How to Transform Your Life Through a Spiritual Awakening

Who doesn’t love a way of thinking that benefits your mental health, and is calming and centering?

Almost 75% of American adults say they want to grow spiritually, according to a 2022 Barna survey.1 Close to 80% of U.S. adults say they believe in a higher power, per the same survey.1 Forty-five percent of U.S. adults say they’ve had a time when they’ve felt some sort of spiritual connectedness.2

You may be a part of that number that is searching for and finding a spiritual connection. You may even say that as a result of seeking, you’ve experienced a spiritual awakening.

“A spiritual awakening is an experience that shifts a person’s basic presupposition about the nature of reality or the meaning of life, often through encountering a situation that supplies a sense of resolution to what had previously been challenges,” explains Daniel Boscaljon, PhD, executive coach and co-founder of Alchemy of Love. This change in mindset that often occurs with a spiritual awakening can not only impact how you think, but also your mental health.

But even if you find yourself making those changes, and focusing on a higher power, does that mean you’re having a spiritual awakening? We take a look at what it feels like to go through this experience, the benefits and potential challenges of a spiritual awakening, and how you can make your new mindset a part of your everyday lifestyle.

What Does a Spiritual Awakening Feel Like?

A spiritual awakening can be as simple as you feeling more in touch with nature and humanity, and finding that you are more filled with compassion for your fellow man. It could also be that you discover or strengthen your belief in a higher power, and that higher power, whether it’s God, Jesus, Allah, or Buddha, is a major part of your thought and decision-making process. You could also have a full-blown conversion experience, and your entire view of the world and your life shifts in line with your newfound religious beliefs.

“A spiritual awakening offers a new appreciation for the future potential. [For] many people who are in despair, suffering from a loss of hope, [or] feel that there is no meaning in life … a spiritual awakening can provide a renewed sense of meaning relative to your passions, generating a renewed sense of purpose,” states Dr. Boscaljon. “This sort of awakening often benefits mental health by restoring a sense of inner confidence in your own capabilities,” he adds.

An awakening can make you feel hopeful about life and your future. It often feels like you have a newfound sense of empowerment.

Understanding the Process of Spiritual Awakening

Research shows that spirituality benefits your mental health by giving you strength in difficulties and making you feel connected to others with similar beliefs.3 Spirituality can also have a positive psychological impact and reduce levels of depression.4 The process of becoming more spiritually attuned or enlightened often leads you on a focused quest for growth, development, and introspection.

“When you become aware of the flow of nature, and you start to work with this awareness, you can begin to set more deliberate intentions of what you want. Instead of getting upset about the things that are not working, you can use them as a springboard to ask yourself, ‘What do you want instead?’,” says Shari B. Kaplan, LCSW, integrative mental health clinician at Cannectd Wellness.

Navigating the journey of a spiritual awakening is about more than just you. Your life and your actions become focused on a greater sense of inner peace, that ultimately makes an outward difference. That thought process gets to the root of the mindset that often comes with a spiritual experience.

Making Your Awakening a Part of Your Daily Life

Having this experience that is amazing and life-altering for you is one thing; figuring out how to implement it into your everyday life is something else. The key, however, is to make a deliberate decision on where and how you want to integrate it and not be overwhelmed in the process.

Start Your Day With a Focus on Mindfulness

“This could involve meditating for a few minutes, where you focus on breathing and invite the life force to cleanse your mind of negative thoughts. Express your willingness to release these thoughts and replace them with positive, constructive ones. You can use the specific affirmation, ‘Please take this mind chatter so that I can be focused and get my work done instead. I am willing to release this chatter and focus my mind on my work’,” Kaplan suggests. In this way, you clear your mind and invite thoughts with a spiritual focus into your presence.

Set a Purposeful Agenda for the Day

Knowing what you want to accomplish, and how you want to do it, allows you to make sure your actions align with your spiritual beliefs. In addition, if prayer and meditation are a part of your new spiritual lifestyle, you can make sure you add it to your schedule.

Find Someone Further Along in the Same Spiritual Journey to Help Guide You

For example, if you have had a new awakening and have just become a Christian, you can spend time with someone who is established in their faith and can mentor you. “These guides often provide a conversational space that allows doubts and confusions to be voiced and held without a need to answer or respond to them. This allows an increased tolerance of uncertainty that is often useful as a psychological response to an awakening,” advises Dr. Boscaljon. Finding a mentor can also help you navigate challenges after having a spiritual awakening. A mentor can also help you continue to press forward when the newness of the awakening wears off and it can seem harder to stay the course.

Put Tenets of Your Beliefs Into Practice

If your spiritual awakening involves being a more compassionate, less selfish person, put that into practice. Can you volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate time and items to a shelter, or contribute financially to an orphanage? Can you take an international missions trip, or work to build a house with Habitat for Humanity? The key here is putting action behind your beliefs.

How to Nurture a Spiritual Awakening

These same practices can help you to nurture your spiritual awakening. By continually putting these actions to work in your life, you strengthen your beliefs behind your awakening.

• Nurturing it includes incorporating actions that are a part of your everyday life. For example, thinking before you speak so that your words can be kinder and less judgmental is a good way to see your actions grow and line up with your beliefs.
• Along the same lines, you can choose to speak words that edify, following the adage that says if you can’t say something nice, then you shouldn’t speak at all.
• You can also choose to pay it forward, which involves doing something nice for someone with no expectation of getting anything in return. These are seemingly small actions that can help you grow in your new spiritual mindset.

Overcoming Challenges in the Spiritual Awakening Journey

Even in the course of experiencing growth, you can still deal with challenges along the way. You may see changes in close relationships, especially if you now see life differently and behave differently with those friends or family members. You may also have people who don’t believe you’ve really experienced internal, spiritual change, which can be hurtful to you.

“One way to overcome the challenge is to work on suspending social relations in favor of cultivating your inner world. Taking some time in solitude can help to reground your sense of personal identity without the noise from those outside,” says Dr. Boscaljon.

Another way “to overcome the challenge is to find a trusted guide with experience in spiritual awakenings or the process of identity transformation. These guides often provide a conversational space that allows doubts and confusions to be voiced and held without a need to answer or respond to them,” he adds.