9 Signs That You’re Healing Spiritually

#3: You’re able to forgive yourself and others.

In 2018, I stopped practicing law and began working as a conscious channel and spiritual adviser. In that time, I’ve met so many wonderful people, and thanks to their connection, I have come to appreciate the signs that you are doing the hard work of healing your sense of separation from the world and reconnecting with the Divine.

What follows are the nine areas I most often see where spiritual seekers have engaged in soul-level healing. These have been part of my healing journey as well. I share them not to suggest that you’re somehow failing if you struggle with any of them. In truth, every human being is working on them, and an essential part of a spiritual path is to let go of comparing yourself to others.

I share them with the intention that they help point you to areas where you may want to focus your awareness or remind you of how far you’ve come on your journey.

1. You No Longer Bypass Your Pain

Almost everyone bypasses their pain. It’s a normal tendency to want to retreat from discomfort. Sometimes spiritual wisdom itself becomes the tool to do so. You wrap yourself in spiritual words that inspire, or you read more and more about manifesting a better life, as a way to manage your pain.

There’s nothing wrong with this tendency. Many people who embark on a spiritual path, particularly at the beginning, may need to step away from their pain, gain some distance, and experience some solace. This is especially true if you’ve been living in pain for some time. But if you’re still doing this reflexively and regularly, you’re bypassing.

You’re healing spiritually when you can put down the books, pause the social media spiritual memes, and just sit with your emotions. You recognize that if you don’t face your pain, toxic positivity, the need to feel upbeat all of the time, will take root instead.

You’re healing when you can be honest about your pain, recognizing that it has a wellspring of wisdom to offer you if you can just be with it.

2. You’re Balanced Between Present & Future

There’s a bit of a paradox here: Many people come to spirituality to want a different life, to find a new sense of self, and to chart a new path. That’s wonderful. I know that without my experiences in energy and consciousness, I would be a very different person today.

At the same time, we hear time and again that the present moment is the path to peace. Fixating on the past and constant fretting about the future are sources of depression and anxiety. How then do we reconcile being present and self-realization? How do we remain here, in the now, while still envisioning changes to our life?

There’s a balance to be found between being present and accepting the present moment while still opening to a new way of being in the world. As you heal spiritually, you know the present moment is full of possibility and, in its own way, is perfect just as it is. Yet you also know that you are capable of co-creating with the Divine, and there are wonderful opportunities that can emerge in the future if you focus your attention and take divinely inspired action.

You’re healing spiritually when you can appreciate the present while still also opening to manifest possibilities you had never before experienced.

3. You Understand the Power of Forgiveness

Again, there’s another paradox, for if you know that the present moment is all there is, and you are inviting in a different life, refusing to let go of the past and forgive yourself and others will only tether you to that old life.

It’s easy to harbor deep resentment toward those who have harmed you. It’s even easier to save the harshest criticism for yourself. In my experience, many people are often unwilling to forgive themselves for their mistakes. That includes your perceived failures like “not waking up sooner” or “falling back into old habits.” It can be easier to judge yourself for your slow progress on the spiritual path, imagining that you might be further along if only you had made better choices earlier. Remember that your path is divinely guided and everything that has happened followed divine timing.

You’re healing spiritually when you’re uprooting old stories about yourself about the past and doing the hard work to truly forgive yourself and others for whatever transpired. When you forgive, you break the karmic cycle. If you don’t, you are bound to repeat the same traumas, time and again.

4. You’re Skillful at Drawing Boundaries

A sign that you’ve healed many of your past wounds is your ability to communicate your feelings and needs to others in a clear, powerful, yet graceful manner.

Most of us do not learn to draw boundaries or ask for our needs. We’re often taught to repress them, or we think that if we share them, our needs will be rejected. Indeed, it is common among spiritual seekers to bypass their needs by dismissing them out of hand as a product of the ego. Instead of communicating one’s feelings to another person, it becomes easier to pull away from them as a way of managing our discomfort.

Of course, it’s often a positive step to look beneath the surface of your feelings to see if you’re actually still nurturing an old wound. But if someone is gaslighting you, manipulating you, or mistreating you in some way, you cannot pretend to be above it to avoid a potentially uncomfortable conversation.

You’re healing spiritually when you recognize that your emotional needs are valid, and you do not shelve them just because you think it’s more “spiritual” to appear to have no needs at all. Instead, you honor your feelings and share them gracefully and skillfully, drawing healthy boundaries with others.

