Overreacting to Your Spiritual Awakening Transformation

One of the all too common realities that happens during the process of realizing their spiritual awakening is that people overreact. Overreacting to the pain and discomfort arising within us creates further pain and discomfort. It can and has gotten more than a few people into a lot of trouble. Whether they’re making drastic and excessive diet changes or giving away everything needlessly, people can put themselves in a whole world of hurt that is completely unnecessary. The pain and discomfort we feel during this sacred process is simply the pain and discomfort that’s always been here. We’ve been so self-medicated with distractions, noise, media (part of the noise really), work, sex, drugs, alcohol, and more that we couldn’t feel ourselves. Awakening helps us to feel the truth, and the truth is that most of us are simply miserable. On top of that, we haven’t even known it and have created a backlog of unexperienced misery that is now demanding out attention.

Thus, as we see this hot mess that is us, some unconscious egos may go into uber-fixer-upper mode, trying to address everything immediately. Other egos will try to treat the symptoms of the discomfort instead of getting down to the root cause of the dis-ease. And there are plenty of other ways that people overreact and make a process that certainly can be challenges almost unbearable or even create real physiological problems.

However, I’m here to hopefully put you at greater ease, so let’s get into it.

The Arising of Awareness That You Are Suffering

No one wants to admit that they’re in pain. Pain is weakness. Weakness is bad. Therefore, no one wants to admit that they’re weak or bad in any way. As such, years and decades (in some cases) go by while the pain builds and builds and builds inside. To most people, you could point out to them how much suffering they are in, but they’d tell you to go fuck yourself–or something along those lines. No one wants to look at the mess they are in, and most people are infinitely happier to point out the messes everyone else is in. Why do you think so many people enjoy gossipping about their neighbors, complaining about politicians, putting down popular athletes, insulting co-workers behind their backs, and so forth? It’s all a game of misdirection to keep the attention off themselves (although in some cases, people like having attention on them, but only in specific ways).

However, your inner awakened light shines on everything. Nothing is left out, and this is most inconvenient for the unconscious ego that has been trying to sell you and everyone else on a certain kind of identity. Yes, ego identities are getting blown up left and right, and the more you hold onto them, the more uncomfortable and downright painful it gets. This is one of the first big ways that people overreact.

Frantically Trying to Save the Dying Ego

Even as someone’s identity is finally crumbling away like the sandcastle it truly is, many of you will be frantically trying to save it. Whether it is the job, your bleach-blond hair coloring, your intimate relationships, or something else, there are many manifestations of this ego in your life. The ones that are least true to who you are tend to be the first ones to go. But just because they are the least true doesn’t mean you won’t fight like mad to defend them and rebuild them. It doesn’t matter how many times the waves of consciousness smash your sandcastle to pieces, you may keep desperately trying to rebuild them and build bigger and better fortifications.

Just stop.

You may notice that you’re exhausted. This is a key sign that you are trying to fight the flow of life–the flow of your own love. While many of us have a lot of chronic fatigue because of the depth of the spiritual shift going on when we are not fighting ourselves, many others create a lot of unnecessary fatigue and even physiological imbalances because they are fighting an unnecessary war on top of the changes. It is best to let this old identity go. Let go of the old job. Let go of the old dietary habits. Let go of anything that seems to be slipping through your fingers. If something or someone is truly supposed to be in your life, they will stay or come back of their own accordance.

Creating Unnecessary Physical Ailments

I’m sure many of you have read some of the ridiculously long lists of spiritual awakening symptoms and signs. While I’ve outlined a difference between primary awakening signs and secondary signs (which are pretty much what are on those long lists), a lot of ailments aren’t necessary to the process. Many of them are simply showing how you continue to fight the process. So yes, you may need to make dietary shifts. You’ve been a meat and potatoes guy your whole life, and that’s not what your body wants. There is a necessary shift to be made here.

But you don’t need to relentlessly cleanse the body using a host of supplements and detox substances. You don’t need to fast for months or whatever. You simply need to make enough space to listen to what your body is really saying when you feel hungry. You may be surprised at how different you eat, but also how easy it can be. If you don’t, you are liable to create deficiencies, increase your feelings of fatigue and weakness, and other things that are wholly unnecessary to the awakened state.

Oh, and please keep in mind that none of you are vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or anything else. You are. That’s it. And your body knows what foods it needs. It doesn’t need a new food ideology built on top of it, although some of you may need to learn how to do some appropriate fasting to help reset the internal system. Many people have taught themselves to like a lot of unhealthy foods and drinks–mainly alcohol, but coffee and the sugar-water known as fruit juice can be issues. So you may need to learn how to do a gentle cleanse and detox. But nothing extreme is required, and if you eat a raw foods vegan diet because it’s what your body wants, that’s completely different than taking on that diet as the “right” way to eat, which is essentially taking a mental stance and imposing it on your body.

