[Originally created in Spring 2005 for Jamie’s ivysea.com web site as the Spiritual Awakening Portal, and recently updated & reborn here at Sophia’s Children.]
Many people around the globe feel a quickening: a call to a greater level of awareness, consciousness, and Wisdom.
If you’re here (on this planet, at this time) to help midwife the New Paradigm and support the Great Turning, you’ve likely been getting intensely ‘lit up’ by major life-changes and transformation forces.
Are you an Experiencer or Experiencer Ally?
Have experienced a life-altering Near-Death Experience (NDE), an NDE-like transformative experience, a “Kundalini” type awakening, etc. and/or have been plunged into a (true) Dark Night of the Soul, spiritual emergency (emerge and see), and/or Underworld Initiation — the ones spoken of in sacred texts, ancient myths, the most soulful poems? You know who you are.
When it comes to transformation, many are called and some, like Persephone, are outright kidnapped into it. Understandably, given the ‘great forgetting’ that struck Western Culture, fewer journeyers find their way through The Tests, The Underworld, The Withdrawal, The Reintegration, and The Return.
Whatever we may call it, the journey of initiation, awakening, and transformation is very intense, to say the least. It can and often does feel very lonely and isolating as all you knew and thought yourself to be is eroded away by forces that seem outside of your control, despite your best efforts.
Like some of you, my passport’s been stamped as an Underworld Journey Frequent Flyer.
That included what is sometimes called a “kundalini awakening,” a Near-Death Experience (NDE), a life-and-identity-as-I-knew-it dissolution (or shattering), the actual deaths of family members, and a variety of other Trickster of Awakening mayhems.
A real-deal Dark Night of the Soul of its various types (soul, senses, spirit).
Using the mythic and symbolic language of astrology, it was a marathon of unrelenting, initiation-bent Pluto & Pals transits.
The Energies of Awakening
But with Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus in fiery Aries, and the famed Pluto-Uranus square and other archetypal energies working the cosmic Death & Rebirth Magic for a cycle of years, a lot more people will be feeling nudged from slumber and awakened, often with a none-too-gentle jolt.
Some cite other energetic-archetypal forces at work as well — Earth, Solar, and Cosmic.
The journey to full remembering and reconnection to Spirit includes moments of vastness, joy, love, inspiration and awe; as well as moments of seeming lostness, anger, numbness, sadness, or even utter despair.
It includes times of bright clarity and connection, as well as through the valley of the shadow, Underworld, via negativa, or “dark night of the soul.”
In Western culture, particularly, there has been a brutal disconnection from wholeness, from Wisdom, from the naturalness of this journey, and even from Spirit. And certainly we’ve been long-disconnected from the Feminine or right-brain awareness and gifts.
For this and other cultural reasons, it can be more traumatic for Westerners who find themselves stirred towards awakening or in the midst of a real “dark night of the soul.”
And yet as the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
While everyone’s Awakening experience and aftereffects journey is unique, there are also similarities along the path.
There are ancient myths that point the way; there are maps being drawn by those of us who’ve walked the path.
And there is a body of research now showing common experiences and effects.
There are kindred spirits and shared resources; there are avenues to reconnect with the deep Wisdom of our ancestors; and there is an abundance of “new wisdom” that joins the ancient.
Regardless of where or how you’re on the journey to reconnect with Spirit, to reawaken to the vastness and grandness of the cosmos and its amazing Divine Intelligence that is in, around, behind and before all things, it’s helpful — very helpful — to have resources, information, and sources of empathy and support.
There are timeless stories and ancient, indigenous traditions that still contain the wisdom to guide us through these initiations — these Hero/ine Journeys of transformation.
If you’ve found your way here, you may be in the midst of your own journey of transformation and awakening.
We welcome you and hope these resources help you find your way — I’ll be adding more specific ‘content’ here as the weeks and months unfold.
Just added:
Common NDE-EPE Aftereffects – How do potent transformative experiences affect us?
If you’d like to schedule a private Transformative Path mentoring or coaching tele-session or series — wherever on the path you may be — send me an email to sophiaschildren ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com.
Questions? Looking for “been there, walked-that-path” kindred-spirit coaching or consultation?
Send me a direct email — info ‘at’ sophias-children ‘dot’ com, and we’ll talk about what might best suit your needs, aspirations, and mojo-building.
Big Love,
