When life crumbles, what's really going on?

Everything may seem so smooth. We go on with our daily life.

But suddenly something shakes us. A disease, a layoff, or even a sudden death of a loved one. Or even something like burnout or a job rejection.

What often happens is we condemn them. We judge them. We judge those experiences.

We sometimes may even make our own self-worth dependent on it. Now we feel like we’ve done something wrong, or we feel like a failure. Especially when you can’t find a new job or you’re laid off while your colleague is not. It can hurt.

However, that’s just one perspective about it.

The real reason behind those challenges often remains hidden. Unknown to the logical human mind.

Sometimes behind those challenges can be a conscious awakening.

What does that mean?

Let’s be honest. We don’t change in our comfort zone. It’s too comfortable.

However, when a major life event or challenge appears, we start questioning ourselves and life.

And while it can appear like a challenging phase, it’s a gift in disguise. It can lead us to a lot of realizations, learning lessons, and deeper truths about ourselves and life. And really, that’s what we’re here for. If there was nothing to experience or realize, it would be boring. As much as we say we’d like to have it all figured out, it would be the same to say we would like to play with open cards in a game. Yes, it would be easy, but also we wouldn’t need to play if everyone had their cards open. Our souls sometimes love a challenge, even if for our human it can appear so unfair or not enjoyable at all.

I was once denied a job position. If I hadn’t been denied, I would have probably never gone self-employed. I would have never created my own blog. I always dreamed of having a blog, as I enjoyed writing and sharing my thoughts. But I always postponed that dream or didn’t even consider that dream for real. My mind gave me too many reasons why it wasn’t worth creating a blog. See how I was holding myself back from my dreams? So that job rejection, which felt awful back then, was a gift in disguise. The special thing about a gift in disguise is that while you’re going through them, they can feel like hell. Only much later is the gift revealed.

And the gift is often a redirection. You’re redirected onto a different path with new experiences and opportunities to grow.

So here are 3 signs you might be going through a conscious awakening. Those are no generalizations, just some general guidance.

• A major challenge such as a disease or a job rejection
• A depressed phase as if nothing makes sense anymore and you don’t recognize your old self
• A deeper longing for the truth and wanting to spend more time alone than usual just doing nothing and sitting in a quiet space

A conscious awakening is chosen by the soul, and in my experience, it’s determined by your own subconscious beliefs, trauma and limitations. What’s important is to allow the process to happen. Some people fight against change. They do everything to keep their current reality going. But if you want to move to a different reality where you may experience more joy, peace and fulfillment, you have to be willing to release old versions of yourself. That can feel like a dying. It can suck. But let’s remember with each dying aspect, there is a new version of us born. A lighter version. A version that has grown. Just like nature. What appears like autumn to us means death to the leaves of a tree.

Nature has often been my teacher. You can learn a lot from trees. They go through the dying and rebirth process so naturally. They don’t fight as much as we humans. They simply allow it.

If something is not how you expected it to be, follow the unexpected.

Trust that life has a plan for you.

Trust that there is a deeper message or even a different path waiting for you even if you can’t see what it is yet.

That’s the magic of life. It comes in all shapes and forms.

No life is perfect, so we've got to embrace the highs and the lows and trust that everything brings us the exact experience or lesson we need right now.

So what is a conscious awakening, some may ask?

Well, it’s becoming more conscious of who you are deep down and who you’re not. It’s becoming conscious of what the world is and what it is not. It’s about the deeper truth of who you are.