This is the Ultimate Guide for your Spiritual Awakening.

Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about your spiritual awakening including:

• The signs and symptoms
• The 4 stages
• Thy why behind it all
• The ultimate end goal

And more.

If you’re ready, let’s dive in.

What is a Spiritual Awakening?

The first question you might be asking yourself is what exactly is a spiritual awakening.

A spiritual awakening is part of a longer, overarching spiritual journey. This has also been referred to as the soul’s journey. We’ll touch on this again later on.

A spiritual awakening is the part of the journey where you wake up to the fact that you are more than your body and more than your thoughts. This is the part where you realize there’s more to life than just eating, sleeping and working.

During the awakening phase of your spiritual journey, you disconnect from the outer world and begin to move inward. This is when you rediscover what life is, what the purpose is and who you are.

Signs and Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening

So how do you know if your spiritual awakening has begun?

Heck, how do you know if your spiritual journey has begun?

Your spiritual journey began long before you were born and this lifetime is only a small part of that journey.

If you are lucky enough to be experiencing the signs and symptoms listed below, you may very well be experiencing a spiritual awakening.

Without further ado, here are the signs and symptoms of a spiritual awakening:

1. You’re very aware of your own emotions and state of mind.
2. You’re becoming more and more aware of the flaws in society.
3. You’re becoming disillusioned with your work and your entire way of life.
4. You see the suffering and injustice caused by the system and you want to help people and make a tangible difference in the world.
5. You’re interested in learning about the mysteries of the world and the mysteries of the human mind and body.
6. You feel disconnected from popular culture.
7. You feel alone, like no one understands what you’re going through.
8. You are experiencing vivid dreams.
9. You’re becoming more sensitive to energies and energetic presences.
10. You feel stuck, trapped by society and your own mind.
11. You feel helpless and angry.
12. You’ve lost interest in the things that you used the love.
13. It’s hard to find motivation to do anything. Everything feels like a pointless pursuit.
14. You’re searching for something more in life, but you’re not sure what that is.
15. You’re almost afraid to believe that you may be going through a spiritual awakening in case you’re wrong and there’s actually nothing more to life than what you have.
16. You’re drawn toward spirituality, scriptures, and the more esoteric sciences.

Note that this is not a comprehensive list but instead a number of signs that when put together are a strong indication that you’re on the right path.

Depending on where you are on your journey, your symptoms will vary in intensity. Closer to the beginning of the journey, most of these things will be very subtle; occasional inconveniences and annoyances as you move through your day and your life.

As you progress on the journey and get closer to the dark night of the soul, these symptoms will become very intense to the point where they consume your waking life.

It is here that the medical world may label you as depressed.

Rest assured that this is a very fortunate place to be and there is beautiful world waiting for you on the other side of this awakening.

How to Start your Spiritual Awakening

If you are not resonating with any of the points listed above, you may still be at an earlier stage of your journey.

Each stage of the spiritual journey is valuable and holds its own lessons. There is no need to rush your journey or anything you need to do outside of your normal life to “begin” it.

In fact, your inner world and psyche are very delicate, anything drastic or abrupt may cause more harm than good.

If you are interested in being more proactive on this journey and working on yourself and your self-awareness so you can make the most out of every stage, we’ve put together a list of safe activities to help you start your spiritual awakening journey.

At any stage of your journey, it is beneficial to be more in tune with your own body and mind, practicing yoga and meditation with us or someone else who is also established in the space will help you move in the right direction.

Who can have a Spiritual Awakening

Anyone can have a spiritual awakening and everyone will.

The world is full of people and everyone is on the same journey. The only difference is that some people are in kindergarten, others in grade school and others are working on their PhDs.

In their own time, everyone will have a spiritual awakening.

What can cause a Spiritual Awakening

As I mentioned earlier, a spiritual awakening is not something you want to force.

A lot of harm can come from subjecting your consciousness to violent methods.

If you’re not ready to be awakened, the awakening itself will be very fractured, violent and unstable.

As it is already a period of great change, added instability will make it even more difficult to move through.

That said, when you consider your spiritual awakening to be turning away from the outer world and toward the inner world, there are 3 things that may cause a spiritual awakening.

Number 1 – Intense suffering

When you experience hardship and intense suffering caused by the world and the very people and situations that used to bring you comfort, you will naturally turn away from the world and seek solace within yourself.

This can be expressed through religion or other expressions of spirituality.

Number 2 – Psychedelics

Drugs are quite unpredictable in the way they interact with the consciousness. While tripping, somewhere, somehow, something may be triggered and you may lose interest in the outer world and seek to know the inner world.

