Spiritual Awakening Stages | The Dark Night of the Soul

If you’ve ever found yourself discontent with your life, perhaps yearning for something more meaningful, or a type of connectedness with the world around you and begun to question your life and its purpose, chances are you’re experiencing the beginning stages of a spiritual awakening.

It’s the beginning of a soul-changing spiritual journey that can happen at any time, often when we least expect it, turning the very world as we know it upside-down as we let go of limiting beliefs and start learning what it truly means to be happy.

While everyone's journey is different, there’s known to be a general flow to an awakening, taking you through different stages and challenges as you let go of these beliefs and habits of your past self and connect more deeply with your Soul and the world around you.

“At its core, the spiritual awakening process is the Soul’s cry for freedom. If you listen to its call, your life will be transformed into something meaningful and significant. On the other hand, if you refuse its call, your life may feel like an empty graveyard.” Aletheia Luna, The Spiritual Awakening Process

While these awakenings can happen at any time for any number of reasons, more often than not it’s the result of what they call “The Dark Night of the Soul” A major life-changing event, be it an illness, family upheaval, accident, or world events etc. that forces you to “wake up,” essentially, to the world around you and life's realities and cause you to question the things

you think you knew.

Stage One: Dissociation and Unhappiness

This initial stage is where you start feeling unhappy with your lot in life and coincides with “the Dark Night of the Soul” as we talked about earlier. Often the darkest point of your journey, you start to feel lost and confused as you search for something different without knowing what it is, and begin to question your beliefs and what society has taught you about the ways of life.

Signs of the Dark Night of the Soul

• Feelings of despair, emptiness, and confusion prevail, as if life's meaning has vanished.
  

• Previous beliefs undergo scrutiny, causing uncertainty and an identity crisis, including religious or spiritual frameworks.
  

• Material possessions, relationships, and external achievements lose appeal as a deeper connection with the spiritual realm is sought.
  

• Profound changes occur within, shedding old patterns and behaviors, accompanied by inner purification or ego purification.
  

• Strong desire for solitude leads to social withdrawal, driven by the quest for deeper self and divine connection.
  

• Emotions, energies, and the environment are experienced more intensely, leading to overwhelm and heightened empathy.
  

• Disconnection from spiritual beliefs or practices is felt, prompting a search for new or deeper spiritual understanding.

Although it can be quite a lonely and dissociating experience at times as you start to realise these truths and drift away from those around you who might not share your path, don’t despair! As they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn, and your dawn is coming!

Stage Two: Awareness and Shifting Perspectives

In this phase something remarkable happens - you begin to experience shifts in your perspective and gain a heightened awareness. It’s like stepping into a whole new world of perception. You’re more aware of the realities around you, the state of the world, and how things seem to be interconnected.

Although it can sometimes be confronting to know the exact state of the world and how different it is from how you originally perceived it, it also sets you up for the next stages in your journey as you delve deeper into these questions of life's purpose and self-discovery.

Stage Three: Self-Reflection and Meaning

Now come the big questions, who you are, why you’re here, is there really more to life than what you previously thought? As well as trying to figure out the meaning of life, It’s also an amazing opportunity to peel back the layers of yourself and what makes you you, exploring the patterns, attachments, and beliefs that have shaped your identity so far.

As you courageously examine these aspects of yourself you’ll start to let go of the habits and beliefs that no longer resonate with you and in doing so, create space for new ones found through research into different spiritual practices, meditations and guides in your search for answers.

Stage Four: Answers and Healing

Alethia Luna refers to a spiritual awakening as “A natural product of your Soul evolving, expanding, and maturing” and after all the research and soul-searching of the previous stage, you can’t help but feel like your Soul has done just that, evolved, expanded and matured.

On journeys such as these, you often come face to face with hard truths, emotional wounds, and past traumas that need healing before being let go in order for you to become your truest self.

During this stage you find out what practices work best for you and your journey, trusting your instincts and allowing yourself the time you need in order to heal your past self. It’s a stage that takes time, sometimes years, as you figure out what resonates. After all, it’s about the journey, not the destination, right?

Stage Five: Disillusionment

For some, this stage is where you take a step back. A spiritual awakening is often compared to the ocean and how it comes and goes, or like a cycle that constantly revolves. Although not everyone will experience this, you might find yourself stuck at this point in your journey and no longer feel a spiritual connection to your practices as you once did, which can easily feel disheartening after all the hard work you put in to get here.

While you might feel yourself slipping into past feelings of discontentment and unhappiness, this stage can also show you places in your life where you might want a better or deeper connection and send you down a different path, often involving shadow work or inner child work as you explore these deeper connections.

Signs you've done Shadow Work

• You can Laugh at yourself

• You're not easily offended or triggered

• You can see and appreciate multiple perspectives

• You're aware of your negative traits without doing ashamed

• You're aware of your negative emotions

• You're assertive without being rude or passive-aggressive

• You confront adversity and setbacks with courage & poise

• You recognize a bit of yourself in everyone

Stage Six: Surrender and Purpose

This is the last stage in a spiritual awakening where you completely surrender to your highest and truest self. It’s a culmination of the spiritual awakening process, where you finally understand your purpose and begin to live your truth and let go of what no longer serves you, feeling at once more connected with yourself and the world around you. It's during this stage that many people will feel called to help others through their own spiritual journey, in order to help create a positive and lasting impact on the world.

What you need to remember when it comes to these stages is that healing and growth, in whatever form they take, aren’t a linear process and everyone is different. While these stages help as guides to figure out what exactly is happening and where you are in your journey, they’re not in stone and no two people's journey will look the same. Healing is messy and complex and hard, and so is growth.

You’ll probably find you flit around from stage to stage as life keeps happening and you change and grow with it. The point is to keep learning and growing, aiming for that peace and contentment that comes with knowing your purpose in life and honouring your happiness and your truth every day and enjoying the journey rather than worrying about the destination and how fast you get there.