Spiritual Awakening Stages: 10 Levels of Illumination

So what is spiritual awakening? It is, above all, a process; a process of exploration and unfolding; a process of learning and growth, of healing and purification. It involves the whole of our beings and works on all levels, physical, emotional and psychological, as well as spiritual.

– Catherine G. Lucas

Just as there are cycles within the body, seasons, and solar system, so too are there cycles within our psyches and souls of growth and expansion.

This inner cycle is known as the spiritual awakening process. We’ve written a whole book about it.

Like a bud blooming into a flower or an oak seed sprouting into a majestic tree, we all have an ancient pattern of growth programmed into the very core of our innermost being.

In this article, I’ll help you discover the ten spiritual awakening stages that form this ancient pattern and where you may be within this growth process right now.

Why it’s a Myth That Spiritual Awakening is Only For “Some People”

Firstly, I want to clarify something:

The spiritual awakening journey isn’t just something that a crowd of special, “chosen,” or elite people go through. Sorry to burst that bubble. But let’s get real here!

We all have the capacity to awaken, and indeed, to varying degrees, we’re all on the awakening path.

So if you’ve ever looked at the uber-spiritual folk out there who go on 6-month meditation retreats, wear mala beads, and dreadlock their hair while talking about their psychedelic visions – and feel like you don’t fit in – you’re not alone.

The spiritual awakening process occurs within the lives of all of us – it’s just that some are more aware of it than others, and some choose to express it more than others outwardly.

All of Life is ‘Spiritual’

Also, spirituality isn’t some compartmentalized thing that happens in the background of what we call life. Pop culture would have us believe that it’s something we “do” behind the scenes.

But the reality is that spirituality is inseparable from life.

Spirit and life are one and the same thing.

The weeds, the dog shit on the sidewalk, the city buildings, as well as the rainbows, the planetary movements, and the majestic creatures of the deep ocean are all expressions of Spirit.

All reveal just one side and face of this thing we call existence or The Great Mystery. 

In the words of spiritual teacher Dorothy Hunt, 

All of life is ‘spiritual’ because all of life is the Infinite’s reflection. Not just part of life, not just the parts you like, not just the roles you imagine are the “good” ones, not just the feelings that are comfortable, not just the people who are beautiful, not just the moments of peace. Everything is Consciousness.

With this in mind, every step or “stage” of the awakening path and the spiritual wanderer’s journey is sacred.

Sure, some spiritual awakening stages may look more traditionally “spiritual” (think visions, mystical experiences, glimpses of enlightenment, etc.). But that doesn’t make them any more valuable than the other “less spiritual-looking stages.”

In fact, it’s often the most difficult and painful stages that offer you the greatest opportunities for awakening, spiritual alchemy, and enlightenment. So let’s take a look at them.

Spiritual Awakening Stages: 10 Levels of Illumination

If you want a complete overview of the spiritual awakening journey in general, I’ve gone way more in-depth in my spiritual awakening article (plus a brief exploration of the stages below).

But here, I wanted to look at each of the ten stages a little more closely.

(By the way, the stages below are different than the kundalini awakening stages, which have to do with the primal awakening of Shakti energy.)

Knowing where you are on the path can help you to stay grounded, find more clarity, and discover more direction. I hope this breakdown of each stage can help you find that inner centeredness.

The ten spiritual awakening stages below are loosely based on the Zen Ox Herding teachings combined with the archetypal Hero’s Journey as outlined by mythologist Joseph Campbell. Mateo and I have crystallized these stages after many years of personal soul searching:

Spiritual Awakening Stage 1 – Spiritual Calling

In this stage, you experience a crisis of some kind. This is a period of confusion, disconnection, alienation, depression, and great unhappiness with life. You are searching for something, but you don’t quite know what. There is a great looming emptiness inside of you. 

This stage either emerges spontaneously (a sudden feeling of meaninglessness) or due to a life crisis (e.g., breakup, divorce, death, trauma, illness, major life change). 

Sometimes, the spiritual calling is initiated by a more positive experience like a mystical vision that comes out of the blue, having a child, getting a job promotion, traveling to a distant land, or anything that opens up your reality and inspires you to search for more.

