When we hear about spiritual awakening, we often have the impression that it's something that happens overnight, almost instantly, and that's it. It’s as if from that moment on, you are completely and fully awake. But from listening to other people and from my own experience, it is far from a spontaneous occurrence. Of course, many times spiritual awakening can be activated by a sudden and unforeseen event...a tragic accident, the loss of a loved one, trauma, illness, psychological or emotional stress, as well as many other factors, but spiritual awakening occurs gradually over time.
So I don't want to discredit the idea of spontaneous awakening because it can happen for some people, but for most of us awakening happens over a period of time. It can even last a lifetime, or even several lifetimes... Very often, what led us to this experience was a disruptive event that changed our life in one way or another, and which triggered our awakening.
Our first experience of awakening often and mainly results in a radical change in our perception. This stage is generally just our initiation into awakening. In other words, we still have a long way to go from this point. During this process we may experience all kinds of ideas, breakthroughs or transformations which can include any number of things.
Among other things, this is the stage where we begin to heal our emotional wounds or resolve a negative tendency or thought pattern. This is when we begin to free ourselves from our attachments, desires and expectations, and let go of all kinds of resistance, false beliefs and illusions.
At this stage, issues that need healing can often seem fully resolved and released. We have taken the time to face these wounds and delve deeply into them, and because we have done this healing work, we may even feel as if our quality of life has changed, and in many ways it surely did. We may even find that we are less reactive, more satisfied, more at peace and more joyful. Sounds great, right? Well, sorry to be the one to break the bad news, but it's not like that at all.
When we think we finally see the end of the tunnel, somewhere along the way, or later, we find ourselves once again confronted with all the things we thought we had healed and left behind. Often, what we thought we had resolved once and for all suddenly reappears. This usually happens when we are faced again with a situation that always elicited an emotional response before.
This can be very disconcerting, confusing and discouraging. Just when we thought we had overcome the problem, here we are again, with the same reactions we had before our spiritual awakening. “Have I been wrong all this time?” is often what we ask ourselves. “Did I really experience an awakening, was it an illusion or was I just losing my mind at that moment? » This experience can raise a lot of questions about ourselves, and even lead us to think that we are completely lost. It may also occur to us that we have regressed, missed something, or taken a completely wrong path in the process.
You haven't done anything wrong, you're not lost, or whatever negative thoughts are popping up in your confused mind. In fact, it's completely normal. As I said earlier, awakening is not a “job” that you do once and for all and everything is resolved, because the awakening process is by no means a straight line. It looks more like an upward spiral swayed by the wind… a tornado! Although we are definitely progressing upward, we are simultaneously moving in circles, oscillating between stages of stagnation and stages of ascension, but also going through what seem to be regressions and coming back.
So it's common for us to find ourselves revisiting old feelings, old attachments, old patterns of thought and behavior. This means that these parts still need work to be resolved and healed. Even if we thought we had fixed those parts, and that may be true to some extent, in fact we may have cured a lot of it, but apparently not all of it. We may have solved just enough to give us the illusion that the problem has been completely fixed.
Often, if what we have to resolve is deeply rooted in our subconscious, we will be forced to come back to the same problem again and again to heal it. Each moment will offer us the opportunity to resolve it little by little, removing a layer of it each time. But if we do the work, each time we face the same problem, we may notice that we overcome it more and more easily. It can even give us the impression of not only seeing a little more clearly, while offering us new lessons, but also of having a deeper understanding of ourselves and our deep wounds. We might also find that our reaction, our emotion and whatever was triggering, weakens each time we revisit it, and tends not to last as long as before.
What to do when certain problems reappear? Just sit with it. Observe it and explore it further. By doing so, you will release them a little more. At this point, you believe that you can finally move on with your life thinking that everything is over and you have solved your problem for good. Not so fast! It could be over if the path of spiritual awakening was a straight line, but it is not like that, so we may face the same problem again and again. I know this sounds like a sick game and a never-ending story, but it's not.
Depending on the problem at hand, the situation could surely come up several times. It's just to face it again, and to show you that you still need to work on this problem, even if you thought it was behind you. You just have to continue the process and come back to your problem, as many times as necessary, in order to resolve it, learn from it, grow from it... until you let it go. It may take several interventions, several confrontations, but you will eventually resolve it.
Of course, it all depends on our willingness to face it, learn from it and overcome it. So to some, this may seem like a losing game, but I assure you that is not the case. It’s for our own growth, and it’s not supposed to be easy either.
However, I want to give you lots of encouragement. Just because we find ourselves continually revisiting unresolved emotions and tendencies doesn’t mean we should feel discouraged or perhaps even ashamed. Don't judge yourself or condemn yourself! Don't feel defeated or hopeless! On the contrary, all these experiences are signs that you are moving towards your healing. Don't doubt it! It may not be the direction you imagined, but you haven't strayed off the path, taken a few steps back, or been completely lost, so trust the process.
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