Spiritual Awakening. My personal experience of intense inner transformation.
In July 2018, amid a blustery grey winter here in Western Australia, I found myself plunged unawares into a sudden and terrifying Spiritual Awakening that shook down the walls of illusion and abruptly flip-turned my reality for good, (and for the better).
There was no warning, no inkling, no break-up, loss or tragic event that lead to the awakening. I was just pottering about in daily life, rolling around the hamster wheel of domestic duty while inching towards regaining snatches of ambition now that my two sons were a little bit older.
The Curtains Are Opened.
It was a regular Tuesday evening. I was sitting by my youngest son’s bedside, mindlessly scrolling even though he had long fallen asleep, when I came upon a reference to “Starseeds”. The word was instantly intriguing, so I searched it up and… tumbled down the rabbit hole.
I learned that Starseeds are souls who originated on other planets in other galaxies, and incarnated on Earth in this lifetime (and perhaps many other lifetimes) as human beings, by choice. To my pre-conditioned mind, it seemed like science fiction.
But when I happened upon an obscure page describing Orion Starseeds (humans in this incarnation whose home is in the Orion star system), my heart-fist pummelled my stomach, the world started to spin, contort, twist and turn, right there on the floor of my son’s bedroom. For even though my mind couldn’t grasp it, and it literally seemed too ‘out of this world’ to fathom: I knew that this was me, my story, my truth.
And with that realisation, came an immediate and terrifying unraveling of all I had known, all that was solid and dependable, all that was safe. The curtains of reality were wrenched apart, and it was not a pleasant sight… at first.
The Dark Night of the Soul.
Many who read this may have already experienced their own version of The Dark Night of the Soul: a spiritual metamorphosis stage that can last for days, weeks, months, or even years. There are countless accounts of this experience out there. It is utter torment, but a necessary shedding of the old to make way for the new. My first Dark Night of the Soul began on my son’s floor that night, and lasted for three wild, terrible weeks.
Electrified with epiphanies that I knew sounded crazy, I leapt up from the bedside and sprinted down to the back shed where my husband was working on restoring his kombi van. Shayne was in his happy place, listening to records, wiping away engine grease in blissful normalcy when I came rushing in, babbling almost incoherently with a nauseating blend of excitement and panic. I shoved the tiny phone screen up to his face and heard myself exclaiming “This is ME! I am a Starseed! I am from Orion!”
Needless to say, it was undoubtedly a very weird moment for him. Shayne has always been, and still is, the most supportive person in my corner, but to hear his wife declare -while sober- on a Tuesday night, that she is literally from another planet… and to remain calm and poised through the rather disconcerting shockwaves of ‘Oh shit, WTF, OMG’ that must’ve been coursing through his insides is a real testament to how lovely this man is.
Shayne then watched as I proceeded to go into almost-nervous-breakdown mode over the next couple of weeks. I could not sleep. Not at all. I was supercharged with a frenetic energy, my mind whirling a million miles an hour. My entire life was flashing before my eyes, synchronicities were sparking and dots were connecting like giant magical jigsaw pieces softly thudding into place.
Fragments of childhood memories came to the fore: at seven years old writing stories about life on other planets; symbols I used to draw and codes I used to write; dreams I had had as a child that were now crystalising in my mind as real memories from other lifetimes (or in fact real adventures from the astral plane in this life); a framed picture of the Orion Constellation that I have hung above my side of the bed; the three stars symbolising Orion’s Belt that I requested be engraved into my wedding ring.
And music — the music that I felt in my heart as a child, the music that I write (and channel) now as an adult. All of these ethereal sounds and emotions, memories, knowings, bound intertwined and connected to one simultaneously identity-shattering and identity-forming realisation. I am from Orion, baby!
Hand in hand with the heightened energy and revelations, was the fear. Deeply buried fears rose to the surface: fears I had deliberately and even consciously repressed for years burst forth through that protective layer and hovered around in the forefront of my brain, buzzing at ear-level, causing stomach acids to roil and my heartbeat to thunder.
Anxiety and panic attacks came in sickening waves, poor Shayne had to contend with me shaking him awake night after night at 3:00am, whispering fervently that I was scared… Scared that I was going to lose him, scared that I was going to lose the kids, that I was losing my sanity, losing myself. How he remained calm through all this is most incredible, but not quite so much of a mystery anymore — because I know now that my Guides and his Guides were helping, but nevertheless my behaviour could easily have been construed as a total psychotic break.
The Doctor.
My immediate family, all of them steadfastly non-spiritual and vehemently anti-religion, were very concerned for my welfare. My mother was raised Catholic but renounced that religion after emigrating to Australia from the United States in the 1970’s. My father, also American, is from a secular family, and my two siblings and I were raised with zero spiritual or religious influences. There was no-one in my circle who could make the inference or suggestion that my suffering was spiritually based, including myself.
The obvious conclusion was that I had lost my marbles. My sister took a week’s leave from her job in Perth and drove the 3 hours to stay at my house and help with the kids while Shayne was at work. I desperately searched for answers the only way I could think of — a western medical Doctor. My sister babysat my three year old while I went off to the appointment at a new surgery, wracked with anxiety and convinced that I needed heavy meds, a myriad of tests and possibly a padded room.