Overall, in this stage, you will start seeing through the lies and delusions propagated by society. You may feel unhappy with life, disturbed by the suffering you see, and hopeless about the ills of the world. You no longer see life as you once did in your previous state of complacent unawareness.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 2 – Resisting the Path

Once you’ve had the inner calling to go searching for truth, happiness, deep fulfillment, or even enlightenment, there will be a part of you that consciously or unconsciously resists the path ahead.

You may long for your old way of life and the comforts of your former self. You may unconsciously turn to numbing habits or addictions that prevent you from progressing as a way of dealing with the stress of the unknown.

You may even feel a sense of resentment toward life or the Divine, wondering why you feel so isolated, stuck, or unfulfilled.

It may feel as though life is playing a “sick joke” on you, especially if everything around you keeps crumbling, no matter how much effort you put into keeping it together.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 3 – Finding Guidance

Eventually, you’ll move through the resistance of stage two either due to necessity (“I can’t continue living this way”) or out of your own inner desire (“I need to find something more”).

In this stage, you begin your search for spiritual guidance, and you step into the Apprentice archetype. More specifically, there is a desire within you to reclaim a sense of personal power and direction. 

But first, you recognize just how little you know. There are many gaps in your awareness and understanding. And so the quest for helpful information, teachings, and guidance begins.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 4 – Starting the Journey

There must be a point to all this, right? In this stage, you’re asking all the deep questions. 

You are in search of who you truly are, your spiritual destiny, and the meaning of life itself. 

You will start dabbling in different metaphysical, self-help, and esoteric fields in the search for answers and truth. Your energy is focused on beginning your spiritual search.

After a lot of soul searching, you’ll find a few teachers, practices, or belief systems that ease your existential suffering. (Beware: a lot of spiritual bypassing can occur in this stage.) 

You will feel a sense of expansion as old patterns dissolve and your True Nature or life path begins to emerge.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 5 – Turning Inwards

After you’ve been on the spiritual wanderer’s journey for a while, following certain teachers, reading certain books, attending workshops, or however you choose to learn, you’ll crave more depth.

The smorgasbord of spiritual options out there may begin to overwhelm you.

Dabbling in many different philosophies and fields is exciting when you’re a beginner, but after a while, you’ll notice that you’ll feel the desire to go deeper. 

In this stage, you’re not interested in dabbling in feel-good spiritual philosophies or surface practices anymore. The abiding pain you feel inside motivates you to do deep inner work and soul work. 

You may become a serious student of meditation, mindfulness, non-duality, inner child work, shadow work, body work, or various other transpersonal philosophies.

You’re more likely to be drawn to the world of the unconscious in this stage as your inner Self prepares for the next stage of involution.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 6 – Facing the Darkness

The deeper you voyage into yourself on the spiritual awakening journey, the more “darkness” you will face within your psyche. 

This darkness appears in the form of old unprocessed wounds, ancestral traumas, the scared inner child, and the various faces of the shadow self.

Unfortunately, it’s common to become overwhelmed with anxiety or melancholy at this point of the journey. However, this overwhelm of the ego can serve a useful function in helping you to go through a death and rebirth process.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, you may experience parts of yourself being metaphorically “burned away.” But in their place, you will eventually feel a sense of expansion and freedom.

Many people experience a Dark Night of the Soul as a result of this death and rebirth process. This feeling of painful and disturbing disconnection from the Divine is like a shamanic initiation of being psychically dismembered and then reassembled.

The old must die for the new to be born.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 7 – Illumination

After the dark night comes the brightness of daytime, and this is what the Illumination phase represents.

At this point of the journey, after the blackness of the previous stage, you may have a number of mystical experiences or brief moments of Satori (spiritual enlightenment) that give you a glimpse into the ultimate nature of reality. 

You can think of this stage as a kind of “reward” for being a courageous spiritual warrior, journeying into your unconscious, and facing the darkness within you.

It is common for those experiencing the Illumination stage to have experiences of Divine love, bliss, joy, and interconnectedness.

