So you’re feeling called to learn more about the spiritual awakening process? Or think you’re already having a spiritual awakening? If so, this article is for you!
In this blog, we go through the different spiritual awakening stages and describe the awakening process in detail, so you can understand more about the journey that you’re on—or about to go on!
You’ll learn about the different signs of each stage, along with possible spiritual challenges that you may need to overcome.
4 Stages Of Spiritual Awakening | Reverend Bernard Beckwith
The stages of spiritual awakening are defined differently by different spiritual philosophers and schools of thought.
Michael Bernard Beckwith is a well-renowned minister, author, and founder of Agape International Spiritual Center. He has written numerous books on spiritual knowledge and self-development—and is quite well-respected within the field of spiritual philosophy.
Reverend Bernard Beckwith systematically defines the journey of spiritual awakening in 4 stages. However, it’s important to note that the process of going through the different stages of spiritual awakening may not be linear.
You might find yourself at different stages of spiritual development within different parts of your life. For example, you might be in the victim stage within your career, but you might be in the manifesting stage within your love life. Or you may find yourself going back and forth between two particular stages. And you can even lose your way and regress back a few steps sometimes too!
Stage 1: The Victim | To Me
In the victim stage, the individual is experiencing victim consciousness. In victim consciousness, you feel like life is happening to you, and you take no accountability or responsibility for your life, actions, thoughts, speech, behaviour, or circumstance.
In this stage, it is unlikely that you have a developed or strong spiritual practice. And you most likely feel disempowered, lost, and unfulfilled. You’ll commonly blame others or the world for your circumstances.
In the victim stage, you believe that you have no control over your life and can’t change your circumstances. This stage is somewhat bleak (spiritually) and often filled with an overt or covert sense of unhappiness, restlessness, a variety of destructive addictions, disempowering habits, and mental health problems.
When you’re in the victim stage, you’re mainly projecting everything outside of yourself and blaming everything outside of yourself for your inner experience. You believe that life is happening to you, your inner mood is dictated by everything around you, and you rarely feel peaceful and calm.
Stage 2: The Manifesting Witch And Magician | By Me
In the manifesting stage, you start to realise that things are happening because of you. You start to realise that you have control, accountability, and responsibility for your life, thoughts, actions, speech, behaviour and circumstance.
You realise that you’re not limited, no one is holding you back and you can direct the course of your life! You begin to play with self-development, positive thinking, manifestation, and the law of attraction. In this stage, you’ll likely start to go into a process of recovery by addressing and beginning to heal your trauma.
All of a sudden the universe seems like an abundant and magical place that you can thrive within, which is a stark contrast to the environment of the victim stage.
During this stage, you’re starting to experiment with different spiritual beliefs and spiritual practices such as affirmations and visualizations. You start to understand that with mindful awareness, action, and desire—you can create anything you can conceive.
In the manifesting stage, you stop projecting outward and start honestly self-reflecting. You realize that your inner experience is within your own realm of creation.
You understand that your reaction defines your experience and that you can’t always control what is happening on the outside, but you can take responsibility for what happens on the inside. This is a state of replacing outward blame with empowerment and personal responsibility. You’re starting to consciously create your own reality.
Stage 3: The Channelling Sage | Through Me
In the channelling stage, you surrender and let go of a variety of attachments. You realise that you do have the power to make things happen and that you can control and manifest, but you lose the desire to control a variety of things and you surrender to the universe, higher consciousness, and your Divine unique path in life with an open heart.
You begin to understand your karmic journey and trust that there is a wider Divine purpose for your life path. Your ego starts to step aside so that you can be a conduit and vehicle for higher consciousness to work its magic through you.
In this stage, your spiritual practice starts to develop and deepen, and you naturally flow with life in a cosmic dance. You’re well down the rabbit hole and using much more than just affirmations and visualizations to explore the mysticism of life.
You might be exploring meditation, yoga, and visualizations while dipping your toe into other spiritual and religious mindful, awakening, and empowering practices.
