The obvious answer is, if you have been questioning everything about your life, your beliefs, your religion, upbringing, society, the world and organizations at large, or are going through or coming out of a Dark Night of the Soul you are probably experiencing an awakening. You have gone through Ego Deaths and ascended timelines, and now you are dealing with the aftermath of some very traumatic events and experiences. This doesn’t always have to be the case. You could have had a Dark Night years ago or even in your childhood and are only just experiencing an awakening now. Or you have been going through a series of small awakenings and each one gets more and more intense and meaningful. There are several ways to know you are awakening. There are physical side effects. For me. first, I was tired and manic at the same time. Staying up several nights in a row researching all I could on Enlightenment and sleeping the days away, at the beginning I didn’t care about my health. I was drinking and eating door dash every night, going to bed with my make up on. Just obsessed with getting answers, not understanding the respect I needed to have for myself and the need to let it all go and go within. After a year of feeling terrible, even being hospitalized for mania, I knew my spirituality was going the wrong way. I went through a massive Ego Death, and I knew I didn’t want to be controlled by anything in my life, I didn’t want to be seen as any kind of label, so I decided to quit drinking. I wanted to experience my life fully as my spirituality intensified. I started to eat healthy. I lost 30lbs. I started a self-care routine, and my skin started to glow, my hair took on a whole new shine, I couldn’t drink enough water, suddenly I just lived to be healthy.

When I first started my Enlightenment Journey, I would break down crying over my stresses and anxieties, fits of tears that would leave me silently screaming and shaking on the bathroom floor. This lasted years into my awakening and I learnt to break down behind closed doors because it passed as quickly as it came on and I felt a release, but others didn’t understand. My frequency was changing, and I started getting chills for everything that deeply affected me. My whole body would vibrate but especially my sternum when I was lying down and I felt a particular truth. I felt vibrations and chills throughout my body. I felt an emotional vulnerability as my mind and heart started to open as I had very tall walls from previous trauma. I started feeling feelings of pure bliss for no reason at all that weren’t connected to any feelings of grandiosity. My life was often in shambles at this stage but some days I just woke up feeling blessed and content, loved and connected with the world. I knew I was connected to “the secret” and I was going to be part of something greater than myself even if I didn’t know what it was yet. I went into hermit mode. I was no longer ok with my relationships, and I had to let go of how my interactions with friends and family affected me. I let go of the ones that were traumatic, and I accepted the people I loved. I allowed them back into my life with a method of nonjudgement and acceptance and found peace and acceptance over time as I became kinder. This was possible by doing the shadow work, healing my inner child and the emotional trauma from childhood. This released a lot of guilt and changed the way I projected onto others, and I became lovely to be around. People remarked that I was a different person. I was just more confident and not emotionally over sharing or overloading onto my friends and family but in therapy confronting my issues and past, dealing with issues like anger, fear, guilt and forgiveness. This was when the crying stopped, and my triggers did not affect me so much as I felt I was not rushing around searching for answers and able to slow down and enjoy the glow up my awakening was affording me.

After a few years I began lucid dreaming, suddenly my dreams were like movies. I was a character in a whole intense story every night filled with signs from my spirit guides and some I could even change and actively interact with the characters in my dreams. I also started seeing signs and synchronicities everywhere. Angel numbers were a big part of my awakening, and not just the basic 111 or 888 but obscure repeated numbers that only meant something to me and my google search history became filled with Angel numbers. This made me feel connected to the Universe, like Source and the Angels were looking out for me. I started to get in touch with my higher self. I started to meditate and this heightened my intuition. I started to be able to read people and vibrate with certain people’s frequencies and feel repelled by others. I was always naive growing up but as I awakened, I started to recognize manipulation and reinforced my boundaries. I let go of relationships before I was codependent, unlike I ever would have done in the past. At the same time, I started to feel a lot of compassion for people and started to work in the Mental Health field working with people with mental health issues. With this compassion my spirituality started to come into focus. I had changed everything about my life in the past few years. I went through two horrendous Dark Nights of the Soul, almost losing my mind with the deep dark questions my altering realities forced me to face. My identity was stripped down to its bare essence and I had to build it back up, facing and letting go of all I did not want to take on my path forward, and creating my new self by finding my true self. My power was always within me. By connecting with the Universe and Source I learnt how to speak to my higher self and listen to my soul, and to let my spirit guides lead me and to trust the process. I did an about-change and became a different person, so I started to define it. I finally had a term for what I was… a new age spiritualist. I bought books, joined groups online, began taking classes on spirituality, started a Facebook page and now this blog, and fully accepted my new self in my newfound spirituality, and I’m still awakening.