The Different Ways We Open Up (Even Unconsciously)

So let me just share a little bit more about spiritual awakening.

Sometimes we have spiritual practices that we do — yoga, tai chi, meditation, sound healing, retreats, etc — all the things that we do to tune in, to connect with who we are, to relax into ourselves. We may even go to see incredible spiritual teachers or powerful beings who can naturally activate those deeper states of love, truth, joy, etc inside us. We go to these spaces to feel that incredible shift, to feel alive in their presence, and to speed up our spiritual awakening journey.

And then there’s the people who have spontaneous awakening one day that they just feel like, “I know my purpose or meaning” for example. Or they may have multiple, many awakenings that they have spontaneously.

Then there are people who may be deeply committed to their spiritual practices and awakened, but weren’t conscious that they were having an awakening. And sometimes we have that multiple times in our lives.

For example, somebody who is taking care of somebody who is a dying loved one. They may be able to show up in ways that they notice people around them aren’t able to show up. Or they may experience the loss of someone very close to them. And when they were around that person, they felt like, “Oh, my life is on target. I’m living my purpose. I’m feeling really open, vulnerable. I feel a lot of love.”

Spiritual awakening is not like a bang. It’s often we get to be human. Really being spiritual is about being human – being loving, vulnerable, connected, all of those things.

So when we’re in a very human place, that might be your spiritual opening or spiritual awakening. Very important to know is that spiritual awakening doesn’t just happen when we go through a crisis or trauma. 

When I was 17 years old, I was in a relationship with somebody who was a soulmate. And I knew that there was a deep connection that I had with this person. It was really beautiful, and it opened up so much love. It opened up my heart. It opened up my access to my own soul in a lot of ways that I wasn’t conscious of at the time. I just remember feeling so tender and much more aware of the cruelty in the world. 

I didn’t realize that opening up to love, opening my heart was so immensely beautiful, and that as a result I also went to the contrast—I was at times shutting my heart in fear, I went cold hearted at times. Or, he would distance himself out of his fear and I would feel abandoned. One example of what that looked like was breaking up and then getting back together with even more emotional and deep intimacy and love.

We think normal, right?

But what was happening was unconsciously my wounds were not allowing me or him to be there with each other. We struggled to keep the connection between us. Our love was beautiful—it grew. At the same time, we hurt each other so much.

The hard part was we were young and didn’t understand what was happening. We had the maturity of soul love. Yet, emotionally we didn’t mature to have awareness of issues that were coming up for us individually. Nor did we have the awareness and sensitivity to feel all the issues opening up in our bodies that happens when we expand in love and connect with our souls. 

Why a Spiritual Opening Can Bring Up So Much Anxiety and Pain

Having a spiritual awakening is really beautiful. We want to have more fulfillment in our lives. We don’t want to live like zombies or disconnected. We want ourselves, our lives—we want to live more enriched. We don’t want to be numb. We don’t want to be doing things that are harming ourselves or others, really. And a lot of times it will also bring up or we feel our deepest wounds.

For example, say you lost somebody you really were very close to, you might feel a lack of purpose in your life. You might feel lost. Or numb, like it’s just darkness around you. You may function fine. You may have friends, you might do your activities, but there’s something inside you that’s feeling the lack of fulfillment because you were fulfilled when you were with them.

Other times, people that I work with come in feeling depressed or carrying a lot of anxiety. They may even have health issues like chronic fatigue syndrome, for example. They don’t know how these feelings or health issues may be related with their spiritual awakening.

Let me back track for a moment.

You may be somebody who has been doing a lot of spiritual practices—had a lot of openings and awakenings, whether consciously or unconsciously. Usually it’s a mixture of both. From what I’ve seen often, a lot of people have experienced their awakening with some consciousness of what’s happening. However many don’t know or understand consciously the transformation that is happening in their bodies.

Now an example of this is your body may be filled with the Absolute—meaning you have access to the vast openness of the universe right inside your physical form.

What happens sometimes if that is the case, the ego can start to freak out. The ego might sense losing its grasp in the body. Maybe it’s losing its identity. Then the ego will start to freak out and start to become stronger, start to become more resistant, and we might end up feeling like a lot of anxiety. Or numbness. Or dissociation. Or lack of motivation to do spiritual practices. 

Struggling with Our Aliveness: When Vital Energy Triggers Our Conditioning

Let’s look at another example—vital energy, this natural force of aliveness in the body. And say it spontaneously opened up in my body during my meditation or I had a transmission—I was around a spiritual teacher and I started to feel alive in their presence.

Sometime after the meditation ends or after the transmission, you may be hit with depletion, exhaustion, collapse, or lots of fear. Maybe I’m not comfortable with this vital energy.

