There's a mass spiritual awakening unfolding on earth right now. In this article, we discuss why this is happening as well as the various stages of spiritual awakening, including 19 of the most common signs and symptoms as well as potential hiccups in the process.

“The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits toward it. There isn’t a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it, although the mind would love that.”

— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

What it means to have a “spiritual awakening”.
Why there’s a mass awakening happening on the planet right now.
19 common stages, signs, and symptoms of the spiritual awakening process.
Helpful tips for navigating challenging moments.

🎙 If you prefer to listen instead, click here to access the podcast episode.

A Time of Mass Awakening
Why the Physical World is an Illusion
Why the World is Waking Up Now
Stages of Spiritual Awakening
1. The Hope for Meaning
2. The Catalyst—AKA The Big Hairy Breakdown(s)
3. The Strange Feeling
4. The Magnetic Pull Towards the Spiritual
5. The Bizarre Interests + Seemingly Unrelated Curiosities
6. The Seeking Outside // Outsourcing of Power
7. The Loneliness + Reclusiveness
8. The Pull Towards Nature
9. The Ego Questioning
10. The Spidey Sense
11. The Stall Out
12. The Physical Symptoms + Emotional Waves
13. The “Am I Crazy?”
14. The Misanthropic Middle
15. The Sharpening of Dreams + Glitches in Reality
16. The Let Go
17. The Call to Be in Service to Humanity
18. The Leap of Faith
19. The Shift
A Final Note

What is a spiritual awakening?

Spiritual awakening has a pretty ring to it, doesn't it?

While waking up is one of the greatest gifts we can give our three-dimensional self, the process can be incredibly lonely and confusing. It's exhilarating, too, and yet it's incredibly challenging. I share this not to deter or frighten you off, but to normalize the difficulty so that you can stay the course when the awakening gets tough.

It's difficult because awakening involves the crumbling and release of all untruths.

And because autopilot living is riddled with untruths and half-truths, awakening is a destructive process. It cracks, crumbles, and releases the facade, the illusion, and reveals the truth.

At the surface, it seems like it would be easy to do away with lies, and yet we've built our lives around them. We're attached to what we think we know, even if it's untrue. It's part of how we define ourselves. And so who are we if what we know is untrue?

We can't force ourselves to awaken... and we certainly can't force others to awaken.

Awakening is only the beginning of the broader process known as ascension, but it's an incredibly expansive part. One in which our consciousness makes a quantum leap in understanding the nature of reality.

While it's happening it's nuanced, but when it happens it's obvious.

At the most fundamental level, awakening is simply a rising of consciousness. An expanding of your awareness beyond autopilot, beyond the illusions of the three-dimensional matrix your five senses have been tuned to resonate with.

In this sense, awakening is an energetic process. One that occurs in both our consciousness and within the body's cells. It's an acceleration of energy, of frequency, and of vibration.

In the wise words of Eckhart Tolle:

Only by awakening can you know the true meaning of that word. A glimpse is enough to initiate the awakening process, which is irreversible.

A time of mass awakening

Even if the concept of awakening is entirely new to you, it's likely that you've heard of the contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. His book A New Earth outlines the process and perils of the awakening process.

I read portions of the book in my 20s and although I thought I'd grasped it (on a cognitive level, at least), I sensed I was missing some major part of really getting it.

I then re-read it several years ago, as I was in my own process of awakening, and within the first few pages it was as if the world stood still. I didn't just understand it, I got it. It resonated deep within my soul, and it was as if I was reading it for the first time.

As I did, I realized that 'A New Earth' wasn't just some catchy book title... Tolle was literally referring to the energetic evolution of consciousness from the third dimension to the fifth-dimension.

He was letting us in on a juicy cosmic secret... one that many before him have predicted as well:

We're currently in a time period of enormous transformation and mass awakening spurred by the acceleration of energy. This is a rising of consciousness across the entire planet. As this happens, earth is literally being reborn. She's transforming into her fifth-dimensional self.