You’re comfortable being a tool for Higher Consciousness to work through because you have an all-knowing sense of trust in the universe. You confidently and humbly surrender yourself to the higher power of the universe and your dharma, so that Divinity can express itself through you.
In the channelling stage, you might start to experience momentary feelings of bliss, and you’ll commonly experience a sense of freedom, calm, satisfaction, fulfilment, and boundless unconditional love.
In the manifesting stage, you are creating the experience that you wish to have, whereas, in the channelling stage, you are becoming a vessel for Divinity in whatever way it wishes to express and channel itself. You surrender to the present moment and accept what is with an open heart.
Stage 4: Bliss Consciousness | As Me
In the bliss consciousness stage, your soul becomes one with universal consciousness and realizes that you are the universe and higher consciousness itself. In this stage, your ego dissolves and you enter into a heightened state of awareness and unlock a state of spiritual enlightenment that is permanently present in your daily life.
In this stage, you’re confidently using a variety of different transformative, mindful, religious, and spiritual tools and practices such as yoga, ritual, mantra, chanting, ceremony, meditation, and more.
You feel a deep oneness and connection with the entire universe and everything in it and realize that you are eternal and infinite. You are embodying an awakened spiritual awareness that there is no separation, and with this comes bountiful limitless awareness.
Interested in learning more tips for spiritual awakening and healing to enhance your life? Then check out my blog article here.
The 5 Stages Of Spiritual Awakening | Deepak Chopra + Joseph Campbell
Deepak Chopra is a well-renowned author and teacher of spiritual philosophy. He has written a variety of best-selling books that are popular within the self-development community.
Deepak Chopra defines 5 different stages of spiritual awakening that are slightly different to those of Reverend Michael Bernard Beckwith. The stages according to Deepak Chopra are in line with the ‘heroes journey’ framework and philosophy as defined by Joseph Campbell.
Stage 1: The Heroes Journey | The Call To Adventure
Joseph Campbell was the mythologist who defined the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey describes the transformational journey that allows individuals to evolve. Joseph noted that this transformational path often aligns with a typical structure beginning with a ‘call to adventure’.
And it is this call to adventure that is the triggering seed of the spiritual awakening that follows. The call to adventure can arise in a multitude of different forms but the common thread is that it is an event or realisation that causes a disruption to your everyday consciousness, inspires you to venture in a different direction, along with nurturing your connection to your higher consciousness.
The call to adventure is a pivotal turning point—much like a crossroad. And if the opportunity is seized, the hunch is followed, or the change in direction is taken—your life path is destined to irrevocably change forever.
Your call to adventure helps to lift the dark veil of lower consciousness, or avidyā, so that you can begin to see more clearly.
The call to adventure that changes your life’s path and triggers your spiritual awakening could come in the form of the loss of a loved one, a holiday, meeting someone new, reconnecting with an old friend, a near-death experience, a change in career, a health scare or on-going illness, a challenge or trauma of some kind, or a plethora of other experiences.
When you are faced with the call to adventure, you seemingly have a choice to accept and take the path, or ignore the call to adventure and choose a different way. However, this is actually an illusion. Due to your karmic imprint, the call to adventure can’t really be ignored or avoided, it simply arises time and time again until you accept the transformational ‘incident’ or event that is destined to enhance and facilitate your spiritual evolution.
Once underway, there is no going back. The call to adventure irrevocably shifts your perception and forces you to look at life with new eyes, and you begin the journey of expanding your conscious awareness.
Stage 2: The Truth Seeker | Choosing A Spiritual Practice And Path
Next is the responsibility of choosing a spiritual path to follow, along with different practices to support your spiritual growth. At this stage of your spiritual awakening, your old ideas, belief systems, habits, mindset, and ideologies about yourself, others, and the world no longer fit or resonate.
This is a period that can be quite unsettling as the world you once knew is turned on its head. In stage two, you become a truth seeker. It’s often filled with collecting new information, learning, exploring, self-reflection and self-study.
