Potential Stages of Spiritual Awakening

Before you read this post, I highly recommend reading “Your Roadmap To Spiritual Awakening.” The Roadmap is an excellent primer on awakening and ascension that explains how simple and beautiful the process is. The post you are about to read goes into more detail on the practical complications of what is in essence an extremely simple concept.

Once you have read the Roadmap, continue on!

Why am I writing this?

There are already many blog posts across the internet about stages of spiritual awakenings and “symptoms” of Kundalini awakenings. I’d like to add one more, in a format I wish I had a year ago when this began for me.

Based on the blog posts I’d read, I was expecting a Kundalini awakening to come in as a nearly singular moment- as one seizure-like, intense evening where all the Universe rushed in at once. It was only looking back on it that I realized that what I experienced was what is commonly referred to as a Kundalini awakening, though spread over the course of a year. While I wouldn’t describe the experience as gentle, there certainly was no moment when I thought I might need to be rushed off to the hospital because I’d lost control of my body. Perhaps it can happen that way, but that seems like a pretty specific situation.

How long does spiritual awakening take?

Spiritual awakenings occur in the mind, outside of our perception time, and I can’t give you any numbers or dates except the ones that have applied to me (a year for the initial, intense awakening period).

Dates and times will probably be different for you. So it makes more sense to describe the awakening process in terms of potential experiences rather than time.

So how long will it take to wake up? However long it takes. That’s the truth. Rushing will only stall the process.

Because awakening never occurs the same way in two people, who is to say when, specifically, the process starts and ends? There is really no start or end, so what we’ll be talking about is the bit when everything suddenly feels extremely potent, rapid, and confusing, and ultimately tapers off into peace and pleasure. We’ll call the confusing bit awakening and the peace, pleasure, and all that follows ascension.

Don’t worry too much about specific definitions or semantics, or try to put your awakening into a box. It’s a kaleidoscope of infinity. You can call it a Kundalini awakening, a spiritual awakening, a spiritual growth spurt, expansion, ascension, enlightenment- the vocabulary has become so entangled it doesn’t even matter. Make up a new word if you want. You’re learning to love more deeply, and that is all that matters.

Possible stages of awakening

Awakenings may come in stages, and they may be similar to what I’ll describe.

All I can really tell you is what happened to me, but I expect there are infinite ways awakening can occur. It is also rather arbitrary to number and categorize experiences, but it’s useful enough for now.

Here are the sort-of-stages I have experienced, so far.

Possible stages of awakening and ascension:

Pre-awakening and spiritual curiosity
Intense, fiery Kundalini Awakening & shadow work
Confusion and re-alignment
Passion, love, and alignment

1. Signs A Spiritual Awakening Is Coming

It may feel difficult to know for certain whether an awakening is on your horizon, but here are some possible clues. However, there are many, many more possible clues than this and your intuition will be the best barometer.

Possible signs an awakening is coming:

You develop new interests in practices like tarot, journaling, meditation, reading self-help books, or anything considered spiritual
You spend more time thinking about your life and what you really want
You crave more time in nature
You become curious about psychedelics or weed
You start examining the contents of your heart and mind
You feel dissatisfied with your life
You start noticing synchronicities that seem too specific to be imagined
You suspect there is more to life and the Universe than just what you see around you
You experience spontaneous knowledge of things it seems you couldn’t possibly know
You experience a catalytic event, like the death of a family member, falling in love, etc.
You strongly desire a spiritual awakening, and you call in your shadow work.

2. Possible Symptoms Of Spiritual Awakening

Since every person alive has perfectly unique desires and fears, each awakening will present itself differently. Below are just a few possible symptoms of spiritual or Kundalini awakening- ones that I’ve experienced myself. You may experience some or most of them, and also entirely different ones not listed.

None of this has to occur in any particular order, and some of it doesn’t have to occur at all. You can even seem to cycle through intense experiences multiple times, so that it feels like you’re on a loopy emotional rollercoaster. It will definitely turn you upside down at some points.

Possible symptoms of a kundalini spiritual awakening:

You suspect you are having a Kundalini awakening.
It feels like your soul is on fire
Your beliefs shift dramatically
Intense confusion
Large challenges and lessons arrive
Your emotions intensify and change from day to day
You feel intensely creative
You spend a lot of time thinking about your feelings
You experience unconditional love
You feel peace like you’ve never felt before
Mundane things become magical
You sometimes feel as if your heart has been struck by a lightening bolt of love and collapse in tears of joy and laughter
It becomes physically uncomfortable to not tell people you love them
You start having psychic and telepathic experiences
You feel brain tingles when you receive psychic information
You have a lot more energy
You cry a lot
You wonder if you are going crazy
You feel the need to sway, dance, walk, and move around a lot more
You think about snakes or other Kundalini/spiritual imagery often (I so badly wanted a pet snake during my awakening)
Time simultaneously feels extremely fast and extremely slow
You forgive old resentments
Your fears begin presenting themselves as challenges
More synchronicities appear
You see clearly your true desires and the fears that stand in the way
You gain massive insights into your own mind
You see glimpses of your future
You begin downloading information from the Universe
Your sleep patterns change
You become aware that you are god
You become aware that everyone is god
You begin to develop an intimate relationship with the Universe

