Can Spiritual Awakening Cause Depression

Periods of doubt, unease, and spiritual sadness are all too prevalent, according to religious and spiritual leaders.

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Life challenges

Dealing with the mundane hardships and stressors of daily life can lead to spiritual sorrow. These difficulties could include the following:

Any of these issues can lead to depression, although depression can also develop without a specific cause or trigger.

Fixation on past sins

Even if you try to forget about a mistake, it can stay in your mind.

Even if you seek forgiveness, struggling to move on from a past or present mistake can lead to unshakeable feelings of guilt and other spiritual pain.

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When you're dealing with significant depression, you may have a propensity to dwell on previous mistakes and regrets, so it's critical to seek help if you're having difficulties coping.

Neglecting your spirituality

When you have less time for God and your typical religious activities, such as prayer, Bible study, worship, and other church activity, spiritual sadness might set in. According to certain religious teachings, this occurs as a result of getting unduly preoccupied with so-called worldly concerns, such as job, hobbies and leisure, or social activities.

It's completely acceptable to devote time to any of these pursuits. It's healthy to divide your time between work, rest, family and friends, and delightful relaxation in order to have a balanced life.

However, if spirituality is a significant part of your life and your daily responsibilities leave you with less and less time for God, you may feel depressed.

Religious doubt

When you observe sorrow and suffering around you, whether in your own life or in other parts of the world, you might start to wonder why God allows people to suffer.

Anger, bewilderment, and doubt are all common emotions that accompany a personal loss or misfortune.

This doubt, whatever its source, might make you feel separated from God, even abandoned. You may begin to consider existential notions such as:

You may feel ambivalent about your spirituality while you fight with these thoughts, and you may find yourself simply going through the motions of church or prayer.

Existential ideas might contribute to depression by making you go through the motions of daily life with no genuine interest.

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Excessive self-examination

When you're dealing with troubles and difficulties, you might think about how your own behaviors contributed to your worries. Then you may start thinking about how to deal with them.

Self-examination can provide insight into decisions that will be more beneficial in the future. Taking measures to find solutions to your difficulties is, of course, never a bad idea.

Still, obsessing on your perceived shortcomings and failings for an extended period of time, or cycling through deeper anxieties you can't quickly overcome, may exacerbate your distress.

Rumination, or thinking dark, sad, or negative ideas again and over, has been linked to depression in studies. As a result, focusing too much on spiritual anxieties or worries, especially when you don't have any clear answers, might exacerbate spiritual sadness.

What happens when you are spiritually awakened?

As Kaiser argues, this is the start of your spiritual journey, as you begin to doubt everything you previously believed. You begin to purge certain aspects of your life (habits, relationships, and outdated belief systems) in order to make room for new, more meaningful experiences. You may sense that something is lacking, but you aren't sure what it is. It's common to feel disoriented, confused, and down during this time.

What are the first signs of spiritual awakening and how do you feel it?

Names like Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, and Jesus spring to mind when asked to think of awakened people. Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela, for example. These motivational figures may make you assume that being awakened is the same as being perfect. If that's the case, attempt to come up with some more relatable examples of awake people. It's helpful to see examples of people who are both flawed and seeking to live a good life with a greater good in mind.

  • Russell Brand, who seems to exemplify a bizarre contradiction of continually questioning and searching for more knowledge while also having a sense of humour in the restroom.
  • Jim Carrey, whose comedic genius aided him in seeing through the mirage of popularity and distancing himself from any desire for it.
  • Oprah Winfrey, who popularized Eckhart Tolle and uses her SuperSoul Sunday show to preach enlightenment to millions of people, has a less enlightened obsession with her weight.

People who model spiritual awakening while not being perfect are what is required to make awakening feel attainable.

Now that you've seen a few examples of awakened people, let's look at how to know if you're experiencing an awakening. The ten indicators of spiritual awakening are listed below.

What does a spiritual awakening feel like?

