Going through a spiritual awakening is one of the most confusing, lonely, alienating, but also supremely beautiful experiences in life.

Put simply, spiritual awakenings mark the beginning of your initiation on the spiritual path. Without experiencing a spiritual awakening, we go throughout life pursuing the emptiness of money, fame, power, and respect in an attempt to find “happiness.”

The unsettling and equally beautiful thing about spiritual awakenings is that they occur at the least expected times. There is no way you can plan for them. They lurch into your life and shake everything up like tornadoes. But the hidden gift buried deep within them is that they occur at the precise time that you need them the most.

• When we undergo a spiritual awakening (also known as spiritual ascension), we literally wake up from the dreamlike reality of ego-centered living. We begin to question our old beliefs, habits, and social conditioning, and see that there is much more to life, and ourselves, than what we have been taught.
• It is common to ask questions such as, “Who am I?” “What is the purpose of my life?” “What happens after death?” “Why do good people suffer?” and other questions that examine the fundamental nature of life and reality during your awakening. Spiritual awakenings stir the deepest and most significant questions within us that we have been putting off asking or have been too scared to touch.
• If you’ve experienced a spiritual awakening, you might crave to find who or what you truly are deep down, as well as what the meaning of your life is, and whether there is a “higher state” of being. Searching for God, or for the Divine, is a common desire during this experience.

There are many spiritual awakening symptoms. In fact, spiritual awakening symptoms are not only emotional but also psychological and even physical. Here are twenty-three of the most common symptoms out there. See how many you can identify with:

1. You feel as though your life is false
2. You crave for meaning and purpose
3. You begin asking deep questions like “Who am I?”
4. You realize that a lot of what you’ve been taught is a lie
5. You feel completely lost and alone
6. You see through the illusions of society
7. You see how unhappy most people are
8. You want to ‘purge’ your life
9. You begin experiencing deep empathy and compassion
10. You desire to be alone
11. Conversations seem shallow
12. You want to quit your job
13. You thirst for authenticity and truth
14. You become aware of your old negative habits
15. You experience anxiety and/or depression
16. You become more sensitive
17. You want to make the world a better place
18. You deeply want to understand who you are
19. Your intuition is heightened
20. More synchronicity
21. You feel more wonder, love, and curiosity
22. You have glimpses into your True Nature
23. You see that we are all One

Physical signs obviously differ for everyone. Here are a few symptoms that I have observed within myself and many others who have begun the spiritual awakening process:

• Amplification of sense. For example, your sight, hearing, taste, touch and/or smell becomes intensified. You may even discover that you’re a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person).
• You discover food intolerance’s that you never seemed to have before (or perhaps weren’t paying attention to). E.g. Allergies to wheat, nuts, legumes, soy, spices
• Changed sleeping patterns, i.e. you sleep more or experience more disrupted sleep, often causing insomnia
• Vivid dreams – your dreams become scary, bizarre or intense
• Dizziness – feeling lightheaded as a result of being ungrounded during the day
• Weight change – either gaining or losing a lot of weight
• Changed eating habits – what you once liked eating no longer appeals to you. Also, you may crave to experiment with other foods that you’ve never tried/liked
• Fluctuations in energy – feeling less energized than you used to
• Decreased or increased sex drive
• Decreased immune function (more illness)

It is uncommon to experience all of these physical spiritual awakening symptoms at once (one or two is more likely). If you have noticed a rapid change in your health during this period, it might be due to the drastic change in your mind-body-soul connection. If no logical everyday reason can be found (such as prior illness, family stress, injury, relationship meltdown etc.) don’t rule out a more metaphysical explanation.

There’s a lot of information out there on the internet about spiritual awakening symptoms, what spiritually awakening actually is, and so forth.

As someone who has undergone an awakening process and guided many others on their spiritual journeys, here are some of the top spiritual awakening myths out there:

• Myth 1 – Once you spiritually awaken, you become instantly enlightened. Reality: Enlightenment, for most people, happens gradually in waves. We go through layers and cycles of shedding the past and growing into our ‘new skin.’ In some rare cases, enlightenment (or union with our True Nature) happens just like that. But the awakening process is a slow and steady process of spiritual alchemy for the vast majority of people.
• Myth 2 – Being spiritually awake means always experiencing love, light, and bliss. Reality: Yes, we might go through periods of love, light, and bliss. But these experiences are temporary: they come and go. It’s unrealistic to expect ourselves to only ever experience one kind of state as we are multi-faceted beings. And that’s okay.
• Myth 3 – Only a rare and elite variety of people experience awakening symptoms. Reality: You’d be surprised how many people have gone through spiritual awakenings. It’s not an experience that’s reserved for the ‘elevated,’ rich, or ‘special’ people. It can happen to literally anyone in any circumstance.