Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Does a Spiritual Awakening Feel Like?Understanding the Process of Spiritual AwakeningMaking Your Awakening a Part of Your Daily LifeHow to Nurture a Spiritual AwakeningOvercoming Challenges in the Spiritual Awakening Journey

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

What Does a Spiritual Awakening Feel Like?

Understanding the Process of Spiritual Awakening

Making Your Awakening a Part of Your Daily Life

How to Nurture a Spiritual Awakening

Overcoming Challenges in the Spiritual Awakening Journey

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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.Close to 80% of U.S. adults say they believe in a higher power, per the same survey.Forty-five percent of U.S. adults say they’ve had a time when they’ve felt some sort of spiritual connectedness.

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,” explainsDaniel 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.

A spiritual awakening … allows a calm and confident acceptance of where you are in life. It is spiritual because what changes is your attitude and not the material circumstance that had previously [caused] difficulties—DANIEL BOSCALJON, PHD, EXECUTIVE COACH AND CO-FOUNDER OF ALCHEMY OF LOVE

A spiritual awakening … allows a calm and confident acceptance of where you are in life. It is spiritual because what changes is your attitude and not the material circumstance that had previously [caused] difficulties

—DANIEL BOSCALJON, PHD, EXECUTIVE COACH AND CO-FOUNDER OF ALCHEMY OF LOVE

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 to Do When You Feel You Are Losing Your Faith

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.

After a spiritual awakening, your thinking begins to align with what you are feeling.

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

“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?’,” saysShari B. Kaplan, LCSW, integrative mental health clinician at Cannectd Wellness.

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.—SHARI B. KAPLAN, LCSW

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.

—SHARI B. KAPLAN, LCSW

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.

7 Tips for Finding Your Purpose in 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 involvemeditating 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 mentorcan 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.

What Are the Mental Health Benefits of Volunteering?

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.

Agape Love: The Art of Loving Unconditionally

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 solitudecan 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.

“A spiritual awakening awakens us to what matters most in this life. It reminds us that what’s most important of all is our relationship with ourselves, [with] each other, to our world, and to a transcendental force. What matters most is bringing loving compassion to all these many relationships,” concludesCarl Nassar, PhD, LPC, founder of The Great Culture Lab.

4 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Kinnaman, David.Rising Spiritual Openness in America.Barna.Pew Research Center.Spiritual Experiences.Rethink Mental Illness.Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Illness.Barton YA, Miller L.Spirituality and positive psychology go hand in hand: an investigation of multiple empirically derived profiles and related protective benefits.J Relig Health. 2015;54(3):829-843.

4 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Kinnaman, David.Rising Spiritual Openness in America.Barna.Pew Research Center.Spiritual Experiences.Rethink Mental Illness.Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Illness.Barton YA, Miller L.Spirituality and positive psychology go hand in hand: an investigation of multiple empirically derived profiles and related protective benefits.J Relig Health. 2015;54(3):829-843.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Kinnaman, David.Rising Spiritual Openness in America.Barna.Pew Research Center.Spiritual Experiences.Rethink Mental Illness.Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Illness.Barton YA, Miller L.Spirituality and positive psychology go hand in hand: an investigation of multiple empirically derived profiles and related protective benefits.J Relig Health. 2015;54(3):829-843.

Kinnaman, David.Rising Spiritual Openness in America.Barna.

Pew Research Center.Spiritual Experiences.

Rethink Mental Illness.Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Illness.

Barton YA, Miller L.Spirituality and positive psychology go hand in hand: an investigation of multiple empirically derived profiles and related protective benefits.J Relig Health. 2015;54(3):829-843.

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