What Happens After Awakening… Is Harder Than You Think

What if awakening isn’t the breakthrough you think it is?

What if the moment something opens within you…
is actually the beginning of a much more difficult process?

Most people talk about awakening as clarity.
As peace.
As certainty.

But that isn’t what happens next.

What follows, more often than not, is something quieter.
More unsettling.

A period of uncertainty.
Of isolation.
Of testing.

In this episode, I explore what I call the desert — the space between awakening and understanding.

Using the life of Jesus as a lens—not from religion, but from a human and spiritual perspective—we look at a pattern that appears again and again:

Awakening
Withdrawal
Testing
Expression

And more importantly, what that actually feels like to live through.

I also share parts of my own experience—what happened when everything in my life fell apart, the isolation that followed, and how that became the foundation for everything that came after.

If you’re in a place where something has shifted within you…
but nothing feels clear yet…

You’re not lost.

You’re in the process.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if awakening doesn't make your life clearer? But instead pulls everything apart. What if the moment something opens within you is the moment you begin to lose your sense of direction? Because when people talk about the life of Jesus Christ, they focus on what he taught. But I'm more interested in what happened after something in him awakened. Because there's a moment in that story that people recognize the awakening. But what comes next is rarely spoken about. The uncertainty, the isolation, the testing. And if you've ever gone through something like that yourself, you won't just understand this, you'll recognize it. Not as an idea, but as something you've lived. Because there's a pattern there. And it's a pattern I've seen again and again, not just in my own life, but in the lives of people who find themselves drawn towards mediumship, toward the inner life, towards something they can't quite explain, but can't ignore either. And more often than not, they don't realize what they're stepping into. There are two moments in that story that I want to stay with. The first is the awakening, the baptism. The second is what follows immediately afterwards, the desert. And when you place those two together, something very clear begins to emerge. First, something is revealed. Then it's tested. And then there's a period where that knowing has to be lived, questioned, and in some sense proven. And this is the part people don't expect. Because most people imagine that when something opens within them, things should become clearer, that confidence should follow, that certainty should increase. But very often the opposite happens. Things become less certain, not more. You begin to question yourself in ways you didn't before. You feel something is there, but you don't yet know how to trust it. You sense a direction, but you don't yet know how to walk it. And that space, the gap between awakening and understanding, is where a great deal of development actually takes place. It's also where a lot of people struggle. Because it doesn't feel like progress, it feels like confusion, it can feel like doubt. At times it can even feel like you've gone backwards, like you've lost something rather than gain something. And this is where people start to panic. This is where they start to think something has gone wrong. But nothing has gone wrong. This is the process. This is the testing. And when you look at the life of Jesus through that lens, that exact pattern is there. There is a moment where something becomes known, something is recognized, and then almost immediately there's a withdrawal, a movement away from everything familiar into what is described as the wilderness. Now, whether you take that literally or not isn't really the point. Because spiritually speaking, the desert is not just a place, it's a condition. It's what happens when the usual reference points fall away, when the things you relied on no longer feel solid in the same way, when you can't quite go back to how things were, but you don't yet know how to move forward either. And most people at some point in their development find themselves just there. Not physically, but inwardly. Before we come to that desert, though, we have to understand something about the awakening itself. The story of Jesus tells us that he goes to be baptized by John the Baptist. Now, historically, that's a significant moment. Because baptism, up until that point, wasn't something people did for themselves in that way. It marked a shift, a movement towards something inward, and that matters because awakening always begins there, not outwardly, but inwardly. At the moment of baptism, the story tells us that Jesus hears a voice. It says to him, This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Now, whether you take that literally or symbolically doesn't matter. What matters is what it represents, because in that moment something becomes known. Not believed, not hoped for, known. There's a recognition of relationship, a recognition of purpose, a recognition of something within that connects him to something greater than himself, and yet not separate from himself. And this is the first thing we need to understand about awakening. It can't be forced. You can attend circles, you can practice, you can meditate, you can study, you can pray. All of that has its place. But awakening itself doesn't happen because you decide it should. It happens when something in you is ready to become conscious of what has quietly been forming for a long time. In that sense, awakening is less like acquiring something new and more like recognizing something that has always been there. And if you look back at your own life honestly, you'll usually find it didn't come out of nowhere. There was a thread. For me, that was certainly the case. You know, I wasn't walking around as a child thinking I was going to become a medium. It wasn't like that. But there were moments, and they stayed with me even when I didn't understand them. My grandmother passed away at 53 from a massive heart attack in bed in my grandfather's arms. I was only about two at the time, so I didn't consciously understand it. But something stayed. Something in the atmosphere of that house. Because when I used to go to my grandfather's house, I could never go upstairs alone. No one told me why, no one said anything, but I just knew something had happened in that bedroom. And it wasn't a thought, it was a feeling, a quiet knowing that didn't need explanation. And I remember sitting in