Awakening is a simple shift in consciousness. Its a shift from ego identification to essence. On When the awakening is initiated in you, your soul goes through intense suffering because during the process of awakening, all those things you are dearly attached to will come onto the surface and they must be healed in order for your soul energy to manifest. Soul awakening or Salvation is a process that involves surrendering and detaching yourself from the world of form. Since birth, we humans are dearly attached to all kind of forms beginning from our body, our mind and its thought forms, stories, our possessions, our loved ones and to external form reality make-ups. When the soul Awakening process is initiated in you, all those things you were closely attached to will come onto surface for cleansing along with all your your fears and insecurities around them. And when this happens, the ego in you would want to leave you because Consciousness (Soul) and Unconsciousness (ego) cannot truly coexist for long. Hence, the ego in you would want to kill its host - you. So, it would torture you with thoughts and feelings around your sentimental bonding to an extent of extinction.

For example, if you were attached to your good looks and your body, your mind will attack your body and make you feel miserable about yourself. It will produce adverse thoughts, feelings, combined with fears and stories about your body so that you cannot escape from the trap of obsessing and hopelessness. Likewise, if you are attached to material things and possessions, you will lose them unexpectedly, or some unexplainable event may occur causing you to suffer in connection to your superficial bondings with them. If you are attached to your partner, maybe he or she will break up abruptly and leave you devastated. If you are attached to something else, you may somehow experience intense suffering in connection with it. Everything you were afraid of will also be used as a tool by your ego to torture you during your transformation. Your ego will create mental phobias, depressions and cause severe mental illness in connection with all your fears. This is ego’s way of fighting off your emerging consciousness. When ego realizes that it will lose the battle and cease to exist, it will even try to destroy its host with it by producing feelings of hopelessness and despair. This is what is referred to as the psychological suffering. And in the current state of Humanity evolution, most of us awaken due to severe mental hardship, agony and unbearable stress. In that sense, suffering also has its purpose – to awaken you out of your dream state and to enable your soul manifest.

When your mental torture gets to an extent that worry and depression becomes your daily companion, you would be left with no choice but to come right into the centre of your Being and embrace mindful living through formless reality of presence where you can find the true peace. The formless reality of the moment and mindful living is the only fix for such stress that your mind may inflict upon you. When this happened in my life, I had to surrender all my pain and worries to the present moment and I began to honor my present moment rather than to live in my mind which would otherwise swing between past and the future. So, I made presence as my primary focus and mindful living as my friend. I began to enjoy even the simplest of the simplest acts I perform including the act of breathing itself. I began to make every act and move through awareness. And I went a step further to mindfulness and started to access the formless reality of presence which the mystics refer to as the awakened consciousness through which deep and profound peace emanates.

This practice went on for months and as the days passed, I was finding myself becoming more and more peaceful. But, my mind’s torture was not over yet. It was still trying to pick on me every time I made space to it. My mind was torturing me as soon as my focus is shifted away from the present moment even for a slightest fraction. It was more like a war between me (consciousness) and my mind (the ego). However, when I was focused on mindful living through the formless reality of the present moment awareness, my mind would again rest and calm down. This fight went on until I started to consider absorbing the present moment as my holy duty and began to put my entire focus into the present moment. With this conscious practice my worries had no room because I had work to do in the present moment. If something went wrong that may cause me worry, I'd quit becoming a worrier and instead get to work of absorbing life from moment to moment – I’d be alert for the next next sound, my next move, next touch, feel and smell in my presence vicinity. Meaning, I was operating from the ground, i.e., I was firmly grounded in the formless reality through my inner body aliveness-Silence-Space-Breath-Stillness consciousness and was perceiving every moment to its fullest. My thoughts did not hold much weight in this state. When a negative thought popped in, it was easy for me to let go of it. My duty was important for me than any of my illusory worries-agony and psychological stress. With this practice, I declared that living in the Essence conscious mindfully from moment to moment is my primary purpose in life. In this state my behavior was far different than when I'm mind identified. My thoughts did not race and I was experiencing constant peace. And my body was not bombarded with harsh emotions and I so, felt peaceful all the time. Plus, I was gradually been drawn into the work I always wished to do but never did in the past. I was slowly and steadily been drawn into my outer purpose.

So, I began to play with the formless reality to overcome my mind’s tortures and I was astonished to override not just the big storm I was facing now, but also some of the daily and common psychological downers such as anxiety, nervousness, depressions, phobias, fear, stress, anger, etc. which were my companion all my life. There are many strategies I have discovered as my way out of this deep depression I had to go through during my ego transformation which may very well be helpful to you in your pass through.