Spiritual awakening refers to soul awakening, self-development, self-transformation, leading a balanced and integrated life, leading an internally joyous life, and leading a spiritual life.

In one sense, spiritual awakening is ingrained as the by default universal purpose in the DNA of each of us. And we are already undergoing spiritual transformation – the pace and method and outward conditions differ. Becoming conscious of this silent awakening, we become open to make little practical steps in our life to expedite the process.

When we look around and see the world, we find that there is a gradual progression in the manifestation of spirit or consciousness in nature.

There are mountains, hills, stones, ground, river and other water bodies that seem to be inert or dead. We sense the functioning of spirit in them as well. Mountains and rivers have their own cycles of life.

The next advanced form comes in the form of plants and animals. There is gradual complexity from one celled plants and animals to giant ones.

We find the pinnacle of the manifestation of consciousness in human beings. Let us become humble because with this truth comes the great responsibility for manifesting the full potential of spirit in our life. Perhaps it is the true purpose of all of us; rather all of us are guided by destiny and our present actions to serve this purpose in conscious and unconscious ways.

When we experience that there is something grand, something magnificent, supernatural or some creative or governing principle in life, whatever you call him – and remember it is not about thinking, it is about experiencing – we open ourselves to the possibility of spiritual awakening on a conscious level.

Spiritual awakening is a gradual process; it is the unwritten commandment that we are unconsciously following. The only need is to become aware of it and then making little steps toward it consciously.

The Four Classes Of Spiritually Advancing Persons:

When we are leading a normal life, we are also making spiritual advancement. It is happening passively.

When we are leading a religious life, following truly the teachings of any religion, we are progressing toward this goal much faster. The original teachings of each of the different religions revolves around the same principles that progress us spiritually.

The core practices of any religious path are practiced by very few individuals, and they are the scientific means of spiritual awakening. Few individuals are able to dive deep enough in these precious teachings and implement them in their lives. They are truly practicing the essence of all religions even though they might be following a particular religious path.

Next in line are the spiritual teachings. They are different from religions and morality, even though they include all the good things of them. Spiritual teachings are the direct means of spiritual awakening in a direct and practical way. These are the underlying science of all religions. They are the different pathways of freedom in Spirit.

The spiritual development can be tremendously advanced when we come in contact with spiritually advanced or enlightened person. It is like transformation of a piece of iron into a magnet by coming in contact with a magnet.

Understanding The Practical Aspect Of Spiritual Awakening:

Spiritual awakening is the unfolding of Spirit in us. We know in theory that we are souls but our thoughts, speech and behavior are far away from the spiritually attuned life.

Under normal conditions, we are influenced and attached to objects of five senses of sound, touch, vision, taste and smell, and to prejudices, biases and conditioning of our mind.

When we are advancing spiritually, we become connected at first with our own soul – the consciousness in us. And then, Spirit begins to influence our mind and body. This is like gradual spiritualization of our entire being.

We become more peaceful, more content, more productive, more integrated, more in harmony with us and with all of nature. We feel connected. The bonds of senses and bad habits begin to loose their hold on us.

Ultimately they shed off as if they had been foreign to us. We begin to accept ourselves, we become more connected, and we manifest the joy that is our nature. Remember pleasure is derived from contact of desired sense objects to senses and joy is our internal nature.

I remember the saying of one great saint. He preached to his disciples, “The true sign of spiritual advancement is getting non-causal joy during your spiritual practices and feeling glimpses of it during your working hours. Gradually as you become more and more intoxicated with this joy, know that you are progressing in Spirit. You will be fulfilled with this joy like no other things.” This equals to the rejoicing in Spirit mentioned the teaching of Christianity.

Another important sign is feeling connected with all – nature, men and women and with all that exists. At first, the feeling of connectedness will be with our own self. Then, this experience will broaden and broaden. The whole life, whole nature, the universe will feel connected.

Most people attach miracles with spiritual advancement. It is non-issue with spiritually awakened person. Miracles are the normal functioning of spiritually advanced individuals. They are more able to experience and work through deep states of consciousness. It is natural to them.

The most important thing is to realize and accept that we are here for spiritual awakening. This realization could be instant under some instances, or it could be gradual like in most cases.

Second step is making little steps leading a more healthy, intelligent and balanced life. Third step is following spiritual practices and then adhering to some specific one that is more appealing to us.

Fourth step is not worrying too much about spiritual awakening. When you eat healthy and exercise and follow some good diet plan, you grow healthier naturally, day by day, each day. The same applies to spiritual growth. Leave this part to Spirit. Let Him take care.
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Because of the fact that spirituality and mysticism are often such vague areas of knowledge, there can actually be quite a bit of confusion about the idea of a spiritual awakening.  One of the most popular places that people hear about a spiritual awakening is in the programs of Alcoholics Anonymous or any of the other 12-step programs. 

