I met a woman recently who, when she found out what I do, was interested in working with me for the purpose of opening up more to her higher guidance. “My mother talks about ‘my angels,’ and I want to be able to hear more of what they are saying to me. I just don’t know where to begin.” Because of this interaction, and others like it that I’ve had, I feel inspired to write this “Beginner’s Guide to Awakening.”
Where do I start?
In my view, spiritual wisdom cannot be forced on anyone. Besides learned experience and inner inspiration, teaching between people only works when it is imparted to people who are asking for it.
If you are already saying to yourself, and to the universe in general, “I want more. I know there’s more. I want to open more deeply to my connection,” that’s half the battle. You are already putting this energy out into the universe, to your higher self, and to your guides, and your guides can then take your cue to speak more loudly, so to speak, by putting more people and things on your path that can help. When you ask for something from your Higher Self, your higher self listens.
Start exploring information from a variety of sources and teachers
In any discipline or venture, but especially when it comes to your very own spiritual connection, it is important to not place all your power in the hands of one teacher, leader, or guide. Simultaneously receiving information from a variety of different sources will expose you to ideas you previously may not have considered before, while also helping keep you centered in your own power. Variety can allow you to notice what you perceive to be universal threads that unify or weave together the different information sources you’re interacting with. Over time you will learn discernment, and also how discernment differs from cynicism.
I was also in your shoes once. I had already had some profound awakening experiences when I was younger, and was always curious in the back of my mind about where my spiritual journey would take me. However, during my college years, I felt… blocked, or like my spiritual development had taken a backseat to other concerns as I learned how to navigate my early adulthood. But the thirst for the connection and growth I’d already tasted never truly abated. One day during my senior year of college, I was sitting on my bed. I said out loud to nobody in particular, “I know there’s more. I want to experience this more viscerally.” It was an intentional prayer that I felt and meant to my core.
The very next day, I came across a Facebook post with a quote about the law of attraction that resonated with what I already knew to be true based on my earlier awakening experiences as a teenager. (I will detail these experiences more in-depth in a future post.) The information was saying the same thing that I had received from my own higher guidance: that we create our own realities, everything is a mirror, and that every experience and relationship comes from a place of resonance with the vibration that we are emitting. The source of the quote was Abraham Hicks, a consciousness stream that is trance-channeled through a woman named Esther Hicks.
I had actually come across some Abraham Hicks videos before, because my mom had sent them to me. However, because I hadn’t asked to receive those videos or that information, I didn’t pay any attention to them at the time. It was only when I was calling it in from my own will, and not what someone else thought I needed to hear, that I was able to open to the information in a meaningful way that helped me.
The “coincidence” of the timing, of coming across Abraham Hicks the very next day, was not lost on me. After reading the meme, I clicked on link to the profile it had come from, and I began to read quotes on the other memes posted on the page. For the next hour or so, I devoured as many of the memes as I could. Many of them made me gasp when I was presented with a new way of seeing things, and others made me say “YES! That’s true!” Over and over again. Abraham-Hicks essentially became my starting point and was relevant and appropriate for me to be listening to at that place and time in my life.
In the months that followed, I began listening to the seemingly endless supply of recordings of Abraham seminars on Youtube. Because I myself had spontaneously experienced the trance channeling state during my own awakening, I knew that the delivery of information in this format was valid. It is still important to not take anyone who calls themselves a channeler at face value, and it is my view that, additionally, not all channeled information comes from positive energy sources. However, if you resonate with the message—and not just the message, the energy and the feeling you have while listening to it—it is likely that the information is helpful and uplifting on your path for where you are at your current level of learning and development.
How do you know who to trust?
If the information is not fear-mongering and instead leaves you feeling uplifted, then it is likely a safe and helpful information source to interact with. Watch out for rigidity: If a teacher or channel is telling you that you must believe in a certain way and that no other beliefs or perspectives are valid, run. Pay particular attention to this one. There is an insidiousness that pervades spiritual circles where information or spiritual instructions are couched in “love and light” terms, but really the undercurrent may be highly manipulative or coercive in ways that are still controlling, just in ways that are constructed to be more indirect or appear benign. If you sense judgment or a superiority complex from your teacher, listen to that feeling. If you sense the teacher is teaching from a place of feeding their own ego and compensating for wounding and deficiencies in self esteem, listen to this as well, because it inevitably comes out as control eventually. If anything is too rigidly dogmatic, notice that. And think for yourself: even teachers or figures that are, by public consensus, accepted as trustworthy or wise, should be subject to your discernment—perhaps those teachers most strongly.