the living room talking to a chair in my own head. Just talking as a child would. Until one day someone said to me, Andy, that was your nan's chair. And something in me paused. Not dramatically, just quietly, like something had been noticed without being understood. Then there were other moments. My mum going to see a medium called Mrs. Winters. Details coming through that couldn't easily be explained. The medium telling us that my grandmother was called Pansy, but everyone called her Pat. And that my grandfather every year on the anniversary of her passing used to give us pansies to remember her by. Her telling us about the pansies and telling us to count them the day before her birthday. And if one pansee had gone missing on the next morning, that she'd come to visit us. And so that's what we did. We counted them. And in the morning we found one missing. And later that day, when we went to visit her grave, we found a pansy on the grave itself. A single pansy. And even then, I resisted it. I told myself it must have blown from somewhere else. Because part of me wasn't ready to accept it. But another part of me didn't forget it. And that's the thing. Awakening doesn't always begin with belief. Sometimes it begins with resistance. But the experiences stay. They accumulate quietly until eventually something shifts. For me, that shift didn't come in a dramatic moment. It came after everything else fell apart. Within six months, I lost my job, my relationship, my home, my sense of direction. Everything I thought I was building just disappeared. And I found myself completely alone. No friends around me, no structure, no distraction, just silence. And I didn't know it at the time, but that was my desert. This was the testing. You know, I used to walk for hours, not because I had somewhere to go, just because I couldn't sit still. There was something in me trying to process, trying to find something, something I didn't understand. One night, while I was walking, I came across a small building. People were going in, so I followed. And it turned out to be a meditation center. I paid a couple of pounds, sat down, closed my eyes, and that was the beginning. At first, it was just something to do, but then it became something else. I started sitting every day, an hour a day, sometimes more. Weekends, two hours at a time. Because if I didn't, I could feel myself slipping back into something I didn't want to return to. And over time, everything came to the surface. Not just what was happening then, but everything. The past, patterns, ways of thinking, ways of reacting. Parts of myself I hadn't wanted to look at. And I had to sit with it. There was nowhere to go, no distraction, no escape, just me and what was there. And I'll be honest with you, that wasn't peaceful, it wasn't calming, it wasn't what people think meditation is. It was confronting, it was uncomfortable, and at times it was absolutely brutal. Because I had to become honest, really honest. Not the kind of honesty where you say the right things, but the kind where you see something in yourself, and you just can't look away from it. Even when you want to. And there were times I tried to justify things, tried to soften it, tried to avoid it. But something in me just wouldn't let me. It wouldn't settle. So I had to keep going back, keep looking. That was the desert. Not a place, a condition, a stripping back. And then one morning, after my grandfather passed away, something changed. There wasn't a vision, no voice, no dramatic moment, just a knowing. A quiet, undeniable knowing. That communication with the spirit world was possible. That I could do it. And what I've come to understand over time is that the awakening is not the end of the process, it's the beginning. Because once that happens, the next stage begins. The testing. And this is where the story of Jesus becomes deeply relevant. Because after the baptism, after the awakening, Jesus goes into the wilderness. And there he is tested. Not to make him fail, but to reveal what is truly within him. And I think there are three tests there that every medium encounters. The first is intention. Because the devil says to Jesus, turn these stones into bread. That's the first test. The devil is basically asking Jesus to use what he has for himself. And it makes him question, why am I doing this? And I've had to ask myself that more than once. And I'll be honest, the answer hasn't always been as clean as I'd like it to be. Because there are pressures, real pressures, to make it work, to build something, to sustain yourself, to be recognized, to feel secure, to feel safe in the physical world. But if the intention drifts too far, the work changes. You can feel it. It loses something. And that's where people lose it. The second test is about impressing. The devil again said to Jesus, throw yourself down. Prove it. And this one is subtle because it doesn't always feel like ego. Sometimes it feels like responsibility. Like you have to do well, like you can't get it wrong. I've stood in front of rooms with people watching, family there, students there, and felt that pressure. Don't mess this up, don't look foolish, get it right. But the moment you enter that space, it stops working. Because you're no longer in the experience, you're in yourself, and that's where the work disappears. And that's why surrender matters. Because when you let that go, something else can take over. And the third test is compromise. The devil said to Jesus during his time in the wilderness, I will give you everything if you worship me. And this is the hardest one because it doesn't come as something obvious. It comes quietly. It comes in moments where it would be easier to step away from what you know is right, to soften your standards, to respond how others respond. But the question is simple. Can you stay aligned even when it's difficult? Because this path isn't easy. You will be misunderstood, you will be challenged, you will be tested, not just spiritually, but emotionally and mentally. And what determines whether you continue isn't your ability, it's your character. So when you put it all together, the journey looks like this: preparation, awakening, desert, testing, expression. And most people try to skip the desert. They awaken and then immediately try to express, do something, be something, show something. But without that period of reflection, the foundation isn't there. So if you find yourself in that place, in uncertainty, in silence, in questioning, you're not lost. You're in it. And if you're at the beginning, don't rush. Because this isn't just about what you can do. It's about whether you're willing to become someone who can carry it.