If you’re wondering what to do after spiritual awakening, you’re not alone. Something is shifting inside you — an inner earthquake, a dawning sense that there is more to life and more to who you are than you have ever conceived of before. The known structures of your life are starting to shake. The questions are getting bigger, and the old answers aren’t holding up the way they used to.
Now what? What do you actually do with that recognition? How do you consciously participate in a journey you didn’t exactly sign up for?
This is one of the most common questions Leon VanderPol receives: “I recognize the signals of awakening within myself. What comes next?” In this exploration, he offers four essential orientations — not quick fixes or step-by-step formulas, but fundamental ways of meeting the transformational process that can help you navigate what may be the most profound passage of your life.
What to Do After Spiritual Awakening: Understanding the Territory
Before diving into practical orientations, it helps to get clear on the territory. Leon distinguishes between awakening and transformation — related but distinct processes.
Awakening is the dawning recognition that there is more to life and more to who you are than you have ever conceived of or experienced before. It is a sense of potential reality that lies beyond the known boundaries of your current existence. And what makes it so disorienting is that it is highly disruptive to your current paradigm. Leon calls it an “inner earthquake” — a crisis of integrity where what has been known and understood starts to shake and crumble, and through those cracks, a greater reality begins to shine.
Transformation is the process that follows. Leon defines it as “a radical restructuring of your sense of self and your purpose and place in the world.” This restructuring inevitably brings uncertainty, doubt, confusion, and at times fear. It raises questions that have no easy answers — Who am I? What do I truly value? What is the meaning and purpose of my existence? — and it demands, perhaps for the first time, that you sit with those questions and listen to what is real and true, rather than accepting someone else’s definition.
Understanding the distinction between awakening and transformation is a crucial first step in knowing what to do after spiritual awakening. With that context, here are the four orientations.
Orientation 1: Don’t Try to Fix It
The first and perhaps most counterintuitive orientation after spiritual awakening is this: stop trying to fix what is happening.
The awakening process often feels destabilizing, uncomfortable, even painful. The natural response is to try to make it stop — to find the right technique, the right healer, the right framework that will resolve the discomfort and restore the sense of order you once had. Leon has watched this pattern play out countless times.
But transformation is not a problem to be solved. It is a process to be moved through. The discomfort is not a malfunction. It is often the very mechanism by which the old paradigm loosens its grip and a deeper reality becomes accessible. Trying to fix it, manage it, or fast-track it typically works against the process rather than with it.
This does not mean doing nothing. It means shifting from a posture of “how do I make this stop” to “how do I meet what is arising with presence and patience.” The transformation knows its own timing and its own path. Learning to trust that — to stop treating the upheaval as something broken — is one of the most important shifts a person can make early in the journey.
Orientation 2: Don’t Try to Go Back
When the ground of your known reality starts to shake, there is a powerful pull to return to what was — the familiar identity, the comfortable relationships, the understood way of being in the world. Leon calls this the seductive call of the known, and it is one of the greatest challenges of awakening.
The hard truth: there is no going back. Not because returning is forbidden, but because the person who would return no longer exists in the same way. The recognition of a deeper reality, once seen, cannot be unseen. You can suppress it, distract yourself from it, construct elaborate strategies to pretend it didn’t happen — but the knowing remains.
Leon is direct about this: the journey of transformation requires a willingness to risk everything to know who you truly are. That sounds dramatic because it is. Every person who has walked this path has faced the dilemma — the pull to return to the land of the known — and had to choose, despite everything, to move forward.
“There is no person who has ventured down this path who has not faced this dilemma,” he says. “But the core commitment is: despite that, I choose to go forward.”
This commitment is not about recklessness. It is about honoring what you have recognized within yourself and refusing to abandon it out of fear. For many people navigating this passage, simply choosing not to go back is the most courageous first step.
Orientation 3: Learn to Stay Present With Uncertainty
This orientation reaches well beyond personal transformation — it speaks to the very fabric of how we relate to life itself. And it may be the most difficult one to practice.
