Eckhart Tolle explains that spiritual awakening is the awakening of awareness — a shift out of identification with the continuous stream of thinking (the egoic mind) into awareness. He stresses that awakening does not primarily mean visionary or mystical experiences ("seeing angels") and compares it to the ordinary morning shift from sleep to wakefulness, from which the mind soon constructs another "dream" of wakefulness.
But spiritual awakening is the awakening of awareness. Spiritual awakening doesn't mean that you suddenly see angels or there's nothing wrong. If you see angels, you're beautiful. But that's not the essence of spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening can be compared to the awakening that you experience every morning, which is the shift from the sleep state to the so called wakefulness is a huge shift in consciousness. And then of course, after a few seconds, the mind kicks in and then you enter another kind of dream, the dream that is called wakefulness. But the term awakening used because when you awaken, you awaken out of complete identification with the continuous stream of thinking in your mind. You awaken out of being trapped in your egoic mind into awareness, and that is spiritual awakening.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
