First off, this blog post is specifically written for people after a spiritual awakening. This post isn’t for people who are feeling disconnected from their hearts or for those who are feeling generally frustrated at knowing that this world is screwed up, but not knowing how to change it. This also isn’t addressing depression nor is it meant to speak to chemical imbalances or a variety of legitimate mental health issues. If you have a mental health issue or are concerned that you might have one, then I strongly recommend connecting with a therapist.
This blog post is speaking to people who have awakened and touched deep divine connection.
After a spiritual awakening and/or other significant spiritual shifts, the things that you once thought were important no longer are. New interests may not be readily apparent, and so the individual finds him/herself in this gray space. Nothing is really interesting anymore, and a sense of indifference can take over a person. It’s not actually a bad place, but few people are ready to handle this kind of neutrality and sit with it. Instead, it kind of shocks the remaining ego. I say “remaining ego” because it’s rare for the entirety of someone’s ego to be gone after one spiritual shift. Dissolving the ego is much more like peeling an onion, and few egos like being in a place of apathy and watching their interests dissolve away. Because of this, people can react negatively to this experience, and that can lead to all kinds of strange states and experiences right when a deeper dissolution into spiritual freedom is possible.
Connected in Oneness But Indifferent
There are two over-arching kinds of spiritual apathy. One involves deep connection, and the other involves disconnection. Primarily, I’m focusing on the sense of connection. However, the sense of disconnection kind of requires some level of knowing around what connection is. Without it, the person is too unconscious to know that they’re disconnected.
For the apathy that arises when we are connected, a lot of that has to do with no longer being attached to desires and ideas that only supported the ego self. So a man who loved sports suddenly loses all interest in it after awakening. For this individual, sports were a means of establishing and maintaining his ego identity, which involved things like winning, masculinity, male community, and other things. But the insecure ego that needed to prove he was a man, a success, and have certain types of friends is gone in the space of oneness. There is just this spacious being. That space doesn’t need those things, and without the need, the interests dissolve.
However, as I said before, it’s rare that the whole of the ego goes. If was entirely gone, he would not be bothered at all by the loss of his desires. Instead, most of the ego is generally still around, and it causes this man to wonder what happened to his interests in football. He may wonder why he doesn’t want to go out drinking with his buddies, and his friends are probably calling and asking the same. For those brand new to the space of oneness, it’s strange. The more he drifts back to ego identification, the more he’ll become troubled by these lost desires.
Returning to Ego Identification
It’s very common for people to seesaw into ego identification and out of it. In one of the simplest and most profound spiritual practices, we practice witnessing our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. When we are the witness, we have disidentified with the ego. When we get caught in our thinking and feeling, then we have seesawed back into identification with the ego.
Despite the power of awakening, this seesawing is very common. It also tends to be more extreme after awakening now that an inner energy is driving the dissolution of the ego—aka the spiritual awakening process. Sometimes people feel kind of manic as they go from deep spaces of peace to deep anxiety, frustration, or apathy (the types of emotions that arise depend on the individual ego). This roller coaster gets worse—as it usually does—the more someone re-identifies with the ego and tries to hold onto their old sense of identity. It’s like holding onto two freight trains traveling in opposite directions. At the very least, it’s deeply draining.
Losing More Desires and Interests After Awakening
Indifference Arising from Depletion
Another form of apathy that can arise is simply from depletion. It’s a lot of work at times to dissolve deeply held issues and ego attachments. With a true spiritual awakening, a lot of stuff gets pushed up all at once. It requires a lot of emotional energy to process what is being understood on the mind, heart, and body all at once. With all your energy dedicated to this transformation, you may find that you have no emotional energy left to be interested in much of anything else.
However, as some of you probably figured out, this isn’t a true apathy. There is an interest.
In this example, the person is interested in their awakening, and their attention is placed there. The issue is more around if the person thinks they should have energy to be interested in other things at this time. To be fair, there are a lot of demands people can have in their lives, and it can be jarring to no longer be interested in working, child-rearing, and other things. This is not a loss of interest in any sort of cynical way or avoidance. It simply is like when a caterpillar is in a chrysalis; she’s not doing much else.
If this is where you are, here are some strategies to help you consciously deal with work, child-rearing, and other practical concerns.
5 Practical Spiritual Awakening Strategies
Dealing with Indecision
In the form of spiritual apathy regarding indecisive, your old self wants one thing, and your new sense of self wants a different thing. This happens a lot. The old impulse to drink wine with your girlfriends comes up, and another impulse to go to a new yoga community gathering comes up. They both have an attraction to you, but it makes it hard to decide. The old ego still wants to do what it always has. The new desire to investigate a yoga gathering isn’t that strong yet, and it probably is running up against the fear of the unknown. So the person feels very indecisive.
In general, the fear of the unknown creates a lot of problems for people. New interests do arise after major spiritual shifts. They usually are around exploring spirituality more fully, and that often means stepping outside of your comfort zone to try new things. That space outside your comfort zone is the unknown, and most human beings have a lot of fear of that.