Information should be empowering. It should place you at the center of your experience. If a teacher describes themselves as the ultimate guru or the most spiritually advanced person that they know, think twice. They should also have accountability structures. If they lash out when people ask questions or hold them accountable, that’s a red flag. They should also be able to say “I don’t know.” Knowing that you don’t know is wisdom. If there’s a documentary out about them that exposes them, maybe take that into account. I will never forget the Teal Swan documentary wherein an attendee at her retreat asks her who is above her, and she is aghast that someone would have the audacity to question her authority. You may think, “Well, that’s an obvious cult! I’d never fall for that!” But her seminars and books are popular… her quotes are shared frequently in spiritual spaces on the internet. Even a woman who eventually reached the inner circle of her cult mentioned that she just thought she was engaging in self-help when she first got involved. So all of this is to say, use your discernment, use more, and then use more!
Additionally, it is important to start paying more attention to how you feel in your body awareness and intuition when interacting with different people, author, videos, books, et cetera. This is like a muscle you can flex. Experiencing some lessons from a place of naïveté is what eventually builds our discernment and ability to retroactively identify what sensations were, in fact, our intuition. Growing from naive to wise seems part and parcel of the journey for many people, so if you stumble or end up entertaining teachers/ideas/etc that you later change your mind about, don’t beat up on yourself.
Just because someone says something with confidence does not mean they are right. Pay attention to the “thoughts between thoughts” that arise for you when encountering new people and sources of information, and notice if your body feels contracted or expanded. As I mentioned before, your awareness of very subtle cues will grow like a muscle as you continue to practice tuning in over time.
Teachers I recommend as a starting point:
Abraham-Hicks
Sanaya Roman
Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll
And, later, after digesting the information from Abraham and Sanaya: Bashar Channeled by Darryl Anka (Older recordings — from the 80s/90s on their website)
Develop a routine
One of the most consistent recommendations from the Abraham Hicks material is to meditate daily, in the morning.
I implemented a daily meditation practice during the year that I was listening to Abraham-Hicks heavily. My therapist at the time, who also was trained in energy awareness, told me that she could sense my connection had opened and strengthened considerably during the months I began meditating daily.
Shortly after graduating college, I met somebody while traveling who works as a spiritual coach. He was the first of his kind that I had met, and I was intrigued… Besides my therapist and a psychic I occasionally consulted with, I wasn’t used to talking openly about my spiritual path with just anyone. I won’t lie to you, at this point in my life I am not inclined to be as open with just anyone who calls themselves a spiritual coach, but his presence in my life at that moment was timely. He gave me one piece of advice that I took to heart, and that became key to my energetic foundation: “Build a routine. Every night before bed I write down five things that I am grateful for, and I start every morning with a meditation.” The routine became my container, and I have stuck with it for a decade.
This is what my daily routine for maintaining my center looks like now, and it’s the routine I’ve had for many years. You can follow it too or alter it to meet your needs—whatever feels like a best fit. I try and do this whole routine at least three times a week, and aim to do elements of it six to seven days a week (if I only have time for one part, I usually choose meditation, either that or exercise). The idea is to quiet your thoughts so that, from a place of centeredness, the current of your inner being can come through less impeded.
1. Some form of exercise
This can be yoga, this can be pilates, this can be running, this can be going to the gym. Exercise is one of the most centering practices to engage in first thing in the morning, and first thing in the morning our vibrations are most malleable, before it has crystallized into a given thought stream/focus, so we can use this state of malleability to our advantage by priming ourselves in the energetic direction we prefer. A channeler that I like, Kryon, recommended exercise followed by meditation, because it physiologically primes us to be able to connect even more deeply during the meditation.
2. A Breathwork exercise
On an ideal morning where I do every piece of my routine, I do a guided 4-7-8 breathing exercise (I prefer the 16-minute video), followed by a Wim Hof breathing exercise video. The video itself is 23 minutes long, but I only hold my breath for about a maximum of 1:30 in each round, so it shortens the total time. You can also do as many or as few rounds as you feel like. Or, you can just do one exercise or the other.
Video links:
3. Meditation
Between 15 to 20 minutes. Some people struggle with meditation when they first start or feel like they don’t know what they are doing. There are many meditation teachers out there that can help you get more comfortable with this practice. The idea is to quiet your thoughts. When I meditate, I feel I am able to receive the messages, feelings and imagery from my higher self more palpably. If meditation is hard at first, don’t worry. It is like a muscle. The more you consistently practice it, the better you become at it.
I want to emphasize the customizability of the idea of “a routine.” If you want to add or subtract something, do so! If you don’t like any of these activities but are more called to a Tai Chi morning routine, do that! This is about YOU, listening to YOU and what YOU’RE called for. Everything is a balance between having the humility to be open-minded to things that many people are recommending and recognizing these tools are popular for a reason, while also having the self-esteem to listen to yourself and put yourself and your inclinations about things first.
4. Time outside and in nature
I try to spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day outside, ideally. Connecting with nature helps us connect more deeply with our own inner nature.
