The Journey of Awakening: Unfolding Spirituality and Heart-Centered Practices

Is spiritual awakening a moment of epiphany or a gradual, unfolding journey? Join me as I unravel this complex relationship between spirituality and technology, revealing my mixed feelings about how awakening is often misunderstood. This episode delves into the evolving sensitivity of younger generations, whose heightened awareness challenges us to grow into better versions of ourselves. Through my personal experiences with spirituality and religion, I share the profound impact of authenticity and simplicity in spiritual practices, inspired by my humble yoga teacher's genuine approach.

Ready to embrace your life as an experimental journey through heart-centered energy? We dive into a transformative mindfulness exercise focused on the heart chakra, guiding you to breathe into this space and cultivate feelings of expansion and strength. As you let the heart guide you energetically, the mental noise fades, allowing the wisdom of your heart to lead. Carry this heart-centered energy throughout your day and observe its ripple effects on your life and those around you. Don’t forget to share your experiences and insights in the comments—let's grow and learn together.

Chapters

• 0:05 Journey of Spiritual Awakening and Authenticity
• 16:18 Heart-Centered Energy Practice

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello, Welcome to Intuitive Insights. I am your host, Megan McDonough. This is where we explore intuition, creativity and connection to both, and how to use it in your life and how to use it in your life. My hope for this podcast and these messages, these talks, is that we can kind of clarify, demystify and utilize our intuition in our daily life to become a more positive, kinder, healing and fearless society in the best way. Big dreams, but the message this week I would like to talk about this is something that I've noticed. Okay, so, with the rise of spirituality and the rise of technology, we're having a little bit of a, you know, a battle between all the things that come with technology, which is lots of information, lots of headspace and anxiety and instinct and fear and all those things, and the rise of spirituality, which is really connecting to your soul, self and getting more creative and connecting more to our intuition, and so being able to discern what's intuition and what's not is very helpful on this path. But as you continue to spiritually evolve, I keep hearing this. To spiritually evolve, I keep hearing this. I don't know if you've heard that phrase.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Spiritual awakening is the phrase that I hear a lot and I can't tell if I like it or not. I got to be honest. I feel like part of me is like, well, yeah, I mean yeah, but it makes it like the way people talk about it, or the way I've heard people talk about it, is like that, like I don't know. In my head it's like you know, you're, you're, I'm just like visualizing this. Like you're picking out, you know, grapefruit at the store and then all of a sudden you're like aha, you know, like it's like a snap thing that happens. You know, like in an instant, you know, as opposed to really taking some time and reflecting on yourself and realizing you know that we all are connected, that this life can be pretty gnarly and and um, et cetera. Anyway, that it's a process. Spiritual awakening to me, when it's talked about, sounds like it's an instant, instantaneous thing, like instant coffee versus like I don't know, like a pour over. You know it takes time, you know to marinate and and get a really good cup of coffee. Okay, All right, I've got off track, All right.

Speaker 1: 2:55

So what I want to talk about today is that, the spiritual awakening journey, but more specifically, the preciousness around it. So I love that. We are all sensitizing, and when I say that I mean, you know, I teach yoga to a lot of little kids and I'm just noticing maybe they've always been this way or maybe we're just more aware and have more information but I feel like the next generation that is coming in, they're so sensitive, they're coming in with this heightened sensitivity and it's beautiful. They're coming in with this heightened sensitivity and it's beautiful. It's really making us older generations have to kind of rethink and restructure how we relate to one another, what actually is important, how we treat each other. You know, it's beautiful. It's hard because with the sensitivities there's a lot of adjustments that we have to make, but it's beautiful because it's teaching us to be better humans. I feel that's one insight that I have into a more sensitive youth.

Speaker 1: 4:38

But back to the spiritual transformation, the spiritual awakening, as it's called, Because we are all more sensitized. Right, it's like this time in between that it's like we're holding space for our precious selves and some of that I think is beneficial and some of it I feel can be short-sighted. So what I mean by that is when does the self-preservation, the self-preciousness around spiritual evolution become blinded self-preciousness? This is more of a Well okay. So here's.

Speaker 1: 5:42

This is where I kind of, as a kid I had a hard time with religions, Like because to me religions would preach one thing but then the people preaching it would act in a different way. That did not seem to resonate with what they were teaching. So to me that rang false, that rang hypocritical and I didn't like it. I thought it was not fair and not right. So I got kicked out of a lot of religion classes for challenging and asking questions. Anyway, that's not the point, but that just gives you some. Where I come from as a human, you know, as a child it's always been you know what's the truth and don't lie. You know, if you're going to speak these things and not act that way, then it's not true, Right, or what is true and what's not.

Speaker 1: 6:56

I studied a lot on my own and then I met my teacher, you know, from a yoga institute in India and I learned from her what was. You know, their institute was very dedicated to Kvaludham is what it's called is dedicated to the scientific research of yoga and to not diluting the text of yoga. So I loved that because for me that was pure right. And when I met my teacher, she wasn't pretending to be anything, she wasn't. I remember her picking me up from the train to take me to her house and we did yoga on beach towels and regular, you know, like loose fitting clothes, no fancy hundred dollar yoga pants, no crazy expensive yoga mat. It's none of that, it was just simple and effective. And when I got in the car with her and she picked me up from the, from the L, I remember had like a little bit of road rage, and not like Ray, I mean, she's a very gentle person, so it wasn't real road rage, but it was just like oh geez, he cut me off.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Oh, can't believe it, you know, it was that kind of thing. And I remember thinking like, oh, my God, I love her. She's like a total regular human who still gets upset. She wasn't falsely trying to pretend like it didn't bother, it bothered her, she spoke to it, she wasn't mean, you know, and she went about her day anyway. So it felt authentic to me and at the time this is I'm getting off here too, because this also speaks to vibration and energy and frequency but at the time I was like smoking and drinking and like being in my twenties, just like, you know, anyone in Chicago, as I was in Chicago it's a great place to be in your twenties. But like, definitely, if you're in your twenties and you're working at a restaurant, you're smoking and you're drinking and like on your week I mean it was just like we're partying.

