What if you don’t feel spiritually awakened because you’re looking for the wrong things?
Spiritual awakening has become almost competitive. Visions. Kundalini energy. Synchronicities. Repeating numbers. Intuition. Spirit guides. Dark nights of the soul. Extraordinary experiences can absolutely be meaningful, but they may not be the measure of how spiritually awakened you actually are.
In this episode, I explore what spiritual awakening has meant across different traditions, including Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, Christian mysticism, Sufism, Kundalini traditions, and Indigenous and shamanic approaches. While these traditions are distinct and shouldn’t be collapsed into one belief system, many raise fascinating questions about consciousness, ego, identity, suffering, connection and what it means to awaken.
I also bring the conversation into psychology, trauma healing, attachment, neuroscience and somatic work. Because awakening may not be about escaping your human experience at all. It may involve becoming conscious enough to actually be present within it.
We talk about spiritual bypassing, why emotions like anger, grief, fear and jealousy aren’t evidence that you’re “low vibration,” and why healing isn’t about immediately turning uncomfortable emotions into positive ones. I share my 4 N’s: Name, Notice, Normalize and Nurture, and how they can help us process emotion without suppressing it or allowing it to control what happens next.
I also explore something we don’t talk about enough: attachment and spirituality. When we suddenly stop feeling connected, seeing signs or having powerful spiritual experiences, we may wonder whether we’re blocked, being punished or have somehow lost our connection. But sometimes our attachment system may be responding to the perceived loss of connection and reassurance.
And finally, we bring it back to manifestation and alignment. You can consciously want something while another part of you is terrified of it. Your body can contract around it. Your nervous system can experience the required change as unsafe. Your attachment system can associate becoming someone different with losing belonging. Alignment isn’t making every part of yourself perfect; it’s becoming aware enough that the different layers of you aren’t unconsciously fighting one another.
Key Takeaways
Maybe spiritual awakening isn’t about becoming less human so that we can become more spiritual.
Maybe it’s about becoming present enough within our human experience that we finally have access to all of ourselves — cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational and spiritual — and from there, becoming more capable of experiencing our connection to everything beyond ourselves too.
In this episode:
What spiritual awakening actually means
Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, Christianity and Sufism
Kundalini awakening versus spiritual awakening
The historical meaning of the Dark Night of the Soul
Ego death versus developing a healthy sense of self
Trauma, the nervous system and spiritual development
Spiritual bypassing and emotional suppression
The 4 N’s: Name, Notice, Normalize and Nurture
Intuition versus nervous-system activation
Attachment wounds and our relationship with spirituality
Why intense spiritual experiences aren’t necessarily evidence of spiritual development
Manifestation, alignment and integration
What it might really mean to awaken
Spiritual awakening isn’t a competition. Your awakening doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s.
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