Spiritual Awakening Through Soul Connections

Five unique challenges of awakening by way of connection to another person

There are a lot of ways to come into a spiritual awakening experience. Many people awaken through a close brush with death. Others through a profound tragedy that shocks their soul into awareness that there is more beyond this plane. Still, others (such as Eckhart Tolle) awaken spontaneously with no discernable catalyst.

Then there are lionhearts: the ones who awaken through love and connection, through an intimate (not just speaking of physical intimacy here) relationship with the divine in the form of a person. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think this is one of the hardest ways to awaken because we have to do it through a relationship with another human being.

Spiritual Awakening by way of Connection

If we come into contact with the divine through a near-death experience, or we unveil the truth of reality on an ayahuasca trip, we don’t then have to continue to wrestle with the messy consequences of the earthly expression of that divine essence. What do I mean?

When we meet someone we share a deep soul connection with, they awaken us to the existence of our soul. Their presence shocks us into remembrance or further catalyzes our soul growth. This is a gift, a wonderful thing. But we don’t always embody our highest divine selves, and neither do they. And while the connection exists in divinity, at its most pure, accessing that experience at all times can be nearly impossible.

People are messy. We have fears and egos and control issues, all of which make it very difficult to connect to our personal divinity. And if they — our soulmate or twin flame, divine counterpart, etc. — are disconnected, it’s very easy for us to feel disconnected (and vice versa), given the depth of our energetic ties to one another.

We end up in a place where we so desperately crave the experience of divinity through our connection to this person. Yet we’re constantly challenged with clearing out the crap that gets in the way of it, often for ourselves and on their behalf, even if unintentionally. This is very hard work.

This Path is Sacred

It’s become so important to me to honor these journeys because I think even the people who experience it firsthand judge themselves for it. We spend more time trying to escape it, trying to tell ourselves to get over it, we’re crazy, to stop pining and chasing and causing ourselves pain. As if we put ourselves in this situation.

We forget that this is a path that life laid out for us and that it’s just as valid and just as holy as any other devout path of soul evolution.

Put us up there with the monks who practice so much asceticism, because after years of spiritual awakening and evolving by way of soul connection, we’ve often been just as abstinent.

We often don’t date others because there’s a singular desire to join only with that one person to whom we feel so deeply connected. So we’ve been celibate. We go deeply into solitude at times, because no one understands the pain. We can’t talk about it without annoying people or sounding insane, so we keep to ourselves. Silent. Contemplative.

We go deeper into ourselves because there’s nowhere else to go. Running from them is painful and chasing after them is painful, but sometimes if we’re still and quiet and close our eyes and imagine them with us it gets easier, for a minute.

There are a lot of things that make any path to awakening unique, and of course, everyone’s journey is their own, but I wanted to share a few things that I find to be particularly challenging to this path because, again, I think we so often invalidate our own experience. So, here they are, in no particular order:

Five Unique Challenges to Soul Connection Awakening

Doubt

Right, so if you have a near-death experience, the nurse team has a machine that says your heart stopped. You have physical evidence that you died and came back to life.

Whatever experience you had on the other side, that’s just yours, but no one can point at you and say “Nah, you didn’t really die, though.” That’s a fact.

If you meet a soul connection, the only proof you have is your own feelings. That’s it. That’s all. So, of course, we spend 90% of our time being like:

“Mmmm, this hurts. Maybe I don’t love them as much as I thought I did. Maybe I made it up.” *Looks at their social media for 2.5 minutes and, confusingly, begins to cry* “Oh, yeah, no, I’m in deep.”

Insecurity

Welcome, our old pal insecurity. He’s never far.

Because the other party in these connections — the more unconscious party, the person who awakens second or not at all — is often running or in denial, it becomes very easy for us to feel unsafe in our love for them.

The love doesn’t feel reciprocated at all times, so we don’t feel secure in this connection. We don’t feel like we’re being held and carried and supported. We feel, instead, like we’re walking on a tight rope, always looking down, waiting to fall on our faces again.

There’s a depth of knowing that, at a soul level, the connection is so strong, but then sometimes communication is inconsistent, or they get distant after coming in close, or they straight up tell you to your face that they feel nothing. It’s a lie and you know it, and maybe they even know it too, but it doesn’t make you feel any safer letting them in the next time (and there is always a next time).

Self-judgment

We judge ourselves constantly. For loving them so much that it hurts. (Doesn’t that make us weak?) For wanting them with us, when we’re supposed to be able to stand on our own.

We judge ourselves for giving them so much of our attention when they don’t seem to offer it in return. For helplessly hoping still when time after time it’s only been shown to lead to rejection. (We can’t help it, by the way. This hope is inextinguishable and a natural — if painful — part of the experience. It’s that stubborn hope that proves the unfailing and devout nature of unconditional love.) We can try to bury it, but it stays, always.

We judge ourselves for holding space for some vision of this connection and for pushing it away because that often causes us so much pain. We judge ourselves for surrendering to our feelings and for fighting them. It’s exhausting. No other path pits you against yourself so readily and so frequently.

Longing

The longing is just…this is one of those things that if someone hasn’t experienced it, they can’t fathom it. I think the closest thing is grief. But even in grief, there’s a way that the pain gets muted over time, softer, dulled around the edges.

The longing for your other half is always fresh. Every single time you feel it, it feels like someone clawed open your chest cavity and ripped out your lungs anew. That feeling of hollowness that sits behind your breast bone, that ache of missing something so vital, you can’t catch your breath. You can’t breathe sometimes.

It’s like we go back to the moment our mother’s pushed us out of the womb into this cold world, with its harsh lights and sharp edges and loud noises. And we cry like babes.

Or back to the moment of original separation from the whole, before we were a soul put into this body alone, way back to that first split that tore into the essence of the oneness we all are. We feel every bit of that separateness in ways we never felt before and we, naturally, long to come back into union.

Isolation

While every spiritual journey necessitates some time alone, there is a way, I think, that many do find community. They attend a yoga group. They meditate with friends. They join the monkhood or stay at an ashram. These journeys, though, are often incredibly isolating, because so few people are going through this.

There’s also a way in which the deepness of divine connections can make other relationships feel superficial and insubstantial in comparison. They can remind us of what we’re missing because they don’t feel like enough. What could ever feel like enough after you’ve been so effortlessly seen, known, and understood without words? After you’ve connected at the depths of your being?

Sometimes we feel an urge to hermit away, to stop being around friends and family entirely because being with them feels even more lonely than being alone.

I hope this gives anyone who has been on these journeys some sort of comfort. This is not a path for the faint of heart. You’re doing incredible spiritual work, even when you’re doubting and scared and in pain. Especially then. Be kind to yourself and know you’re not alone.

❤

If you’d like to talk more about soul connections and spiritual awakening, feel free to drop a comment! I love chatting down there. And if you’re interested in catching other things I write, you can become a Medium member here. XO