Spiritual Awareness: Definition, Examples, & Stages

I’m still not a big fan of the word “spiritual”. First, it can mean many different things to many different people (Wilber 2007). Second, spiritual awareness doesn’t really have anything to do with spirituality (as most people define it). Spiritual awareness is just the natural evolution of human awareness—as we grow, we become more aware of more things, and that can lead to a stage of awareness that we silly humans call “spiritual awareness”. 
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Awareness of Spirit?
While some people may define spiritual awareness as awareness of spirit, this experience is more of a sideshow than the main show. You might experience awareness of spirits, or you might not. Developing this particular type of awareness is irrelevant and should be considered to be more of a distraction than a goal in itself (Maharshi, 1985). 

So for the purposes of this article, spiritual awareness is defined as the natural evolution of awareness—or perspectives that emerge in the course of natural human development. It does not arise from a belief (like religion) but rather from direct experiences, observations, and realizations.

Since we’ve defined spiritual awareness as the natural evolution of awareness, it can be helpful to look at the earlier stages of awareness that eventually lead to spiritual awareness. This way, we can see where our awareness is coming from and where it is going.

The Expanding of Awareness
Overall, we tend to move through the following stages of awareness. Once we reach a certain stage, we’ll then consistently see the world through this new lens (Wilber, 2007). That is, everything we saw through our past levels of awareness looks different through the new level of awareness. 

However, our growth here is more like nested Russian dolls—our awareness expands in waves that move outward in a spherical pattern rather than running along a straight line. So we can see things through the earlier stages if we choose to (i.e., we transcend and include;  Kowalski, n.d.) as our awareness continues to expand. 

Once our awareness expands to a new stage, we can still see the world through the earlier stages when we choose to. Often, we can even see what stage of awareness others are viewing life through. It’s kind of like watching a play from all the different seats. You can see something from your current seat of awareness and then you mentally shift to see what the play might look like from another person’s seat, and then another, and so on. Doing this builds empathy, compassion, and social understanding. 

Stages of Awareness

Stage 1: I am my body

At this stage, we are aware of ourselves as a body. We might feel bodily-related emotions like shame or pride about our physical form, a sense of being trapped, or distressed by our body’s limitations. When we have a body-based identity, survival is top priority, and motivation is largely driven by survival goals.

Even when we are beyond this stage (or any stage), we can still look at life from this viewpoint when we want to (or when something triggers us in ways that lead to this viewpoint). For example, someone might tease us about out weight and suddenly we identify as a body again. 

Stage 2: I am my emotions

At this stage, we begin to realize that we have a body, but what makes us who we are is our emotions. Each time we move to a higher stage, we identify with something new and the previous thing we identified with becomes something we have (Wilber, 2007). We’ve expanded, and so our smaller awareness is encompassed in our bigger awareness.

At this stage, we identify with our anger, fear, frustration, overwhelm, or other emotions. The idea that we can change our emotions might seem impossible at this stage. This is completely understandable given that we can’t really change our emotions directly. 

We might try strategies like emotional suppression (“Stop emotions. STOP!”) which only makes them stronger. We might drink alcohol to stop emotions, but they just keep coming back when we’re sober. As a result, we might say things like, “I am who I am”, because our identity is emotion-based, and our direct experience has shown us that we can’t change the self, as we define it. 

Stage 3: I am my actions

At this stage, we begin to realize that we have emotions, but we don’t have to act on them. Now, we understand ourselves to be our actions. You may use expressions like, “Walk the walk” or “You are what you do.” It is now becoming clear that our actions have big impacts on the world around us. 

This is a pivotal stage. Identity is becoming action-based. For the first time, we begin to take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. As a result, we begin to feel a sense of self-ownership which can lead to experiences like courage, optimism, and resilience. This is quite a positive change.

Stage 4: I am my thoughts

At this stage, we begin to realize that we do actions, but our thoughts are really the drivers of these actions. If we have a thought about being unsafe, we might feel fear and then engage in an action like hiding or running away. If we have a thought that we are disrespected, we might feel small and then yell or hit someone. And if we have a thought about wanting something—like a fast car, a good job, or an attractive romantic partner—we’ll engage in whatever actions are needed to reduce the feelings of “not enough” and get those things. 

Here, we become aware that our thoughts occur first, and so our identity is thought-based.

Once we have the awareness that we are driven by our thoughts, we might start to observe those thoughts to better understand who we really are. You can do this through meditation, throughout your daily life, or both.

Check out the spiritual awareness meditation below for a short guide.

At the beginning of this stage, it can often be very difficult to observe thoughts—they seem to be all over the place (it’s no wonder we are a mess!). With practice, we are eventually able to watch our thoughts moving through our minds as if on a conveyor belt. 

We might miss the content of some thoughts, but we’re aware that we missed them. Suddenly we’re aggravated, so we look inward and ask, “What thought did I have?” Suddenly we realize that 5 minutes have gone by but we understand that our thought stream took us away even if we can’t recall all its thoughts. 

Transitioning from Self-Awareness to Spiritual Awareness
Personally, I still consider this stage to fall within the domain of psychology. Most people at this stage are meditating to achieve some sort of mental or emotional benefit such as relaxation, stress reduction, improved concentration, etc… What they don’t realize is that if they keep at it, they’ll find themselves in the next stage, developing spiritual awareness, which can be quite surprising (and distressing) for those not already on a spiritual growth path.

Stage 5: I am my awareness

At this stage, we begin to realize that we have thoughts, but we are actually the aware presence that witnesses our thoughts. We begin to notice the act of noticing itself (Sayadaw, 1994). We can’t possibly be our thoughts because our “self” is watching them, and not really having much control over them.