You might find yourself called to learn about different spiritual philosophies, spiritual practices, religions, ancient cultures, sacred scriptures, traditions, famous books, and pivotal events during world history.
Perhaps you feel called to learn more about the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, or other variations of the higher self. Or you might find yourself drawn to a particular spiritual teacher such as the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh.
This stage can be both exciting and also scary. It isn’t always easy to discard the old to make space for the new. The ego likes the safety of things which are familiar.
However, you’ll find yourself in a position where these old but familiar worldviews no longer resonate, and this calls you to explore new levels of awareness and deeper levels of consciousness.
This period can be unsettling because you might be letting go of things, objects, people, circumstances, and environments that no longer resonate with your new energetic frequency.
Perhaps you leave a relationship that no longer resonates, or you decide to move on from a job that is no longer supporting your new growth, or you let go of a friendship that has become stagnant.
Growth isn’t always easy, and it can be upsetting to shed old and familiar situations. You might experience fear because of the unknown, and the fact that you can’t see what is to come. But it’s important to remember that you also can’t see the beautiful things that are destined to replace these things or people in your life. In these moments, it really helps to find trust in your Divine journey.
During this period it’s important to deeply explore spiritual philosophy in order to find a path that helps you to contextualize your new understanding and view of the world. There are many different paths you can take, and you’ll naturally be drawn towards spiritual traditions and practices that align with you.
Vedanta is a Hindu spiritual philosophy that says there are four different paths of spiritual practice back to truth and enlightenment. These are bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, karma yoga and raja yoga.
Whereas in Buddhism, there are three main branches; Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Vajrayana Buddhism.
Each of these paths provides a unique set of practices, belief system, and structure to serve as an access point and vehicle to guide practitioners back to unity and higher consciousness.
There isn’t a wrong or right path to take, you might choose one path, or an amalgamation of multiple paths. If you follow your heart and intuition you will be guided to the correct method for you—based on your energetic constitution and karma.
Stage 3: The Sadhu | Following Your Path
At this point, you have had the world as you know it turned upside down. You’ve been around the world and back seeking truth and a new paradigm that fits your current state of heightened consciousness. And you have now fully committed to your spiritual path—it has become your new way of life.
This stage is about walking the path of your choice with discipline, trust, and faith. You now have to use the methods you have chosen to unlock and expand even higher levels of awareness.
Sādhanā is the Sanskrit word for a spiritual or ritualistic practice used to gain enlightenment or spiritual awakening. In this stage, you commit to your sadhana or spiritual practice and you deepen your knowledge and experience in your spiritual path.
You might experience a large shift in consciousness as you dedicate yourself to your spiritual discipline and spiritual practice. You might experience cosmic shifts in the expansion of your awareness, and the strengthening of spiritual gifts such as intuition and psychic abilities.
As your ability to meditate strengthens, you’ll most likely notice your ego struggling to compete with your inner stillness and inner peace. You may continue to experience shifting ideologies about yourself and the world, and it’s likely that you’ll start detaching from worldly possessions, identities, and other ego-centred obsessions.
You’ll likely experience glimpses of Divine unity and a bliss-like fully awakened state of consciousness in your spiritual practice—such as during meditation.
In this stage, it is common to undergo recovery through addressing and healing deep traumas. Your ability to understand the world’s complexities with empathy and compassion increases, and so does your ability to accept, forgive, and let go. You consciously nurture your spiritual growth with persistence and love.
In this stage, you might notice a change in attitude towards life. Things that once seemed really important and stressful suddenly seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and you find yourself being able to easily detach from drama. You’re put off by the drama of life and prefer to turn inwards towards stillness and blissful peace. And perhaps you feel more carefree, happy, fulfilled, and satisfied with life.
You might also notice that you’re in alignment with life and that you’re able to manifest with ease. Dedicated spiritual practice helps to remove energetic, mental, and physical obstructions. This helps you to manifest your desires and life’s purpose with grace and ease. Synchronicities, blessings, and miracles might feel like regular occurrences as you start to flow with the energy of the cosmos.