Speaker 1: 8:55

But I wanted to quit smoking. I just couldn't. I was too anxious, right. And then I went to her house once a week and I learned from her guru cool style. I don't even know what that was when I was doing it, but that was a beautiful gift that I received. And then I noticed like I would leave and then I would smoke and I'd be like, why am I smoking when I left? But then after a few weeks like not even a month, I don't think I went to go smoke after I left her house and my body was like rejecting it. And my body was like rejecting it. So it was like the frequency of my being was like no, this doesn't fit anymore. You know, I'm not sure why I went off on that tangent, but anyway, the point is, is that the energy of being around her and the practice of the doing in its simple form I didn't really tell anybody about this, you know shifted in me, so I wasn't super precious about it.

Speaker 1: 9:58

But then, when I became a yoga teacher, I ran into what I call a lot of. I ran into a lot of what I call passive-aggressive yogis, and what I mean by that is like and at times I'm sure I was like this too, and maybe I still am, and God, I hope I'm not. But you know, you know, walking around like you're holding a bucket of peace but you're so afraid that that bucket of peace is going to spill that you're just really precious with your energy. And so the difference between really being that, really being a bucket of peace you know you're not going to spill, and if you do, it's going to be okay because there's going to be more. Where that came from there's no fear attached to it came from, there's no fear attached to it.

Speaker 1: 10:56

But the yogis parading with the fear of dropping and spilling their bucket of peace used what I call that yogic language shield to defend passive, aggressive or sometimes just aggressive behavior, which to me was the same problem I had with religions. You know, say one thing nice and pretty, and then act a certain another way. And I struggled with this myself too, for a long time, because I would. You know, if I was, I would drink on the weekends with my friends, not crazy, but I, you know, I'd have a glass of wine or something, and then and sometimes crazy, let's be honest but I was like I didn't feel. I felt hypocritical, even though it doesn't say anywhere that you don't have to. You know you have to not drink to be a yogi Well, maybe it does, but it's, it's a matter of choices, vibrating and fitting within your vibration as well. So then that gets mixed signals and those mixed signals can be disingenuous or hypocritical.

Speaker 1: 12:05

So all of that is bringing me to the preciousness around spiritual transformation or spiritual awakening, and this is what I wanted to say. And it all comes back to the two things fear and faith. Faith is a sub-frequency or an iteration of the one main frequency, which is love, which is the soul, which is intuition, and fear is kind of the mortal frequency. It's not bad. There's a phrase that I love there is no good, there is no bad, there just is, and what there is is information.

Speaker 1: 13:07

So when you feel that fear, fear that you need to hold on and protect something as it transforms or as it awakens, You're not really awakening or transforming. You're still living in fear, Because the awakening and the transforming, the very act of it is elevating you from that fear into love, from that segregation into integration, from separation into connection, From noise to stillness. There's a lot of pointing fingers in today's society in the name of being better or more evolved or more elevated as a human. But whatever we do or say to elevate ourselves, if we're still pointing the finger at someone else, we're still living in fear, we're still living in that separation. We haven't shifted the frequency, we haven't shifted the vibration.

Speaker 1: 15:11

So this leans back on that word I just mentioned, which dissolves inherently from its frequency, from its energy, from its vibration, the lines of separation. It dissolves doubt and it dissolves fear. And it does not need to be associated with any particular thing, it's just the feeling and the energy of it. And that's faith, Faith in yourself, Faith in love, Faith in unity period, Without any discriminations. So let's just take a moment if you want to try this practice of just sitting in faith. And what does that feel like?

Speaker 1: 16:18

The body, the mind, your existence here on earth is an experiment, it's a journey, it's a practice. So experiment, Go on the journey, Practice, Practice. Take a few moments to just sit or lie down or just be. You could even do this walking, but find your heart, your mind's eye, place it on your heart area, your heart chakra, and feel that area just bolstering up with light and growing and getting larger and more buoyant. And place the energy or the feeling of faith in your heart and, as you inhale, feel it expand as you exhale, feel it expand as you exhale, feel it strengthen, Inhale, expand, Exhale, strengthen, Inhale, expand, Exhale, strengthen, Inhale, expand, Exhale, strengthen.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Keep breathing into this feeling, Notice how it shifts you, Notice if it shifts you where it shifts you. The mind noise has no place here. This space is the heart's domain. The heart is the brain of your energetic body. Its guide is your intuitive eye. Trust yourself and take this energy with you for the rest of your day and see how it radiates, see how it reverberates off others and back onto you. I'd love to hear in the comments how you enjoyed this mini practice, if you've had a spiritual awakening or journey, where you are on it and what practices you've noticed that have helped you along your way. Noticed that have helped you along your way? No-transcript.