Welcome, superstar. In this article, I’m going to share how to have a spiritual awakening: a guide for atheists, agnostics, and overachievers. In this article, I’m going to first cover what does it even mean to have a spiritual awakening, then I’m going to talk about the particular problem that atheists, agnostics, and overachievers face when they want to embark on this journey. Also, I’ll share with you the 9 access portals for spiritual awakening but you can try one, some, or all of them.
What does it even mean to have a spiritual awakening?
For me, my definition of that is to feel a connection to something greater than yourself, to some higher power, to some divine purpose, to your own higher self but something that’s more than just the tangible, concrete reality of the day-to-day.
In my world, I look at that as requiring a type of radical self-leadership that’s rooted in 2 main things: truth and love. It’s about finding the universal connections between everything and everyone, what unites us rather than what divides us.
Now, that’s just my personal opinion and I’m no spiritual guru or spiritual leader or anything but what I found in my own life and with my clients too is that when there’s something beyond the day-to-day, it can give more meaning, more purpose, more joy to life as an ex-atheist/ agnostic/ overachiever myself, I know what it’s like to live a life without these types of principles.
Challenges in spiritual Awakening for Atheists and Agnostics
Now, the particular problem that people like perhaps you and like I was facing is that when we decide that we want to embark on a spiritual awakening or we want to open up to these new ways of being and believing, we can want to get it right, we have this sometimes, especially for atheists and agnostics like I used to be, this desire to understand, this desire to have a rational knowing, to figure it out.
And what I’ve discovered is that there is no figuring this out really. There’s just experiencing, there’s just opening to it and being curious and exploring it and that’s why it can be challenging for someone with a very rational, rigid belief system to open up to these new realms because so much of it is just impossible to explain or describe or understand.
So if that’s you right now, all I suggest you do is just put that aside for a moment and be open.
Consider that there may be more to life than you’ve experienced than you believe than you know and just consider the possibility, right, and stay open to that.
Challenges In Spiritual Awakening For Overachievers
Another thing that we run into especially with the overachievers is the desire to do it fast. This is not one of those things that you can really approach that way.
Yes, there are principles, there are practices, principles you can learn, practices that you can implement and it’s going to unfold as it unfolds and I invite you to consider that however it unfolds is perfect.
What A True Awakening Means
So, these 9 access portals are a combination of mind, body, soul, heart. There are different ways in it because everybody is different and what I discovered for myself, I had a certain path to my “awakening.” I really sometimes hesitate to use that term because it’s so loaded with meaning already but it’s truly how I feel about what happened to me. I did awaken to a new life, into a new world.
It’s a combination of these different ways, and I believe that a true awakening involves all of the senses, areas, and modalities.
What I’ve noticed is some people need to feel it first and then they’ll believe it, some people need to believe it first and then they can feel it. These portals are not in any specific order, they’re just, you know, possibilities. Give them a shot.
1. How To Have A Spiritual Awakening By Having A Breakdown
So, the first access portal to spiritual awakening is what I did, is have a breakdown. Now, I know that you don’t want to actually actively go out and say okay, I’m gonna go have a breakdown, but maybe you’re already in one, don’t fight it.
A breakdown can be an incredible access point into higher levels of consciousness. When we break down like I did when we break down, we often open, we often shed old beliefs, we see the world in a new way, we let go of things, we release and emotion, and have a catharsis.
Go ahead and have that journey if that’s where you are, you know you’re on the brink of one, let yourself let go and dive into that discomfort.
2. How To Have A Spiritual Awakening By Leaning Into Emotions
This is the heart access to some sort of awakening, which is to open yourself up to being vulnerable, to be seen, to being served, to being supported, loved, to greater intimacy and one of the things I like to say is to allow the emotions, whatever they are to move through you like a wave.
This is a concept that I learned from one of my mentors. She created something called Sacred Leadership and in her work and her teachings, emotion is a wave that we can allow to move through us and when the wave moves through us, it moves energy and it opens us up to new possibilities, to new ideas, to new feelings, to new truths.
3. Meditation & Prayer
Meditation and prayer came a little bit later in the process for me but what I’ve seen with others is that it can be the first step into the process.
And what meditation does, what prayer does is generally just creates stillness, slows us down, and then opens us up to the observer, that part of us that isn’t hooked into reality, that greater part of us that is the observer that’s able to see how we’re being and observe us from more of a neutral distance.
You might call that observer your higher self, your best self but essentially meditation and prayer are ways of slowing down, helping us to disconnect from the concrete, tangible, rational world and breathe and move energy through us and be open to new sensations, new ideas, new thoughts, new possibilities.
