When a shaman is called or chosen by the spiritual world, the person will often be hit with a dramatic illness. This can be a difficult physical illness, a mental illness, or both. It can be so bad it brings them to a literal physical death.

Do you find yourself afraid of what’s to come? If things don’t go your way, are you terrified of the unknown outcome? Is your mind running around in circles panicked about not knowing what the future will bring? If you answered yes to any or all of these, you are not alone!

Awakening is the complete transformation and realization that you are not what you thought you were. The identification with a personal self is how we operate in the world of separation, however, is it truly who we are?

Have you heard of this term? Spiritual Bypassing. Whether you’ve heard of it or not, the concept is simple enough to understand, and chances are you’ve fallen prey to it yourself, or know other people who have.

Many things in life can trigger a spiritual awakening experience. The loss of a loved one, a traumatic occurrence, a sudden diagnosis of an illness, a desire to know truth, kundalini awakening, shamanic initiation, a transcendental experience, a psychic opening, a psychotic break, psychological disturbance, and any other life circumstances that can transform your perception of reality.

Fear. The fundamental thing we all face at some point. For me personally, I had a run in with fear that quite literally shook me to the core of who I thought myself to be. This up close, and very personal relationship I developed, lasted much longer than I like to admit, however, it eventually taught me something that nothing else could.

Have you spent time in your life seeking the deeper meaning of this world? Do you yearn for a connection to something greater than the surface level interactions? Do you find spiritual teachings you resonate with, groups you feel drawn to, and then you don’t?

Are you changing and it feels out of your hands? Has your awareness shifted so much that your entire life is different? Do you feel like everything in your world is blowing up and your life purpose is now uncertain? These are all very normal feelings to have while going through the awakening or undoing process.

Living a spiritual path, truly seeking a deeper meaning to your life, and wanting to feel inner peace and contentment in a world spinning out of control, can be a real challenge. Keeping yourself grounded, centered, and connected to spirit no matter what life throws at you can bring incredible depth and true joy to your life.

Looking deeper at the cycles of time, and for the sake of discussion, if reincarnation is real and we continue to live lifetime after lifetime, when does it end? Does it end? If it does end, how can we actively facilitate this process? As A Course in Miracles suggests, if this world is truly unreal, and the only true reality is God, how do we get back to reality? How do we wake up from the dream? What are the steps we can take to move closer to our true nature?

Your awakening journey may eventually bring you to a place where time seems irrelevant. This concept of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years repeating themselves over and over again begins to feel very illusory. From the moment we are born, until the day we die, we seem to be on a time clock. Time to get up, time to go to school, time to go to work, time to eat, time for another appointment, time to take the trash out, and time to go to sleep.

Going through incredible inner change can leave you feeling like an outsider, a loner, or an introvert with no desire to interact with people. The inner movement within speaks so loudly it is all you can put your attention toward. The mere thought of mingling with those around you feels torturous. Just opening your mouth to say anything seems odd. You don’t feel like the same person anymore and you’re doubting if you can still delight in conversation.

When you find yourself changing on the inside and you can’t make any sense of it, it baffles the mind. You can feel something shifting deeply within you, your perception is changing, you know longer see things the way you used to, and now you are having difficulty describing this experience, not only to yourself, but to those around you.

As we come upon the New Year, and I think back to all the different blog topics and podcasts this past year in 2023, I can’t help but sum up the awakening journey into one simple concept, “Are you arguing or accepting reality?” To answer this, you must decide which side of the mind will answer this question. If you realize you spend a fair amount of time resisting what is happening in your life, you can be fairly certain the ego is making that decision.

Consciousness. What does it mean exactly? There are a lot of new age thinkers presenting consciousness as the nature of our reality, as who we really are, as the field of awareness that comprises everything within the universe. A very simple understanding of consciousness is being aware of one’s own internal and external environment, or better yet, being aware of something else.