The physical world is an illusion

If this sounds completely crazy... the idea that something physical like the earth could transform, remember that quantum mechanics has demonstrated that what appears to be solid to our human senses is merely an illusion. That atoms are almost entirely immaterial (despite the longhand belief that they’re the fundamental units of matter).

The physical body, the earth, the floor you're standing on or chair you're sitting in as you're listening to this... they're .00001% physical matter and 99.99999% empty space. What's in that empty space? Energy.

The world we see isn't physical, it's energetic. And so are we.

At its most fundamental level—the level of the atom—the material world is almost completely nothing... or no-thing... and yet all things potentially because of the vastness of the energy stored within it.

The physical matter you perceive with your eyes is almost completely empty space... filled with the limitless potential of energetic wave forms.

If this piques your interest look into the physics concepts of "observer effect" and quantum entanglement.

Why is this happening?

We’re currently in an astrological time period known as the Age of Aquarius or the Golden Era. It’s long been predicated as a period of time in which human consciousness will rapidly evolve from a more polarized perspective to that of unity consciousness.

This mass awakening has been known about and predicted for eons and your soul chose to come here during this time to witness and take part in this planetary awakening of consciousness.

You're here for a reason and one of those reasons is to awaken to your true nature.

19 Stages of Spiritual Awakening

Your particular awakening process is as individual as a snowflake's crystallization pattern. It will begin and unfold in divine timing, occurring in a way that’s most supportive of your greater ascension journey.

This doesn't mean it will be easy or gentle, it only means that it will happen as it's meant to happen for you.

For most, the awakening process unfolds in a slow, steady way. More rarely, awakening can be instantaneous and abrupt (e.g., spontaneous awakening). The latter is usually far more difficult for the mind (ego) to adjust to and is generally considered to be one of the most difficult ways to awaken.

Like grieving, the stages of awakening tend to be similar across people but their order, timeframe, and repetition are completely unique.

If your spiritual awakening process is the slower, steadier type (as opposed to spontaneous), you might find yourself oscillating back and forth between stages, stalling out, or even stopping from time to time.

This is all normal.

Throughout ascension, the energetic frequency our body is holding is trending upwards, yet shifting back-and-forth between frequencies depending on a variety of variables.

These periods of “descension” or stagnation allow the body to adapt to increasing levels of light at a cellular level. They also give the mind time to adjust to new ways of thinking, believing, and perceiving.

It’s one thing to know something at a cognitive level, it’s an entirely different thing to live and embody the frequency of that knowing. It takes time to integrate these shifts in deep and meaningful ways.

Once awakening begins, it can't be stopped, only delayed by the ego's doubts, fears, and resistance.

Now let's talk about some of the common themes and stages of spiritual awakening.

The following are in no particular order (please keep in mind that stages often co-occur and can even recur)…

1. The Hope for Meaning

One of the earliest stages of a spiritual awakening is the craving for more meaning and purpose in life. It's the gently rumbling desire to move beyond autopilot living before you're even able to recognize that you've been set to autopilot.

Although this can come as a sense of hopefulness, more often than not it comes as broad feelings of frustration, discontent, or apathy for life.

Simply put, you feel trapped by the way you're currently experiencing life or some aspect of it.

2. The Catalyst—AKA The Big Hairy Breakdown(s)

The catalyst is the experience or coincidence that begins to set off the chain reaction of your spiritual awakening.

It can be something seemingly inconsequential—running into the right person or the right book at the right time. A spiritual connection with someone that unlocks a profound soul-led knowing within you.

Or it can be some major, life-altering event—the loss of a loved one, a divorce, an accident or injury, a mental breakdown, losing your job, hitting rock bottom, etc.

Maybe for you it was a seemingly positive event—you achieved monumental success in your career which you thought would bring you happiness, only to realize that you're still not fulfilled in a meaningful, enduring way.

Whatever the catalyst is, it leaves you contemplating existential questions in a very big and nagging way.

You find yourself continuously asking things like:

Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is this all there is? What happens when we die? Will this pain ever go away?

The process of moving from autopilot to fully awakened is highly individual. The specifics of the journey are different for everyone and so is the order of events. But certain aspects of the awakening process tend to be necessary... predictable even.

