A spiritual Awakening is still a fairly rare thing ... and if that term is not familiar to you, I encourage you to visit Jim Tolles' excellent and matter-of-factly named website, Spiritual Awakening Process. Jim is a fantastic writer and covers all aspects of the experience with exceptional clarity, so I encourage you to check out his work. He also offers spiritual counseling if your situation requires it.
But briefly, we're all somewhere on a path to Awakening, but many of us are simply too occupied with life as we know it to see through the veil of illusion ("maya" in Sanskrit) that creates what we habitually know as our physical Reality. Behind that veil lie beautiful and startling truths which ... once you've seen them, you can't unsee. And once something lifts the veil for even a moment or two, it initiates a process of energetic upgrading and purification that can be extremely challenging to the psyche. Hence the need for support on the path.
Anyway, I was asked on Quora whether the world as a whole is going through a spiritual awakening, because for those of us who are familiar with the phenomenon, it sure looks like it's gathering steam. My response got a lot of upvotes on the platform and was recently translated into Portuguese (Hi, Portugal!), so I thought I'd share it with you here.
Q: Is the world going through an Awakening?
A: I believe it is, and I believe it is being spurred in part because humanity as a whole organism understands that it's approaching a tipping point beyond which the planet will become uninhabitable by us. It's "wake up or die" time.
There have long been awakened and advanced spiritual beings on the planet but they have been subjected to persecution in most cultures and have kept themselves hidden, with some obvious exceptions like Jesus and the Buddha. Only recently has it become more acceptable to discuss spiritual matters outside of a structured religious setting, with the result that we are able to acknowledge and safely explore new interpretations of our reality and what it means to be human. Thus it is also more possible than ever for awakening to be transmitted.
Each of us is a facet of the One Consciousness; we only appear to be separated by individual bodies. So when one of us awakens, it has a ripple effect and we start to trigger each other. (I even think the current Pope may be an awakened individual based on his language.) If we're lucky, enough of us will wake up to rescue our ecosystem before it's too late.
Of course, with Awakening comes self-purification and its attendant ego resistance, which you can easily see in the political upheaval in the US right now. Those who would cling fearfully to the preawakened state — to illusions of separation, status, wealth and power — are clashing with the new reality of interdependence, love and unity of consciousness.
Awakening means we see ourselves as the whole, with humility. The moment I understand that "you" are also "me," how can I harm you — whether you're another person or another country? How can I not share my stuff that I've hoarded? How can I not love you as myself?
Ego hates this. It thinks: How do I give up the satisfaction of comparing my lifestyle, heritage, body, home, culture, accomplishments to yours? How will I know who I am? What will I do if not compete? How can I be "safe"? It's as difficult — and as sacred — a struggle for a society as for a person.
Will the whole world wake up in time? I believe so, but as with any awakening individual we are going through the challenging, necessary process of looking directly at our darkness in order to heal, and things are going to be very messy for a while.
Namaste, Rishika