Not Getting Caught Up in Spiritual Fads

Strangely enough, many people who are trying to help these days are still very much caught up in a lot of ego games. Some of the most confused people are the ones who consider themselves to be spiritual people. But as I mentioned in “Beware the Spiritual Ego,” a lot of people haven’t really addressed their core ego issues, and as such, their unconscious ego is now wearing a whole lot of so-called spiritual clothes, which include ideas, ways of speaking, and yes, clothes too. But true spiritual people don’t really need to present themselves in any particular way, and they certainly don’t make you do anything. It’s just like reading this blog. You don’t have to do anything I say, but I make myself available to you in this way because I feel like serving others.

But those who are caught up trying to help because of whatever core issues they are still carrying often talk about these latest greatest spiritual techniques. They may be into a new dietary solution. They can be highly reactive to a lot of things going on in the world and quick to point out the world’s flaws, which they’ll use as the reasoning as to why you should totally do what they’re doing. There really is a lot of charlatanism going on out there, but that’s why you always need to be cultivating your own inner knowing. In so doing, you can learn to notice when you’re overreacting. You can learn to hear the truth in what people say and find what feels right for you. If you don’t, you can overreact and get caught up in the cults, overly intense spiritual workshops, confused ideologies, and plenty more until you just feel like a ruined mess, or you’re just an ideological zombie spouting off this new “religion” you’ve bought into.

Calming Down Into Your Loving Being

All of this is quite crazy because at the core of all this is love. Inside of you is the persistent emergence (and that’s one of the things that is a key definition of a true spiritual awakening–it’s persistent and here 24-7) of your own love. It’s uprooting the stuff that isn’t true to you. It’s helping you to see, embrace, and heal multiple layers of pain and suffering. It’s helping you to truly be free. What a rare gift.

And it is rare. There are countless beautiful kinds of spiritual shifts, which are often confused as awakening. But the actual spiritual awakening is quite rare. It is a shame that so few people can see it for what it is and embrace it. If you’ve stumbled across this spiritual blog in your confusion today, I encourage you to take heart. Nothing is going wrong. There’s no need to overreact and make huge changes, although there may be some important changes that you have to take right away. But it’s important to learn that there’s a big difference between a reactive decision and a conscious decision. The actions you take can even look the same, but the how–how you do something–can produce vastly different results.

Putting a Microscope on the Reactive Ego

The reactive ego has to fix things now. This is nothing like the awakened Self that acts from the space of the Now. You’ll notice that the later doesn’t need to make anything happen. It’s not worried about right or wrong. It can accept painful decisions or supportive decisions that you make. The reactive ego presumes to know what the right and wrong things are, and it presumes to know how to create the “right” outcome that it wants, which as many of us have learned it tends to get backwards. As such, if you are feeling very reactive to what is going on, it’s time to but a microscope on this reactivity. What are you feeling? What are you avoiding? What’s really going on? Often, we feel a lot of internal discomfort, but nothing is actually going wrong. We go to the Western MDs, and they tell us we’re fine. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the arising of discomfort. There’s no need to worry about it, but when worry arises, the ego is showing it’s hand. Look at the cards it’s playing. Look at the level of control this unconscious part of you is trying to exert over you. Do you really want to be taking actions from this level of fear and control? I would hope not, and I can tell you clearly that if you do, you will tend to make all the pain and discomfort ten times worse.

Allowing Is Not Passivity

Specifically for those of you who are good at going with the flow, allowing the arising of discomfort to come and go is wonderful. But this is not a passive place. You shouldn’t just be camped out in your parents’ basement waiting for this storm to pass. For you, much of your lessons probably will be around conscious action. You’ve probably been underreacting to things in your life, and you’ve let a lot of opportunities slip past you because it wasn’t easy enough for you. The awakened love within you knows the exact medicine you need, and you may find yourself on the opposite side of this lesson where you have to take much more conscious action. Some of it may feel excruciating and uncomfortable, but consider that you’ve been living in a bed your whole life and have never walked. Getting those atrophied muscles going isn’t going to be fun at first, but like any transitional time period, it will pass. And as with much of the shifts in awakening, you generally tend to feel stronger, freer, clearer, and more loving with each issue and transition that passes.

Decompressing and Destressing

Wherever you can, I encourage you to find ways to decompress and destress. Being in the middle of the fiery crucible is intense. There’s no doubt about it. But there’s no need to overreact. Don’t try to leave the fire. This is a cleansing fire helping you to purge the darkness within. Don’t be scared of that darkness either. It is yours. It is part of you, and it must be embraced and fully seen. Then, quite naturally, that darkness is no longer dark. When the light looks at something, the darkness is penetrated and evaporated. It can only exist where we do not look. As we look, we realize the truth, and the truth isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes the pain we feel is simply the realization of just how much garbage has been inside. You may feel quite humbled, which many unconscious egos hate. That’s all right. You are now no better than anyone else. So embrace this. Learn to let go of trying to be somebody, and be nobody. Melt into your own love and extinguish this overreactivity. It will help the process of spiritual awakening transformation go so much smoother.