An awakening can be many things. For me, it was a consciousness shift and a deepening of my spiritual connection to my soul. To illustrate how one handles an awakening, I would like to use the “when life gives you lemons” expression.
When life gives you lemons, and you “make lemonade” then you’ve taken something believed as bad and made something believed as good, out of it. Essentially, you transformed the lemons into lemonade, and for this example, we will will say lemonade is the highest and best use of the lemons. The lemons have had an awakening.
But what if life gave you lemons and you threw them at cars as they drove by? I would call that a false awakening. You had lemons, you did something with them, and the lemons have now changed state. However, throwing lemons at cars could get you arrested, could be harmful to another person or vehicle, so not a very good choice. Now you’ll have to go back to the store and buy more lemons, assuming lemonade is the goal.
An example in my life of a false awakening is when I turned thirty-five. I had this aching in my soul of unhappiness, disconnection to my then husband who had immersed himself in a new job. I felt like there was more to life that I wasn’t living. I joined the Y and started running and doing power yoga. I started my own online blog and crafting business, and I also picked up some architectural drafting work on the side. What happened is I started doing more, but none of these things were in alignment with my highest and best good. And they didn’t fix any of my problems. On the surface I was busy and feeling accomplished, but inside I still struggled with lack of purpose and connection. And, to make matters worse, I ended up diagnosed with anxiety and was prescribed two anxiety medications.
What if you sliced one of the lemons up and added it to your water? Using lemons for your water is a good, healthy option, but in this case, not the highest and best use for the lemon. However, it is on the right track. If you take your lemon flavored water and add sugar, you’ve got lemonade. So, I would consider this a mini-awakening because it is making progress in the direction of the highest good of the lemon.
Not doing anything with the lemons does not bring about any change or transformation.
Thank you for indulging me and my lemon analogy. I talk about false awakenings I’ve had in my book, Unbound Allegiance: Finding Freedom in a Truth of Your Own. I also take you through my 3 step process to navigate an awakening. If you are interested in working directly with me, I have some programs in Nature to help connect to your soul here at Nature Activation. I also do personal and group sessions which you can inquire about here. Thank you.
Much love and Namaste.
Amy