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RAMAKRISHNA ANANDA

What Does "Awakening" Mean?

Explore how awakenings can change your life

Yoga involves a series of progressive awakenings. Awakening is shifting from one perspective to a higher, broader, more inclusive one. Explore the main awakenings which most people experience as they grow in spiritual awareness. Discover how waking up to Spirit brings a happier, more joyful life.

Spiritual Development

Wake Up to Spirit

Yoga involves progressive awakenings all the way to spiritual and soul awareness. There are eight different kinds of awakening experiences which most people encounter along the way.

Just like we wake up from a deep sleep or a dream and switch our level of consciousness to the physical world, we can wake up from the awareness of the material world to discover spiritual realms. We can know Spirit directly and realize that Spirit is manifesting everything. Yogis seek to wake up from normal life into an awareness of spiritual life.

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  • Many awakenings occur as we grow in awareness
  • Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (Awakening):  Spiritual awakening is a shifting from one perspective to another until we finally glimpse meaningfulness where our mind could not perceive it before.
  • Awakenings change the way we think, feel and live
  • Smriti, divine remembrance, enables us to remember the soul within
  • In samadhi one’s whole consciousness wakes up to and is absorbed in Spirit
  • Samadhi brings the awareness that Spirit the only reality and that Spirit has become the universe

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“Higher consciousness (also called spiritual awareness) is the main component missing in the lives of people. We humans are spiritual beings, enlivened by Spirit. We’d have a much better world if more people discovered the already present Spirit within them.”

— Ramakrishna Ananda

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