7 Life-Changing Stages Of Spiritual Awakening (Which One Are You In?)

Can you feel it too? The world is changing. We live in a time when we wish for change more than ever before. Countless people are becoming more aware of the problems in the world and also of the fact that certain outdated ways of life need to change. I’ve spoken to so many clients in sessions and conversations with friends and family, who feel like massive change is underway and needed, both in their inner and outer world.

If you are feeling this way, it’s possible you are going through a spiritual awakening. When this happens you will find that your consciousness is growing, your interests are evolving, the meaning of life changes for you. All this is accompanied by the desire to first change oneself in order to change the world. In today’s new resource I share the stages of spiritual awakening and what to expect with an ego death.

You may be having a spiritual awakening right now and chances are, you don’t even know what the heck is happening behind the scenes! But it turns out that spiritual awakenings tend to follow certain patterns or stages that you can easily recognize to help make sense of what’s happening to you. And once you learn these stages and how to work with them, you’ll notice your spiritual awakening and personal advancement becomes easier and more peaceful.

Do you know people who live their lives so fully in the moment that they never really stress out? It’s as if nothing seems to bother them. They’ve mastered knowing how to completely detach from drama and peace is their pulse. They flow with the natural rhythms of life, and things always effortlessly work out for them. More importantly when you are around them, you feel calm and loved. This type of person may seem like an anomaly.

Chances are, you probably don’t know someone like this, or at least not someone who is this way all the time. But this way of living isn’t reserved just for the ascended masters, i.e., the Buddhas of the world. It is possible to tap into this flow when we eradicate our ego. What ascended masters like Jesus, Kwan Yin, Saint Germain, Kumara, Buddha or Confucius have in common is the experience of enlightenment that happens after an ego death.

In Western cultures, death is a word we usually associate with darkness, decay and mourning. But the ego death is one of the most precious, beautiful, expansive, illuminating, awe-inspiring and paradigm-shattering experiences you will ever go through. For every serious spiritual seeker, it’s a pivotal process in our personal growth journey. For after you go through it, you will never be the same . . . and that’s a beautiful thing. Right now the world is going through a lot of turbulence and shifts. This is in part because planet earth itself, and all of humanity are experiencing a massive consciousness shift that often comes with detaching from the the manipulative control of our egos.

Breaking away from the ego and returning to our true nature, one of love, can be hard because most of us are controlled by our ego, which is our sense of self. Those who suffer from low self-esteem often have the biggest egos in the sense that the ego is manipulating our connection to our true self by making us think we aren’t enough and we don’t belong or fit in this world.

The ego holds us back because it puts a lens of duality over everything. Instead of seeing things as they are, the ego seeks to divide and separate: right and wrong, winner and loser, strong vs. weak, good and bad, popular and successful or not, love and hate, etc. But these divisions aren’t in alignment with our true self or our natural human values so it brings suffering to our lives.

To understand how we can unhook from the ego’s lies, I turn to A Course in Miracles. “The whole purpose of A Course in Miracles is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable”, and therefore “selfishness is of the ego, but self-fullness is of spirit”.

The more in tune you are with your whole self, the less ego can exist. 

As the course teaches, “The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed” (page 131). This means the more you learn about your true self, the easier it is to disengage with all things that make you feel less than.

Once we realize the ego is an identity of our own construction, we can free ourselves of its negative manipulation. But we can’t let go of the illusion if we don’t know we are stuck in one. For years I used to believe every thought I had about myself, until I recognized most of the thoughts were negative, and therefore projections of the ego, the part of me that felt unworthy.

What is your mental construct of your “self”?

Who do you think you are?

Often who you think you are is very different from who you really are.

The ego part of you is the “self” that needs to categorize and put you into a box.

You see, the ego hides behind “I” and “me.” It tells us who we need to be and how we fit into the world. It will either make you feel less than or better than everything—there is no balanced middle ground. But your true self, the love and light and peace within you, knows that you are child of God, and with this love, you are enough and have nothing to prove.

When we move past ego demands through an ego death, we return to our True Nature and learn to live beyond the confines of the ego’s dualistic reality. But this experience of eradicating the ego isn’t always easy. For some, this complete loss of identity is a huge illusions bust causing immense emotional pain. It can be the most petrifying experience ever, because the ego’s defense mechanism always kicks in to keep itself attached to its person. But for many, the process can be liberating. Understand, the death of the ego is just another step on a lifelong path of spirituality and isn’t a grand opening into enlightenment, but rather an initiation into a more peaceful way of being. Nonetheless you may be experiencing an ego bust. If so, these steps can help support you.

