What is Spiritual Awakening? How to Create a New Consciousness

Have you had a spiritual awakening? What does spiritual awakening even mean? And are there techniques you can practise to increase your chances of having an awakening experience?

On this page we’re going to delve into what spiritual awakening actually implies and get to the heart of the matter in jargon-free language.

More than ten years after my own spiritual awakening, the oneness I experienced with God remains the key event of my life. I suspect now that it cannot be surpassed.

But what exactly is spiritual awakening and what purpose does it serve? Will your life be any better after awakening?

Let’s find out…

What is a spiritual awakening?

Spiritual awakening is a process of inner transformation. It can happen in a sudden moment of illumination, such as St Paul’s on the road to Damascus – or more subtly over time. Sometimes it is a most joyous experience – an experience of oneness with All That Is (as it was for me). For others a spiritual awakening occurs during or after a ‘dark night of the soul’ period.

Indeed, for some people spiritual awakening involves some kind of crisis that might last for months. For others, myself included, awakening can happen in an instant, a glimpse of ‘The Other’ that shifts one’s centre of gravity. You’re never the same afterwards.

Whatever the case may be, a spiritual awakening is a direct, felt experience that somehow establishes a new psychology or a new consciousness within yourself. A metanoia takes place and you see the world through new eyes. It is like being baptised by the Holy Spirit.

But are there ways to bring about spiritual awakening? Are there things you can do to create such an experience?

Hopefully this page will give you some answers…

What is spiritual awakening good for? What purpose does it serve?

We can spend a week on a spiritual retreat (or years following a guru) and be none the wiser. Their teachings become difficult to apply in the so-called real world. This was pointed out to me during my experiments with psychedelics when my partner at the time asked, “How do you apply these insights in the real world?”

I couldn’t answer her. It was all well and good accessing a higher consciousness but what difference did it make in my day to day life? I got to thinking that there must be a reason why humans – and perhaps other animals – can experience these more exalted states of being.

And I came to the conclusion – like many other mystics throughout the ages – that the whole point of spiritual awakening is to free oneself from the conditioned, egoic mind (with all its limited thinking) and thus operate from a ‘higher’ soul-based psychology with qualities such as love, altruism, empathy, tolerance, kindness, and compassion.

That was what I needed to apply in the real world.

Spirituality without formal religion

Religion has two principle aspects; an external and an internal, an intellectual and a spiritual, of head and of heart, of things believed and things felt…

Edward Greenly ‘A Hand Through Time’

Whatever organised religion says, beneath the layers of dogma the main purpose is unity. And, to my mind, this is what true spiritual awakening involves; a direct, felt experience of oneness or what is often called ‘unity consciousness’.

The way I’m defining oneness or unity consciousness here is this…

“Oneness is a felt-experience of merging with All That Is. It is where your individual consciousness becomes one with universal consciousness. Subject (you) become one with object (The Other). No separation. No duality. Everything becomes One.”

But how are we to achieve such a state? Is it worth the effort to even try?

You might think you need to be religiously orientated to have any chance of having such an experience. But years of praying, or meditating, or reading scriptures, or attending spiritual retreats is no guarantee of any type of transcendent experience.

Awakening can happen to anybody – someone with years of religious piety or a drunkard living in the gutter. God’s Grace can be given at any moment, such was my own experience…

Spiritual awakening: the mystical experience of oneness

I’ve written a little about my spiritual awakening on my page ‘oneness and cosmic consciousness‘ and my story was published in best-selling author, Steve Taylor’s, book ‘Spiritual Science’…

I won’t repeat myself here other than to say that for 20 minutes ‘I and the Father were one’. Everything was One Thing.

Below, I want to go more into how I’ve come to an understanding about my own spiritual awakening and the years of research I’ve done since into the subject of mysticism.

Questions abounded…

Why was I offered the hand of God? How and why did it happen to me?

Had I done anything to help create it or increase my chance of having such an experience? What really happened in those 20 minutes?

RELATED CONTENT: 7 Ways to increase your chance of having a mystical experience

Questions about spiritual awakening and oneness

Perhaps my studying esoteric and ‘occult’ subjects from the age of 15 (Tarot, dreams, astral projection, ESP, altered states on consciousness, hypnosis, mysticism and the like) had primed me to have a mystical experience (that occurred at the age of 42).

But if such experiences also happen by chance – a moment of Grace – why do they only happen to some people and not everybody? My experience happened whilst walking down a busy street. No sitting cross-legged for hours like the Buddha under a tree.

But we must take our questions further…

What, precisely, is happening during the state of oneness?

If us humans are capable of such an experience, what purpose does it serve? Is there some ‘cosmic intelligence’ with an agenda? Is spiritual awakening part of human evolution? And what are we to do after the experience?

These questions haunted me for ten years until I stumbled upon the Hindu science of Advaita Vedanta. There I was, searching in the mind-body-soul section of my favourite ever secondhand bookshop – Treasure Chest Books in Felixstowe, Suffolk – when my eyes lighted on ‘The Book of One‘ by Dennis Waite…

Suddenly I had some sort of answer! There was an explanation! I’d experienced something that mystics have harped on about for thousands of years.

