This is a perspective of spiritual awakening that I wrote in the year 2011 when I started what could be termed as a spiritual journey due to my wants and desires not creating an experience of life that I was happy with.
The words below require updating and which I will do as soon as I can, however if you have any questions then please use the comments section below or contact me here.
Spiritual awakening is the process by which you experience being in a state which is commonly referred to as enlightenment or nirvana, and which is often described as a deep and profound KNOWING of YOU being beyond and above your self, your mind and it's thoughts, your desires and dislikes, your feelings as negative and positive emotions, your body and its condition, and the outside world as the situation you are in, your vocation, family, friends and people in general, nature including animals, plants and minerals, and the human made material world.
I currently cannot fully express how living life in the enlightened state can be as I my journey has just began, but from my own experience of the process of spiritual awakening, and the experience of others, I can express that it is possible to experience the enlightened state in the form of profound INSIGHTS (VISIONS) which KNOWING and REALISATIONS of why you experienced and experience life the way you have done and perhaps still do.
You will also REALISE that there is more to the universe than the intellectual mind can comprehend or experience and which I can conceptualise from my own findings and experience as you are what you think you are and also that which is the space that makes possible what you think you are.
The process of spiritual awakening is either chosen or forced upon you, but either way I believe that the choice has been made for you and not by what you think of as your self but more so a higher and expanded level of consciousness of your self that KNOWS that you have to take a step into an unknown world.
From my own findings and experience of the awakening process, progress of spiritual awakening can be delayed but cannot be reverted nor stopped, and I believe that once the process has commenced, and once you have had INSIGHTS and KNOWINGS, you really would not wish to revert or stop the process even though the journey can become a very painful exercise over and beyond any pain and suffering you experienced before.
The additional and somewhat new pain that you experience during the process of awakening is somewhat an illusion and a story made up by the mind and its conditioning, as was the pain before the process of awakening, and that such pain is created by the undoing of what you thought you knew and what you thought you required, and you will really KNOW this from the INSIGHTS that you have during the process of awakening.
Such pain is not actual physical pain, even though both physical and mental changes can occur, but is more so and undoing of conditioning, beliefs, thoughts, desires and intellectual knowledge, and the undoing of which the mind and it's egoistic form will try to stop, as in some way, they, the mind and ego, want their existence to continue.
In the simplest and perhaps harshest terms, during the awakening process, the tangible; what you think you have, and the intangible; what you think you know, will be utterly ripped apart, but when YOU really KNOW that is what needs to happen, YOU will accept the breakdown, and in some way be able to kill your SELF to somewhat become what you need to be.
Think of the process as a caterpillar being cocooned to become a butterfly. A caterpillar's characteristics, beliefs and abilities, both mental and physical need to change for it to become a butterfly, but with there being that slight tricky stage of having to become cocooned and everything physical and mental having to change, and with there being no going back.
However, if you told a caterpillar that it's going to lose most of it limbs but it will gain two flappable structures on it's back, and so it may not be able to climb anymore or walk through small holes, and that other caterpillars who it knows and who know it, may not understand and be with it anymore, and that it may not see much of the world it knew, but with those points not being an issue as it will be able to fly, that it will see the world being bigger than it thought it was, and that it will still be able to visit its caterpillar friends if it still enjoyed them and their environment, the caterpillar would probably reply by telling you that you are crazy, where to go, and may decide that it's not going to take the step and it is happy where and how it is.
However, cocooning will happen, and the caterpillar is destined to become a butterfly, as life forms evolve. Only when the caterpillar cannot take the suffering as a caterpillar, does itself choose to accept the process, as the process is happening without its self's choice and it is the non-acceptance that is actually creating the suffering, as the cocooning will happen whether the caterpillar likes it or not.
Only when the caterpillar becomes a butterfly and enjoys the experiences of life as a butterfly, will it become wise to the process.
Now, I do not know if caterpillars, whilst becoming butterflies, have REALISATIONS and KNOWINGS about grander aspects of life than when they were caterpillars, but for humans, it can be said that the process of spiritual awakening is the undoing of conditioning, beliefs, thoughts, desires and intellectual knowledge, and comes with ever growing REALISATION and KNOWING that there is more to you and your world than you thought you knew.
Living Life With A REALISATION Of Spiritual Awakening And The Enlightened State (Living Life As A Butterfly)
From my (that word "my" is the ego kicking in again) research in spiritual awakening, there seem to have been very few commonly known of humans to have lived life mostly or entirely in and with the KNOWING of the enlightened state but fortunately some of them have been documented and experienced to date, and from my findings, they include in no specific order, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Rumi and of a more recent time construct, Eckhart Tolle.
I also believe that there probably have been and are many more humans experienced in the process of spiritual awakening and KNOWING of the enlightened state, whom have not been known of commonly, or perhaps only known of by a select few, or not known of at all as they have not expressed themselves as such.
I believe the construct of time has come where the requisite of human evolution is for humans to live life with a higher level of consciousness and wisdom which does not mean that all humans needs to be enlightened but more so need to awaken so that with all the pain and suffering in the world that is being experienced and known of, an acceptance of another way of living life needs to occur and perhaps is awaiting in the form of the next stage of human evolution, as a marvel.
If a caterpillar can transcend it's suffering as a caterpillar and become a butterfly, perhaps the butterfly can help other caterpillars transcend their suffering.
I some time ago saw the X-Men First Class movie that had a few words which somewhat dramatically expressed what I just said. See the extract from the movie below as somewhat a fictional but apt audio and visual pointer to the words above.
Appreciation:
20th Century Fox : For the X-Men First Class movie.