The big hairy breakdown is one of those aspects. Sometimes it even takes a few hairy breakdowns to get us questioning.

The breakdown comes in many forms and with many triggers, but the hopeful outcome (from the perspective of our higher self) is that we'll surrender. That we'll release our too-tight grip on life and begin to open our hearts to more cosmic possibilities.

An important note…

As more and more people awaken, it's possible that there will no longer be a need for the disruptive, messy types of catalysts. In other words, as awakening becomes more commonplace, it might become a gentler process.

As the new consciousness is beginning to emerge on the planet, an increasing number of people no longer need to be shaken to have an awakening.

—Eckhart Tolle

3. The Strange Feeling

There's a strange and persistent feeling that we have throughout the process of awakening. One that doesn't go away until we hit the critical mass that flips our eyes open for good.

It's a feeling that I can really only describe as this vague knowing. A feeling that your mind isn't yet aware of something big and important.

It's knowing that you don't know something that you really need to know. Or that you’re not remembering something that you really need to remember.

Maybe you're feeling it now. As if you're about to understand something life-changing, but you're on the periphery of it and not able to see the full picture yet.

It's like you're filling in the puzzle pieces, one by one, but you're missing the frame that surrounds the puzzle itself.

I had this feeling persistently in childhood. It intensified in my 20s and early 30s. But once I fully awakened, it went away. Vanished seemingly overnight and hasn't returned. It was as if I woke up from a waking dream and could see beyond this “matrix” existence to a reality that was far more real and true.

If you're feeling the strange feeling, trust that it's there for a reason. It most certainly is.

4. The Magnetic Pull Towards the Spiritual

You find yourself becoming spiritually curious.

Wanting, maybe even craving, to learn more about spirituality in a very broad sense and not necessarily in a way that's tied to any one religion in particular.

5. The Bizarre Interests + Seemingly Unrelated Curiosities

Are you curious about things that seem 'out there' or 'strange'?

Perhaps you're into ghosts, aliens, the mysteries behind the pyramids, UFOs, and conspiracy theories about the moon.

Maybe you've taken a random liking to quantum physics, string theory, and black holes.

Perhaps you're into angels, spirit guides, astrology, psychics, and tarot.

Or for you it might be a rebellious questioning of the status quo of the systems. You find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole on GMOs and the deterioration of our food system, the broken nature of the political system from end to end, the chemicals in personal care products, the industry of illness that's become the cornerstone of modern medicine...

The list goes on for miles, but the point is that what begins as a journey of taking a good hard look at ourselves morphs into a broader, more expansive curiosity about the nature of reality itself.

And it leaves us wondering, "What in the absolute world is going on here?"

The mind will tell us these interests are strange and pointless.

"Everyone will think you're crazy..."

And yet, we keep feeling that tug to learn more... like a cosmic thread through the heart, pulling us forward toward some shimmery constellation of knowledge and truth.

Your curiosities aren't strange, they aren't random either... they're intelligent and interconnected. Wise and universal bits of intelligence that guide you through your spiritual awakening like a trail of cosmic breadcrumbs.

Each of these curiosities is doing its part to wake you up to the whole. To snap you out of the matrix so that you can gasp yourself awake.

This is how it happened for me, too. Over the course of 15 years, I'd developed this vast, bizarre, and seemingly disconnected collection of interests. I'd assumed they were all disparate interests and labeled myself a "curiosity chaser" to make some sort of sense out of it.

Until the day when my eyes flicked open and I realized that everything I'd been separately interested in was intricately connected. Each had done its part to shake me awake.

Here are some seemingly bizarre (to the mind, not to your soul) topics or themes you might find yourself interested in throughout your own awakening:

*The above list isn’t anywhere close to exhaustive. Your own interests are likely to be specific to your own path and gifts.

6. The Seeking Outside // Outsourcing of Power

As you move through the awakening process, you might experience moments or a large period of time in which you're searching for someone outside of yourself to be the ultimate guide in your spiritual journey—a teacher, a guru, a sage, a saint, etc.—to essentially tell you how to awaken.

