My awakening

First of all, what do I mean by “awakening”? Spiritual people use the phrase to describe the time when they realize that there is more than what we can see. There is a bigger meaning, a bigger picture. Often, it occurs during some sort of crisis in people's lives, like facing a life-threatening disease, going through a divorce, experiencing depression, etc., or when an unexplainable miracle appears. My logical and conservative brain would explain it as our desire to find meaning when life hurts in an unbearable way. But here is my story, that makes the rest of me believe in awakening and spirituality:

Growing up, my cousin was involved in spiritual practices, especially telepathy with animals and meditations. I was curious but unsure whether to believe in it. My dad is a conservative man, and my mom appeared to be so too, but she had crystals in her drawers and sometimes talked to the flowers in our home. The last summer before my parents divorced, I dreamt multiple times that my dad had another girlfriend, and I went crying to their bedroom to tell about my nightmare. A few months later, it turned out to be true. I dreamt the truth before I knew it was the truth.

The divorce was a family crisis. I was feeling devastated, like all of us, and this made me enter another state of being that I hadn’t felt before. I was really sensitive and present because the pain I felt required that. One night, I was sleeping beside my mom, I woke up, and I saw a woman standing at the end of the bed. She was white, staring at me, and I was staring at her until I got scared and screamed and hid under my duvet. I knew I had just seen something unexplainable (AND NO I WASN'T DREAMING). This scared me, so when I was alone in the house, I went around and said out loud “If anyone is here, please leave this place”, and I haven’t seen anything ever since. The years went by, and I started talking with the universe internally: “If you are going to support me, please do it in a not-scary way." My mom taught my brother and me about manifestations, and we were incredibly good at it! We played with it like when we went for a walk in the forest; my brother would say out loud “thank you for letting me meet a snake today,” and then we saw multiple snakes! I did the same when I went to exams "thank you because I pick this specific subject at the exam,” and 9 out of 10 times it happened. Even though these things happened, I still felt like the universe forgot me because I was feeling a lot of pain, so I separated myself from it. But now and then, I got reminded that there was more. When I was 17, I dreamed that my mom would get breast cancer, but she would survive. One year later, doctors found cancer in her breast, and she survived. The same day my mom got the diagnosis, I got an apartment in a city 4 hours away that I dreamt of, but that was before I knew she was sick. I went and started studying. The first night in my apartment, I noticed I had tinnitus, and it didn’t go away for years (and I was feeling awful!). Half a year later, I moved back close to my hometown, and mom recovered completely within the next 6 months. I continued my studies, but deep down I felt like: this is not for me. This frustrated me so bad thinking: JESUS CHRIST, I’M SICK AND TIRED OF MY GUT FEELING BECAUSE IT'S ONLY SAYING NO! So I finished my studies and got a job. Felt horrible at that job. I was crying several times a week. I quit, went to India to try Ayurveda with my spiritual cousin, and I finally felt the YES in my gut. I went back home and found a job that felt like a “MAYBE” in my gut, but I found out that MAYBE means NO. I quit again and decided to go back to India, this time with no return ticket. I was simply tired of the endless suffering! I promised myself: FROM NOW ON I'M ONLY GOING TO DO THINGS THAT MY GUT SAYS YES TO! NO MATTER THE COSTS!

It’s been one year since I made that promise, and I’m keeping it! The YES does exist. But I’ve needed a lot of time with myself. A lot of time. And I still do. I feel like I’ve been looking at all the stones in my life: Picked them up one after one and asked if this makes sense to me, and then either keep it or throw it away or reshape it.
- Do I need these material things, or should I sell them or give them away? What material things are important to me in my everyday life, and what doesn’t matter.
- What kind of sports do I love doing, and what do I do to look a certain way?
- What friendships nourish me, and what doesn’t? And why?
- What kind of lifestyle nourishes me?
- What kind of communities make deep sense to me?
- Who am I doing this, this, and that for? Myself? To impress someone? To fit in?

I felt like I was forced to enter this process. My awakening was forced upon me. I was suffering when I tried to fit in. I knew that I was a happy soul by core, and this life made me an unhappy soul: Grey. Tinnitus. Migraine. Tired. No lust. No spark. When Fred (my boyfriend) and I discuss lifestyle opportunities I realized that if I have felt the way he does at his work I would never have entered this process! I would have been working 9-5 right now! Because oh boy, I deeply wanted to fit in and to be “successful”. My body, heart, and soul wanted something else for me, and the YES in India was so loud, so I knew I had to listen.

Awakening for me means that you are waking up to figure out what really matters to YOU! If that is the big house, fancy cars, go ahead and get it! Then you will feel the deep meaning of working to get these things. To me, that is to experience the YES and let that be my navigation first and foremost. If that means I’m going to earn a little money, then I’ll live a lifestyle that matches that and still be happy! Because I have lived in a nice apartment, with nice stuff, but the YES wasn’t there, and then the nice stuff feels like air to me.

So YES first! Like this, writing this feels like YES! And how I appreciate it ❤️
I hope you have the courage to investigate your YES’s! And there is no shame in not knowing what your YES’s is! Believe me, I still only know a few of my YES’s and it’s been one year!