Transformation, by its nature, dissolves the structures that once provided a sense of certainty. Career, relationships, beliefs, identity markers — all of these can be destabilized when the deeper process is at work. The mind, understandably, reaches for something solid. More financial security. A new relationship. A clearer plan. Anything to replace the sense of ground that has shifted beneath your feet.
Leon describes this grasping as the untransformed mind looking for certainty through external means — the “old world” of security built on worldly conditions. But the journey of transformation is redirecting you toward a different kind of certainty: one that arises from within, from connection with what Leon calls the “ground of being” — a depth of self that is itself the unwavering fabric of existence.
Learning to be present with uncertainty means learning to be present with what uncertainty evokes: fear, worry, concern, trepidation. Rather than reacting to these emotions by grasping for external anchors, you begin asking different questions: What is actually emerging in this field of uncertainty? What is calling for my attention? How am I being guided to respond — not from fear, but from a deeper knowing?
This capacity develops slowly. But as it does, something remarkable happens. Decisions begin to arise not from panic or the need to control, but from an inner guidance that carries a quality of rightness. You begin to act from a place that is not shaken by external circumstances, because the ground you stand on is no longer external.
Orientation 4: Deepen Your Relationship With Your Essential Self
The fourth orientation is the most constructive answer to what to do after spiritual awakening: actively deepen your relationship with who you really are beneath the layers of conditioning, masks, and identity markers you have accumulated.
Leon uses the terms “essential self,” “higher self,” and “true self” interchangeably — all pointing to the same reality. The journey of transformation is fundamentally a journey of self-actualization in the deepest sense: not building a more impressive persona, but coming into lived contact with the essence of who you are.
How do you do this? Leon names two practical starting points.
Spend time in silence and solitude. There will be an impulse — a genuine pull — toward spending more time alone, in reflection, in contemplation. Honor it. This may come alongside a desire to move away from people or situations that no longer resonate with where you are. That is not selfishness; it is a signal that your inner journey requires space. Journaling, meditation, contemplative practice — the form matters less than the act of turning inward and witnessing what is actually happening within you.
Seek community that shares the journey. Alongside the pull toward solitude comes a need for community — people who understand the territory, who are asking similar questions, who can hold space for the kind of exploration that most of the world does not understand. Finding this community is one of the most important things you can do. The journey of transformation can feel profoundly isolating, and the fear that others will judge or misunderstand you is real. But communities of fellow travelers exist, and being part of one can be transformative in itself.
Neither of these happens quickly. Coming to know your essential self is a gradual process of peeling away what is not you and discovering what remains. But each glimpse of that essential reality is deeply motivating. Once you touch the ground of your own being, the desire for more of that contact becomes the engine of your continued journey.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I do after a spiritual awakening? The most important thing is to stop trying to fix the experience or return to your old way of being. Knowing what to do after spiritual awakening begins with trusting the process: develop the capacity to stay present with the uncertainty that transformation brings, and deepen your relationship with your essential self through silence, solitude, and community. Transformation is not a problem to solve — it is a process to move through with patience, presence, and commitment.
How long does the awakening process take? There is no set timeline. Transformation is a radical restructuring of your sense of self and purpose, and that kind of change unfolds at its own pace. What matters is not speed but orientation — are you meeting the process with openness and willingness, or fighting it? The capacity to rest in uncertainty, rather than forcing resolution, is itself a sign of deepening transformation.
Is it normal to feel alone during awakening? Yes. Many people experiencing transformation feel that no one in their current life understands what they are going through. This is a common and natural part of the process. It often coincides with a pull away from relationships or situations that no longer resonate. Seeking community with others who are on a similar journey — through coaching, transformational programs, or conscious communities — can make a significant difference.
The Center for Transformational Coaching supports people on the inner journey and the communal journey — because both are essential to navigating transformation. If you recognize yourself in these words, explore the Deep Coaching Intensive or download the first three chapters of A Shift in Being to go deeper.