On your Spiritual Journey, you will realize that you were wrong about almost everything you thought about yourself. You are being reborn.

Identity Crisis

One of the things you’ll notice as you progress is how much you change. At first, it’s just small details, but over time, as you incorporate more concepts and routines, you begin to stop being the person you once were.

This is completely normal, as you will start letting go of old beliefs, and you may feel disconnected from your surroundings. Something very revealing will happen: your priorities will change. The truth is that from now on, you won’t stop questioning your own ‘self,’ because you will begin to realize that almost everything is a mental construct and not your true essence.

Some Phases of Spiritual Awakening

Normally, your transformation will be gradual, but there will be clear and necessary signs, such as your friends. The people you will start spending more time with will be those who seek to solve problems in the same way as you do—by looking inward.

This is necessary for your evolution because the answers based on your old self, you already know, don’t work. Your view of life before the transformation was often based on complaints and the distractions needed to avoid facing problems. So, what happens then?

As time goes by, you will start feeling different, and you’ll even confirm it through what others say about you.  At first, you surprise others in a positive way, because your solutions are more thoughtful and responsible responses. But later, when it becomes clear that the change isn’t just a one-time thing, you won’t receive as much support. Your discourse will become circular and uncomfortable because you’ll always end up at the same point: any problem will, in one way or another, relate to people’s inner selves.

The wonderful thing about all this is that what manifests on the outside, in the eyes of others, is just a small part of the incredible inner transformation you are undergoing.

Self Discovery Journey

I remember that one of my first “changes” was to start using the verb “to love”. I began to say goodbye to my daughters and parents saying “I love you”. I became aware of the power of words, the passage of time, the message of love I declared throughout the day, and the gratitude I showed daily. I began allowing myself to cry to songs, knowing that what I was feeling wasn’t about the song itself, and to savor moments of joy, understanding that the event was merely the trigger for what I was truly feeling.

I started to hug more. I began looking into people’s eyes with tenderness, and I made expressing gratitude a daily routine. Over time, many more changes followed—becoming aware of the fleeting nature of life and the importance of shared moments, understood as extraordinary “coincidences” or crossings of lives. I also started seeing my judgments and ideas reflected in my surrounding reality, as a mirror of my inner self. All of this eventually led me to feel a deep sadness one day, without knowing the cause.

When you feel a pain that you don’t understand, you must meditate. And that’s what I did.

Losing Yourself

The pain I felt was very similar to the loss of a loved one. Someone was leaving my life, and I was feeling their absence deeply. And you know what? That person was my younger self. My adult self from my 30s to 40s, an age range that I believed defined my personality entirely.

During the meditation I started to cry and began to “say goodbye” to my old Edu, with all his frustrations, his efforts, his joys so unconscious and ego-driven sufferings that had been so important back then.

I tried to hold onto him for a little longer, but I could no longer identify with him. So many memories from that decade came to mind, but I couldn’t feel any of the emotions he had associated with those memories. It was something both amazing and sad. It was like listening to someone else’s memories—seeing them projected in my mind, hearing the comments and experiences, hearing my own laughter, but not being able to feel what he (my old self) expressed, simply because the origin of the emotions for me now was another. It was painful, as if my memories were being stolen from me, drained of all emotion.

But it was an enlightening meditation. I let go of my old self, who had been so eager in his pursuit of happiness and so obsessed with achieving it, without yet realizing yet that this wasn’t the right path.

Rebirth for Spiritual Growth

They say that awakening is a rebirth, and therefore, for you to be reborn, your old self must die. In that death, it is normal to experience pain.

Don’t think of this as something negative. You must understand that everything that involves the creation of something, will also imply a previous emptiness that you achieve by letting go of what you hold on to and what you are attached to. And the personality is difficult to let go of, because we do not want to say goodbye to our personality of so many years.

Spiritual Healing

That dying for your rebirth is a transformative healing process that will involve facing your fears and burdens by exposing your being. Exposing your being implies opening your layers of protective armor and feeling that your essence is, in fact, indestructible. Only then will you understand that no matter how much pain you uncover, it doesn’t truly matter.

This involves the sublimation of your emotions in order to integrate them and forgive. In my case, deeply forgiving myself often involves a calm cry, where I turn pain into love.

You must understand that this is not an empty cry of lack or resignation; it is a cry of deep forgiveness, from within, fully open to feeling all the pain and making it disappear in your radiant being.

Finding Myself

The wonderful thing about awakening is that, in a later stage, you become aware that nothing truly dies, and everything coexists with you in this moment. All the versions of yourself from your entire life will be with you, looking at each other, smiling, and dancing to the rhythm of your inner energy. You will realize that nothing is lost, that you are infinite in nuances, and that all your selves are essential to the one that shines the brightest now, simply because this version is an improved version of everything that came before, closer to your true self. Isn’t that beautiful?

Here and Now

Then, you will become aware that everything is lived in this moment. Tomorrow never comes, and neither does the past. We never leave the present. And if we can travel to the past and future right here, shifting through time without moving, it is because time is circular—it cannot be any other way.

But remember that everything is a divine paradox. Because then you realize that you never lose anything, even when you let go and release it. You live EVERYTHING in the present, where it has always been, but now you live it from a place of forgiveness, that is, from love, that is, from your essence, that is, from your inner god, because your ENTIRE Universe resides there, within you. Wow.