We now understand ourselves as awareness itself and begin to experience the world almost like we’re a viewer watching a movie that we’re also a character in (it’s very odd). Through this observer, awareness, or witness-identity, we begin to discover that our thoughts have 3 characteristics: Impermanence (they’re always changing), Suffering (they are largely negative), and Non-self (they come up without our willpower commanding them to) (Ingram, 2018).

The witness-identity is the beginning of spiritual awareness. This, too, is a pivotal stage because we’re beginning to look deeply at the nature of our reality. Because we now see ourself as awareness itself, everything we come into contact with is seen more clearly. In every moment, we have the potential to become a bit more aware, and this kicks off the intense experiences that are often inherent in the spiritual journey (Sayadaw, 2016). 

Bringing Awareness To The Beliefs Behind Thoughts
Now that our awareness can watch our thoughts, we can finally begin to understand them—and ourselves—better. If we trace our thoughts backward, we can see that they arise from beliefs. For example, maybe we have a self-critical thought. If we bring awareness to the thought, we can see that it arises out of a belief—perhaps the personal belief that “I’m not good enough.” Maybe we have a thought about another person dressing weirdly. If we trace this backward, we can see that it arises from a cultural belief about what the “right” way to dress is. 

We might begin to realize that everything we thought was us is just a pattern that looks like this: 

Belief > Thought > Emotion > Habit > Behavior > Experience

…and none of it is us.

When spiritual teachers speak about “conditioning”, this is what they are referring to. We all are conditioned—that is, our beliefs are formed—through interactions with our parents, community, society, and beyond. If one is trained as a psychologist, as I was, we are taught this in school. The difference, when looking at conditioning from this (stage 5) perspective, is that we begin to see that the entire “self” that we think we are is made of conditioning. There is no self there.

Spiritual Awareness & Identity
This is when our self-concept and sense of identity begin to get really unstable. We know we exist. But what we thought we were is just a bunch of conditioned beliefs and their byproducts. 

We can feel like we’re drowning, grasping at anything that will give us back the spiritual illusions that we are a separate self. Our ego, which is basically the glue that holds the entire illusion of self together, is likely to start having a hissy fit. “I am a self!” it might scream. But our direct experience—our witnessing of the beliefs, thoughts, actions, emotions, and body as not-self—has proven otherwise. These are all things we have. They are not things that we are.

“I Am Nothing”
Now, we might start to feel like, “I am nothing”. But it is our ego that is saying this. It is dissolving, but it has not given up yet. It can no longer convince us that we are an individual, separate self, so it concludes that we must be nothing. 

Ironically, it’s half right. It IS nothing. And as long as we are still identified with self—even if we believe that we are the awareness of our separate self—we’ll feel like we are nothing, like we are dying right along with our ego. This is the true definition of what it means to experience The Dark Night of The Soul. 

Spiritual Awareness & The Idea of Doership
By this point, our sense of doership—the idea that our self is the one initiating action—is falling by the wayside. We may have discovered that most of our willpower was ego-driven—that is, we did things solely to pursue worldly pleasure and avoid worldly pain. Although we may not have yet experienced ego death, our ego is weak for sure, and the ego is no longer in charge of our actions. We might discover that 50% or more of our actions now seem completely meaningless. 

The guidance given by Akilesh Ayyar on how to surrender willpower and doership can be helpful here. Get his Book: Spiritual Dialogues with Akilesh

Stage 6: I am everything.

At this stage, we finally begin to realize that we have awareness, but we are more than that. Once we have dissolved enough of our ego to accept that the idea of self is an illusion, we open ourselves up to deeper questioning and understanding of what we truly are. “If I am not a separate self, then what is this mish-mash of thoughts, feelings, awareness, etc…)?!” we might ask ourselves. This is when we begin to realize that what we thought of as “our” awareness is not really ours at all. How could it be when we have no self to claim it?!

I really like how Rupert Spira describes this. He talks about how we are whirlpools in the river of awareness. What we think of as self is just the information that has gotten trapped in our personal whirlpool. In reality, we are just part of the river. 

He describes it better than me, so check out his video below (answer starts at 1:22):

Although I love Rupert Spira’s explanation, for some reason, the idea of “everything being awareness” was too big of an awareness jump for me. A slight change in language made it click. That is, “Everything has its own awareness.”

In other words, feeling itself is what feels. The ego itself is what suffers. Thoughts think themselves (Sayadaw, 2016). And all this is happening within “me”, “us”, “All that is.” It’s like we are the space in which life happens. Or, we are like the ocean and everything happens inside of us. 

Once we detect that awareness is present in each of our internal processes—processes that we used to claim as self—we begin to move from the “I am nothing” phase to the “I am everything phase.” At first, it may just feel like you’re a conglomeration of things—thoughts, feelings, actions—all with their own awareness. Like a bouquet, with all different types of flowers.

It’s a fairly small jump from here to accept that everything outside the body also has its own awareness. And since the self is not a thing, there is no barrier between internal and external. Therefore, “I am everything.”

• Kowalski , K. (n.d.) An Introduction to “Ego Development Theory” by Susanne Cook-Greuter (EDT Summary). Retrieved 7/26/2024 from https://www.sloww.co/ego-development-theory-cook-greuter/
• Ingram, Daniel. (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book – Revised and Expanded Edition. Aeon Books.
• Maharshi, S. R. (1985). Be as you are. Arkana, London.
• Sayadaw, M. (1994). The progress of insight: a treatise on satipatthana meditation. Buddhist Publication Society.
• Sayadaw, M. (2016). Manual of insight. Simon and Schuster.
• ​Wilber, K. (2007). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Shambhala Publications.