What do we mean by spiritual awakening?
There are many different ideas about what this means, but in the way I speak about it and experienced it, waking up is waking up out of any ideas about it, back to reality as it is, back to what we are, as we are.
As we go through life, we all construct different identities, different narratives that we view things through. I have spoken before about the veils that we live behind, seeing ourselves, others and the world through our ideas an concepts "about" those things.
It is said, all thoughts are superimpositions over a naked reality. This is true.
When we wake up, its as if we start to loose "our" world. We really only loose our private world, we don't loose THE world, we begin to gain the world as it is. We see that the narratives we have been telling ourselves about things are false, we wake up from a kind of dream.
This realisation, or awakening, can only happen Now. We can literally only wake up Now, because in reality Now is all there is.
After this initial glimpse into the timeless dimension of our Being, there can still be so many parts of our system that need to be integrated into that realisation. Waking up, doesn't clear our trauma or our shadows, unfortunately. Even though we can see its only thoughts and sensation, that its doesn't ACTUALLY have any reality, the body can still very much hold those energies and still react as if its true.
This is where cleaning up happens, we begin to reintegrate all the suppressed emotions, liberating the energies, traumas from past experience that are still held within our system. Processing all the unprocessed pain. This, paradoxically happens Now, but takes time for all that is unconscious to become conscious.
As things clear, not only are "we" present, but our whole system slowly gets it, relaxing more and more into Now, into Being. Again paradoxically, over time our system becomes more present as less and less energy from the past is being held. Or if I was to use spiritual terms, our karmic energies start to burn up.
It literally BEGINS with waking up, with realising what I am is this Eternal, Unchangeable, Silent Presence, Here and Now, which some call Self Realisation or Enlightenment. After that realisation has stabilised, and even before it has, we begin a process of embodiment, shedding the old layers so the Timeless Presence that we are can blossom into the world of time.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton
www.mattnettleton.com