The term ‘spiritual awakening’ may make us think of something that sounds like a woo-woo concept, or spiritual mumbo, and it can be off putting. The concept could appear foolish, or self-aggrandising, or simply inaccessible. But spiritual awakening at its most simple and fundamental refers to what many of us do every day without even thinking about it. We seek to understand ourselves better.

All of us are born into this world as who we are, albeit in a non-individuated, non-conscious form in infancy and childhood. During those young years, survival is our driving goal, and through our childhood experiences we learn what we need to do, or be, or express, in order to survive. These lessons create a blueprint for who and what we believe we need to be to get our needs met and to achieve what we want to achieve. Upon the blueprint we form our ego self; a protective interactive layer between our core or real self, and the external world.

The ego is therefore a functional construct. The difficulty in our current externally focussed world, is that we don’t generally recognise the ego self as a functional construct; we believe it is in fact who we are. We become very attached to it and it is intricately tied into our entire worldview. When our ego is threatened, we will likely experience a reaction of intense fear, which may manifest in any number of ways from anger to withdrawal. Our survival instincts are in play, geared to protect the physical self, and by extension the self we have constructed to safely navigate the external world.

As part of our ego self we have a conscious aspect and an unconscious aspect. The conscious ego is the self concept we accept as ourselves, and that is aligned with who we consider ourselves to be and how we want to be perceived by others. The unconscious ego is the shadow self, the parts of our learned ego self that we reject and do not like, because they are contrary to who we consider ourselves to be and how we want to be perceived by others.

Both the conscious and the unconscious are constructs, one known and accepted, one disowned, and the deeper truth of who we are sits beneath both aspects of the ego. We may call this our soul; it is the essence of who we are without the layered teaching of the world, our true self.

A spiritual awakening is when we move closer to knowing our true self. It involves reconciling the ego, the conscious and the unconscious, so that we can more clearly perceive what exists without the ego. This is not to suggest the ego is ‘bad’. As a functional construct especially designed to navigate our material reality, we need our ego as long as we are a material being.

But it is through knowing these aspects of ourselves, and knowing which is which and why, that we start to naturally move towards a more expansive understanding. As we attain a deeper understanding of ourselves, we can start to have a deeper understanding of other people, of collectives and humanity as a whole, of other living creatures, of the natural world, of the earth itself, of the entire physical universe, and eventually this will lead us into understandings beyond the perceptible physical. We expand our conscious awareness to hold more understanding of what it means to be who we are.

Why the word ‘spiritual’? Our soul self, our true self, that exists before and after the ego, is our personal representation of ‘spirit’. When we awaken to ourselves and our true nature, we awaken to the spiritual side of ourselves. Even if we never get to the stage of consciously connecting to the concept of our soul or of spirit, we still move closer to that understanding and thus we expand our awareness in that direction.

Expanding your consciousness is not mystical, it doesn’t mean detaching from human concerns, or seeking to exist in a perpetually altered state. It is in fact quite the opposite. It is inherently human, a natural part of being human. It brings a deeper meaning to being human. It can only be experienced from and through our humanness. Whether you call it raising your consciousness, expanding your awareness, or spiritual awakening, it starts with yourself, and it goes as far as you care to take it.

Image credit: facebook.com/thefractalmultiverse

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