Additionally, there are a lot of inner spaces that a person must investigate, and the fear of the unknown can make people want to avoid them as they are afraid of what they may find. Very often fear and avoidance fuel this sense of indecision. There may actually not be any indecision; there may only be fear. But the longer someone avoids things, the more things slow down to a halt. This can make the person feel particularly indifferent and lost in a gray haze of feelings.
Disconnected and Apathetic
After awakening, it’s hard to fully disconnect, but it is possible because anything is possible in a universe of infinite possibilities.
When someone disconnects from the awakened energy that is moving them, they feel truly lost. A part of them will probably remember what it is like to know and feel the truth, but they’ll try to be content with their old illusions anyway. They may reside even more in spiritual apathy because some of their desires got washed away in the initial awakening flood of energy. But they didn’t do the surrendering that was necessary to wash the ego more fully. So the vibrancy of life in the present moment is missed. Life just seems gray and meaningless. They’re stuck.
Getting Stuck and Incomplete Spiritual Awakening Integrations
The way out is to figure out where you resisted the inner changes and possibly avoided some external changes that were needed. If your ego is confusing you too much, get outside support in figuring this out. However, you are going to need to be ready to hear the truth. If you have disconnected yourself from the flow after awakening, you probably put forth a tremendous amount of resistance to do so. That probably felt horrible, and the way to jump start this whole thing again is back through that resistance, which will probably feel terrible as well.
In general, the problem with apathy is that it’s not really that bad. A dark night of the soul will drive someone to change because they don’t want to stay there. But living in a space of apathy and probably a certain degree of numbness is manageable. More than a few people even manage to convince themselves that they are happy again with their old desires.
The Illusion of Disconnection
Ultimately, we are never disconnected from oneness, but we can focus our energy on illusions. The more we focus on separation, the more disconnected we’ll feel even if we ultimately are never disconnected.
Early on someone’s spiritual path, they are generally still entranced by the many illusions of their ego. They’re entranced by romance, body sensations, adventures, emotions, ideas, and all kind of things. They are in a trance living in an ego fantasy. A true awakening shakes people out of this trance for a short-term, but depending on the person’s initial experiences, they may get entranced with something new.
A peaceful, blissful spiritual experience after awakening is one way people get entranced again. Their ego thinks they can feel this way all the time, and it decides that anything else is boring, not-good-enough, not-spiritual, or something else. So the ego may become apathetic towards deeper states of peace and neutrality that come up because they are not this blissful feeling. In this instance, apathy is a sign of ego rejection. It has decided that it knows what a spiritual experience should feel like, and it just wants that one type of experience again and again and again.
But this is not possible. Wanting only one type of spiritual experience is a form of rejection. It is rejecting the infinite number of other experiences we can have as well as holding onto the idea of an experience that is now in the past.
Going towards Truth and Losing More Interests
In the short-term, people may find more spiritual interests as an apathy phase ends. These new interests can go on for awhile. They may build spiritual communities around themselves and work with spiritual teachers. They may learn how to do self-inquiry and a host of useful spiritual tools. A lot of new interests that feel truer to them may spring up for a time, and this is useful for a certain phase of ego dissolution.
But the further you go, the less you have interests in anything, including any kind of overt spirituality. Why? Because of all of life is spiritual. There is not one single atom in this universe that is not part of oneness. You can’t go anywhere without being enmeshed with this truth and with spirituality. As someone lets go of deeper ego layers, they more fully realize this. In such a spiritual realization, more ego interests—including those spiritual interests—drop away.
Losing More Desires and Interests After Awakening
At Peace in Neutrality
The truest form of love is a kind of all-encompassing neutrality. Everything is embraced, and the person is at peace with life as it is. But unlike the blandness of apathy, peaceful neutrality is alive. It is vibrant. It is.
This space has always been here, but our ego fixation on having life be a certain way got in the way. The ego spends so much time unconsciously judging everything that it never really sees and experiences the present moment. In the deeper states of spiritual realization, we do see and experience the present moment. We are at peace with it, and the sense of ego apathy that often arises in the beginning of dissolving the ego after awakening is melted away into peace and inner stillness.
(Updated 8/15/2018)
16 Comments
I am feeling this today. Especially the split between everything being complete and perfect, beautiful just as it is, and that somehow being here implies that I am supposed to add to it somehow, but I don't have anything to add- it's already perfect!
My partner thought that I had run out of ideas and was uninspired, but the opposite is the case. I have all of them and am full of inspiration. Just no desire to act, and conflicting stressful thoughts about how my previous (to awakening) commitments to act seem futile and silly at best, not to mention simply unnecessary.
I'm also presently dealing with weird circumstances with people in my family accidentally injuring and hurting me in very strange and unexpected ways. I have a session booked with a cranial sacral therapist I adore this week coming up. I feel like this is going to change my life. And I am a bit scared and also ready.
Thanks for this article. It was exactly what I needed to read tonight.
