Transformation

A Peak Experience When we awaken, we’re tapping into something more expansive than the day-to-day experiences we’re accustomed to. This causes us to stretch our imagination to revisit and revise what we believe is possible for ourselves. This allows us to reimagine what we believe is possible overall, which naturally reflects and shifts our beliefs about what we believe is possible for ourselves. It shifts how we see and perceive reality. And that shifts possibilities. It cracks us open and gives us opportunities to grow exponentially, whereas before we were plodding along at a snail’s pace. Awakening is a peak experience akin to a monumental leap in consciousness evolution. But in order for that peak experience to take hold and level up your life, you’ve got to do the work to integrate that experience fully into the fiber of your being, into your way of being, and embody it in your day-to-day reality until it becomes normalized. You can have a peak experience that changes you in the moment, but without integration, life tends to just kind of go back to business as usual and nothing profoundly changes. The process of integration is part of the initiation. The initiatory process that walks hand in hand with awakening is nothing short of a paradigm shift. When you awaken, your eyes open wide to the potential of a new paradigm. As you go through the initiation, your life follows suit and shifts from the paradigm you were living in prior into something completely different. But you’ve got to do the work for that transformation to occur. An awakening without the transformative initiatory journey generally results in a return to sleep. You remember that awakening, you know that it happened, but it fades into the background and becomes more like a dream than an actual paradigm shift. Life soon goes back to the way it was, and nothing profoundly changes. You’ve gone back to sleep. That’s fine if that’s your choice. But if you’ve picked up this book, it’s unlikely that going back to sleep is your preference. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Do the work or don’t. Integrate or don’t. Embody or don’t. They’re All Different Awakenings come in all shapes and sizes. In my experience, every awakening is different. They show up differently, they feel different; each holds its own kind of energy, its own frequency. Each one has something unique to teach us. They don’t all have to be monumental, traumatic, or life shattering. They’re not all predicated by some kind of dark night of the soul. But they are a wake-up call to change in some way. And within any change, certain aspects will die while others rise up to be born. I don’t think all awakenings are necessarily spiritual awakenings. However, I do think that each awakening is our spirits, or Spirit, nudging us in a direction toward something and away from something else, asking us to level up in some way. So perhaps saying all awakenings are not spiritual awakenings is contradictory. If, by definition, an awakening is a nudge from spirit or Spirit, then I suppose they are all spiritual in nature. Some awakenings can occur as a multitude of subtle shifts—epiphanies that change us gradually, pulling us forward like a path of breadcrumbs we follow through a forest. It’s up to us whether we read the signs and follow the path toward the light or take a detour into the deep, dark woods. But there’s a difference between an awakening that feels like a nudge, an inkling, or a trail of breadcrumbs leading us down a path of transformation, and an awakening that feels like a cataclysmic event akin to the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. And within the overarching cataclysmic awakenings, there are a multitude of smaller, gentler awakenings that are the breadcrumbs leading us down a path. Sometimes the path we’re being asked to walk toward the lights happens to meander a bit through the deep, dark woods. Cataclysmic Awakenings Some awakenings are big. Profound. Cataclysmic. Earth-shattering. Paradigm-shifting. Evolutionary. Revolutionary. Not simply epiphanies. These big awakenings do not simply require acquiring a broader understanding or deeper wisdom, though that is most certainly involved. These are not the smaller awakenings that occur throughout the day-to-day of life, which are self-evident if one is paying attention. These are not the small, steady steps forward. These are different. They’re giant leaps. They’re akin to the fabric of all existence ripping open, veils shredded by gale-force winds of change. Analogous to the symbolism of the Tower card in the tarot, they’re like the bolt of lightning that strikes the tower, causing it to crumble. Within the internal cataclysm, you may find yourself standing in the metaphoric rubble of what was. Exposed. Vulnerable. Uncertain what to do with all the consciousness that’s flooding in. Uncertain what to do with this new understanding. Uncertain how to hold it, how to embody it, and how to live as an embodiment of it. This uncertainty, this want of something different, can ultimately cause us to inadvertently blow up our lives in some way. When the realization of how incongruent the life you’ve been living is in comparison to the wisdom of the awakening you’re experiencing settles in, it’s as though you can’t help yourself. The archetype of what was cannot hold or sustain the new paradigm. Who you have been cannot hold what the awakening is asking you to become. Does it ultimately boil down to whether or not the life you’re living needs some blowing up? Does it pertain to the state of alignment, or misalignment, currently active in the reality you’re perpetuating? Perhaps. Is the cataclysmic awakening showing you that the life you’re living is too small to contain you? Or is it blowing open the veils to show you something bigger, more potent, that your conscious awareness is now ready to assimilate? I think, perhaps, it’s a bit of all of the above. And so much more.