I Didn’t Go Looking for an Awakening—I Was Looking for a Way to Survive

I didn't go looking for an awakening.

I went looking for a way to survive.

At the time, I didn't use those words. I wasn't thinking about becoming spiritual or discovering some deeper meaning to life. I was just trying to get through what was happening around me and inside me.

It felt like several parts of my life were falling apart at the same time.

I had recently left a job I had worked at for approximately twenty years. At the time, losing that part of my life felt devastating. I had been a manager, and I had carried a great deal of stress and responsibility. I was responsible for more than just my own work. I was constantly thinking about other people, other problems, and everything that needed to be handled.

When that chapter ended, I could not see it clearly yet. Looking back now, I can see that leaving that position eventually gave me some of my life back. I no longer had to carry everyone else's responsibilities on top of my own.

But at the time, it felt like one more thing had been taken away.

At the same time, my marriage was falling apart.

When a twenty-year job was ending and my relationship was failing, it seemed like the life I knew was collapsing around me. The things I thought were supposed to provide stability were no longer stable.

I didn't know what my life was going to look like next.

Living in Fight-or-Flight

My day-to-day life felt chaotic.

There were panic attacks, anxiety, uncertainty, and a constant need to keep my mind occupied. I could not simply sit quietly with myself. I needed my phone in my hand. I needed the television playing. I needed music, videos, or something else filling the silence.

Silence gave my thoughts too much room.

When my thoughts took over, anxiety and panic often followed.

I had lived with anxiety for a long time, even before I had the words to describe it. As a child, I remember having panic attacks, although they were not as frequent as they became later. I worried about what people thought of me. I worried about the next day. I replayed conversations and imagined what I should have said differently.

My mind was almost never still.

For a while, I tried different ways to escape that feeling. I used marijuana to quiet my thoughts, and later I turned to prescription painkillers to numb deeper pain. At the time, I was not thinking about healing. I was thinking about getting a break from myself.

I wanted the noise to stop.

I wanted to feel normal.

I wanted to experience even a small amount of peace.

Looking back now, I can see that I was not really running from one specific problem. I was running from my own thoughts, my emotions, my past, and the life I had become trapped inside.

I Was Rushing Through Life

One of the things I did not understand at the time was how much of my life had become organized around distraction.

I would rush through work, chores, or responsibilities so I could get back to scrolling TikTok or YouTube. I would hurry through the things I needed to do so I could watch television or rewatch a movie I had already seen many times.

I was rushing through living so I could get back to doing nothing.

That might sound strange, but distraction had become a form of escape. As long as I had something in front of me, I did not have to sit with what was happening inside me.

The problem was that the distractions never actually solved anything.

They only gave me temporary relief.

When the phone was put down or the television was turned off, everything was still there waiting for me.

I did not understand that I would eventually need to learn how to be present with myself instead of constantly trying to get away from myself.

The First Shift

The first shift did not happen because I had a plan.

I was at my new job and had some downtime. Because I could not stand having nothing to occupy my mind, I started scrolling through TikTok.

I came across someone talking about the universe, interconnectedness, and the idea that we all came from the same source.

I do not remember his exact words, and I do not necessarily hold every belief the same way today. But something about what he said gave me another way to look at existence.

He talked about how we are all connected and how we are part of something larger than ourselves. He talked about the possibility that we are souls, that the Divine is within us, and that life may have a deeper meaning than what we can see on the surface.

I had carried a fear of death for much of my life.

The idea that everything might simply end had frightened me. But this gave me another possibility to consider. Maybe death did not mean that everything disappeared. Maybe we were part of something that continued. Maybe, in some way, death was a return to where we came from.

I would never say that my fear of death disappeared completely. It has not. But something softened in me.

For the first time, I had another possibility to think about, and that possibility brought me some peace.

It also changed the way I thought about other people.

If we really are connected, and if there is something Divine within all of us, then hurting another person is, in some way, also hurting ourselves. I did not understand exactly how that idea would affect me, but I began interacting with some people differently.

I started trying to meet people where they were instead of only seeing them through the judgments and frustrations I had built up over time.

I was not perfect at it. Some people were much harder for me than others. I also do not believe we should ignore genuine abuse or pretend that harmful behavior never happened.

But in ordinary relationships, I began to understand that carrying every old irritation into a new conversation made it harder to really hear the person in front of me.

When I put some of those judgments aside, even temporarily, I listened differently.

I was more present.

I cared more about what was actually being said instead of having half of the conversation with old memories in my own head.

I did not understand this as a spiritual practice at the time. I was not consciously trying to become more present or nonjudgmental.

I had no clue what I was doing.

I only knew that some of the changes made me feel better.

Finding Proof That Life Could Feel Different

Around that same period, I had a long conversation with someone I had found through YouTube.

I still do not know exactly what label I would give his work. Maybe it was spiritual guidance. Maybe it was simply a meaningful conversation. The label is not what stayed with me.

His energy stayed with me.

He seemed genuinely happy to talk with me. He was excited and made me feel as though my being there mattered. There are times when you can sense that someone is putting on a show for other people.

With him, it did not feel that way.

It felt real.

I remember thinking that if another person could live with that kind of genuine happiness and excitement, maybe I could too.

It was not jealousy or envy. I was not thinking, “I want what he has.”

It was more like seeing proof that another way of being might actually be possible.

During that conversation, we talked about shadow work. Afterward, I began doing my own version of it.

I did not sit down with a workbook or answer a list of questions. I might choose something from my past and allow myself to think about it throughout the day.

I tried not to live inside the pain or reopen the wound just for the sake of feeling it again. Instead, I tried to understand what happened, what it meant to me now, and what I needed in order to move forward.

Sometimes there was something to learn.

Sometimes there was something I would handle differently today.

And sometimes the only thing left to do was let it go.

Searching for Something to Hold On To

After that, I began consuming as much information as I could.

I spent a lot of time on TikTok and YouTube listening to different people, different beliefs, and different spiritual practices. I was trying to figure out what might work for me.

Looking back, I was probably over-researching everything.

But I was still living in fight-or-flight. I was not calmly designing a spiritual path for myself. I was taking in information because I needed something to hold on to.

I was not completely sure about anything.

I was simply along for the ride, trying to figure out what was happening to me.

Some of the things I explored did not stay with me. Other beliefs changed as I changed. But some of the core pieces of what I believe and practice today were there near the beginning, even before I understood what they were becoming.

That is how my awakening began.

Not with certainty.

Not with a dramatic experience.

Not because I thought I had special answers.

It began because the way I had been living was no longer working, and I needed something different.

What I Understand Now

Looking back, I can see that my awakening was not one single moment.

It was a series of small changes.

It was the first time an idea about the universe softened my fear of death. It was the first time I tried to listen to someone without carrying every old judgment into the conversation. It was the first time I saw genuine happiness in another person and realized that maybe happiness was still possible for me.

It was beginning to look honestly at parts of my past instead of only running from them.

It was searching, questioning, doubting, and trying again.

Today, I can sit quietly in a room with nothing playing and simply enjoy the moment. I can look at the trees, the sky, or whatever is around me and be present with it.

That would have seemed impossible to me back then.

I did not begin this journey with answers. I did not even know exactly what I was looking for.

I only knew that I could not continue living the way I had been living.

So when something brought me even a little more peace, a little more hope, or a little more feeling of being alive, I followed it.

At the beginning, that was enough.

And sometimes, when you are trying to survive, enough is where the healing begins.