Why Am I Losing Everything During My Spiritual Awakening? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 82 minutes

Short answer: If you feel like you're losing everything during a spiritual awakening, it's usually a sign you're about to move into a new layer of yourself. Loss is the process of something or someone leaving your life, grief is how you feel it, and the rebound effect of loss is rebirth. Some things, relationships, possessions, roles and old beliefs, simply can't come with you into the next stage. You can't skip the grief, but you can learn to get in front of the loss, walk it in faith and let it rebuild you stronger.

If you're struggling or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 (US) any time.

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Key takeaways

• Loss happens again and again as you go up the frequency ladder of awakening. Its rebound effect is rebirth, the phoenix rising from its own ashes.
• What you're losing can point to what you're clearing, such as old generational patterns around money and possessions, or soul contracts with loved ones.
• You can learn to get in front of loss by letting go consciously, instead of waiting for it to be forced on you.
• Loss isn't only things and people. It can be a role you've been defined by, like parent, teacher or CEO, and losing it pushes you to discover who you really are.
• Grief moves in stages: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and depression, and eventually acceptance, hope and joy. Depression can be part of the reset, but don't let your energy stay there.
• If you honor the process of loss and learn the pattern, you always trade up.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

Why am I losing everything? (00:00)

Hello, and welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I'm your host, Shelby Carino. You made it into the episode, and getting in is always the hardest part. We have a massive topic today: why am I losing everything?

I get this question a lot from people who are in the thick of their spiritual awakening. This is something none of us can escape. It happens consistently as we go up the frequency ladder of our ascension. If we can embrace the fact that we're going to lose everything, whatever that may be, we can move into the next stages of ascension more and more easily.

What you want to get good at is making sure what you lose isn't something that hits you so hard in the gut you feel you can't recover. We can get better at how we bring in our losses, and even better at how we navigate them.

What loss is, and why its rebound is rebirth (03:44)

Let's define loss, because we throw that word around, and spiritual loss is a whole different ball game. On a human level, loss is a process where something or someone in life goes away. It's things leaving. But loss can also be a feeling.

When something or someone goes away, it can trigger what we call grief, because we feel deprived of someone's presence or something that had value in our lives.

So if loss starts a process that moves us into grief, what's the rebound effect of loss? Rebirth. When something dies off or goes away, the human spirit has a tenacity to rebuild itself. That sets us on a journey to seek information and learn new processes, beliefs and patterns, and to make better choices, so we never have to experience loss at quite such a deep-rooted level again.

When I see clients, or just people living life, enduring loss, it's very telling where they are in their ascension based on how much loss they keep bringing in and how they navigate it. When someone is losing everything, their spirit, their connection to source, possessions, relationships, money, I tell them they're now on a journey of faith. Faith is an unpredictable place to be, with a lot of twists and turns.

The suffering of loss is inevitable, and it can affect the emotional, physical, mental, spiritual and energy bodies. But something dies within us so we can rebirth ourselves and become the phoenix that rises from its own ashes. That's a natural part of the awakening journey.

What you're losing tells you something (09:48)

So when people ask me, "Why am I losing everything?" my perspective is usually: perhaps you're about to ascend into another layer of your awakening and you're ready for the upgrade. In coaching, I also look at what they're losing. If they're losing material possessions and money, there may be a place in the unconscious mind where they're clearing a generational pattern around greed, wealth and money that past generations never cleared. There's a way to do that letting go and get the learning without losing every possession.

Sometimes it's a deep spiritual loss, like losing loved ones one after another. Some people's soul contracts include soul family who aren't meant to stay here very long. They pass in succession, within months or years of each other, because the person connected to them is meant to go through a rapid-fire ascension, a rapid death and rebirth process through the loss of loved ones. Those are two big examples: losing possessions, which ties to money, and losing relationships with loved ones.

Some things can't come on the new journey (12:36)

When we open the door to our spiritual advancement, we're ready to grow our light differently and take on a higher frequency, and some things can't come with us on that journey. They could weigh us down, hold us back or carry old energy that isn't appropriate for the new space.

Here's a basic human example. When you move, some of your old possessions aren't meant to go with you, because they carry other memories or energies or just don't fit. When my husband Joe and I merged into one house, before we built the home we're in now, we had to merge our possessions. He had items he'd carried for years from different parts of his life and relationships.

I had already been on a losing-everything journey for several years before I met him. I'd been cleaning out my closet, getting rid of high school memorabilia and kitchen items from a past marriage. So by the time we merged, I didn't have much left to let go of, and I could open that space for him.

He got to do his loss in a way that was less dramatic and much more ethical. No one died or was hurt. It was letting go of pots and pans and old documents he didn't need. It was channeled differently and kept everyone around him safe while his energy let go.

A lot of people think, "I'm just throwing away a piece of paper" or "I'm just cleaning out a cabinet." But when you're on an aware path, you realize that when you're cleaning things out, you're moving energy.

Getting in front of the loss (17:44)

When you're losing everything, there's usually no roadmap. Loss often comes abruptly and unexpectedly. It's that Annie Get Your Gun moment: "I feel something, I've got to act on it." And the next thing you know you're giving everything away, or losing everything.

I remember one time I was consciously letting go. I'd been living with a roommate, and I started getting rid of kitchen things. It was new, nice stuff, and I put it out on the curb and posted that anyone could come get it. I wasn't even selling it.