Thank you for sharing, Imogen. Always wonderful to hear from you and feel the beautiful energy coming through with your words. Lovely. 🙂
Thank you, Jim <3
I have been a formidable suppressor until recently, and I almost (and sometimes do) laugh when I realise that the beautiful unfolding of my consciousness was so thoroughly denied by me that I actually saw doctors about the "symptoms" that I now know were just about me trying to stop a firehose with plastic wrap. 😉
I found more conceptual congruence with films like The Matrix and Inception when experiencing "glitches" in the unstable platform. I am now beginning to allow that energy that was firing off as blow-outs in a hose, randomly and causing exhaustion. I'm still physically tired, but I feel better in waves, shifts.
It is surprising to me how much I am returning to childhood understandings, like I went on a long, strange vacation in a foreign land, and now I'm just re-acquainting myself with my home. It's so nice to be back. 🙂
All that to say that, though I've been visited by all sorts of helpers along the way, I behaved as though I were alone, and so, now I recognise this and see, so it is changing, and your blog, Jim, is a delight and encouragement for me while I am in the process of renewing. Thank you. 🙂
Hi Imogen,
If you haven't read this post already, you'd probably like it: http://www.spiritualawakeningprocess.com/2011/08/riding-energy-rollercoaster-surviving.html
These shifts definitely come in waves, and they demand everything of us. And yes, all the misunderstandings and poor reasoning of adulthood get stripped away, taking us back to childhood. It's about building a new foundation built on Truth and not lies. It's about marrying child-like curiosity with spiritual wisdom so that we can become spiritual adults who live, play, and enjoy this world.
It's an honor to be one of your helpers from time to time with my words.
In kindness,
Jim
my healing process hit a road block for me about a year ago… I could feel all these things from childhood bothering me deep down but didn't feel like I could talk to anyone about all the abuses & wounds of my earlier years so I ended up finding a therapist and worked through it all with her. A year later I feel like an entirely new person with so many less barriers (even in my everyday working life). It's amazing how these deep inner wounds from years ago affect your everyday interactions with people. I feel so lucky to have come across such an amazing therapist and sites like these to help me along my journey. Thank you so much for sharing your valuable insights.
Thank you for sharing part of your story here, Anjali. I'm sure that others will find inspiration from it.
Much love and light to you,
Jim
Going through this right now. I feel lost and unfocused. I know I’m a higher being and limistless, but I still letting my old fears and attachments limit me. My ego seems to still be fighting to hold on. I’m glad to stumble upon this blog to help me process everything that I’m going through. I’m not entirely sure on where to go from here.
I couldn't understand my apathy before reading this. I am on one wild see saw at the moment look no hands 🙂
I'm glad the post can help. 🙂
Recently i feel i have lost of interest in anything i used to and unknowingly what is my new interest. I thought i'm still in the darkness and still undergoing awakening. I'm not sure what comes next. I think i'm too peace to worry. Just that i wish i could get to know about my life purpose. So i can re-start my life and to serve the higher purpose. This article does helped me. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. I recommend doing some journaling on the desire for a higher purpose. What is a higher purpose? How is it different than a regular purpose? Why do you need it?
Once you get answers to those questions, then question your answers. In this way, you can peel the desire like an onion to get to the core issue that is disrupting your ability to be at peace in the Now.
Here's a blog post to help you:
The Path to Nowhere
Although this question may sound argumentative, please trust my sincerity when i say that is not my intention. Rather, I want to understand the paradox I see contained in this article. On one hand you continue to write these wonderful articles (for which i say many, many thanks), but in the portion of this article titled, "Going towards Truth and Losing More Interests" you describe how one loses interest in "overt spirituality." Yet the very writing of this article seems to be an engaging in overt spirituality. Thank you.
Are you asking why I wrote this article?
I'm called to do so.
Ultimately, everything is spiritual, and as someone grows, they also lose interest and the need to distinguish between what is "spiritual" and what is not.
Additionally, the losing more interests blog post is aimed at a person who is further along in their development and who has begun to really understand what truth is. Other blog posts are aimed for people earlier on the path.
Consider an addict. A person healing addiction does things during that phase that later on make no sense to a non-addicted person. Or a person mending a broken leg doesn't set a healthy leg bone once they've healed.
Hope that helps. Thanks for the comment. I didn't see it as argumentative at all.
I’m stumbled across a few of your writings in the past Jim. I just wanted to say thanks for being here and it’s obvious you write from the authentic awakened space. Although you don’t need my validation or anyones I just wanted to say thanks for being here.
It gets really interesting when you awaken fully to the realisation that all of this (all spirituality) is a farce. Necessary obviously. Using the mind to undo the mind as Nisargadatta says. They all (masters & gurus) told us this would happen one day and the whole bottom would drop out from under us…. all of it.
As you know it gets etched away slowly in the awakened as we drop the concepts but on one glorious (or not so glorious lol) day you will not have one iota of spiritual knowledge to stand on. But who needs to stand? Who? The I jut is. Blessings my brother. Good stuff here. Thanks.
It is really quite amazing how you can explain this experience in words, and help people you have never met, millions of miles away, over the internet, understand what is going on inside of them better. Thank you 🙏
You’re welcome, Pat. How did you find my blog?