Suddenly, the blinders of the ego dissolve, and the truth of Consciousness is revealed. Some spiritual wanderers in this stage even gain access to mystical visions, extrasensory gifts, and other “cosmic downloads” that are powerful and life-changing.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 8 – Traps & Pitfalls

With great power comes great responsibility, as the saying goes – and in this stage, many spiritual wanderers are prone to falling into the traps of the ego as a response to the experience of Illumination.

Spiritual materialism, ego inflation, makyo (spiritual delusion), and spiritual narcissism are all issues that inevitably pop up like weeds in the garden, threatening to eat away at that which we’ve carefully planted and cultivated on our journeys.

When the ego (or separate self) gets a taste of spiritual ecstasy, it is simply too irresistible just to let that experience pass by. The ego will inevitably try to “own” or “claim” these experiences as its own, whether consciously or unconsciously. 

The result is a kind of spiritually elevated self-righteousness that sets “us” apart from “the others” out there who may be “less awakened.”

This is, of course, total egotism. Of all spiritual awakening stages, this is where we run into the most issues on our paths.

Will we let the ego run the show, or will we practice humility, spiritual discernment, and compassion? That’s the real question. Unfortunately, many seekers get stuck in this stage and struggle to progress, sometimes for the remainder of their lives. 

Spiritual Awakening Stage 9 – Rebirth

With the appropriate guidance and shadow work, you will eventually get through the previous Traps and Pitfalls stage and experience the beauty of Rebirth.

Rebirth isn’t just a temporary or superficial shift in perception or awareness. In this stage, Rebirth represents a profound and permanent inner change, one that cannot be replicated except through a deep devotion to spiritual awakening.

Unlike the Illumination stage, where we experienced a beautiful, short-lived breakthrough (often accompanied by some kind of mystical experience), Rebirth signifies a period of total inner reconfiguration. 

This experience is typically quiet and humble yet immeasurably deep and significant. Sometimes, we may not even notice that a shift is happening until we notice that what haunted or plagued us in the past is suddenly gone. We have changed from the inside out.

Spiritual Awakening Stage 10 – Integration

After Rebirth comes a long process of Integration.

Integration means taking the spiritual lessons you’ve learned from your inner work and soul work and applying them to your daily life. This is a process that happens both naturally (without effort) and with effort, as in deep spiritual practice.

In this stage, you’ll experience the most profound and long-lasting changes deep within. Many people experience prolonged mystical experiences and periods of unity with the Divine in the integration phase. Others experience a quiet peacefulness and sense that “all is well.”

Remember that enlightenment, or full Self-realization, is never guaranteed: we can strive for it, but it is ultimately a gift from Life. Nevertheless, profound peace, love, and joy emerge and are felt in this stage.

You may feel ready to share what you’ve learned with others in this stage as a form of integration. Many are called to help and serve humanity in some way and pass their insight on. Life becomes less about me and more about we. 

In this stage, you may undergo an energetic shift or expansion in awareness, and some experience life from a more undivided point of view. Above all else, you will feel connected, at peace with yourself, and deeply aligned with life.

Take our free What Type of Spiritual Wanderer Are You? Quiz, to find out what stage is dominant in your spiritual journey.

The Spiritual Awakening Process is a Cycle

Although I’m writing about spiritual awakening stages here, please keep in mind that none of these stages are hierarchical.

There’s no “better” or “worse” stage. 

There’s also no end-point, as this journey is cyclical.  

After stage 10, you’ll eventually be called to grow, learn, and expand in new ways – and you will, therefore, return to stage 1 again, the Spiritual Calling. And on and on, like the sun and moon rising and falling, rising and falling.

By the way, I’ve explored this entire journey more in-depth in my illustrated course, Spiritual Wanderer, which walks you step-by-step through the awakening path. So if you want to go deeper, I highly recommend that you check it out. It gives you a complete map of the awakening journey, helps you identify shadows on your path, and supports you in embodying the five archetypes of awakening based on over thirty collective years of research and direct experience.

To close, I’ll leave you with some words from spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle on the nature of awakening,

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Tell me, where do you think you are on the wanderer’s awakening path? What has been the biggest challenge for you so far? I’d love to hear below!