I was falling asleep when I was woken up by spirit to write this post as quickly as possible. I have been a little AWOL lately (with guilt, no less) to decipher exactly what my identity & purpose is. There are days when I’m reading voraciously on advanced spiritual topics, then hopping onto it girl podcasts, quantum leaping or searching for techniques on “how to get the perfect 90s blowout.” Then comes the “doing” phase where I want to do everything all at once. I fixed my career, my diet, my finances, my health, my social life, my workout regime. Then comes the phase where I don’t feel like doing any “improvements.” All I want to do is simply exist, enjoy & experience life as it comes. For so long, I gave myself a lot of guilt for taking this time off any “pursuit of perfection” almost as if to continue telling myself that “there’s so much left to do to reach the life I have been manifesting.”
Then I had to press pause. What was all this leading me to really? It led me to thinking, "have I been going through a year long spiritual awakening? Is this how it felt the last time?"
There's been so much talk about spirituality online & to make things worse, overdependency on ChatGPT to decode life. That's when I started paying attention to the signs & the phases. It's happened before. It may most definitely happen again. And it may be happening to you. Welcome to your spiritual awakening. Or the Dark Night of The Soul. It is in this phase where I had one of my darkest & most honest spiritual awakenings. And I'm going to show you how to navigate yours.
Please Note: This post is for spiritual guidance only and not a substitute for professional care. If you’re experiencing depression, anxiety, or mental health challenges, please reach out to a qualified therapist. For balanced support, you may also consult a trusted spiritual advisor.
The Signs: Everyone goes through this & it is just as unique as us, but there are certain signs which will help you understand if this is a spiritual awakening.
- The outside world or life as is starts lacking meaning almost as if there’s something beyond the constructs of your daily life. Instead of wanting to give in, you feel the pull to experience more.
- Spending time alone first feels threatening till all you want to do is spend time understanding yourself. You stop fighting with the perception of others & feel pushed to be more you.
- You start noticing the signs, the loops & the patterns around you & within you. Instead of fearing it, you feel pulled to rewrite them.
- You feel the need to rest a lot. Your body & mind feel heavy. Instead of wanting to disengage completely, you feel the need to be wiser with how much time you spend with others & with yourself in balance.
- Anything unaligned gets taken away without a trace. Not seen or heard from that ex who lives in the same city? That’s the Universe rewriting your present & ensuring your paths never cross since everything you had to learn from them has been learnt.
- You struggle between your old identity & your new one. It’s the in-between phase where the past identity fades & the new one is rewritten. It’s not that things don’t excite you, it’s that there are new things you discover that do.
- You question EVERYTHING. Every thought, every emotion, every interaction. You start analysing how things & thoughts make you feel with the sole purpose of, “does this allow me to become my best version?”
- On a physical level, things blow up. The job or relationship that you had for years & made you feel safe? Yes, it’s gone & no matter how much you pray to get it back, it isn’t coming.
- On a spiritual level, you feel like you know everything & nothing at once. You poke at your beliefs, your coping mechanisms, your faith (I struggled with this the most) & your practices.
The Why: When everything feels like it’s coming crashing down, it is easy to lose faith in yourself, in the Universe or whoever/whatever you believe in. This is when most people give up, wanting to go back to what once was. I get it, I’ve been there myself. It’s not easy to come out but I made it out & you can too. But to understand how to come out, the why is extremely important. Why did this happen to me. You may find yourself asking this question to others or yourself. Let me be the first to tell you, it’s ok to feel the pain. It’s ok if you don’t feel like “pushing through” it & it’s ok to question it. What is not ok is to either brush this under the metaphorical carpet or let this pain become your identity.
The reason this happens is because we’re spiritual beings going through a human experience. We are here to evolve & evolution is painful — think of a butterfly. When we pray or manifest for the one, the money or anything else, the Universe clears anything standing in the way of that, including yourself. Whatever happened, happened to strip you of the old identity, fears, limiting beliefs, clearing the way for the new. Keeping the manifesting angle aside, our souls chose to undergo certain lessons & karma we must endure. To fulfil them is our destiny & it comes with rewards.
Your spiritual awakening helps strip down everything you’re used to — your identity, your life, your perception. For eg. I can no longer have spicy food. I’m giving you a very small, minute detail of my life to understand & comprehend the scale of this. It makes you question & rewrite everything. I lost friends, jobs, money, relationships & almost lost Celestine. All of this was just to help me answer the question — who am I without these things, people & labels? Once you get the answer to this, which won’t be linear, you’ll feel fulfilled with or without anything or anyone.
The How: Like I mentioned above, this was done in phases. No one can tell you how long it lasts (trust me, I’ve had enough clients ask me this). The only answer I have is “till you decide to get out of it” or “when you’re ready”.