While it’s important to aim for consistency, don’t beat up on yourself if you have days here and there or entire periods of time where you feel like meditation doesn’t call to you. Sometime’s it’s important to enforce our own discipline, and other times it’s important to listen to the cues to take a break from a practice.
Healing
Opening more to your spirituality expands you into more of yourself at an accelerated pace. You may experience disruptions to your reality in small or large ways. To stay most grounded throughout change, I recommend you don’t bite off more than you can chew. There is no race to the end. Take in information and implement changes in thoughts and habits at a pace that is digestible to you, and open to more when you know that it is time.
Essentially every one of us humans deals with imbalance. Part of the purpose of our spiritual journey is to bring our beings into greater balance and harmony. We may be called to look more deeply at childhood wounding and let go of emotional pain that we have been carrying.
Expect change
Many people speak of spiritual evolution, but I prefer the term metamorphosis. Metamorphosis involves linear change that accumulates up to a certain point, and is punctuated by more quantum changes or specific transitionary times (the time to build a cocoon; the time to emerge from the cocoon). The nature of metamorphosis is such that we, in all likelihood, do not know what we are to experience once we come out the other side of our current phase of transformation—that’s the point of our movement towards that transformation, in order to discover what lies on the other side of the transformation. Until then, what we know and have are the instincts that guide us towards that point. We don’t need to know what life will be like when we transform, because if we already knew we would already be transformed. So, follow your natural instincts. What’s relevant for the caterpillar to know isn’t that it will emerge with wings: what is relevant is that it knows, from its inner drive, that it must consume milkweed. That’s all it needs to know until it is time to know something else; until it knows from a place deep within, and from changes that emerge from its physiology, that it is time to construct a cocoon. You know what you need to know based on your feelings and instincts at any given time, and you know 100% of what you need to know to get to the next step.
For most people, spiritual development entails a deep restructuring of many belief systems (especially our beliefs about ourselves). The process that gets us to these changes may be cathartic or challenge you in ways you didn’t see coming.
Synchronicity may accelerate
Spirit guides and our higher selves love to use synchronicity to communicate with us. Pay attention to coincidences or reoccurring elements—things that reoccur beyond statistical probability or seem coincidental—but ONLY if they stand out to you. You will know if synchronicity is “real” or if you’re trying to force dots to connect because you don’t have to go looking for it. If you’re scrutinizing your reality of environment for patterns, reoccurring numbers, or repeating elements or inventing vague connections between things, this is 99% of the time coming from your mind and not a communication from your higher aspects. Synchronicity won’t always be constant, either—part of the idea of it standing out to you is that it isn’t necessarily happening all the time. If you stumble upon it and it strikes a chord with you, it may be a nudge from your higher aspect.
Staying Grounded: IMPORTANT
An influx of higher dimensional energy that floods people’s energy bodies when they embark on a journey of spiritual awakening and expansion may be overwhelming or ungrounding if it is more that a person is capable of handling or integrating. In fact, a certain degree of this overwhelm seems to be part and parcel of the experience for many people, because the experience of finding your center after a destabilizing experience, and relying on yourself to do so, contains many lessons.
Consider a water pipe that is flooded with an outsize volume of water coming at a velocity it is not prepared, in its hardware, to handle. It may damage the pipe. You are not “stuck” with this hardware forever—beings of light upgrade the hardware of your energy body and the current you are able to handle once you have integrated where you are currently at. Have patience with your process and also trust that you are never stuck.
I don’t know anyone who has not been knocked off center to some degree or another during their spiritual journey. Do not beat up on yourself if this happens, but also be mindful of taking good care of yourself if you become ungrounded or de-centered and know when to ask for help and even be open to seeking mental health resources that may be more conventional or exist outside of the realm of “spirituality.” Things that don’t label themselves as spiritual are not inherently un-spiritual; in fact, many (or even most) things that don’t carry a spiritual or new age label often have far more beneficial energy than things that label themselves as spiritual. Remember that everything is a mixed bag. It is generally easier for things that exist outside of the realm of spirituality to come from, and I mean this in the most literal sense, an energetically grounded place. Without a stable foundation of grounding, life force cannot flow forth in a consistent, automatic, and reliable way. Everything is built on the foundation of groundedness.
It’s all in your choices!
Have courage.
Cut Cords
One thing you will notice is that taking symbolic actions with intentionality (rituals) may have a powerful energetic effect in your life. If you search online, you will find a whole array of different cord cutting exercises that may be of use to you. I will share my favorite cord cutting exercise in a future article.
To know what energy is yours and what belongs to others, it is important to untangle your energy from other individuals whose emotions and thoughts may be affecting you unconsciously, especially as you begin to increase in your sensitivity. Think back to significant relationships from the past that are no longer active in your life: start here for cord cutting. I will write another article about cutting cords.
In the next article, I will detail exercises that can help you increase your own intuition and subtle awareness that you can practice with other people.
Leave a comment