Thoughts run through you faster than ever. One moment you have a lot of them. The next thing you know, they've all disappeared out of thin air and leave you totally empty. Sometimes your mind is so vacant that you want to puke, or punch someone in the face.
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Yet you notice an underlining stillness in you no matter where you go. Trust me, they're not. You're cut off from the world and oddly, you feel OK about it. You feel like you're living in the middle of a desert, alone. No matter how gregarious you used to be, by the middle of this you probably find yourself alarmingly isolated. All your social charms are gone. You don't even know how to talk properly because your mind is on leave.
Yet most of the time you feel just fine without company. Aloneness is rich and meditative and seldom lonely.
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You don't have much desire to connect with the world anyway. In fact, you've become so sensitive that if you go to over-crowded venues, after a while you feel dizzy and overwhelmed. You find yourself sort of withdrawn energetically even when you're interacting with others. And if your head is stuffed with spiritual doctrines, this would freak you out, because being spiritually advanced means you should be as open as possible, no? The alchemical change process needs space to happen. When the caterpillar is morphing, you don't cut the chrysalis and expose it to the open air.
Similarly, things are happening in you that the eyes can't see. Listen to your body. And don't force yourself to be any other way than what every cell of you wants to be. One day you feel sublime and free. The next day you're driven into the ground and you don't even know why. Nothing bad has happened, but you feel like a stinky sock soaked in the rain, miserable and heavy. You have nobody to complain to; others don't understand what you're complaining about. Not even your shrinks or your shamans. They can't help with your case, because you're not sick; the most they can do is to not misdiagnose you.
So go ahead and fire them already. Besides, you don't have the language to describe your condition to others- too few people have experienced it; and those who experienced it never talked with each other enough to develop a consensus-based lingo. You are feeling this way because a new system is being constructed in you, while the heavy debris of your old structure is burning away.
You're simply smothered by the ashes. Try not to engage with the dark thoughts accompanying the smoke. Know that they are not yours anymore. They're just saying goodbye. You need lots, and lots, and lots of rest. Otherwise you are tired all the time. If you want to take a nap after breakfast, consider this your new normal and go ahead and lie down. All the growth and reconfiguration in you takes enormous amount of energy. Think of your body as a computer changing operating system.
In between systems the machine seems stunned and can hardly perform any function.
If you don't expect your computer to be productive during those paradigm shifting time, be even more patient with your own inner computer. Respect your body's instinct. Keep it well rested and nourished. And stop scolding yourself for being "lazy". You occupy your body differently. There's more space in your body, like you're wearing a loose-fitting shirt. In our sleep state, we likely take these things for granted and fail to appreciate their true value. Appreciation is an important sign and symptom of spiritual awakening, especially in terms of well-being because it helps free us from wanting.
In Buddhist terms , we become free of craving and so free of the psychological suffering this creates. Fear in general decreases in the wakeful state and fear of death is our most fundamental fear. The ego feels especially fragile in the face of death. This decreased fear of death is related to the transcendence of the separate ego — another sign and symptom of spiritual awakening. However, perhaps the main reason why the awakened person loses fear of death is because of a different attitude toward — and understanding of — death.
Our consciousness is just the product of brain activity; when our brain stops functioning, our consciousness ceases, too. But from the spiritually awakened perspective, reality is more complex than this. The essence of our being transcends our brain and our individual identity. In the sleep state we have a strong tendency to identify ourselves, to give ourselves labels in order to enhance our fragile sense of self.
We like to define ourselves in terms of our religion, ethnicity, nationality, and political affiliation, and also by the labels of our careers, achievements, and qualifications.
Defining ourselves in these ways gives us a sense of belonging, and bolsters our egos. In spiritual awakening experiences this need for identity and belonging fades away. People no longer feel affiliated with any particular religion or nationality, just as they no longer feel defined by their careers or their achievements. They no longer feel that they are Americans or Jews or scientists or socialists. They feel that such labels are superficial and meaningless. Another sign of a spiritually awakened individual is that they often have a similar attitude toward different spiritual traditions , too.
Doing Spiritual Warfare Without All The Weirdness
As a sign of spiritual awakening, they have an open and ecumenical attitude, and they recognize that different traditions are simply expressions of the same underlying truths. As a sign of spiritual awakening, awakened individuals have a wide sense of perspective, a macrocosmic outlook. This means that they have a spiritual awareness of the wider impact of their individual actions. For example, they may decide not to buy or use goods that are produced by exploited workers or oppressive regimes. This wide perspective that occurs as a common symptom of spiritual awakening also means that, for spiritually awakened individuals, social or global issues are as real and important as their own personal concerns.
This wide sense of perspective has moral implications. As we have seen, awakened people tend to be more ethical and responsible, more compassionate and altruistic. But awakening also fosters a more all-encompassing and unconditional type of morality. For spiritually awakened individuals, justice and fairness are universal principles that transcend laws or conventions.
They may even break laws and potentially sacrifice their own well-being — perhaps even their lives — in order to uphold moral principles. In the sleep state, the process of familiarization that switches off our attention to the phenomenal world acts on our conceptual awareness, too. It switches off our attention to things we should ideally feel grateful for. Rather than appreciating what we have, we want more.
But awakened individuals do feel grateful after a spiritual awakening. They appreciate the value of their health and their freedom, the beauty and benevolence of their partners, and the innocence and radiance of their children. They have the ability to count their blessings, no matter how long they have had them.
They feel a profound sense of gratitude for small and simple experiences, which is one of the primary signs of spiritual awakening. This sense of appreciation also leads to curiosity and openness. They are the fruits of those inner changes, expressing themselves in terms of new traits, habits, and ways of living.
Spiritually developed individuals are commonly believed to be detached from the world and not particularly concerned about what is happening in it. Their spiritual enlightenment supposedly makes them indifferent to the trials and tribulations of ordinary people in everyday life. We imagine them sitting on mountaintops or in monasteries, basking in their own self-realization.
Spirituality: How To Nurture It
The following signs and symptoms of spiritual awakening are often present: We have a strong idealistic desire to change the world for the better, an impulse to serve other people and contribute to the human race in some way. We may feel a sense of mission , to help the human race move through our present phase of chaos and crisis into a new era of harmony. Awakened individuals love doing nothing.
They relish solitude, quietness, and inactivity. In humania, which is equivalent to a state of sleep, people find it difficult to do nothing or be alone with themselves because this means facing the discord of their own being and the turbulence of their thoughts. This is another one of the signs and symptoms of spiritual awakening.
Rather than fear quietness and inactivity, we enjoy them deeply because they allow us to touch into the radiance of our own well-being. That God himself endorses their lifestyle and encourages them to brave their own path. We are taking a stand against the works of darkness and, in a sense, fighting for the souls of men and women. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered moved, seconded, carried, and minuted in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Spiritual Warfare Occasionally Involves External Things
Lewis understood that in our polite, post-modern society, Satan tends to prowl about stealthily, dragging people to hell with their sin rather than their ritual sacrifices. That the influence of evil is seen primarily in websites and sitcoms and workplace affairs, not in blatant demonic rituals. When we boldly proclaim the gospel and take a stand against wickedness, we are certainly waging spiritual warfare. Most of our spiritual warfare takes place in our own hearts and by taking a stand for Christ in a broken and dark world.
People tend to talk about spiritual warfare in one of two ways: Not at all because it feels weird to talk about demons and the Devil and unseen realms.