So many people on the spiritual journey think of awakening as connection with source, the absolute. Sometimes people call it God, oneness, or enlightenment.
Awakening is often thought of in terms of reaching this—that I am one with everything. I am the absolute and that’s it. And an awakened one is: they are the absolute. There is nothing personal about them, and they have reached the place where they have no ego left and they are just the absolute.
For many people on a spiritual path, awakened ones or awakening is a duality—or non-duality as they call it. It’s ego or oneness. Ego or God. Ego or absolute.
But I have some questions to reflect on, to ask, to inquire about this. Because we’re setting ourselves up with that simplistic and simplified view of awakening or what an awakened one is. And that could be on some level sabotaging our spiritual growth.
Is Anything Real?
When I hear people talk about the absolute and oneness, they often say, “Nothing is real. It’s we all going into oneness anyway, so nothing that is happening on this planet is real.”
What that brings up for me is: is the person who is embracing millions of people—is that not real? Is the person who is killing millions of people—is that not real?
If I have a child, what is that child? Me? Oneness with me?
And is my relationship with my child or my partner the same as my relationship with someone who is killing millions for money? Are we all just one? Is that what it is?
And if I have an attachment and love for my child that is different than my attachment or love for some other child, is that my ego? Is that what it is? Is this the duality that we find ourselves in? Am I in ego because of my love, my attachment, my relationship with my child or my partner is ego? And on the other hand there’s the absolute where we’re all really one?
How do we get into this either-or place and set ourselves up for something that’s not how creation made us?
How Creation Made Us
How did creation make us? Why didn’t creation just plop children, plop humans onto the earth?
Why did creation create a woman with a womb that nurtures, feeds the baby, gives it all the elements it needs to grow in her body and give birth? Why are humans dependent, babies dependent on humans to be raised—to receive mirroring, nourishment, physical, emotional, and spiritual elements that we need to grow up as healthy humans?
Why did creation make us this way if it’s just ego?
What is an awakened one? Are they just the absolute? Is that all that they are?
What elements are needed for the absolute to manifest into a body with their own particular flavor—with the individuality of how they may be interacting with us, of what they may be bringing to us? What gives one awakened one a different flavor than another one, and another one, and another one?
Why are there so many spiritual practices? Is it because we’re all one? We’re all the same?
Yes, we all come from a supreme consciousness. Nothing exists really without the absolute, without the supreme consciousness. That is true. But is everything else just ego? That is my question. And that there is nothing personal about our existence on this planet.
The assumption that our personal relationships—our connection to our child, our partner, and how creation has made us—that none of it is personal… that is the belief of many on the spiritual path.
What is an Awakened One?
An awakened one is someone who is connected with source, with the supreme consciousness, with the absolute. They are in constant connection. They know how to access source—amazingly right—and they are continuously accessing source.
And as they access source, they’re also manifesting certain ways of being, certain qualities, certain elements. Whether it’s the embrace of a mother, or the Mahakala/Mahakali aspect that is about erasing the ego, or the capacity to orient, to see, and to differentiate understandings from a whole body and heart level, not just an intellectual level.
They are accessing source continuously, and that source moves through the different elements we need in our lives—like passion, power, silence, majesty, aliveness, vibrancy, joy, compassion, and pleasure.
But there is one more element: the higher self, the spirit, the one that is guiding us in our lifetime. It is what we are here to cultivate, what we are here to offer, and what our personal-impersonal mission may be for why we’re here.
How does an awakened one choose in which way they manifest what they are doing on this planet? Many on the spiritual path bypass this part entirely—they bypass the higher self, the magical being within us, the spirit.
Humanizing Spirituality
What is the difference between an awakened one and you and me? The difference is that they are connected with source fully, completely. They embody connection with source. It’s not transcendence—it’s embodied.
And what that means for us is that we can cultivate that connection too. We can cultivate different aspects of what our soul is here for, the elements that we need to be on this planet like joy, love, passion, pleasure, stillness, peace, power. We can access those ourselves. My soul may not have cultivated what an awakened one has cultivated to that extent in this lifetime, but at the same time, I too can cultivate. I too can start to access what they access.
This is controversial. In Diamond Logos, they talk about this as humanizing spirituality.
Humanizing spirituality means recognizing that we are all on a journey, and when an awakened one takes birth on this planet, they are also on their journey. We do not erase their humanness, their vulnerabilities, or their evolution. They are really beacons of light on this planet, yet they are also still often in the process of cultivation.
It is difficult for us to see that they may also be navigating conditioning, issues, and programs. It could be upbringing, or it could be cultural conditioning that doesn’t fully allow the glory of their soul and what they are here for to come through. Oftentimes it’s the personal aspects that are the hardest to allow. So they may not allow it. Many of us on the spiritual path have a need to blind ourselves from allowing the awakened one to be an awakened human.
The Sacred Pairs of Creation
Reflecting on this brings up a lot of sadness for me. If we look at different religions, they are full of sacred pairs of union—Radha and Krishna, Christ and Mary, Muhammad and Khadijah, or the consorts in Tibetan Buddhism. Why are there pairs in that way? Is creation made in a way where we are all seeking that personal aspect of union? We may not manifest it in this lifetime, and there is nothing wrong with that, but what if that is a sacred personal aspect of being human? Why do we dismiss it as just “the absolute or ego”?
I want to invite you to reflect, to question, to see: Is this rigid “either-or” belief accurate? What if the belief that everything is either supreme consciousness or ego is actually getting in the way of your spiritual journey unfolding? What if your belief overrides your actual experience? And now you yield your experience to your belief? Not the other way around—that your experience informs your understanding?
This is a trap that many get stuck in. We feel like we’re failing, but it’s only because we are splitting things off and burying them in our bodies. If something doesn’t resonate with our rigid belief system, we split it off. And where does it go? It goes into our bodies and starts to create havoc. Or we split off the havoc entirely and pretend we are all good, while unconsciously creating physical structures in our bodies that take us completely away from our true spiritual path.
So many things here to reflect on. You don’t have to know the answers. To open up to questioning, to ask and ask, to allow unfoldment to inform your understanding.
Reclaim Your Embodied Journey
If you find yourself trapped in these beliefs, splitting things off and burying them in your body, please know you don’t have to navigate this alone. I offer a free 20-minute consultation for one-on-one psychospiritual integration mentorship worldwide.
If this article resonated, you may also find support in these reflections on embodiment, spiritual maturity, and psychospiritual integration:
- From Spiritual Highs to Embodied Maturity — on why bypassing our conditioning doesn’t make it disappear
- The Pendulum of Awakening — on the contraction that follows every opening, and why repressing it backfires
- Our Deepest Trauma Isn’t What Happened to Us — on what gets split off and buried in the body when we can’t yet hold what’s arising