3. Confusion And Realignment

Ah, so you thought after the initial lightening bolts of peace and joy and intensity you were in the clear? Bless your heart. That was only a little sample platter, a tiny, tiny taste of what can become available to you after you go through the process of forgiving and dropping beliefs that are blocking you from experiencing that love on a constant basis.

Next you must fully embrace the new understanding that you are the author of your life. You are the power. You are the sole manifestor of your reality. Your deepest desires, the ones you have been too afraid or embarrassed to admit even to yourself, are available to you the moment you believe they are and set your intentions and actions in alignment with them.

In order to help you get there, the Universe will seem to throw every fear at you in order for you to face them, overcome them, and allow a greater flow of love through your life.

Here are some confusing spiritual challenges you may experience:

Old friends, patterns, and jobs falling out of your life
Facing all of your fears
Dealing with anger, sadness, grief, shame, and resentment
Feeling like there is only one perfect decision in every situation/militant thinking
Self-judgement and doubt about your desires, capabilities, and worthiness
Feeling like you need to be perfect before you are worthy of ascension and a relationship with the Universe
Not trusting the Universe to deliver your desires
Trying to solve all of your problems logically from an intensely confused mental state
Distortions in your experience of time
Putting small, daily practices and habits into place

Best Practices For An Easy Awakening

Challenges do not have to be challenging. In truth (though this is extremely difficult to accomplish), you do not have to experience challenges externally at all. Through meditation and contemplation, you can face all of your fears in your mind and set your desires and intentions in full alignment without moving a muscle.

However, for nearly 100% of people who have ever been born, difficult challenges will appear externally to to be met with action. Overcoming these challenges simply helps you release old beliefs and fears and accept more love, something you could have done entirely in your own mind if you wanted to. (This is what psychic masters living as hermits are doing.) I am absolutely not recommending that you put pressure on yourself to become a psychic hermit- in fact, I suspect that would be much slower and a lot less fun. Your external reality is an extremely helpful and perfect classroom to help change your internal reality.

Best practices for waking up gently:

Forgiveness/non-attachment/letting go/clearing out
Turning resentment and shame into gratitude
Confronting your deepest love
Accepting more and more love from the Universe and your external reality
Actively practicing unconditional self-love (inner peace)
Integrating your different personality compartmentalizations
Aligning your intentions with your desires
Allowing yourself to think and feel literally any thought or feeling without shame
Creating a new life with intention

4. Embracing Passion, Love, & Alignment

Ooh baby, do you feel that good energy running through your life? Do you like that you’re laughing at little things and that you don’t care anymore if strangers catch you smiling for no reason? Have you started experimenting with talking to the Universe in more specific ways? Are you noticing that everything you want seems to be flowing in nicely, and you no longer feel there is a need to rush or make endless to-do lists?

Welcome to ascension (or whatever you want to call it), where unconditional self-love unlocks the love of the entire Universe.

Here are some experiences you might have during spiritual ascension:

You protect your peace as your number one priority
You expect good things to happen
You have very strong and clear boundaries
You sometimes experience instantaneous learning and perspective shifts from challenges
Unconditional love spreads from you to others
You use and improve psychic abilities intentionally
You Know, capital K, where you are in alignment and your desires are coming to you
Your actions are gently falling into alignment with your desires
Clarity is more common than confusion
You access an ever-expanding flow of new creative ideas in alignment with your desires
You have much greater control over your consciousness and focus
You feel very deeply but do not cling to intense emotions like they’re the last chopper out of Vietnam (aka you are unattached)
You empathize with other perspectives, even when someone is angry at you
You communicate clearly, with honesty and integrity
You are more excited to wake up in the morning
You feel deep gratitude for all of the beautiful experiences, objects, and people in your life
You tell more and more people that you love them and what you love about them
You Know you have immense creative manifesting power and begin to redesign your life with intention
You know your “calling” and act on it (we all choose our own callings- there is no predestined path)
You’re just not particularly worried about most things

What Next?

Spiritual growth never ends. We are all always growing in our capacity to give and receive love. After you come into full alignment, what comes next?

Well, you get to decide. You can be and have anything you want, and bring love into the world in spectacular, weird, inventive new ways. It is all up to you now, captain.

Good luck out there.