If you read my post on Tuesday, you might have been thinking that the spiritual awakening journey that I was writing about sounds like the path to a good place, but doesn't reflect your current experience.

And if so, you might be wondering if it's possible to start your own spiritual awakening journey. Well, let's explore that question in this post.

Well, here's what I think. If you are thinking you really want a spiritual awakening, then it has probably already begun, behind your back or while you weren't looking. :)

So let me float some more ideas past you and you can see if they resonate with you...

raising your base frequency permanently
discovering & living as your higher self
shifting humanity to a higher dimension
deeper & more open spiritual connection
helping to heal the world

Did they resonate with you? If you also felt excited about being able to experience those shifts, then you have probably already begun the spiritual awakening process.

​Yay! So now what? Okay, let's look at that. because I do have a few next-step suggestions...

If you now think you might be at the beginning of a spiritual awakening process, there are several next steps I want to suggest.

(1) Start or Deepen Your Spiritual Practice

Carve out space for a daily spiritual practice so that you can be empowered each day to move the process forward, yourself. It also will help you to deepen your connection with the divine, or the universe, and with your higher self. 

Creating or deepening a spiritual practice will open up a way to receive spiritual guidance. And as you make time for spiritual guidance, you also can take note of your new insights, of your responses to them, and of how you intend to act on them.

Which leads to my next idea.

(2) Dedicate a Journal to Writing it All Down

Take note of your thoughts and feelings, your wishes and longings, and any intuitive insights you get during your daily spiritual practice.

They will help you confirm that you are, in fact, experiencing a shift. And you can document it as it happens.

(3) Start Re-thinking Your Core Beliefs

​Question everything. And as you examine each belief, ask yourself where it came from, and is it really true.

​Both of the previous suggestions can help with this one.
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​Journal prompt or question for reflection: what will your next steps be?

See you next time!

Love, Jeanine

Carl Jung described it as a process of uncovering or returning to who you really are. But as a process that leads you to enlightenment, I would say that that discovery is more of an endpoint or end goal than a description of the process.

During the process of awakening spiritually, you may make lots of discoveries. And getting to enlightenment may involve several smaller spiritual awakenings, which lead to some realizations, but not all of the ones you are meant to have.

Another end result would be a shift to a higher consciousness, in general, so you are likely to come to peace about things in your life that you haven't been able to get closure on, and accept life, as it presents itself, while still maintaining your bliss.
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It often begins with a crisis or experience that leads to a dark night of the soul where you question things that you previously believed were true, and think deeply about the meaning of life and who you are.

Often, you feel cut off from the spiritual connection you want and the settled sense of meaning you previously ascribed to your life.

Or, if you're not in crisis, it may begin more gradually, as you notice that your life isn't quite working the way you think it should.

(1) You are questioning your beliefs.

Suddenly, what once seemed clear to you is called into question. And when you begin to think that what you believed in any area might not be true, it often leads to re-thinking everything.

(2) You feel isolated and separate from the divine and the important people in your life.

Often these are people you have always felt a close connection to, so the change can sometimes be bewildering, especially if it is sudden.

(3) Those relationships begin to change as you do.

The process of waking up changes you in ways you couldn't have anticipated. So your relationships may be changing, because they don't understand what you are experiencing, and/or you may not understand why they can see what is now crystal clear to you.

(4) You are beginning to re-connect with your spirituality in a different way than you did before.

You may become much more interested in exploring your spiritual beliefs, and they may change. You also may begin to see life from a more spiritual perspective.

(5) It becomes easier to tell when someone is lying to you, is insincere, or is trying to manipulate you.

And you may find that your intuitive ability increases in general. And that may deepen your sense of connection with humanity, with nature and with the divine.

(6) You may experience physical signs and symptoms.

You may feel more tired than usual, and need to sleep for longer periods of time. Or you may have trouble sleeping. 

People often say they experience a ringing in their ears from time to time, but that it doesn't last long. Some spiritual teachers say that that means you are shifting to a higher frequency.

(7) Your priorities and habits may change.

You might commit to healthier eating, or dedicate more time for self-care. Things that never bothered you before may become a problem, and you might decide to let them go.

One shift that seems universal is that your perspective on things will change and that may make you less reactive, over time, to the things that used to bother you. In fact, one of the hallmarks of enlightenment is accepting life as it comes,

And this list gives you some of the signs and symptoms of a spiritual awakening, but there are many more. Each person's experience will be unique.
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(1) Trust the process: know that the outcome will be positive.

(2) Self-love: be as gentle with and kind to yourself as possible.