However, this is not an invitation to gobble up all the psychedelics or plant medicines you can get your hands on. In fact, some plant medicines like Ayahuasca are very sacred and need to be taken with the right intentions and right guidance.

It is very easy to go wrong while on this path and a spiritual awakening resulting from an intentional overdose of psychedelics might not take you where you want to go.

Number 3 – Karma

Your karma will naturally bring you to the point of spiritual awakening when you’re ready. When you have lifetimes of merit under your belt, the universe will conspire to bring situations and people to you that will trigger your awakening and continue to lead you forward on the spiritual path.

Needless to say, this is the most stable and sustainable path to your spiritual awakening. In this scenario, you will become very easily established on the spiritual path.

The Four Stages of Spiritual Awakening

The spiritual journey is not like a staircase where each step is distinctly different from the previous.

Instead, each stage blends into the next. The mindsets, desires, interests, energy and motivations that are signatures of each step are distinctly different from the previous and the next, but the transition zones between stages can blur and feel like a mix of both.

I’ve listed out the 4 phases or stages of your spiritual awakening below.

It is possible that there may be some overlap between stages. If you feel like you resonate with symptoms of multiple stages, you may be in a transitional period between stages or rapidly moving through stages to catch up to progress you made in previous lifetimes.

Whichever stage resonates with you the most will tell you which stage you’re in.

It is very rare to move backwards in this process.

Once true knowledge becomes rooted in your consciousness, it is there for eternity.

You will not lose it and you will only move forward.

Each of the stages listed below can last anywhere from months and years to decades and lifetimes depending on your specific journey.

Stage 1 – Wanting More & Disillusionment

This is the first stage of your awakening and if this is where you are, you should be so excited to embark on this journey.

This is the beginning of something so beautiful that it cannot be put into words.

This is when you start to turn away from the exterior world and turn toward the interior world.

Now, up until this point, you’ve been fully immersed in the world. The world and its endless charms have kept your full, unwavering attention… up until they didn’t.

When you enter into this stage of your awakening, you will start to experience the following:

• You are starting to see through things you used to find so charming.
• You’re becoming tired of a world that doesn’t rest and seems to eat up everything that you give it without gratitude or a second thought.
• You feel like there’s no end to society’s expectations and that no matter what you do, it’s never enough.
• You’re starting to realize that all the things that seem so shiny and wonderful on the outside actually hide a dark truth.
• You’re becoming suspicious of the motives of people in power, corporations and governments. You’re realizing that they don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart.
• A growing sense of dissatisfaction with the world and your life is blooming within you.

In essence, you’re disconnecting from the narrative. You’re no longer gobbling up what mass media throws at you and you’re starting to think for yourself.

You’re exploring different venues to find happiness but nothing is enough to fill the void that is opening up inside you. Everything feels fundamentally flawed and empty.

At this stage, a lot of people become very cynical and distrustful of the world.

My story parallel

If you’re wondering what this looks like, I have written many posts about stages and moments of my own spiritual journey. I have a post detailing my search for more and the flaws that I found in every single way I tried to find happiness and give back to the world.

As dark and depressing as this sounds, this is ultimately what led me to where I am today and if I had been able to find happiness in any of these things, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would most likely still be stuck where I was all those years ago.

If this is what you’re experiencing and you feel like there’s nothing in this world for you, then this is your reassurance that you’re on the right path and better days are on the way.

Stage 2 – Spiritual Shopping

At some point during the disillusionment, you will be naturally drawn toward knowledge, practices and experiences that are generally hidden. This can be the occult, esoteric practices, psychedelics, ancient scriptures, Ayurveda and more.

You’re searching for Truth, but you’re not entirely sure what it is and what it looks like.

The questions, “Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose?” will begin to take shape in your mind.

Your intellect will be very active here and your awareness will be generally high. As you progress through this stage, you will become more and more aware of your emotions, the noisiness of your mind as well as your anxieties.

In your search, you will push yourself out of your comfort zone and you may have uncomfortable experiences. Naturally, fear, anxiety and unconscious behaviours will come up to protect you. You will become very aware of your thought patterns, self-limiting beliefs and things about yourself that you would rather not admit even to yourself.

During this stage, you will explore different avenues and aspects of the world of the unknown in hopes of finding an answer that satisfies you.

My story parallel

For me, this stage of my journey looked like my first step into the unknown. On an impulse, I bought a backpacking bag and a one-way ticket to a country where I didn’t speak the language or know the culture at all.

To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with my life. I didn’t feel like I was expressing who I really was inside and I didn’t really know how.

My friends, family and society hadn’t taught me. Instead, they had conditioned and indoctrinated me into a certain way of living and being.