The 12th and final step suggests the possibility that a person can have a spiritual awakening and therefore arrive at some kind of final condition wherein their spiritual journey is said to be complete.  The idea of coming to an “end”, however, is problematic in spirituality and this is the reason we need to be clear about what is meant about a spiritual awakening. Great sages like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Lao Tzu and Sri Aurobindo have discussed these confusions in detail and suggested that the condition may be extremely rare even though it is often reported y many individuals.
    
The idea of “waking up” spiritually might be best understood by imagining that people are all relatively “asleep” when it comes to the reality of their day to day lives. Oftentimes, when you are asleep, you don’t even realize that you are asleep because your dream can seem so real!  This is a similar experience in relation to the spiritual “slumber”. 
    
People who first enter a spiritual recovery program or spiritual group of any kind can all be said to be somewhat “asleep” in terms of their awareness about what is real or what is most valuable in their lives.  They seek out the instruction of other more experienced individuals to help them to “wake up” to the realities of the world around them.  This can often be a very difficult and even traumatic experience as we don’t particularly like to wake up to reality anymore than we like to be awoken from a good dream when we are asleep in our beds.  Nonetheless, if we stick around a spiritual group long enough, we begin to become more aware of certain things and can be said to be “awakening” to a new reality.
    
The full significance of a spiritual awakening, however, is often much more extreme than most of us realize.  We may have experienced certain dreams at night where we thought you had been awake and actually visited many “real” places such as our job, our school or our home but then later we discovered that none of this was real.  We had either fallen abck asleep without realizing it or we had only been going through another dream, very lucid, yet unreal nonetheless. 
   
This “dream” experience is also very common among people who begin to study spiritual truths and become very excited when they feel that they are finally “waking up”.  The reality of this “waking up” as a full blown spiritual awakening, however, is very far from a reality in most cases. As one great sage once said “You are mistaking a crack in the mirror for the full light of noon!”  A spiritual awakening is something that is actually much more profound and comprehensive than most people realize.  These experiences are classically restricted to a very small percentage of the population throughout history and have been discussed in many great books such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Kaballah and the New Testament. 
    
There is wide agreement amongst some of the world’s most notable spiritual teachers that only one in ten million people will ever truly become awakened to the full reality of the spiritual condition of mankind!  Can this be true?   The reason it may be correct is that spiritual work actually requires extreme dedication and effort over many years before a person can typically be said to become completely awakened to their spirit.  Muhammad is known to have spent years in mediation before finally becoming “Enlightened” and certain issues surrounding life and death and the eternity of the soul are very profound and can only be intuited by those who witness extreme tragedies or experience near death transformations in their lives.  Even after these extreme experiences, people often return to their original state and are only changed in a very profound way rather than being completely “awakened” to their spirit. 
   
A spiritual awakening is something more grand than many people have likely been capable of understanding after simply hearing about the subject.  The rarity of the experience, however, can provide great inspiration to those who would choose to devote their lives to that same spiritual quest.  These great spirits have included such names as Muhammad, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Krishna, St. Paul, Ramana Maharshi, Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus Christ and many others. 
    
The quest for a spiritual awakening can make a person into one of the most influential figures in history, as th previous list suggests.  If you set your course for the stars, you may just reach it someday! Once you do, there will be no more doubt about whether you have arrived or not.

What is enlightenment? This question has become very controversial and in many ways it went from a religious quest to a philosophical quest. In fact, it’s become so debated that there’s a magazine dedicated to the subject. WIE (What Is Enlightenment) is a magazine well worth picking up and it’s on the cutting edge of modern thinking about spirituality and higher consciousness.

Finding a definitive definition for spiritual enlightenment can be quite a challenge. Expressing in words the magnitude of this inner realization that we have come to define as enlightenment, almost always fails to fully explain the conviction and experience of having that profoundly connected feeling. The idea of enlightenment is often misunderstood as a goal or a state of mind that you have to reach in order to be truly spiritual. The idea of enlightenment is multidimensional and offers us some great insights into life and our own spiritual path.

A greater understanding of the meaning of enlightenment will help us to understand more of that spiritual dimension of life. To better understand what enlightenment is, let’s look at three great insights about what it might mean.

The first great insight into enlightenment is that it is a higher awareness. This higher awareness is an awareness of something higher or beyond ordinary everyday awareness (which is almost a state of ‘sleepwalking’ for most people). We all experience life through our sense and for the vast majority of people their experience of life is confined to this sensory experience. There is, however another level of life; a level that is beyond the mere sensory experience. God, soul, spirit – call it what you will is that presence deep within you that’s your constant companion in life. In fact it is the essence of who you really are.