5. You Value the Gift of Your Light

This is a fairly common tendency among spiritual seekers. We’ve often been dealt a tough path in life. We’ve faced enormously challenging circumstances, and the world at times has seemed like a cruel place. The risk is that if you are fixated on letting go of the past and becoming a better person, you fail to appreciate how beautiful, strong, and accomplished you are now.

Most people cannot fully appreciate their gifts and the light they bring to the world. They don’t see themselves as the Divine does. They can easily see their foibles and setbacks, and they lack confidence that they can offer much of anything to the world. The spiritual path is about empowering you in a different way — not the accumulation of political or financial power — but the ability to see your role in the world from a different perspective. You see yourself through the eyes of the Divine.

You’re healing when you recognize what a gift you are to the world. It’s not that you think you’re superior. It’s simply that you recognize your worthiness, your value, and your belonging are no longer negotiable.

6. You Don’t Judge Others for Not Being Awakened

It frequently happens that we see the potential for others now that we’ve awakened. We might even begin to open to our psychic gifts and get glimpses of what others are experiencing. Still, it is not our path to force anybody to alter their lives.

We also might struggle with the idea that the world is on fire and humanity desperately needs to awaken. I would agree, and yet I also recognize that no one ever embraces change when it’s shoved down their throats. After all, look back at your life before awakening, and how many times did you reject the kind of message that you now embrace? You weren’t ready for it then.

You’re healing spiritually when you can perceive where a person is at along with their full potential, where you can see their light without getting caught up in their wounds. You know that what they need more than anything is compassion, rather than someone telling them that they’re wrong. You remain balanced in the face of their reactivity, knowing that you were once the same.

7. You’re Connecting with Others on the Path

You realize that you’re not alone. The spiritual path, in many ways, is a solitary venture. You must dive deep into your psyche, touching your pain, uprooting old beliefs, and connecting beyond words with the Divine.

Yet, at its core, spirituality is not about isolation. It’s about community and connection. It’s about seeing Spirit in everyone and everything. That might mean that you are no longer interested in pursuing the same activities as before. Instead, you go in search of new ways of interacting with others, whether that’s finding a meditation community, participating in retreats with others, taking classes, or finding others on social media.

You’re healing spiritually when you begin to connect with others on the path, forging new kinds of relationships. You recognize that everyone is on a spiritual path, whether they know it or not. You’re simply finding the ones who make it a conscious part of their lives.

8. You Embrace Living in the Material World

Perhaps no other topic in all the years that I’ve worked with others comes up more than money. Many spiritual seekers feel a deep sense of disconnection with the material world — they often feel like strangers on the planet, and they don’t feel at home in capitalist structures like corporations. Money becomes a vexed topic. You need it to survive, but you feel ambivalent around its role in the world and what you must do professionally to acquire it.

That ambivalence can also extend to being in one’s body. You might find that you struggle with being in a body and its material demands of exercise, nourishment, sleep, or you bristle at society’s valuation of certain kinds of bodies over others.

You’re healing spiritually when you can release your ambivalence about being in a material world. You come to understand money is energy and necessary to your survival. While you don’t need to hoard it, having your material needs met is part of the spiritual journey. The same is true of loving your body — without it, you wouldn’t be on this magical adventure.

9. You’re Connected with the Unseen World

This one almost seems too obvious, but sometimes we can forget just what it means to be on a spiritual path. This means you’re connecting with the unseen world—your spirit guides, angelic beings, and the Light itself.

The Divine is always sending you, with perfect timing and synchronicity, the teachings, tools, practices, and people you need to connect even more deeply with your higher self. God is within, but connecting with the Divine inside is a practice you must cultivate, develop, and hone. Most of us are not taught at an early age that we all are connected to Spirit.

Instead, we are often taught to ignore that voice inside that whispers softly. Whether you think of it as your internal guidance system or the call of the soul, that deeply knowing part of you can become muffled. The spiritual path reconnects you to this stifled voice so that you can be guided in ways that may seem illogical or unconventional. You’re healing when you’re learning to listen to your intuition or your natural psychic faculties emerge (or re-emerge, if suppressed at a young age).

You’re healing when the unseen world that you previously ignored now becomes your primary source of guidance and information. While still being grounded in the material world, you appreciate reality in a whole new light. You’re becoming the whole you — material and spiritual — that you were always meant to be.