the opposite of wakefulness]

Perceptual

• Intensified perception / increased ability to be present
• Awareness of “Presence” or spiritual energy
• Aliveness, harmony, and connectedness

Affective

• Inner quietness / less identification with thoughts
• Transcendence of separation / sense of connection
• Well-being
• Absence of (or decreased) fear of death

Conceptual / Cognitive

• Lack of group identity
• Wide perspective – universal outlook
• Heightened sense of morality
• Appreciation and curiosity

Behavioral 

• Altruism
• Enjoyment of inactivity / ability to “be”
• Nonmaterialism
• Autonomy / living more authentically
• Enhanced relationships

If we look at the characteristics of awakening described above, we can see that each is an example of a high energetic vibration state. High vibration has the elements of unity, oneness, love, joy, gratitude, and appreciation. The awakening person has experienced these characteristics because “low-vibration weights” associated with the ego (beliefs, attachments) have been removed from them and their energetic vibration (consciousness) has now been allowed to rise to a higher state. 

The ego is a construct of the mind and “weights” of the ego are beliefs that the person has taken on in its life time (from schools, parents, family, friends, society, etc), which form the basis of how the person processes events in their life and that lead to the construction of the reality they experience. That reality experience naturally leads to thoughts, which in turn lead to emotions. Those thoughts and emotions then create an electromagnetic vibration signature that represents their state of being and per Quantum laws, that vibration attracts similar vibration signatures into their lives. Which means they create more of the same reality until they change how they are vibrating. Or more importantly from a root cause perspective, their vibrational reality will not change until they change their beliefs, de-program their minds, and take on a new, more desired set of beliefs. And in the case of the people studied by Steve Taylor for this book, the impetus to make these changes came from the various traumas the individuals suffered that acted as strong catalysts for those changes. One of the people studied provided the following insight:

“I had a moment of clarity. I knew I had to let go of everything, including my own concepts and beliefs. I had to align myself with my spiritual path and continue with my inner journey. From that point on, it was a gradual awakening, day by day. It was a process of coming back to my true self. Now I feel like I’ve woken up from a dream. I realize now that the dark cloud used to follow me around was the dark cloud of thoughts. The realization that I am not my thoughts was one of the most liberating experiences. Now the clouds of my thoughts may come, but I can just watch them pass by, without logging in and identifying with them and making them personal. Because of this I feel that I’m the real me and have such a deep peace and contentment. I don’t have any desire to do or be anything in particular. I’m just content being. It feels like the quest is over and there’s nothing to seek anymore. I am home. I feel so deeply thankful.”

Are You Experiencing a Spiritual Awakening or are on the Path to Enlightenment?

To assist people answer this question for themselves, Steve Taylor and his research partner Kelly Kilrea created an Inventory of Spiritual / Secular Wakefulness. It is a questionnaire which allows people to answer for themselves 29 questions that people who have experienced spiritual awakenings routinely agree on as traits of their awakening experiences.

After reading statements 1-2, select:
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral / Not Sure (if you neither agree nor disagree with the statement or are unable to decide)
Disagree
Strongly Disagree

1. I have an ongoing sense of inner contentment and ease.
2. I derive profound pleasure from engaging in ordinary activities.
3. I sense and know deeply that I am not my thoughts.
4. When life brings unexpected changes, it is fairly easy for me to accept and move on.
5. I experience a deep sense of union with life itself.
6. The past and future do not disturb my present experience.
7. I feel a sense of awe at the “is-ness” of the world around me.
8. How I look does not have any bearing on my self-worth or sense of identify.
9. I experience regular periods of mental quietness, when my mind is free of thoughts.
10. I feel intensely alive in my sensual experiences.
11. I feel deeply present.
12. I am incapable of causing intentional harm to anyone or anything.
13. I find it difficult to establish deep and authentic relationships.
14. I don’t feel the need to belong to a group, community, or society, or conform to its conventions.
15. I feel intense aliveness in all of my senses.
16. Becoming a successful or prominent person is important to me.
17. I have no sense of needing to do anything; I am content to just be.
18. I notice my emotions as they arise without getting immersed in them.
19. Death frightens me.
20. I sense that seemingly separate things (like household objects, trees, and people) are part of the same all-pervading consciousness.
21. I feel equally connected and compassionate toward all human beings, regardless of their culture or country, and not matter how closely they are related to me.
22. There is a larger purpose or mission that is expressing itself through me.
23. I judge other people’s behavior in my mind.
24. When making decisions I trust my feelings and intuition to take me in the right direction.
25. The world around me is intensely vivid and alive.
26. My sense of self-worth isn’t affected by success or failure.
27. I often have a sense of timelessness.
28. I feel pressured to act in certain ways to gain acceptance.
29. In a short passage, please describe the most significant aspects of your perspective of the world and your perception of reality.