Phase 1: The Crash — This is when everything comes crashing down. It feels like everything is burning around you. For me, it started with the loss of a relationship with someone I wanted to marry, followed by a sudden exit from my job, health issues, money issues, belief issues & losing friends that were disguised as foes. It wasn’t easy. I spent hours & days crying, having dark thoughts, praying for relief. It made me question everything, including my own beliefs, reading abilities & manifesting abilities. It used to feel so easy so why when I most needed it did all mechanisms fail? Why were my friends not able to understand what I was going through? Why wasn’t anyone answering my prayers? It did change one night where I decided that I had had enough & stopped waiting for help & gave myself a pep talk. Next day felt the same though. This is when I realised that things weren’t going to change overnight, but it would change by consistently showing up for myself & understanding the deeper meaning to this phase. In this phase it is extremely essential to feel everything without needing validation. Don’t try to run out of this phase by pushing your emotions down. Cry. Journal. Vent. But be careful of seeking external validation.
Phase 2: The Crawl — I call it the crawl because it took a while to come out. After many failed attempts of “is he coming back” readings from other readers, I realised that the question I had to ask was “why do I still want him or the job back?” Everyone gave me false hope till I stopped & asked myself this. That’s what changed the game for me honestly. In this phase you’ll encounter a lot of different opinions both good & bad. Some friends would ask you to move on quickly, some would fuel the “he’s coming back” theory & some would rage bait you into giving them material for gossip. This is to help you understand who is aligned with you & who isn’t. Be ruthless about your selection as you advance to the next level. It took a while but anyone who didn’t respect me, gossiped or was not right for me was moved out from my life quickly & painlessly once I decided it was ok. No conversation needed. This also includes romantic associations, jobs, etc.
Phase 3: The Climb — Hands down my favourite phase, since I had so much time on my hands now, this phase was the building block to my new life. This is when you’ll be tempted to fix things with freshness & vigour. I spent time reading, researching, travelling, trying new experiences, working out & failing if I had to. The key to navigate this phase is to do things without guilt. This doesn’t mean choosing badly for yourself. It means prioritising your well-being first without guilt & finding the courage to ask for more. For eg. I would cancel plans to work out or sleep. I would not go on dates just because I could. I would take time off work to fix my health. I took a break from my baby Celestine too. I instead chose to travel. The thirst & hunger to be me & the best version of me overtook everything else. I wanted to do more, learn more, experience more & rewrite me as I knew it. This is when I fixed my career, cemented my finances, sorted out my health & took charge of my life. But there was always the guilt of not doing enough or reaching there fast enough.
Phase 4: The Calm — This is undoubtedly the most crucial phase in your journey. It feels like you’ve been doing your thing for a while but nothing as such is changing, till it does. This is the eye of the cyclone. You feel like halting everything — the healing, the learning, the self-improvement. All you want to do like I mentioned earlier is press pause & just be. Guilt gets addressed in this phase. This is the phase I decided to travel & I realised that I had been pushing myself to reach the pinnacle of perfection by healing. Now that I knew everything that I did, I had to implement it. The first step to this was assuming I was already healed, happy & where I wanted to be in life. Almost overnight, the way I saw myself changed. My desires lost power over me, manifesting became easier when I wasn’t scanning for proof, my self-concept was top tier & life felt easy. I knew myself, I knew what I believe in, even if it was just one line that everything is going to be ok because I am me. It made me trust myself a lot more but it wasn’t always rosy. This is the phase where everything I learnt in my journey came back to test whether I learnt my lesson or not. For eg. In love, I started making intentional decisions based on alignment rather than loneliness or impatience. I had been manifesting love for a while but was I settling for bare minimum just to feel close to it or avoid loneliness or was I truly aligned with the person. Copy-paste this to my job, Celestine, health, everything.
Phase 5: The Comeback — This is the point of completion, for now. Was I able to stick to my self-beliefs? Was I able to let go of my fears? Was I able to shift my thoughts? Yes. This version of me is unrecognisable internally. I may be in the same room as I cried for hours but it won’t affect me. I’d meet the people that hurt me but it won’t affect me. My perspective shifted as I realised I was so much more than the labels I wore, including my emotions. I was no longer “bitter”, “hurt” or “heartbroken”. The one thing you will be feeling is rage. But not the one that burns those around you. The kind that lights up within you. The kind that remembers the potential, not just the pain. The kind that charges you up for the way ahead while burning the bridges of the past, including the past you that settled for less, the fears you thought you had, the limiting beliefs you wore because they felt normal. That is what awakening feels like — burning through the illusions that made you forget who you were & randomly waking up from a dream.
Your awakening is as unique as you. So you may feel like you’re staying stuck in some phases longer than others. Your only job is to observe. Your reality feels like a mirror to your inner thoughts. So notice, and I mean really notice, what it’s trying to teach you. Above all else, know that it’s all going to be ok.