Ch 1: My Awakening Begins
I feel compelled to share my journey toward enlightenment with you. The last couple of years were transformative on many levels and caused me to WAKE UP (a spiritual awakening). My intent is to help others along the way as we are quickly moving toward a global awakening.
What is Enlightenment?
Let’s start by defining enlightenment/spiritual awakening. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi described it as a reality whereby one is content, peaceful and happy twenty-four hours a day, independent from outside circumstances. You can still experience momentary sadness, but the emotion does not overshadow the underlying stable inner happiness. In addition, enlightenment means living one’s full mental and spiritual potential by being in harmony with natural law.
Eckhart Tolle describes enlightenment/spiritual awakening best in his book, The Power of Now. It occurs when you realize you are not your mind thinking mind — ego. Each person experiences this process of waking up differently as their ego transcends their ordinary, finite sense of self to encompass a more expansive, infinite sense of truth or reality.
It is the journey of learning to watch and not judge your thoughts and to understand that if you stop and observe your overthinking mind, you must be MORE than a compilation of thoughts and feelings. When you realize there is no past, only experiences that enabled you to grow and learn. The future is imagined and therefore does not exist either. All we have is NOW.
Tolle says, “When you honor and accept the now, you are free of pain and suffering.”
Pandemic & Fear
Over the last twenty years, I’ve studied psychology on the Master’s level, read hundreds of personal development books, and immersed myself in self-improvement workshops and courses. I will share my experiences that led up to my recent awakening and how I interpret what is going on around me.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I became frightened. I wasn’t sure how we would cash flow at our small business. My mom is elderly with pre-existing health conditions, and I was afraid this virus would kill her. I worried about my four kids (17yo, 15yo, 12yo, and 3yo) and how their health and lives would be affected long term. It became apparent our “normal” was quickly changing. Fear consumed me.
With a 30-year history of battling anxiety and depression, I’ve learned techniques to cope. I’ve spent years in psychological therapy, taken many mild medications to find the right one for me, practiced yoga, and learned to breathe deep to stay calm. I have a life coach and dear friend to work through life’s difficulties. I focus on gratitude and write about my feelings, which takes away their power by shining a light on them and calling them by name. Getting thoughts out of my head helps me to more easily choose to spend my time and energy on what I can control.
As it turns out, if you throw in a global pandemic, I freak out! Some awful thoughts and feelings arose that frightened me and led me to dark places inside my mind. Waking up at 3 am with terror and dread of the future and how covid would affect my family, friends, town, Nation, and the entire world became exhausting. I spent hours of my life watching the news and the covid cases explode. I didn’t leave the house for a few months and began day drinking. Intoxication led to more restless nights, hangovers, more profound depression, guilt, anger, extreme sadness, and existing in a state of constant fear.
I was not thriving during the summer of 2020. I reached out to my doctor, who prescribed a sleeping pill for 30-days to help my body rest. He also recommended exercise and doing things that bring me joy. I knew pills weren’t the answer to my problems.
People told me to pray and trust God/Source/Universe/Creator/Being/ Oneness/I Am (I use Higher Power) would work it all out in my best interest. Sometimes faith didn’t seem like enough, and I would go into a spiral of imagined doom and gloom and get lost there. I was lying in bed for hours at a time, staring at the ceiling, unable to understand how this would play out.
We Choose Our Reality
My saving grace was that a dear friend started a book study reading: 40 Days to a Joy-Filled Life by Tommy Newberry. I highly recommend this book, which encouraged me to shift my thinking and behavior. You choose your reality. That 6-week period of meeting virtually on weekdays at noon shifted my perspective on many things. I examined what is essential to me; if this virus is going to kill us all, then I wanted to go down doing what I love and being the person I was born to be.
By mid-July 2020, I was drowning myself in alcohol. The last night I drank was on a weekday from noon until around 10 pm that night. I woke up at 1 am and needed to throw up, which sadly was not uncommon as of late. As I staggered to the bathroom down the hall, I was quiet and did not wake anyone up. I shut the bathroom door and then turned on the light. My eyes quickly closed in response to the brightness, and I immediately fell to my knees and crawled to the toilet.
I prayed to God and asked if he would please let me live. As I violently vomited into the commode, I promised to be a better person. Please don’t let me pass out, hit my head on the toilet seat, and bleed out for my children to find my cold, corpse on the hall bathroom floor in the morning. I begged to have another chance, and the Universe honored my pleas. I woke up the following day and focused on remaining sober for 24 hours. My goal then moved to 48 hours. Next was one week, then a month, then 100 days. After that, I didn’t miss alcohol and its toxicity in my life.
Sobriety
Today I’m 607 days without consuming, and I’m a better person for it. I didn’t realize its toll on my mental, physical, emotional, and financial health. If you are sober curious, I highly recommend an app — I Am Sober. You can anonymously post about your ups, downs, and all-around of quitting. I felt comfortable sharing my honest thoughts and found nothing but support. Even when someone drank and reset their days sober counter, everyone was non-judgmental and encouraging. We are human, and alcohol is addictive, socially accepted, and a way for some to hide from their reality.
Sobriety was a necessary step to ignite my spiritual awakening. The alcohol was numbing the good and the bad in my life. I began practicing meditation in August 2020 and love the app — Ten Percent. There are videos and courses to teach anyone to calm the mind through meditation. Please take the time to learn this method of quieting the mind. It is through silence that we acknowledge our Being. Meditating allows us to observe our thoughts and feelings without judgment.
“Be still and know that I Am.” Psalms 46:10
This is profound Biblical wisdom about how in silence we find our one true self. For me, many pieces of the puzzle started to fit together in January 2022. This is shaping my understanding of life and my life’s purpose. There is an energetic shift taking place, and many are waking up faster than ever before. There is immense freedom and peace simply being in the NOW. Not regretting past mistakes you can’t change, not wishing your life away by wanting some happiness in the future, but truly enjoying this breath and being grateful for this moment because, in reality, that is all we have, anyway. Welcome friends!