Dr M. was a fit elderly lady with short silver hair and golden skin. She listened diligently with sparkling eyes as I recounted my woes of not being able to sleep, the anxiety, the fear: this must be hormonal, probably peri-menopause right? At the end of my rushed monologue, she asked me if anything had happened recently to trigger these feelings. I hesitated for a second, before I found myself blurting it all out, everything that I had realised since discovering the existence of Starseeds on my son’s bedroom floor. I knew it sounded crazy, but there it was.
This beautiful, brilliant lady, instead of agreeing wholeheartedly that I had gone round the twist and needed medical intervention STAT, calmly explained about the different aspects of our human bodies. She described that there is the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. She suggested that the fear I was experiencing was coming to the surface because it was being released. Dr M. didn’t seem at all concerned by my shocking ‘reveal’ of having come from interplanetary heritage. She simply printed up a perfunctory referral for blood tests and said that she probably wouldn’t need to contact me about any results, because it was her professional opinion that I was having a ‘Spiritual Awakening’.
When I returned home and declared that the Doctor had diagnosed me with ‘Spiritual Awakening’, my poor sister was MOST incredulous, she urged me to get a second opinion. The whole idea of a medical doctor giving such a diagnosis seemed quite harmful to her, but I knew, deep down, that Dr M. was right. And I am so very grateful.
A little side note: when I tried to make another appointment to see Dr M. regarding some general health issues, the receptionist told me that she had retired, in fact it turned out I was one of the last patients she ever saw before hanging up her stethoscope. I know now that she was a gift from my Guides and Guardian Angels.
I begin to see with new eyes.
A week after the Doctor appointment, my sister had returned to Perth and I chanced a few hours child-free as Mum had taken my youngest son for the day. Instead of feeling relieved for the ‘me time’, on this particular day I was most unsettled. Agitated and restless, I drove to a carpark overlooking a stormy beach… I couldn’t stop thinking, thinking, thinking… thinking about the night I’d read the word that changed everything. Starseed. Thinking about the jigsaw pieces of my life. Thinking about the Doctor, and about all of the revelations and events that had brought me to this exact moment right here at this windy beach. And out of nowhere a sheer guttural panic rose and took me over like a snake uncoiling within.
It was not normal anxiety, it was not a normal panic attack.
It. Was. Terrifying.
I rang Shayne in desperation, but he didn’t answer his phone. Winter clouds were racing across the sky, the ocean was black with uprooted sea-grass, waves were crashing directly onto the shore and sea spray was spitting at the windscreen. There was something stirring. It was the enormity of truth bearing down upon me. I had to get moving.
I took off my shoes and socks, got out of the car and tore off barefoot down the deserted beach. I sprinted into the wind, charging into the salt spray. Gusts of sand granules were whipping my face, piercing my cheeks like tiny needles, and still I ran, and I ran, and I ran.
I ran because I knew I was changing and I was powerless to turn back. I ran because I was so so scared, overwhelmed with burgeoning truth. I ran from my old self, I ran towards the new. When I could run no more I stopped and bent over panting, gasping. I gulped icy air into my aching lungs. When I stood upright again I felt a surprisingly fresh sense of calm washing through me from the inside out. My physical body had responded well to the burst of exercise and endorphin release, but something else was happening too.
I stared up at the tumultuous sky, and my oh my… I sensed magic. I sensed infinite stars, planets, galaxies and worlds upon worlds. I sensed powerful benevolent beings, angels, spirits… I sensed God. And in that moment I knew it was all real. And suddenly I was not afraid anymore.
As I headed back to the car, I felt like a different person, but more like myself than ever before. I gave a joyful wave as Shayne pulled up in his work ute, his eyes full of worry from listening to my frantic voicemail, and even though it had only been a few minutes beforehand, it really seemed like it was from another time. I had started to see with new eyes.
We sat in the car and I tried to articulate what was going on. I explained that everything was changing in front of me, literally. But really I was okay- I was better than okay. The curtains of the world had parted and there was new light kaleidoscoping in all directions, illuminating all manner of truths. Shayne was present and he was listening, but I think it was the vocal articulation and conscious acceptance of my own evolving truth that enabled me to finally solidify the change. And how magnificent- I was not crazy! I was just waking to reality.
A New Normal.
My first Dark Night of the Soul ended on the beach that day. The fear was transmuted by giddy thrills of excitement and a renewed sense of wonder. There was so much to learn, so much to explore!
Love for all beings and all life bloomed inside my heart like a sunflower.
It felt like such a long journey, an epic saga of transformation, but it really only lasted three weeks- from the initial moment of intrigue, to rocketing down the rabbit hole, the subsequent torture of the Dark Night of the Soul, and the turning-point via walk-in role of the Doctor, all culminating in an emancipating crescendo of understanding and acceptance. New eyes. New truths. A new reality. A new normal.
I have come pretty far since that day on the beach three winters ago. I found myself a Spiritual Healer and Mentor and she helped immeasurably back then, and continues to teach me now. I have learned that I am a Lightworker. A Healer. A Messenger. A Channeler. In the present day, at the time of writing, I have had two further Dark Nights- each of which shed more skins and new abilities emerged fresh.
And I now know for certain that I am indeed a Starseed: my most recent lives were spent divided between Arcturus and Orion prior to incarnating on Earth. I am here to do good work for Gaia, through striving to be a good person, and through sharing music, writing, healing, and raising the vibrations of the Earth.