Psychological research on spiritual and kundalini awakenings is still in its early stages, and it has tended to ignore events that occur suddenly and unexpectedly. Studies on the impact of mystical experiences, such as spiritual and kundalini awakenings, on well-being have identified the predominantly positive, healing effects of these experiences, as well as some of the more challenging aspects brought on both by their disruptive nature and by their typically biased clinical interpretations. Despite a greater number of research addressing the powerful physical aspect of kundalini awakenings compared to spiritual awakenings, the subtle phenomenological variations between spiritual and kundalini awakenings have rarely been studied. The interchangeable use of these terminology could make it difficult to comprehend these experiences and their effects, especially as stronger bodily feelings may imply more difficult outcomes. Some of the phenomenological and neurobiological bases of drug and non-drug induced ASCs, as well as the links between the spiritual features of ASCs and the symptoms of TLE and trait absorption, have been investigated by neuroscientific and psychological study. However, SSA/SKAs have yet to be mapped within the ASC framework, and the common predictors used to research ASCs (TLL and absorption) have not been tested as efficient predictors of SSA/SKAs.

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This paper will explore the general properties of SSA/SKAs, their consequences on well-being, how they compare to other measurable ASCs, their links with TLL and absorption, and the potential phenomenological variations between them in order to fill certain gaps in the data. The authors hypothesize that Spontaneous Kundalini Awakenings (SKAs) are not only more physical than Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings (SSAs), but also more likely to produce negative experiences, based on the prevalence of anecdotal accounts of physical and energetic experiences preceding challenging kundalini experiences. After that, the phenomenological distribution of spontaneous Spiritual and Kundalini Awakenings will be mapped within the ASC framework by comparing their phenomenological distribution to that of non-drug and drug-induced ASCs. Following a similar approach to the investigation of induced ASCs, analysis will be undertaken to evaluate the hypothesis that TLL and trait absorption predict the severity of the SSA/SKA ASC. More research will be done to see how the SSA/SKA sample's population distribution compares to the distribution of previously reported “normal” TLL and absorption samples. The short- and long-term effects of these events on one's well-being will be investigated.

What should I do after spiritual awakening?

It necessitates stepping outside of yourself in order to see the wider picture, which isn't always a pleasant experience when you've spent your entire life wrapped up in yourself.

It brings empathy for others, but it also brings sorrow since you feel other people's emotions so intensely, especially unpleasant ones.

That's why it's critical to look after oneself during this time. It'll almost certainly bring a lot of discomfort and conflicting emotions, and it's easy to get caught up in it and fall into sadness.

Treat yourself with care, patience, and compassion, just as you would a good friend.

Free up space

In the room, there's a lot of clutter, both figuratively and…possibly physically.

Remove anything that isn't needed to make place for the new and better. It can't enter into your life if it doesn't belong there, therefore get rid of anything that doesn't provide worth or purpose.

Continue with spiritual practice

Don't lose momentum simply because you've spiritually awakened; continue with your spiritual activities such as meditation, yoga, or just some peaceful alone time to keep you from becoming lost.

Because of how easy and pleasant your previous life was, it can be tempting to return to it. That is to say, the period immediately following your awakening is a vulnerable one, and you must be cautious not to lose your way.

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What is the spiritual awakening process?

Spiritual awakening, contrary to popular belief, does not entail a literal transformation “Awakening.”

You don't wake up one day feeling like you have a powerful energy within of you beckoning for change.

Spiritual awakening is a long process in which a person realizes that their existence extends beyond the physical realm “I” refers to the ego.

Eastern spiritualists refer to the ego, or everyday self, as the acquired mind in Taoist philosophy.

What are the symptoms of a kundalini awakening?

Kundalini awakening is characterized by the following characteristics. The energy is too strong or uncomfortable to tolerate, and it is frequently accompanied by shaking, jerking, or spasms. Adoption of yoga poses or mudras (hand gestures) on the spur of the moment, even if the experiencer has never done so before.