Note: Twenty-three of the statements are scored from 1 to 5, with 1 for strongly disagree, 2 for disagree, 3 for neutral / not sure, 4 for agree, and 5 for strongly agree. This excludes statements 13, 16, 19, 23, and 28, where the scoring sequence is reversed (so that strongly disagree scores as 5 and strongly agree scores as 1, etc). Scores to the 28 statements should be totaled. A higher score indicates a more intense degree of wakefulness. Item 29 is included as a way of validating the response to the inventory – that is, of testing whether the participants’ responses match the way they describe their experience.

From The Leap, The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening, by Steve Taylor

The spiritual awakening is the beginning… the process will continue as long as it takes for the person’s soul to be fully be in charge, fear in all its manifestations is overcome, and the ego has taken its proper place as servant to the soul and not the opposite way around. And so in that sense, there is an initial surrender of the ego to the soul, but there could be a number of such surrender moments as whatever fears the ego creates for a person must be overcome until the person fully merges with their higher self and trusts completely in its direction rather than the ego’s – a process captured quite well in sociologist Joseph Campbell’s work, The Hero’s Journey. Spiritual “surrender” is thus reducing the size of one’s ego so that the Soul can fully expand into its fully expanded state within the individual. In essence, letting as much of your true self, your divine light or soul, into your being. By doing so, you reclaim your full divine powers, your true infinite potential, and take back your rightful place as god in human form.

And as you reclaim your Divine Creator-hood, you will also regain many “Super-Human” powers that in many ways are the source of wakening characteristics listed above and in other ways go beyond them with more advanced capabilities. These powers have been denied to and hidden from the average person over the last 5,000 years. We can better understand what these powers are by looking at what has been handed down through the ages by the Yogic masters. The different modes of Yoga (to join or unite)  practice developed thousands of years ago in India, were meant to increase the energetic vibration in the mind-body-spirit complex and unlock the latent Superhuman powers in the individual. They called these powers Siddhi’s.

The Yoga Sutras lists twenty or so of these powers and they are grouped into three major categories:

Mind-Body control

1. Exceptional Stability, Balance, and Health (mind and body synchronized)
2. Disappearance of the body from view (a form of teleportation)
3. Extraordinary Strength (physical, mental, and in in general robust health).
4. Knowledge of composition and coordination of bodily energies (using the mind-body connection for self-healing)
5. Liberation from Hunger and Thirst (using the concepts of breatharianism to extract from the Prana what the physical body needs to survive). 
6. Blazing Radiance (the enhanced “inner fire” or energetic vibration of a person)
7. Perfection of the Body (high energetic vibration and information allows the body to be ‘lighter’ and achieve perfection)

Clairvoyance (pre-cognition and telepathy)

1. Knowledge of the Past, Present, and Future
2. Clairaudience (knowledge of the meaning of sounds produced by all beings – or development of the “third ear”. This allows one to hear the conversations of the enlightened ones, the subtle mental conversations of others, the celestial music, and receive messages through the ether both awake or asleep). 
3. Knowledge of Previous Births (or past lives)
4. Knowledge of Other Minds (telepathy or mind reading)
5. Foreknowledge of birth, harm, or death 
6. Knowledge at a Distance (remote viewing in modern terms)
7. Knowledge of the Inner Universe (understanding spirit or soul beyond the five senses)
8. Knowledge of the Outer Universe (understanding the macroscopic universe beyond the five senses)
9. Vision of higher beings, knowledge of everything that is knowable, knowing the origins of all things, and knowledge of the true self (a complete understanding of the true nature of reality)
10. Freedom from bodily awareness and temporal attachments (moving beyond matter to connect directly to the vast quantum field of energy and information; developing connection to Spirit beyond the body and the material world).