(3) Spiritual practice: carve out time to nurture your spirituality & process spiritual insights.

The best way to speed up the spiritual awakening process is to stay centered. Most of us, most of the time, are not centered, and this costs us.

Centering yourself is easy but only if you know how to tell if you are not centered and you know what to do to find your center again.

Did you know that there were 4 centers and therefore, four ways to become centered again?

According to Scott Jeffrey, you need to know what centering type you are: thinking, feeling, sensing or spiritual and that will tell you what to focus on in order to return to your center. Click the link in the previous sentence to learn more about what the types are and how each type would get centered differently.

Just to give one example, I think I am a feeling type, because I process experiences through my feelings. So my best way to center myself would be to focus on my heart area and notice how I am feeling in the moment.

One easy way to know if you are not centered is to notice if you are focusing on the past, present or future. If the answer isn't your present moment experience, then you are not centered.

Here are some techniques you can use to get centered again...

(1) Deep breathing: even 4 or 5 breaths should make a difference.

(2) Mountain pose-ish: imagine that you are a tree and focus on connecting with your roots underground.

Or, stand with feet at shoulder-width distance apart. Imagine that your body is connected both to the heavens above and the earth below your feet.

Imagine what it is like to be a channel between them and feel into that.

(3) Navel awareness: notice how your breath moves your belly.

To nourish your navel chakra at the same time, imagine the sun surrounding your navel and belly are, and/or picture your navel as part of a beautiful sunflower. My sunflower would be orange, of course.

Though most of these ideas are from Scott Jeffrey (same link), the navel variation comes from me.

(4) Heart centering: focus on your heart area. Mentally smile at your heart, tell it "I see you" as you breathe in and then say "thank you" as you breathe out.
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(5) Use journaling: write down all your thoughts and feelings to externalize them. 

For more examples, click on Scott's link above.

I've always been interested in new ways to understand how to find your life purpose. And a post I read yesterday marries life purpose to a question I often ask about everything from creating your perfect morning routine to ​planning your new year. Mind blown!
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Now, if you're participating in the winter edition of the Ultimate Blog Challenge, you may have been lucky enough to read the blog post I am referring to, a couple of days ago. The post comes from Dominique Brooks, from RebootedMomMD.com.

And she marries finding your life purpose to my favorite question - how do you want to feel?

What I'd like to do here is think through her life purpose questions for myself, as journal prompts, and give you a chance to do the same.
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Before reading my responses, I invite you to pause and consider each question for yourself...
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TW: one night, after an episode of abuse, when I was about 9 years old, I was having an asthma attack and was determined not to survive it. But a loving being (guardian angel?) materialized in somewhat shadowy form and told me that if I stayed, I would eventually learn to be or become happy. 

And ever since then, that has been my number one goal in life. I was pretty self-absorbed about it, too, for a good long while.

But eventually, a couple of decades ago, I had this moment of revelation about how people struggle to be a better person, but can't, because they can't heal or let go of the past.

The want to let things roll off their backs, or respond with compassion or kindness, or not react so strongly, etc. But something constrains them.

They want to be happier, but can't quite manage that. That was my struggle, too.

So one answer to how do I want to feel? is "happy."

But recently, in the past year or so, I have begun to add another one.

It's those moments when suddenly you notice that you aren't reacting the same way you normally do. When you feel a sense of oneness and love and want to send that out to all sentient beings.

I think of those moments as a kind of everyday enlightenment. And I want to experience a whole lot more of them.
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I would say that it is my spiritual practice and self-care & emotional healing experiences that have worked best in this area.

Spiritual aromatherapy with my favorite essential oils, visualization, yoga poses, and yoga mudras have all been powerful sources of those feelings and experiences. So I definitely want to continue all of those spiritual healing practices.
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This is a question I've already been thinking about, though not exactly connected to life purpose.

But for most of my life, when I have thought about what I would do for the world, if I could, it's been about making everyone happy. And at an even deeper level, it means helping them heal and change the way they think and respond to life experiences, so that they are able to allow others to live in peace and have more happiness and peace, themselves.

I see people who do harm as being bound and as needing emotional healing so that they can be set free. But recently, I have thought of it in an even bigger sense, in terms of a kind of spiritual awakening or enlightenment, just as I have for myself.

So I want to write more about those concepts here and weave them into the work I do.

If you have not read Dominique's post yet, I urge you to hop on over there, because it is filled with goodness about how we can reclaim our power as women.

And in the comments, I'd love to know what thoughts have come up as you read her post or this one.

See you next time!

Love, Jeanine

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