The fourth state of consciousness

In Advaita, they talk about a fourth state of consciousness – beyond waking, sleeping, and dreaming – referred to as ‘Turiya’. It is better known in the West as oneness: an experience of ‘pure consciousness’ where your individuality identity gets swallowed up and merges with The Other.

All and any pre-judgments you have, personal stories and conditioning, fears, anxieties, hopes and dreams – indeed, anything that defines you as an individual being – is gently enshrouded by the cloak of a super-consciousness. You become That.

I and the Father are one

John 10:30

So, after years of searching, I started to gather the pieces of this cosmic jigsaw and slot them into place…

Consciousness experiencing itself

It wasn’t until several years later, when I was helping guide someone’s Ayahuasca session – and we later spoke of ‘cosmic consciousness’ – that I fully understood what had happened during my oneness experience.

In simple terms – which are still difficult to understand from a logical left-brain perspective – I became consciousness witnessing itself. During the state of oneness, my individual consciousness (my ego/personality) connected to, and was then filled with, The Other.

Everything out there I saw through my eyes and felt in my heart was also ‘pure consciousness’. ‘Out there’ was also ‘in here’. Pure consciousness witnessing and experiencing pure consciousness.

There was no me and you. No me and it. No me and other/Other. Subject and object were merged. The witnessing-I became One With All. What I witnessed, I was.

I AM THAT I AM.

God as the ultimate state of consciousness

So, is this what we’re really talking about here? If we strip away the religious dogma of the last 2000 years and get back to the original teachings, could we ask whether God simply refers to a much greater consciousness?

Can we come to see God not as a thing or a noun, but more as a verb, a happening, an experience of a greater reality? An expansion of one’s individual ‘wave of being’ into the ‘ocean of Beingness’?

And would this help us lay aside the religious fervour that has caused so much death and destruction over the centuries, and still does to this day?

Can we consider a return to a more ‘cosmic’ religion that is at the heart of all religions?

And if we can grasp this idea – and have the direct experience of it – what are we to do afterwards (on a personal and collective level)?

What do you do when you stumble upon the Holy Grail?

Spiritual awakening through unconditional love

During and after my spiritual awakening I felt more loving and altruistic towards everyone and everything. I became far more tolerant and empathic.

Even though the actual experience of oneness lasted only 20 minutes, the affects lasted several weeks. I felt closer to people, more connected to nature, everyday objects had a numinosity about them. Everything seemed more alive.

The state of oneness had shifted my ‘centre of being’ away from the person I was. To this day, over ten years on, I still don’t quite know where the old me went!

I can only assume it must be similar to what St Paul described during his ‘conversion experience’ on the road to Damascus.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Galatians 2:20

What causes a spiritual awakening?

For myself, perhaps my awakening was a result of becoming a father for the first time? In hindsight, I realised that one important aspect that could have triggered the mystical state was the feeling of unconditional love I felt as I pushed my baby son along in his pram.

Did my consciousness align with his? Was I sensing his feeling of love for everything as he lay in the pram? Is this what babies feel before they get conditioned by us and develop their own personalities?

And if so, how did that unconditional love then spread out to everything and everyone around me? (Or did the love come from The Other and into me?)

As you can see, there are still pieces of this cosmic jigsaw I’m trying to piece together.

Maybe I’ll never understand it fully. Maybe it is enough to have touched the hand of God/The Great Mystery/The Tao.

After finding the Holy Grail…

I feel blessed. But I know there is more to do…

You don’t leave the Holy Grail sitting gathering dust in a cupboard. But I won’t go preaching in the streets.

Perhaps it is enough that I’ve shared my personal account here. Maybe I’ll create a workshop where we could explore these ideas together? Or perhaps I’ll write a book?

One thing is for sure…

My spiritual awakening and those twenty minutes in the mystical state of oneness is something I’ll never forget. It will go with me into the next life.

I already know what heaven is.

---

Please share your spiritual awakening stories with me…

I hope you’ve found this article interesting and informative.

If you’ve had spiritual awakening experiences please share your story via email or comment below.

Check out my self help page for 7 ways to help you experience the state of oneness and delve deeper into the importance of mysticism in psychotherapy

If you’d like to find out more about how hypnosis can help you to spiritually awaken, book a Free Discovery Session with me

---

Three more books on spiritual awakening…

Steve Taylor’s The Leap – the psychology of spiritual awakening explores how and why these experiences happen and what they might mean. Like all of Steve’s books, this one is an excellent mix of spiritual ideas underpinned by psychological enquiry.

The Egoless Self: achieving peace and tranquillity beyond all understanding by Cardwell Nuckols is a simpler read, though nonetheless profound. Again, mine is covered in pencil scrawls and it’s worth a second reading to garner more insights.

And Tim Freke’s The Mystery Experience: a revolutionary approach to spiritual awakening had me spell bound a couple of summer’s ago! He draws upon ancient wisdom as well as sharing some of his own contemporary ideas, embracing science, philosophy, and spirituality.

Remember to check out my library of over 40 Books to Change Your Life if you’re interested in reading more about spiritual awakening and personal development.

Back to Awaken Your Soul

Human Spirit Home