Let me give a fictitious example. Say my dad was somebody who went into rage pretty easily. This is not healthy power. This is unhealthy rage, and it scared me. Because of that, I may be afraid to experience that feeling in my body now.

Or let’s say my mom, in response to my dad, repressed her aliveness and shut it down in her body. I learned in my connection with her to repress my own vital energy.

As an adult, I may start to see that I do both: I repress and I discharge this specific energy. Sometimes I repress it and go into shut down, exhaustion, and fear. Other times, I notice I’m so much in my rage and I act it out, yelling or breaking things.

So a beautiful opening of this energy of vitality and aliveness has brought to my consciousness that I don’t often experience it as vitality or aliveness. I experience the lack of flow of it as I struggle with repressing it or acting it out in ways I don’t want to.

I can’t bypass my psychological struggle. Now I need to work with my psychological structure that is not comfortable with this aliveness.

Here’s the thing—I might end up going to receive support from somebody who may not know there’s a whole connection between the body, the heart, and the mind. I might get coping skills on how to manage my anger, or we might even look at what happened with my parents with this energy.

But they may not understand that this is an experience in the body. They may not know how to help me answer: How do I cultivate this essence of aliveness, of vitality? How do I cultivate this so that I can have it in a really healthy way, and not go into fear, collapse, or anxiety about it?

They may not understand how this energy actually heats the whole body and expands the tensions so we can really feel it.

Spiritual awakening isn’t just working on the “shadow.” It is transforming these feelings—anger, collapse, or fear—back into the vitality of the body. If we miss this piece, we miss our spiritual awakening. 

When We Open Up, Not All of It Is Ours

All our experiences in life are stored in our bodies. In our tissues, in our muscles, in our organs, in our bones.

And when we start to awaken, whether we are aware of it or not, our body is changing, transforming. As our body opens, not everything we experience is ours.

For example, I may start to feel terror and I start to think, “Oh my gosh, I’m so scared. I’m so scared. I’m so scared.”

It could be the terror I’m feeling is I just visited a dying person and I picked up on their terror. Or the terror that’s opening up is my dad’s terror when he was a child. I’m not aware of it because I never knew that he had terror.

Psychospiritual Integration: Integrating Spiritual Growth Beyond the Ego

A lot of times when we do have some kind of spiritual openings and awakenings, we need to work with them with the body, with a special kind of understanding and knowledge of what happens when a particular aspect of our real self opens up that corresponding psychological issues will open up.

If we go to get support from someone to address just the anxiety or depression or whatever symptom we are feeling and they don’t have knowledge of the connection between spiritual awakening as it relates with different aspects of our real selves opening in an embodied way and the corresponding psychological issues, they may still be able to help us and guide us. And we may not get what we need because they might be working on our ego, and really our ego has been transforming via spiritual practice or awakening.

We are on a spiritual path, on a spiritual journey. Part of the psychospiritual understanding is that our ego developed in response to loss of who we really are, loss of our essence. The spiritual path isn’t about improving or upgrading the ego. It is often about dissolving the ego structures so our real selves can show up. 

And so when we have mental health issues, for example—it’s just an example and this isn’t a blanket statement—but when that happens, oh, maybe this vital energy came in and opened up my fear, opened up my blocks to it, opened up feeling alone as a child, feeling like there wasn’t an attachment figure there when I needed them. It might open that up on a way back to reintegrate our essence.

So we’re transforming our ego structure into who we really are. If we go to somebody who doesn’t understand that, they might be trying to upgrade our ego, trying to make our ego better when we’re actually on a path that’s transforming it.

Chronic fatigue, for example, talking about this vital aliveness, sometimes chronic fatigue has to do with a lack of this inner life force. And so, it can be helpful to work with somebody who is helping you to get that vital aliveness AND also working on the psychological barriers to having it.

Don’t Give Up: The Struggle Is About Coming Back to Yourself

I hope that this article has been supportive for you. Spiritual awakening can be difficult, we can get lost, and actually fall hard. If you are struggling and you have done spiritual work, whether consciously or unconsciously you’ve had spiritual awakenings—don’t give up. Even if what I do doesn’t resonate for you, keep looking. There are answers out there.

Let’s Explore This Journey Together

If this resonates and you feel called to explore your spiritual openings or awakenings more deeply, psychospiritual integration mentorship is available worldwide.

This work isn’t for everyone. Psychospiritual integration is a depth-oriented approach for those who feel called to explore the emotional, psychological, somatic, and spiritual dimensions of their experience together. I offer a free 20-minute consultation so we can connect and see if this work is a good fit for where you are on your path.

This understanding comes from my studies in Diamond Logos teachings under Faisal Muqaddam—a rigorous path that weaves together depth psychology, spirituality, and somatic embodiment. It is a core foundation of my psychospiritual integration work.

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