What Is Spiritual Awakening?

Most of humanity is living in the trance of separation, sometimes called egoic consciousness - or ego for short. This means that consciousness is habitually identifying with the inner world of those body-minds, causing them to believe they are separate people.

Humans have a wonderful capacity to look within, known as self-reflection. This automatic function of mind creates the illusion that there is something there that we are looking at - ourselves! When we self-reflect, we see this ego process in action. A continual identification with thoughts, emotions and sensations. We innocently believe that the noisy and continual content that is arising is who we are. People in our world confirm to us that this is correct - you are a separate person (which is not true), further deepening our belief in separation.

When we initially hear about awakening and that there is no person there, it can seem unbelievable and frightening. We have spent our entire lives listening to the mind talking from the perspective of this one that doesn't exist.

Here are some ways identification occurs when operating from ego:

- When a thought arises and is believed to be true, then we are caught. Thought after thought will appear, and we'll be lost in this trance of the mind until its cycle completes. The mind has well-worn pathways established from collective and personal conditioning. If these thoughts are not examined, outward and inward stimuli will trigger the conditioning and the thought patterns indefinitely.

- Along with being caught in the mind's trance, we are believing that there is a separate self that is having the thoughts.

- These thought patterns activate emotions and that gives us a deeper sense of who we think we are. We may have the thought that "all people are mean" and then feel scared, lonely and angry. The emotional response makes the belief seem even more true.

- Some long-held emotions can feel so familiar to us that even if they are difficult, such as depression, it gives us a sense of who we are. Perhaps we wouldn't know who we were without depression or anxiety.

- We attach to the body - we may identify with an illness, pain, sensations in the body, or our appearance - attractive, fit, overweight, unusual.

- We unknowingly create an idea of the image we present to the world and then fight to maintain it. I am beautiful, I'm kind, I'm funny, I am unique...

We become trapped in a world of self-concern, measuring ourselves against apparent others, causing desires and aversions. We can feel that something is off, we feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled, and we interpret that as needing more of what we like and less of what we dislike. But we can never fill the literal void within us.

The constant reference to this imaginary person only reinforces the illusion. When we examine our thoughts, we can see that they're usually speaking from the perspective of this imaginary self. "I wish I could find a partner." Who is it that wants the partner? When we start to bring attention to this fraud, that's when the illusion can begin to dissolve.

None of this is wrong, it's just a stage that consciousness goes through. It allows you, as the formless, to experience yourself as separate people. You forget that you are the eternal creator, when you birth yourself into human form. But when the time is right, you begin to remember what is true. You start to wonder "who am I?" and see through the layers of identification, revealing your true nature hiding in plain sight. This is known as spiritual awakening.