Forget everything you know about spiritual awakenings and enlightenment.
It’s actually extremely simple. There are only two cardinal rules:
1. Forgive everything
2. Love yourself first
Anything and everything else you might need to know about enlightenment is available to you as direct psychic knowledge on the other side of your forgiveness work.
And every single thing you’ve ever heard about “should” or “must” beyond forgiveness is an unnecessary complication, and a placebo that somebody else has decided is the universal truth because they heard it worked for somebody else.
You don’t need to do yoga, you don’t need to go to a Buddhist temple, you don’t need to eat vegan or attend sound healing ceremonies or collect crystals. You don’t need to abstain or sacrifice. You don’t even need to meditate in any specific way.
It’s not about removing pleasure from your life. Please keep enjoying pleasure. Good lord, please keep enjoying your pleasures. You just need to begin to forgive.
There is nothing you must do but forgive everyone and everything, every situation, and every part of yourself, every taboo, every historical injustice, every grudge and resentment, every trigger, every emotional addiction and looping thought, and every shame, gently and gradually. As you wake up and practice forgiveness, you will begin to understand viscerally and through experience that forgiveness is literally the same as non-attachment, as letting go, and as unconditional love of self and others.
Without the visceral understanding of that sentence and of what forgiveness actually entails, it can seem rather scary. There may be many things that you don’t want to forgive, that you feel deserve eternal punishment for a finite error, including yourself. I have been going through this process intentionally for a year and a half, and I understand. I understand those feelings completely. It is scary. Why would you want to let go of anger toward corrupt bankers and politicians? Systemic issues and generational family dramas? Why would you want to let go of attachment to love? How could you even begin to let go of the idea that you are limited in any way? Then you might have to be the hero of your own story!
I get it. But I absolutely promise that on the other side of those fears, once you’ve let go, you’ll find that your heart shines more and more and you feel more love for everything, for yourself, your life, and other people. Your special loves will become more special once you let them go, not less. On the other side of fear, there is only ever love.
And so, here is the only time I will use the word must. You MUST learn to forgive. Genuine forgiveness is not lip service with a background grudge. It is a glowing heart and an understanding that the other party, or yourself, is a loving soul doing its best to grow.
Here, on this site, we will learn to practice forgiveness.
So what is a Spiritual Awakening?
A spiritual awakening is a re-alignment with the Universe and unconditional love through forgiveness and non-judgement.
As you begin learning to accept more love for yourself through forgiveness, that love starts overflowing to everyone and everything around you.
You will have your own unique, singularly intimate experience. It will be the greatest adventure of your life so far.
A spiritual awakening is the complete undoing of false limiting belief systems that have been holding you back from your truest desires, the life experiences you desire so strongly that you have buried them for fear of the pain of never having them. The massive amounts of energy you have spent clinging to your past will become available as rocket fuel for your future.
Waking up is coming to the understanding that your mind is literally creating your reality, and becoming intimate with its contents, with facing your greatest fears and greatest loves. It is learning to change your thoughts and actions to match your desires and accepting the increasingly thrilling gifts bestowed upon you by the Universe, because that’s what an unconditionally self-loving you would do.
The voice of fear
Will there be complications? Yes.
The nagging voice of fear in your head has become so persistent, so ubiquitous, that you are going to have a difficult time overcoming it. That is the journey.
The nagging voice of fear in your head has become so persistent, so ubiquitous, that you are going to have a difficult time overcoming it. That is the journey.
Every single difficulty that arises is simply a curtain of fear with nothing behind it.
Every. Single. One.
Fear will make itself seem solid and substantial, but it is like a doorway- you can walk right through, and find that on the other side are not the shame and horrors you were expecting, because those were only burdens you were carrying that you left at the doorway. When you walk through, there is love. Each time you pass a gate of fear, there is more and more love than before. It never ends.
Fear will present itself in many disguises: confusion, stress, anxiety, depression, denial, and addiction. You will learn to unmask all of them.
