Today’s topic is aimed to help separate two very different concepts that get co-mingled. One is about being ready, and the other is about being prepared. Very often, these two ideas are merged together, but I think in the context of spiritual awakening that it is important to separate them with distinct meanings.
It’s so common for people to have experiences they aren’t prepared for and for which their soul is ready, and it’s equally common for spiritual seekers to have done tons of preparation and have nothing really emerge. It’s kind of like making a baby. By a woman’s mid teens, her body is ready. Is she financially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically prepared? Probably not. On the other side, you can have a 45 year-old woman prepared on all fronts, but her body doesn’t want to conceive or at least not as readily. While biologically she is ready, on some deeper level, something doesn’t want to be created. Something is unready. In many ways, spiritual awakening is kind of like that.
However, preparing for awakening as well as intentionally working to let go of the ego are wonderfully important things to do even if an “official, honest-to-God” spiritual awakening doesn’t happen. Many things evolve and are revealed through those quiet moments of preparing, and the ability to do inner work and self-inquiry offers a lifetime of benefits.
How to Prepare for an Awakening
The Soul Is Ready. Are You?
Spontaneous spiritual experiences abound. In some ways, they are always spontaneous. They come when and how they want to. They also can come to those who have never believed themselves to be spiritual a day in their lives.
That second part can be shocking to spiritual people and the “un-spiritual” people who have those experiences. How can someone who doesn’t care at all about spirituality be awakened or have a spiritual opening of significance?
Because their ego isn’t the one running the show. The soul often doesn’t care if the person “thinks” they’re spiritual or not, and preparation is not necessary if the soul feels like moving a few mountains today. If God decides something, it will be done. If this has arisen from you, now you have to do your “preparing” after the fact and catch-up with whatever spiritual shift has arisen.
An Unexpected, Spontaneous Spiritual Awakening
Spiritual Preparation and Cultivating Patience
Meanwhile, a whole lot of people on the spiritual path simply need to cultivate patience and a spiritual practice to help them dissolve the ego. Along the way, there tend to be moments of peeking through the veil of illusion for many people. They realize things about themselves or about life. They may have profound experiences, but not necessarily. Big spiritual “ah-ha!” moments are not necessary. But they seem to grab people’s attentions, and that’s why they’re usually the moments that get blogged about and talked about on YouTube.
Instead, correct spiritual preparation is a letting go of expectations for big moments as well as a trusting of the inner work that you do. However, it is important to do inner work correctly. Many people don’t understand it and get lost trying to control themselves in a new way. But when done appropriately, a person begins to peel away layers of ego and discover greater levels of peace, clarity, and true love within themselves.
Spiritually Unready and Unprepared
Well, it should go without saying that if the soul isn’t ready and the person is unprepared, not much is going to change. Every now and then, I hear someone trying to intellectually justify doing nothing. They’ll jump to a conclusion that they don’t have to do anything on the spiritual path because there is nothing to do. It’s usually a huge misinterpretation of what being here now and surrender are all about. This is often a way for someone to excuse themselves from doing inner work and dealing with the messy parts of themselves that may be uncomfortable.
Generally speaking, human beings stay in their preferred ego patterns. That doesn’t change without some amount of work, and in this scenario of no preparation and unreadiness–which is where most of humanity resides in my opinion–nothing is going to radically change. The Divine doesn’t want it, and the human being isn’t preparing for it. The ego will stay in its same patterns.
Inaction and Non-action on the Spiritual Path
Ready, Prepared, Go!
Obviously, the best of all worlds is to have someone who has prepared and whose soul deems them ready to flower into awakening. That’s pretty rare. However, it is common for the prepared spiritual person to be ready for different spiritual openings and shifts that gradually evolve them.
When someone is prepared, they more easily accept what they discover without resistance, and that allows the fullness of the new spiritual realization to be absorbed. That further moves the person in an intuitive and intelligent way towards greater spiritual freedom, and the positive benefits compound themselves.
I’ve only seen this a few times because even those who really want the spiritual path tend to still prefer their ego patterns. Stepping into realizations and spiritual discoveries as they arise continues to challenge deeper and more powerfully held attachments. So plateauing or quitting is always possible. It’s like you hit that one thing where the ego suddenly says, “Enough!”
But the more deeply you go within, the more wise the prepared spiritual person is to these tricks. You learn how to move through them because you are prepared and your soul is ready.
The Spiritual Path Is Messy
Finally, I may be making very clear distinctions in terminology, but the spiritual path is messy. Distinctions disappear, and things get blurry. That just means that everything and anything is possible.
For example, it can be surprising how some people with no spiritual preparation at all can go so far when they are truly spiritually ready. Other times, there are seekers who have spent decades on the path only to reject a shift when something real finally comes because what they thought the spiritual path should look like wasn’t what they expected at all.
This path can really go in any direction, but it is a beautiful one. It can show all of us so much each and every day, and so how ever soul-ready or spiritually-prepared you are, I encourage you to embrace this moment exactly as it is and see where the spiritual path takes you.