Because of the difficulties that arise in the awakening process, it's tempting to want someone else to do the work for us... or to tell us exactly what to do. It would be so much easier that way, wouldn't it?

Seeking information outside ourselves is a normal part of the awakening process. We're curious, lonely, and questioning our sanity. It's only normal to look for answers during this trying process.

But when we set our sights on one person or one approach to spirituality, it's easy to outsource our power to that person or method.

There isn’t one person or one path to guide your awakening.

And there’s no hierarchy here.

Spiritual teachers who look down on you from a pedestal instead of empowering you to unveil your own equally bright light are either naively misguided by their ego or intentionally preying on the vulnerabilities that are exposed during the awakening process.

The sign of a great therapist: Their ultimate goal of your work together is that you'll eventually be able to "fire" them from a place of gratitude and appreciation because they've armed you with the tools you needed to empower yourself from within. An effective therapist guides us back to our own power.

The same is true for an effective spiritual teacher. Their goal is to be your guide as you gather the wisdom and tools you need to move to the next level of understanding yourself. The goal is that you eventually don’t need their guidance anymore, because your wisdom is internally generated and sustained.

True teachers guide us to our own empowerment.

False teachers require us to revere them or place them on a pedestal... to hand our power to them.

In other words...

Be your own hero.

Gather wisdom along the way; take what resonates and leave what doesn't. But don't give anyone more power or reverence than you give yourself.

7. The Loneliness + Reclusiveness

As you move deeper into the process of awakening, it's common to feel lonely and misunderstood. Or as if you're different.

This is especially true if you're one of the first in your immediate circle of friends or family to have a spiritual awakening.

While it's tempting to want to wake others up along with you, awakening isn’t something we can initiate for someone else. Each of us must choose the path on our own.

In addition to feeling lonely, it's also common to desire distance from others. To retreat and long for more isolation and alone time. While this doesn’t feel as strange for introverts, the desire for reclusiveness can feel very strange for those who are typically extroverted.

8. The Pull Towards Nature

You find yourself craving more time in nature.

And you find yourself appreciating nature in a new way... listening to the way the birds chirp in the morning sun, admiring a hummingbird as it magically flits its wings to hover near a blooming flower, watching an earthworm wriggle itself across the damp, rain-kissed ground.

The sun's rays assist us in the awakening process, so it's natural to crave more time outdoors and in nature. Honor this desire as frequently as possible.

9. The Ego Questioning

You realize you have an ego and begin to question it. You bring awareness to it and get curious about it.

If you listened to The Soul Horizon podcast episode titled Ego 101 and it resonated with you, you're absolutely in the process of awakening if not already awakened. Only an awakening soul is able to convince the ego to examine itself and bring awareness to its shortcomings and misgivings.

10. The Spidey Sense

Your intuition heightens; your "inner knowing" increases.

You also find that you're able to see through others' deceit or manipulation more easily.

You see through the illusions of society... news broadcasts and political speeches start to look oddly like scenes playing out in some sort of movie that you’re losing interest in watching.

11. The Stall Out

At some point (or many points), your awakening process may seem to halt or stall out. It's common to feel as if you'll never get that spiritual buzz or bliss back when this happens.

Oftentimes, the stall out occurs when we need time to integrate all the information we've been gathering on a deeper, subconscious (and even cellular) level.

It can feel frustrating to be passionately obsessed with the process of spiritual awakening one day and completely numb to it or disconnected from it the next. This is entirely normal. Give yourself the space, compassion, and patience needed to move through this integrative and restorative stage.

Engage with spirituality in more passive ways at this time—watch interesting youtube videos, shows on Gaia TV, etc. Get out in nature. Sit in the sunlight and daydream.

Don't push it, hold space for the pause.

Take the easy road back to the general vicinity of your spiritual curiosity. Find something, anything, that feels remotely interesting and take a small step towards it.

For example, if you're feeling completely turned off by spiritual reading but crystals seem interesting to you... amazing. Learn about them. Take small steps towards your curiosity.

There's a quote from spiritual teacher Maureen St. Germain that's useful here...