Here are the 7 Life-Changing Stages of Spiritual Awakening /Phases of Ego Death:

Phase One: The Spiritual Awakening 

The first phase is when you start to leave behind your daily routine and dissociate from the life you’ve created. It is considered a spiritual awakening as you start to question everything. Perhaps the job you are in and used to love, is no longer bringing your fulfillment? I remember when I was in my corporate career in advertising, I would call in sick to write articles and read books. My “real” future self was in conflict with my past “old” self. Meeting in the middle meant starting to shift away from the life that no longer felt good, and if I had to call in sick to that life, then I would do it. In this phase, we are waking up.

This awakening occurs when we begin to feel that we have a void in our life. You may feel as if something is missing and, no matter what you do, you cannot fill it. Most often this spiritual awakening is accompanied by depression, lack of motivation and feelings of being lost.

Questions to ask: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I supposed to do?

Phase Two: The Dark Night of the Soul  (Ego)

When my doctor diagnosed me with clinical depression in 2009, I was going through my own dark night of the soul. It is often the darkest, lowest point of our journey. A literal rock bottom will shake us to our core. In this phase, we are in complete despair, and we know that something has to happen in our life, something drastic and meaningful, or else there will be a death of us. This is the ego death in initiation. We may even become isolated from others and even ourselves and feel the heaviness of the world. Jim Carrey said, “Depression is your avatar telling you it’s tired of being the character you’re trying to play,” and this is the theme of this phase. The character you’ve been playing is retiring. If we recognize that this dark night is actually the ending of the old so the new can begin, we can shift through with more grace.

Question to ask: What character have you been playing, or what masks have you been wearing and are tired of?

Phase Three: The Sponge  

This is the explorer phase, where you aren’t sure what you want but you know clearly what you don’t want. As you start to chip away at all things that no longer resonate, you create more space for what is true and in alignment with you to be your reality. This looks like experimentation with new hobbies, jobs, people and experiences. You start to fill the void with things that may seem frivolous but bring you peace and joy. Writing, art, more time in nature, getting a new pet, astrology, healing modalities, new books, new hobbies, even new friends are all very common in this phase. I call it the sponge phase because you are soaking up new ideas and shifting into new habits. This is a time when you are starting to give yourself permission to explore and treat everything as an adventure for your soul. Often in this phase, you will branch out to new spirituality, tools and teachers beyond the normal mainstream religion to try to understand what you are feeling.

Questions to ask: What brings me joy? What do I feel called to do?

Phase Four: The Satoru Self

Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, “comprehension; understanding.” It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō, “seeing into one’s true nature.” And this phase is all about you recognizing and honoring your greatest gifts, talents, skills and stepping into your true nature.

For me, it wasn’t until this phase that everything started to click. Before this phase, I felt as if I was in a spiritual washing machine, tumbling around in confusion and doubt. But after the sponge phase, where I tried lots of different things, I discovered my true self—the writer within me came alive. In this phase, you want to dedicate more time to the things that truly bring you joy and make you feel alive. For me that was writing, traveling and being of service to others. What does your satori self crave?

Questions to ask: When do you feel most alive? What do you love? What does your true self need and want in order to thrive?

Phase Five: The Soul Sessions

This next phase is not to be rushed, for it can take months, years, even decades. It is the true you emerging and developing a structure for your spiritual self to exist and thrive. The soul is growing, and as you learn more about yourself, you start to implement new tools, routines, rituals and strategies to help you stay aligned to your true self. This looks like working with new coaches, teachers, meditations, reiki healing or discovering essential oils or crystal healing therapy. The list of healing modalities is endless. The soul’s mission is to discover what works best for you. Just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean it is aligned with you. The goal here is to trust your intuition and honor your own path.

Question to ask: What practices, tools and rituals help me feel most aligned?

Phase Six: Surrender and Allow

In this phase, you’ve done so much internal work and may be living in more balance, peace and harmony. Now it is time to fully let go. Let go of who you thought you were so you can be all you are destined and truly meant to be. You have become familiar with your true self. Now it is about giving your true self permission to shine. In this phase, you surrender everything that is not part of your true nature. Everything that was created by your ego will now fall away. This includes patterns, habits, people, situations—everything that is no longer in alignment with your soul’s highest expression. For this step to be most effective, trust that not knowing what is next is safe, as you lean into faith and trust that the Universe is working on your behalf to support, uplift and guide you, and you will always be provided for.

Questions to ask: What no longer serves me? What is falling away? What is emerging?

Phase Seven:  Awareness and Service 

The last step is full awareness of your divinity, your light and your love. You no longer live in a place of ego, and spreading your light is your mission and service to the world. You do this by honoring your joy and living your passion. Doing what you love daily is one of the highest forms of happiness, and by you committing to this happiness, you help to uplift the world. You understand joy is your birthright and peace is your priority.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, what steps you’ve taken to connect to your true self?