After my spiritual awakening (I can’t believe I’m committing to that phrase!), I didn’t become lighter the way I thought I would.
I became sharper.
More aware. More observant. More conscious of every flaw, every reactive pattern, every moment where I fell short of who I thought I was supposed to be now. And instead of feeling liberated, I felt exposed. Like all the parts of me that once hid in the background suddenly stepped into bright, unforgiving light.
What surprised me most was the urge that followed.
I wanted to bury those parts of myself.
The impatience.
The need for attention.
The need for validation.
The ways I can be small, defensive, or afraid.
I thought awakening meant transcending these things. Rising above them. Becoming “better.” But instead, it felt like I had been handed a high-definition mirror and told, Look. Really look. I wanted to smash the mirror because what I saw was too real.
And once I saw myself in HD, I didn’t want to hold my flaws with compassion. I wanted to exile them.
There was a quiet shame that crept in — not loud, not dramatic — just a subtle voice saying, “You should be past this by now.” As if awareness automatically meant mastery. As if seeing a wound meant it should instantly heal.
What no one really talks about is that awakening can make you more self-critical before it makes you more free.
I started monitoring myself. Catching every misstep. Policing my thoughts. Wondering if I was “doing healing wrong.” And the irony is that the more spiritual I became, the less human I allowed myself to be.
That’s when I realized something uncomfortable:
I wasn’t trying to grow — I was trying to disappear parts of myself that felt inconvenient.
But those parts didn’t come from nowhere.
They were formed in moments where I needed protection. Where I learned how to survive. Where softness wasn’t safe or needs weren’t met. Trying to bury them now felt less like enlightenment and more like rejection dressed up as self-improvement.
The truth I’m slowly learning is this: awakening doesn’t ask us to erase ourselves. It asks us to include ourselves more fully. Even the parts that feel embarrassing. Even the parts that don’t fit the image of who we think we should be now. As my husband said, after my awakening, I began throwing out both the good and bad parts of me. I overcorrected to the point I was losing my humanity.
Maybe growth isn’t about burying our former selves, but about letting ourselves breathe long enough to soften. Long enough to tell us what our flaws were trying to protect. Long enough to stop fighting ourselves in the name of becoming whole.
I don’t think awakening made me broken.
I think it made me honest.
And honesty, I’m learning, is the beginning — not the end.
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