Remember, you will not transform everything overnight. Remember too that we humans generally follow a sine wave in terms of our evolution, moving from ideal expressions to the old familiar ones, and then back to an even higher ideal expression.

—Maureen St. Germain, Mastering Your 5D Self

If you've found yourself particularly stuck or stalled out, sometimes it can help to get curious about the stall out itself.

I've noticed that there tends to be three types of spiritual stall out, each with a different reason or meaning behind it.

#1 The Restorative Stall-Out—AKA “The Quiet Expansion”

This happens when there's a genuine need for integration to occur before the next stage of spiritual expansion. It’s a period of much needed rest, recovery, and subconscious integration.

On a conscious level it will feel as if we're stuck or dispassionate towards spirituality, but there is deep integration and understanding taking place on an unconscious, cellular level.

We genuinely lose interest during this period of time because we need to process and integrate what we've taken in previously.

We’ll know this integration is nearing completion when we begin to feel the buzz of curiosity once again.

#2 The Mind-Derived Stall-Out

Two forms: the stress-induced 'blahs'; the ego diversion.

Stress-Induced Blahs: This happens when we're feeling over-burdened by life's many demands. In other words, when our proverbial bucket of stressors has overflowed.

When three-dimensional life becomes chaotic, busy, or over-burdened, it's easy to slip back into mind mode. In other words, it's easy to retreat to the comfort of relying on the thinking mind to guide us because the cosmic mind / heart / higher self is still new and unfamiliar. If and when this happens, be gentle with yourself. Sometimes the best thing we can do in these instances is to simply focus on what's in front of us and take it day by day.
Don't force your way back up the river and don't cling to familiar boulders as you're being guided downstream. Flow with the river without resistance, and you'll find your way to where you need to be.
When you're feeling willing and ready to re-align with the awakening process, the easiest way back is to provide yourself with stillness and space on a regular basis.
The tricky thing, of course, is that when life is stressful or overwhelming, one of the last things we want to do is be alone with our feelings... but when we give our feelings the space they need to be fully felt, we also create an opening in the emotional body in which they can then be released. Bravery is often required in these moments.
If creating internal space and stillness is out of the question for you in the moment, then create physical space and stillness instead. By this I mean, tackle the lingering to-do's relating to cleaning, cleansing, or clearing the physical space around you.
The physical pileup and clutter also creates an emotional pileup. Each time we consciously notice clutter or un-done to-do's and then choose to ignore them yet again, we add to the internal mental/emotional clutter. And when there's too much clutter, inside and out, we stall out spiritually.
Spring clean your house, clear out old clothes in your closet, tackle that pile of laundry, empty out that suitcase that's been sitting on your bedroom floor since the girls' trip you took two months ago.

The Ego Diversion: This happens when the mind or ego becomes fearful of the change that the awakening process introduces. In an attempt at self-preservation, it uses reasoning and logic to create diversions that stall out the awakening process.

When this happens, notice it and bring awareness to it. Get curious about the mind's fears.
In either instance, make sure you're getting plenty of rest! A lack of sleep is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get stuck in 3D.

#3 The Parasitic Entity Stall-Out. There are energetic entities that feed off of our negative emotions. Our suffering releases energy (i.e., “Loosh”) that fuels them. These entities can latch on to our subtle energy bodies. Once they're latched, they'll continue to drain and feed off our energy until we clear them. Their energy feels heavy, draining, and exhausting... like an unwanted anchor holding us down. These parasitic energies don’t want us to awaken, because the more we awaken the less our consciousness is able to be dragged down into the fear-based loops that generate the negative emotions that feed them.

Burning sage or palo santo are popular ways to clear negative energies but there are other ways as well. I recommend using this 12D shielding mediation daily and also reciting this ‘commanding personal space’ prayer in moments when you feel your energy being drained or harvested.

12. The Physical Symptoms + Emotional Waves

During a spiritual awakening, it’s common to experience an increase in physical sensations and emotional upheavals.

Common physical sensations: Buzzing feeling; ringing in the ears; strange vibrations; sleep disturbances; fatigue/tiredness; light flickers/blurry eyes; exhaustion; heart palpitations; increased body odor; lightheadedness; hypersensitivity to light, sound, and sensory input in general; electric shock sensations; unexplainable aches and pains; symptoms of a kundalini awakening (the clearing of blockages in the chakra system that allows new energy to move into the body).