4. Yoga
A lot of people take on yoga the same as an exercise routine and that’s honestly how I started it. I think I was divinely led to yoga because I wanted it as an exercise and it allowed me to open up to a lot of new ideas as well and what yoga can do is it can create more embodiment, more processing of the emotions through the body.
I’ve done, I’ve witnessed and I’ve participated in yoga classes where people are in tears and they’re releasing, stuck energy, stuck bound emotion, whatever it is from their bodies.
So yoga is a great place especially if you find yourself to be someone who stores emotion like you know that you tighten up your jaw or your neck or your chest or your stomach or that you store stress somewhere in the body, yoga might be a way to unwind and let some of that energy move through.
5. How To Have A Spiritual Awakening Through Your Mind
Another access portal is your mind, which is opening up your mind to new ideas. There are a few books that have made a huge impact on me and the way that I perceive the world, the way I understand the world.
A lot around quantum physics and the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. One of those books is called “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot
and I was led to that book by a book called “Busting Loose From The Money Game” which is not the greatest title and wait till you see the cover but it’s such a good book.
Another book that really, really changed the way I see the world and it’s very much rooted in science and research is called “The Field” by Lynn Mctaggart, I highly recommend that book.
6. How To Have A Spiritual Awakening Through Entheogens
And now a little bit of a controversial strategy access portal, something called entheogens. Entheogens are substances, some people call them medicines, some call them hallucinogenics or psychedelics but there are certain substances that can give people the feeling of knowing or connecting to the divine.
One of those substances you’ve probably heard about it, it’s called ayahuasca. It’s from South America, generally from the Peru area, those Indians there they’ve been using that technology so to speak for centuries, for millennia to help people have awakenings, spiritual awakenings.
Another entheogen is called DMT, dimethyltryptamine, and DMT is really interesting as an entheogen because it is the only one, the only of these substances that are actually produced inside the body.
Yes, it’s endogenous, which is very crazy if you think about it that we would have in our body already a substance that creates these types of experiences and actually the substance is produced by the pineal gland which is deep in the brain and DMT is actually one of the components in ayahuasca.
Another substance that people have used to have divine experiences to have a more spiritual connection is psilocybin, which is found in certain mushrooms.
So, these products a lot of times I’m very careful to recommend these types of things because I know people use them recreationally and I think that’s something that you know when you use it recreationally, you’re probably not going to have a spiritual awakening, maybe you will, I don’t know actually but I think it’s very important to be very mindful and intentional about the setting, how you do these things, finding maybe a shaman or a medicine person or a guide, a mentor, somebody that you really trust who can help guide you through the experience and help you integrate the experience because sometimes they can be pretty uncomfortable.
7. Find yourself a community of like-minded individuals
Another thing I recommend is to find yourself a community of like-minded individuals who are on a similar journey, who are looking for that awakening, who are already awakened and looking to increase that or elevate that even more.
People doing this work together can support each other and actually help each other have breakthroughs. When somebody has an experience, you can vicariously have that experience with them.
8. Sound
What I’ve discovered is that sound in a lot of different ways is very connected to spirituality.
Now, there are some of the obvious ways, for example, sound i.e. sound bowls and sound healings and musical instruments can start to elevate emotions and help us connect to our heart, help us connect to what’s beyond, and also the sounds in our own bodies, the sounds that our throat wants to make, the screams, the cries, the growls, and the grunts to connect to the primal. So much of our civilization, our civilized way of being is about silencing sound and it’s such a big part I think of connecting to what’s beyond.
Just to give you a sense, an idea, there’s new research that shows that for example the egg in a woman’s body, that the way that the sperm finds the egg is through sound. It’s an acoustic signal that the egg sends out.
There’s so much around sound that’s being discovered now as a wave encoder of information that moves through the quantum field of consciousness and our current everyday reality.
9. Heart Coherence
Now, I’m not going to talk all about what heart coherence is. You can learn about it from the Heart Math Institute but essentially it’s about bringing your heart into alignment with your emotions, with your mind, with your brain waves and bringing everything into coherence, so that the heart signal that you send out which is a real thing, by the way, we can measure it with instruments so that that heart signal that you send out is a coherent signal.
Coherent signals attract coherent signals that uplift and elevate whereas incoherence creates disturbances and wobbliness in the field.
So, working on your own heart coherence, getting in touch with your emotions, and elevating those emotions is another access point to greater spirituality.
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