Remember Rip Van Winkle? People in the American English speaking area of the world who passed our secondary school years within the 1950s to 1970s do remember him. He was the man who slept for 20 years within a hollow in New York. We knew him in your English Literature class.
To the younger generation who know nothing about Rip Van Winkle, here is a very brief summary. He was the main character in Washington Irving’s story “Rip Van Winkle.” He was really a Dutch American who did not want to work for a fee. He just planned to play. One day he was lost in the mountains of New York as it was then before the American Revolution and got into the company of the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew. He drank their drink and fell asleep. He awoke only after twenty years, having a long beard along with an aged man. He dates back to his village only to find out it had been not any longer the same as he left it. America was now independent from Great Britain. After some searching he discovered his family.
Who is awakened only after sleeping those many years, that is, in his body, the physical life, the reason why I started with the story of Rip Van Winkle is because he illustrates the person who sleeps for many years. In the spiritual life, like Rip Van Winkle everyone seems to be asleep and unless somebody wakes them up they may keep on sleeping spiritually, perhaps for the remainder of their life. Many of them will wake up only in eternity. Listed below are 3 ways to know you’ve experienced a spiritual awakening. For those who have not experienced these 3 ways, because of this you will be still asleep, which is, spiritually, like Rip Van Winkle physically, and it’s time for you to get out of bed.
And that is the main difference between spiritual awakening and physical awakening. If you are asleep, you cannot know that you are physically awake. You are unable to know you are awake while you are still sleeping. However, you can know you have not even awakened spiritually. How? Whether any of these ways are present in your life, by reflecting on your life. It means that you have not yet awakened spiritually if they are not yet present. Knowing this now you can want to awaken spiritually. And desiring to awaken spiritually is the step before actually awakening spiritually.
Fortunately, the methods to know we’ve had a spiritual awakening act like the ways to understand we’ve possessed a physical awakening. The initial strategy to know that you will be physically awake is actually by being familiar with your surrounding, initially indistinctly, then slowly and gradually, more distinctly. Just before you open the eyes you may know that you are already awake, that you are currently still in bed, that it must be late within the night or early in the morning, etc.
However in spiritual awakening you are aware of the spiritual realities near you. You understand that you will be inside a world of spiritual in addition to physical realities. As time goes on and as you proceed in our spiritual journey this awareness becomes clearer and clearer, though again, as in physical awakening, this awareness is at first indistinct.
This understanding of spiritual realities surrounding you may result because of a dissatisfaction together with your present job, of any failure in running a business, of any loss in someone you care about, of a joyful encounter using a beloved. Whatever it is that triggers this awareness, you are made aware that not only physical, visible things surround you but also spiritual, non-visible things, like love or fear, inner peace or turmoil, joy or confusion. For more information please visit Spiritual Development