Psychokinesis (mind influencing matter)

1. Inducing Loving-Kindness in All (influencing others through your energetic vibration)
2. Influencing Others (transmitting spiritual energy to others through one’s gaze or presence)
3. Levitation
4. Mastery over the Elements (ability to manipulate physical reality in all forms).

The Siddhis come on line over time as you raise your vibration, gain higher levels of alignment with your Higher Self and the Divine Will. The process tracks your soul evolution in this way and is a safeguard – giving lots of power to a lower evolved soul who doesn’t have the best interests at heart of others can be very dangerous to themselves and others. This is why they only will emerge from those that have sufficiently risen in consciousness and surrendered the control and desires of their ego to the divine will of their soul, inner-god, or higher self.

But to reclaim these super-powers, we must do our part and get to the elusive ego-surrender.

What leads to that “Ego-Surrender” Occurring?

Sudden trauma or radical life altering circumstances can lead to surrendering of the ego to the Soul / higher self as Taylor describes. Or, a gradual “softening” of the ego over time until either (1) you reach a point where you feel you (your ego) no longer can figure things out on your own and thus open the doorway to your soul light to fully come in or (2) along with the softening of the ego, you proactively go within and reach upwards to purposely desire to fully merge with your Higher Self. 

This second approach is well described in spiritual philosopher Paul Brunton’s – The Short Path To Enlightenment: Instructions for Immediate Awakening. Brunton shows that we must realize we are much more powerful than we know, and our free will choices carry great weight. So someone consciously choosing with great intent and sincerity to merge every cell in their being with the light of the Creator or Source through reconnecting with their higher self (which is always directly connected to the Source) is a direct command to Universal forces and must be honored. It is a free-will choice you are making and you are in control. The one thing that must be emphasized is that vibrating at a high level, at love or above, is important. Saying flatly “I want to connect to my Higher Self” is sub-optimal. The creator’s light and energy is what true divine love is and when you vibrate towards that level it makes the connection process much easier. A good approach would be to attempt this connection while you are meditating, have calmed your mind, and allowed your energetic vibration to naturally rise higher. Like connects to like in the world of spirit.

Getting to that ego surrender is a process that is ultimately being coordinated by your higher self. It creates circumstances or what I like to call “catalysts for growth” that will help you break down the walls of separation that the ego creates between you and everything in your physical life and between you and your Higher Self. These catalysts challenge your established beliefs, perspectives, habits, goals, and desires. In essence, your Higher Self is guiding you to release from the ego’s drive to keep you in a mind set of duality or separation and instead move you bit by bit towards Unity Consciousness. The state of being where you come to see yourself as One with All. 

Some of these stories may look like “sudden trauma”, but if you look more deeply at the person’s life, it was probably a culmination of a process their higher self started years ago by providing catalysts for change to break down the ego’s grip on them and after many lighter nudges it amplified the intensity in order to get the big breakthrough in consciousness.

Only the person can choose when they are going to be ready to let go of their egoic constructs and let more of their soul-light / higher self into them. Their Higher Self will guide the process and will create scenarios in their lives for the gradual softening (or sudden destruction) of their ego to occur.

Connecting to your Higher Self or inner god light, is also a matter of optimizing the conditions for that connection to occur. Since we are all energetic vibration, a key task in this regard is to reduce all the distortions within your mind and body that would hamper this connection from occurring. For the mind this would mean anything that causes noise and agitation – so the mind has to be quieted, negative and fearful thoughts eliminated, and a state of peace and harmony must be achieved. For the body, all toxicity that disturbs the smooth flowing of energy throughout body must be removed – low vibration foods, chemicals, and drugs all top the list.

So why is it that intense psychological turmoil and suffering lead to awakening in some people but not in others?”