I bought that ticket to give myself a chance to break the mould, find true happiness and reinvent myself or rather, figure out who I was without all the structures that I had grown up with.

Coming from a life where I’d been in institutions my entire life and never really had the opportunity to explore who I was without them, this journey began by putting myself out there in baby steps.

Underlying all of that was a desire to explore ancient cultures, learn their secrets and find higher truth.

Stage 3 – The Dark Night of the Soul

The dreaded dark night of the soul might be one of the most fortunate things that you can experience during your lifetime.

It definitely doesn’t feel like it when you’re going through it, but in the grand scheme of things, the dark night of the soul leads to a second birth.

The characteristics of this point of your journey is that you’ve completely turned away from the world.

You’ve searched and scoured the internet, local libraries and maybe even historical sites for the answers you’re seeking and you have nothing to show for it except perhaps some texts that you cannot decipher.

Perhaps you also had your own version of a pilgrimage, but you came back empty-handed and exhausted with no choice but to suck up your ego and fit yourself back into the societal mould that you so desperately tried to get away from.

At this point, the thoughts that had begun back in Stage 1 are consuming every waking minute of your day.

It’s hard to think about anything else, let alone be a productive member of society. No matter what changes you make, you cannot get away from:

• Wanting more in life
• Feeling like a cog in the machine of society
• Wanting to make a difference in the world
• Feeling like your life is just passing you by
• Feeling oppressed by society, unseen and unheard
• Feeling lost, stuck and alone

My story parallel

I experienced the dark night of the soul when I came home from South America. I hadn’t found what I was looking for and I had no choice but to get a 9-5 job and start working.

I felt like all my efforts were for nothing and even that potential of freedom had been shot down.

I only lasted in that job for 6 months. After that, the voices of dissatisfaction in my mind became so loud and unbearable that I decided to quit my job with absolutely no plan going forward.

For me, it was the only way out of the pain I was experiencing; the only way that I even had a chance to find what I was looking for.

Even though I didn’t know what I would do without the structures of society in my life, I trusted that somehow, I would figure it out.

Stage 4 – On the Path

At some point during the dark night of the soul, a ray of light will find you. It may come as something very familiar and mundane, but the thought of pursuing it scares you.

The battle you have to face is if you decide to follow that ray or not. That decision will challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and make some uncomfortable choices.

The longer that you put off making those choices, the more the feelings of dissatisfaction inside you will grow.

Sometimes the universe gives you a tight deadline and you have to make a choice sooner than you feel ready to.

Once you’ve made the unconventional but better decision, committed to it and integrated the changes that that choice implies, you will be out of the dark night of the soul and on the path.

Here, you will stand by the choice you made despite your own doubts and insecurities because the thing that you were drawn to feels right and brings you peace.

The stillness that you found and continue to find justifies it all.

Answers start arriving and you’re willing to do what it takes to continue on this path and establish yourself in this newfound peace.

As you establish yourself, you’ll find ways to give back to the world and make a tangible difference that resonates and feels good to you.

My story parallel

For me, this choice wasn’t just whether or not to quit my job but rather whether or not I should leave that entire way of being behind.

After quitting, I pursued the only thing that made sense to me in that moment: yoga.

I researched yoga schools and once I hit purchase on a yoga teacher training program, the metaphorical snowball began to roll on its own and it grew and grew and grew.

I found myself, the answers I was seeking and my path forward in life.

You can find an overview of my entire journey on my about page.

What happens after a Spiritual Awakening?

During your spiritual awakening, you’re peeling back the layers of the ego that keep you confined in the outward-going ways of the world.

As you peel back the layers, and commit to the path that has found you, you’re effectively establishing yourself on the spiritual path.

You will pick up a regular spiritual practice (like yoga) that guides you through your blockages and to higher and higher levels of awareness until you attain moksha or spiritual liberation.

How long does a Spiritual Awakening last?

The amount of time that it takes you to work through your spiritual awakening depends entirely on you, your karma and how you approach the journey.

If you run from the journey, and avoid it by drowning yourself in the world, then it will inevitably take longer and lead to you feeling stuck in life.

Trust me, I’ve tried to run from this journey.

The more I tried to hide in the world and distract myself with the mundane, the longer it took me to work through all the things that were coming up for me.

When you drown yourself in the world, your inner turmoil will seem to subside and give you peace. You may have experienced that the turmoil comes back and every time it does; it is more intense.

Until you take responsibility and face whatever is coming up for you, it will not go away.

Guidance on the Path

While on this path, you will likely experience multiple awakenings.

Everything in your external world is designed to help you move through these awakenings. The right people, resources and situations will always show up to guide you forward.

If things in your world are triggering deep emotional pain, childhood stresses or trauma, it’s because these emotions have been buried deep inside you and are ready to be released. This is pending karma.