This higher awareness is about recognizing that you are not just a physical being with the occasional spiritual experiences, but that you are in fact a spiritual being having a human experience. In the New Testament, St. Paul said that “you are in this world, but you are not from this world.” This awareness will help you to see past most of the mundane daily struggles that keeps so many people bogged down in an unhappy life. Whenever you are aware of this higher power in your life, you are in an enlightened state. By turning your thoughts to God, you automatically turn your thoughts inwards and become aware of God’s presence in your life.

The second great insight into enlightenment is that the world is the way it is because it is the way it is. Everything is the way it is and the proof for it is that it ‘is’. The question is what are you doing with what ‘is’. Enlightenment has been described as the quiet acceptance of everything. When you realize that everything in this universe happens according to divine law, you will have the insight that things don’t just happen and that there are no mistakes in this perfect system. We tend to strive only for an illusive state of ‘perfection’ and when things don’t work the way we want them to, we tend to call it ‘bad’.

The truth is that underneath our shallow perceptions there is something bigger and greater at work and this is why all the great sages were able to remain at peace in the face of great challenges. They knew that in this world nothing ever goes wrong. When Jesus was crucified he was able to forgive, knowing that even that was part of the perfectly orchestrated universe. When things don’t seem to be working for you, maybe there is something else that is working.

The third great insight into enlightenment is probably the most important. This insight is that every time you are at peace you are enlightened. Inner peace, although it has very little value in our culture, is probably the most important thing anyone of us can have in our lives. With a sense of inner peace you are truly happy and content with your Self. In this state your mind is quiet and you are connected to God. God and peace is synonymous and when you have inner peace you have God within. Inner turmoil suffocates your spirit and builds a wall around your consciousness that prevents you from living from your higher self and seeing life with a greater sense of clarity.

Enlightenment is within your reach. It’s not something to attain but rather something you connect with. It’s a state of being where you are united with your true spiritual origin – it is when you are connected with God and therefore everything in creation. Connectedness leads us to the realization that we are all one, which removes conflict and gives us a sense of inner peace which allows us to joyfully accept everything.

The idea of enlightenment is as old as mankind’s search for a greater truth behind life. Although the term enlightenment originated in ancient eastern religions, it has almost taken on a life of it’s own in modern spirituality. You may ask yourself ‘what is enlightenment?’ and like most before you, your answer will fall well short of fully encapsulating the totality of it’s meaning. I don’t believe that there are any definitive definitions or explanations for what enlightenment is. But, I do believe that there are many great insights from this profound idea that can help us to better understand that invisible spiritual dimension of life.

The beginning of the 18th century was the start of an era better known as the Age Of Enlightenment – a period of time in history that is characterized by a global shift in thinking. Essentially, The Age Of Enlightenment took mankind out of the ‘dark ages’ where the state and the church had a monopoly on ‘knowledge’ and they controlled what people were allowed to believe.

Along with many great scientific discoveries (of which Newton’s laws were one of the most significant) a new intellectual awareness compelled ‘ordinary’ people to start thinking and exploring life for themselves. It’s as if people’s mind were opened to a whole new world. They started to turn their attention inwards instead of looking to the church to tell them what to think and believe. This global shift in thinking was the birth of our modern world; a world were we can explore life for ourselves and learn to command our own thoughts and direct our own consciousness.

What took mankind out of the dark ages and into ‘the light’ was knowledge and learning to look past dogma and convention. Hence the name The Age Of Enlightenment because it refers to the idea of casting a light unto what was previously dark.Have you ever tried finding your way in a dark room? You feel hopeless, uncertain and lost. This is how many people feel in their everyday lives – as if they are living in a spiritual darkness. In this sense the idea of enlightenment can be a great insight for you. Enlightenment is nothing but turning on your own inner light to help you ‘see’. This seeing is not sight as we’ve all come to know it but rather an inner sight (or an insight) that goes beyond that of ordinary everyday perception.

Many people think of enlightenment as a ‘goal’ – as a state of awareness to reach by following certain spiritual practices and when they eventually reach this goal their entire life will be blissful and without any problems. The truth is that this is impossible, for the very nature of our consciousness is for it to expand and enlightenment is about the unfolding of your spirit by expanding your awareness.

This inner light that helps us to perceive things in greater truth will not change our outer world as much as it will change our inner world. It’s an inner realization that will help you to change the filter through which you perceive and experience everything in life. Enlightenment is not an attainment, but a realization. Once you reach this realization nothing will change, yet everything will change. You will find that even though the world hasn’t change it appears as if it has because you see it anew.

We all spend much of our lives working towards the attainment of an ideal state of mind; a state of mind where we are happy, where we feel peaceful and where we feel that our lives are meaningful. Many think of enlightenment as this ‘ideal’ state of mind. But, life is never fixed in time and enlightenment is about allowing your spirit to grow into this life by expanding your awareness of who you really are. Enlightenment is that inner light that gets switched on through inner wisdom. It allows you to see past the illusion of your sensory experiences of life and to see in ever greater clarity that divine part of who you really are.