Common emotional upheaval signs: Depression; new or increased anxiety; feelings of apathy; agitation or irritability; changing interests / losing interest in previous passions or career path; feelings of hopelessness.

All of these things can also indicate true medical conditions, so always be sure to check with your doctor if you're experiencing new and persistent symptoms.

Spiritually speaking, these physical sensations occur as a byproduct of energetic upgrades to our DNA. Solar flashes and flares from the sun contain energy transmissions that affect our physical body as well as our non-physical light body. These spikes in solar energy directly catalyze our awakening on a cellular level.

The Schumann Resonance, a measurement of the earth's "heartbeat," reflects these energetic surges and shifts as well.

13. The “Am I Crazy?”

It's entirely normal to question your sanity at some point—likely multiple points—during your awakening journey.

14. The Misanthropic Middle

At some point during the awakening process (and after), it’s common to feel misanthropic and as if the world is too big a disaster to sort out.

The general sentiment when this happens is, “Humanity is a disaster... why bother trying?”

15. The Sharpening of Dreams + Glitches in Reality

You might find yourself experiencing extraordinarily vivid dreams... maybe even lucid dreams.

More dèja vu.

Glitches in reality or noticing mandela effects.

16. The Let Go

You find yourself letting go of habits, lifestyle choices, thoughts, and relationships that no longer serve your highest good.

You're better able to recognize what and who is weighing you down. And you're beginning to prioritize your own authenticity over people-pleasing and attempts to ‘keep the peace’.

17. The Call to Be in Service to Humanity

You feel the humbling call to be in service to humanity and find yourself with the undeniable urge to do something meaningful with your life. This is a shift from acting upon motivations that are primarily in ‘service to self’ to acting upon heart-led intentions to be in service to others.

If you're feeling this way from the comforts of a stable job... maybe even one you were once thrilled with, this can be particularly confusing. You don't have to up and quit your day job on the spot, but pay attention to how you're feeling.

Honor your feelings by taking small steps in the direction of those wise whispers.

Maybe this means volunteering, maybe it means getting involved in fundraising work, maybe it means starting a blog and writing about the topic you're being called towards.

18. The Leap of Faith

Logic can only take us so far; at some point, we must bravely leap in faith to fully awaken ourselves to our true nature.

We must welcome the unknown and the uncertain. And we must be willing to consider all possibilities.

At this point, the sense of knowing within our soul becomes so strong, so unwavering that it overcomes logic.

19. The Shift

When You Know, You Know.

Then, to the eyes we did not know we had, a whole new world will be revealed.

—Rudolf Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds

When this strange cosmic puzzle finally comes together, it comes together.

In a single moment, something clicks and in that sliver of time your eyes open wide.

And once they're open, there's no closing them again. No way to flip the switch back to autopilot.

This is when the journey really gets going...

Because once you’re awake, then you begin to ascend.

A final note

If you're sitting here thinking, “What in the world did I just read?”

Yet you kept reading anyway because something kept you here, this I know for certain...

You were brought here for a reason, and you read this for a reason.

When it comes to these matters, there are no coincidences.

This information is for you, whether for a former you, the current you, or some you off in the future.

Whatever the reason is, I hope these words serve as a useful a supportive catalyst in your awakening journey.

Liberated from illusion, we can be free of all fear. In the end, waking up leads to absolute freedom. We don't just lead our everyday lives. We navigate the field of infinite possibilities.

—Deepak Chopra, MD Metahuman p. 230

19 Stages of Spiritual Awakening

here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

Table of Contents

What is a spiritual awakening?

While it's happening it's nuanced, but when it happens it's obvious.

A time of mass awakening

The physical world is an illusion

Why is this happening?

You're here for a reason and one of those reasons is to awaken to your true nature.

19 Stages of Spiritual Awakening

Once awakening begins, it can't be stopped, only delayed by the ego's doubts, fears, and resistance.

1. The Hope for Meaning