Steve Taylor asks and answers this key question toward the back of the book:

“Research into PTG can help us here. It turns out that PTG is associated with certain personality types. In particular, people who have the trait of openness – in that they are curious, creative, and imaginative – are more likely to undergo PTG. And the same applies to TTT. Specifically, people with what might be called a “transliminal” type of mind (to use the term coined by the psychologist Michael Thalbourne) are more likely to experience it. People with a transliminal mind have softer psychological boundaries and are empathic, intuitive, and creative. They are more likely to have spiritual experiences and to experience paranormal phenomena. Essentially, to have a translminal mind means that you ego is not as solid and rigid as normal, with less of a sense of separation and individuation.” Taylor further adds: “TTT is also dependent on a person’s attitude to their psychological turmoil. First, it is more likely to occur if a person is prepared to acknowledge the reality of their predicament. When we face up to the reality of a dangerous predicament, we also face up to our own psychological turmoil. Rather than being estranged from ourselves in delusion and denial, we go into our own being, exploring our inner being and our feelings. This kind of self-exploration may also help to bring about TTT. We saw this process in Gus’s and David’s stories in Chapter 1. Both of them began to explore their own being through meditation, and realized how their suffering was created by their thoughts. In terms of attitude, the most important aspect of TTT is acceptance. When we go through challenges and suffering, we often go into a mode of resistance, such as when we talk about fighting a disease  or struggling to overcome obstacles. But doing so blocks transformation. When we shift into a mode of acceptance – which can occur in the form of surrendering to a situation, letting go, or handing over our problems – then the transformational potential of suffering is released inside of us. Meditation supports the process of acknowledgment, self exploration, and acceptance described above. When a person meditates, they enter and explore their own being. They face up to the predicament and explore the negative feelings it generates. This may lead to a shift into. mode of acceptance, bringing transformation. We could also add that inactivity and solitude help to facilitate TTT. This is because inactivity and solitude encourage us to enter into ourselves, so that we face up to our inner turmoil and explore it.” 

Ultimately, I think we could all agree that achieving some degree of spiritual awakening right up into fully expanded and permanent enlightenment would be the most important thing any human being and collective society, could achieve. We need everyone on our planet to have these types of awakening experiences so that we can raise the collective consciousness on earth and transform our current dysfunctional reality into one of peace and happiness that all people deserve. The good news is that we don’t all have to suffer intense, life-jarring traumas to rise in consciousness. We can take a more methodical and gentle approach to it. Steve Taylor outlines some of those approaches in the latter chapters of Extraordinary Awakenings. I recommend his book highly, as well as his previous book – The Leap, The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening. In The Leap, Taylor provides a brief summary of his recommendations on how to pursue gradual awakening:

Gradual awakening means practicing meditation and mindfulness, service, and altruism. It means embracing quietness, simplicity, and inactivity so that we become comfortable within our inner space and learn to be. It means learning to quiet and disidentify with our random thought-chatter so that we know the peace of inner stillness and connect with our deepest nature. It means softening the strong boundaries of the ego so that we connect with other human beings, with nature, and with the whole cosmos. It means letting go of our psychological attachments to uncover the essence that they obscure and to allow our latent higher selves to emerge. And perhaps most fundamentally, gradual awakening means remodeling our psyche, transforming the self-system of sleep into the self-system of wakefulness. There’s no reason why this should involve any individual effort. It’s not a question of pushing or striving, but rather of aligning ourselves with a process that is already under way, like allowing ourselves to float along with the fast-flowing current of a river. And at the same time, in a symbiotic way, our own momentum will intensify the momentum of the whole process itself. The universe wants us to wake up and will happily guide us toward wakefulness, if we create the right conditions.

I’ve also recently written a book that expands deeply into the methodical and gradual path to spiritual awakening and provides a detailed overview of how to raise your vibrational energy and attain higher levels of consciousness. It is called – The Path to Enlightenment, A Guide to the Soul’s Ascension Journey. If you are motivated to begin or accelerate your own spiritual journey, you can visit this link and download a free copy.  

In Service to Your Highest Good,

~Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com