You are ready to wake up. I trust that you are. This is a big milestone. The entire Universe is proud of you and cheering you on. Behind you, neon stars are exploding in excitement for your journey. You are a hero.
Understanding emotions
There is a lot of confusion about the nature of emotions, what they mean, and what to do about them. While it’s more than I can describe in this blog post, it is extremely important to at least give a little summary.
On your spiritual journey, and through your entire life, your emotions are your signposts. They are signals from your soul to go in this or that direction, take this or that action, or even to change your mind about this or that topic (forgiveness). It will be important for you to spend time thinking about your emotions, ideally beginning with those that are most potent. These are often love, desire, hate, fear, shame, and guilt.
You will learn to follow the threads of your emotions to their roots until you untangle them all. When you begin sorting them and letting go of attachments that are not serving you, you’ll realize that your emotions are a direct line of communication with your soul and that if you follow them wisely and bravely, they will lead you to the fulfillment of your dreams. It’s a cosmic game of “getting warmer”.
You’ll realize that your emotions are a direct line of communication with your soul and that if you follow them wisely and bravely, they will lead you to the fulfillment of your dreams.
The issue for most people when it comes to emotions is not the emotions themselves, but clinging to them. The problem is not feeling angry at an injustice, but having an unaddressed pattern of anger at injustice. The problem is not that you are sad, but that every time you get sad, you are so worried about being sad that you become anxious on top of it or block it altogether. The problem isn’t that you desire and long for people or goals, but that you lock desire away for fear of never having its fulfillment.
The mental act of clinging to or blocking an emotion does exactly this: it prevents new emotions from coming in. It literally prevents you from hearing the guidance from your soul. From a state of clinging to, avoiding, or burying emotions, it will be difficult or impossible to make a decision that is beneficial to you, because the answers are contained in the flow of emotions that you are disallowing from your mind.
When you learn to feel your emotions without clinging to or burying them, you let them flow so that you can learn from them, act on them, and build a spectacularly vibrant, loving, and playful life.
Facing challenges on your spiritual path
Waking up is the greatest adventure I’ve ever been on. I am constantly surprised by amazing opportunities and synchronistic gifts. You will receive wonderful surprises as well.
But along with thrilling gifts, you will also face fearsome challenges. Both the pleasures and the pains will be perfectly and exactly what you need to experience in order to grow. They will reflect to you precisely what is in your heart, one lesson at a time.
You will at every turn have the opportunity to transform a challenge into a gift, as each challenge is a gift in disguise, simply a prompt to help you change your perspective. Part of waking up is learning to trust that this is true. The entire world is your mirror.
You will learn to trust your own intuition- your feelings, that “getting warmer” game with your soul- above all else, and you will begin to look at your own desires so that you realize every single thing standing in the way of your having them is simply a limiting belief, and it is within your power to change those beliefs to match the reality of love.
Waking up is learning to love yourself first, always and unconditionally.
It is learning to dispense of the idea of sacrifice and begin to know intimately, through experience, that loving yourself first in every possible instance, in every possible way, is exactly what will give you the power, drive, and love necessary to bestow love onto others and live a life of passionate creativity. It is learning that self-love is the most unselfish act a human is capable of, that self-love is the foundation for a life of peace and passion.
It is also learning that forgiveness of others is a supremely self-loving act, and that ultimately, in order to love yourself unconditionally, you will have to love everyone else unconditionally, too. But there is no rush- we’ll take it one situation at a time.
How do you know if you’re having a spiritual awakening?
If you feel you’re having an awakening, you probably are.
You are the ultimate authority on your own experiences, so trust yourself. No matter what anyone else says, you are the one who gets to decide what your experience means. It’s all for you.
What next?
Since there are only two rules, you should learn the following two skills.
Consider these your course requirements.
1. Learn how to practice forgiveness
The singular most important thing you can do now is begin to practice forgiveness.
2. Learn how to practice true self-love
Beyond that, everything else is optional.
Consider the following your course electives.
- Learn about the nature of the Universe
- Read spiritual books you feel drawn to