Practices like yoga will help you release deep-root stresses, burn through your karma and become a shining reflection of the infinite Self that exists inside you.

In reality, this is the purpose of yoga.

Yoga is union. When the body, breath and mind become one with the universal consciousness, you are in yoga.

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What is the ultimate goal of a Spiritual Awakening?

And now you might be wondering what the point of a spiritual awakening is and why you have to go through it in the first place.

A spiritual awakening is a natural evolutionary process that ultimately helps you raise your level of consciousness and experience inner peace, harmony and love.

You have taken birth here to learn lessons, grow and evolve.

You can think of this world as a school. When you first start off, you are thrilled by your classes, your friends and all the wonderful things you’re learning and seeing.

As you progress through the grades, you become more aware of the repetitive nature of school. Somehow the people are the same, the situations you face are the same and the emotions are the same.

By the end of it, everything feels like a chore and you’re so ready to move on and do something else with your time.

Once you discover what you want to do next and find your place in the world, you let go of the lifestyle you once knew and surrender completely to your new way of being.

Just like you can’t stay in school as an adolescent forever, you cannot stay in the pre-awakening state forever. You naturally want to move toward peace, happiness and higher purpose in life.

Your Spiritual Awakening is Part of your Overarching Spiritual Journey

Yoga means union with the infinite being and yoga is a spiritual path.

When I say there are 4 distinct paths of yoga, I mean that there are 4 paths to infinity and supreme consciousness. I do not mean that there are 4 different modalities of asana practice.

Not surprisingly, world religions incorporate many yogic practices that have been around since time immemorial.

Gyana Yoga

Gyana yoga is the path of knowledge. By studying ancient scriptural knowledge, dialogues and the Self, you can reach infinity.

Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion. Through love and devotion to the Divine and all of existence, you can reach infinity.

Karma Yoga

Karma yoga is the path of selfless service. By performing acts of service and charity with no desire for the fruits of your actions, you can reach infinity.

Raja Yoga

Raja yoga is the royal path or the effortless path. This is a very scientific path and perhaps the easiest. It will take you to infinity whether you believe it will or not.

This path encompasses the 8 limbs of yoga. This is where asana practice fits into the whole picture.

Denouncing the World and Becoming a Yogi

While we’re on the topic of the paths of yoga, let’s bust a myth.

Many people are under the impression that to be a true yogi, you need to denounce the world. Many people believe that you cannot be a yogi while living in the material world and enjoying material comforts.

This is a false misinterpretation of the yogic texts.

You can do both.

In fact, greater skill is required to be a yogi and still live in the world, and that is a true yogi.

How to make the Spiritual Journey easier?

Let’s bust another myth.

Many people believe that they can undergo the spiritual journey and reach liberation on their own.

It’s impossible.

To learn how to walk – something that we feel is very basic – you need the help of people who can walk. You need to see, imitate and take the support of those who have been there and done that.

The same goes for learning how to drive. You take lessons and practice with experienced drivers.

This is also true for learning any skill. You learn from people who have already mastered the skill.

In the spiritual realm, this is amplified.

Why?

Because you are moving toward something that is nameless and formless.

How will you do it if you have no guide?

Even studying scriptures that come from enlightened sages requires some skill.

As you saw in the previous section, it is very possible to grossly misinterpret scriptural knowledge and make life decisions that do not actually support your spiritual growth.

The guidance and support of someone who has been there, done that and is established in the space is essential to make this journey easier.

Since you are working with your energy and the deeper layers of your consciousness, you want someone who is grounded enough to help with this.

This is where Parm’s Yoga comes in.

If you are interested in receiving guidance with your spiritual journey, I have achieved results with my own journey and those of my clients.

Click here to apply for 1:1 coaching and see if it’s the right fit for you.

“When I worked with Parm I felt more calm and in control, not as lost or afraid that my life was passing me by or that I was stuck in this dark hole and couldn’t get out. I worked out more, meditated, and enjoyed yoga for essentially the first time. I felt supported with Parm along for the ride and she was there for me every step of the way.”

Summer Hasan

Bonus: Spiritual Awakening Test

If you’re not quite at the stage of committing to a single path, it could be that you’re at an earlier phase of your journey.

Good news!

Our Free Spiritual Awakening Test will help you pinpoint exactly where you are on your spiritual journey.

We’ll also share personalized guidance, resources and advice designed to help you move forward powerfully on the spiritual path no matter what stage you’re at.

Click the link below to do the test!

Spiritual Awakening Test

Pinpoint exactly where you are on your spiritual journey and receive personalized guidance, resources and advice on how to move forward.

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