Interested in learning more about the easy signs that you’re healing and going through a spiritual awakening? Then check out my article here.
Stage 4: The Gatekeeper | The Challenge
In the fourth stage, you face yourself as the gatekeeper. Your ego isn’t the biggest fan of your expanding consciousness, and the end of your worldly suffering because ultimately, your ego dissolves piece by piece as your conscious awareness expands.
Your spiritual awakening becomes the impending death of your ego. Spiritual growth isn’t without resistance and struggle. As your higher truth seeks to emerge, there is pushback and resistance from the ego that wishes to remain intact.
As you meander consistently down your spiritual path and develop your practice, you will experience discomfort in a variety of ways. Spiritual growth can be, or is, uncomfortable at times.
As your conscious awareness expands you’re faced with having to confront thoughts, behaviours, mindsets, habits, and emotions that don’t serve your highest truth. You’ll face internal and external influences that tempt you to stagnate or regress in your spiritual growth.
And your ego will provide a number of temptations in the hopes that you’ll abandon your spiritual awakening. This is like the spiritual version of fight club, often you’ll find yourself in battle—with yourself.
Joseph Campbell calls the barriers and challenges that arise on your quest for the spiritual self—threshold guardians. Threshold guardians are essentially gatekeepers that barricade the pivotal turning points in your life. These can be internal or external, literal or symbolic, energetic, mental, or physical.
The gatekeepers can be things like circumstances, experiences, limiting beliefs, setbacks, people, trauma, addictions, self-deceptions, material distractions, or anything else that blocks your progress on the spiritual path. And make no mistake, the gatekeepers that you experience in whatever form, can test your faith, make you question your path, and threaten to derail your progress.
At points during this stage, you may feel lost, hopeless, disempowered, exhausted, and ready to give up. You might feel like you’ve lost sight of the truth, lost the path, and that you’re disconnected and alone.
During the fourth stage, your commitment and resolve will be tested by your gatekeepers. But these trials and tribulations actually form important stepping stones in your spiritual journey. Your gatekeepers are codes to be cracked, and on the other side of these hurdles, are light codes of spiritual growth.
Due to your karmic imprint, these gatekeepers can’t be avoided, and they will continue to reappear until you find a way through them armed with courage, faith, and trust.
Stage 5: The Light | Spiritual Unity
In stage five, your soul stops seeking the light because you self-realize—you are the light.
At this point, you fully wake up from the sluggish slumber of your lower consciousness and merge with your true nature and permanently operate from an awakened state of consciousness. You transcend the ego and reach unity with higher consciousness.
Your true nature as infinite, unconditional, boundless, pure love is revealed and you permanently operate from this new shift of consciousness into an ever-present and unchanging blissful state.
It is often described in spiritual books and sacred scripture as the seer and the seen merging into one. The bliss-like unified state that you enter during meditation becomes permanent. You realize that you are the universe, observing itself. The witnesses and the witnessed are unequivocally inseparable.
In this stage, the fruits of your spiritual practice are realized, the truth of the universe is recognised, your life’s purpose is fulfilled, and there is a cease in your searching. In the last stage of your spiritual quest, there is a process of detachment and letting go.
Until now you have been gaining knowledge, and accumulating spiritual practices, and experiences that enhance your spiritual growth. But in the last stage, there is a process of shedding and letting go of everything that occurs so that your destiny of transcendence can emerge.
Everything that isn’t relevant such as the recurring drama, unnecessary possessiveness over material objects, identities, and people, and the illusions of the ego, simply melt away. You go beyond the spiritual practice, ancient wisdom, and experiences to become the spiritual practice itself. Everything falls away so that all that is left is the true version of you—the true self.
Conclusion
The stages of spiritual awakening can be defined slightly differently by various spiritual teachers, scholars, and thought leaders. However, there are huge overlaps and similarities because ultimately they’re all describing the same process of spiritual growth and spiritual development.
Are you able to recognise the stages of spiritual awakening and healing unfolding in your own life?
If you liked my article, why not share it with your friends?
