(PREFACE) Redefining What “Awakening”, “Enlightenment”, and “Dark Night of the Soul” actually mean

As it’s not exactly my place to tell you what this means—because I am not, in this moment, in some imagined state of “enlightenment.” And even saying a state of enlightenment is misleading. Enlightenment isn’t a state at all. It’s stateless. It’s what we already are.

Still, I feel compelled to speak about these terms because they’re used so casually now—thrown around, diluted, and often stripped of their depth.

Awakening is a spiritual term used to describe the moment a human being begins to existentially question and recognize what we are, and what we’re doing here. It’s imperfect language, but it’s the closest thing we have for this process.

Awakening is often portrayed as a constant “love and light” experience—but that’s not the full picture. It may include love and light, but awakening to what we truly are—existentially—can be terrifying. The questions it brings up can induce deep fear. Yes, there are moments of wonder and bliss, where the world suddenly appears alive, conscious, and unbearably beautiful.

But as you begin to wake up from the ego—the illusory self shaped by conditioning, societal norms, trauma, and identity—the ego doesn’t simply dissolve quietly. It fights back.

We are deeply attached to our identities. For me, those identities included the party girl, the girlfriend, the people-pleaser, the “good person,” the “broken person,” the narrative of being a child of abuse. All of it. The victim voice. The cruel inner critic. Every story I had told myself about who I was.

Through meditation and inquiry, these identities didn’t disappear—they were seen. Clearly. Honestly.

I began to see not only the beauty within me, but the ugliness too. The light—and the shadow. As these layers peel away during awakening, there can be an immense, almost torturous grief. We mourn beliefs we’ve lived inside of for years, sometimes decades.

This is what’s often called the Dark Night of the Soul—a process written about in spiritual texts since the beginning of time. It’s frequently triggered by a breakup, the death of someone close, or a sudden upheaval in life.

For me, it all happened at once.
(You can read more about that in the first Dark Night post.)