Does that count as losing everything? Yes. I had learned that instead of waiting for loss to come and force me to lose everything, I could get in front of it and let go. I could take control of the roadmap instead of hanging on and losing it all.

That's what I want for every person: that you're not waiting for the shoe to drop and then cutting bait and running, but being mature about how your transitions happen. In this process there's an exchange. You're letting go of something to bring something in. You're leaving a place of security, because you know it, for an unknown place that lacks security but somehow promises something better. That's where you step into faith.

Losing my homes, and building one with Joe (21:28)

Many times in my spiritual journey, the way I did loss was losing my housing and places to live. That satisfied the gypsy in me. Growing up, my family hardly ever traveled. If we did, we went one state over to see family.

We never got on a plane to go overseas, even though from Texas, Mexico is a short flight. We were very rooted in routine. Because I didn't get that travel or that moving around as a kid, as an empathic, psychic, spiritually evolving adult I made up for it by living in many different places.

It began at 26, when I got married the first time. When I divorced at 30, I lost everything. I literally went bankrupt. I had nothing but myself and my animals, so I had no choice but to rebuild and figure out a roadmap.

If I hadn't, I could have gone down into a depression I might not have pulled myself out of.

At one point I rented a house whose original hardwood floors desperately needed redoing. I made an agreement with the landlord: if I redid the floors, he'd waive the security deposit, because I didn't have the money for both. A client of mine who was an interior designer agreed to do the labor, I paid for the materials, which was almost nothing, and I gave him sessions in exchange.

Everybody won. The landlord got new floors that increased the value of his home. And my client named the floors Phoenix Rising, because the stain and swirls looked like a phoenix rising from the ashes. That was the time in my life when I started letting go and losing everything differently.

I lived there a couple of years, and then other things catapulted me to another place, and another, until I finally got where I needed to go, with Joe. By the time we got together, I'd gone from a childhood foundation of always having a stable home to living under the umbrella of other people's land, hence "landlord." So I developed an appreciation for buying a brand-new home with Joe that nobody had lived in, one we could build ourselves without anyone else's energy in it.

We could ground it and make it what it needed to be for our family, our relationship, our security and our foundation. The lei from our trip to Kauai is literally cemented into the foundation of this house.

We weren't just buying a house or furniture. We'd both been through significant loss, some we had control over and some we didn't. But we created a roadmap, because we knew that what we used to rely on for security wasn't really secure.

Walking the path of faith, and losing a role (29:24)

Sometimes when we leave behind our baggage, this precious cargo of ourselves and our possessions, it can be one of our best signs that we're stepping into faith to walk the journey. But if we're still trying to figure it all out while we're losing everything, the wheels keep spinning and we never get anywhere. The journey is in the faith, in the not knowing. You walk the path while the loss is happening, knowing there's a promise you can be reborn, rebuilt and rise from the ashes. It helps us define who we were and who we're becoming.

Sometimes we're forced to give up a role we've been defined by. This happens a lot with parents. For 18 or 20 years you're the parent raising children, and then they're grown and the nest is empty, and you wonder, "What role am I playing now?" even though you never quit parenting. Or you've been the CEO of a company for years, then the job goes away, and you don't know what role you fill anymore.

When I left teaching after 11 years in the school system, I had a void for a while, because my role as a teacher went away when I walked away from it. I thought, "How am I defining myself now? What's my job?" If you've been in the public eye, as an actor, a radio personality, a public speaker or a news anchor, that's a role too.

If it goes away, who are you? Sometimes these things are forced on us so we can truly identify who we are. The destruction of that loss breaks through us and forces us to face it.

How my biggest loss began (33:36)

A lot of spiritual awakenings happen through divorce. From 18 to 26, I lived a pretty normal life. I graduated high school, went to college, got my bachelor's in education in four years, moved to Dallas, got my first teaching job and settled into public school teaching.

Then, because I was a huge NSYNC fan (don't laugh, it was a legit crush), I went through a phase where my high school classroom's homecoming door decorations had an NSYNC theme, and some of my test questions did too. That's how I met my ex-husband. He was a radio personality, and I met him on the air while trying to win a contest to see NSYNC front row at Madison Square Garden. It was the first real excitement in my life.

Then he wanted to come speak to my speech class with the radio crew, and then I was on the air doing a listener takeover lunch for an hour. The station wanted to hire me because I sounded good on the air, but I turned it down because I didn't want to overstep with the guy I was crushing on.

When we married at 26, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to follow him and his career. I quit teaching mid-year. I lost the state I had always known, my friends and family because they weren't coming with me, my security, my job and my income. I traded it for the unknown and the excitement of what could be, and I chased it.

Was it an Annie Get Your Gun moment? Yes, because he was my out. Around 26, my spirit was already knocking: "You need to go on a God journey. You need to start growing."

He brought chaos, excitement and movement, and I said, "Sign me up, because I need to get out of here, away from my family, and figure out who I am and make my own decisions."

Left with nothing at 30 (38:16)

Little did I know he was a person with no ethics who would create, alongside me, an experience where I lost everything again. This time I had more at stake. I had a townhouse, two cars in my name, all the bills in my name, everything on my credit, even though he made the money. The person I thought I could trust decided I only had value for what I could give him. When something younger and more enticing came along, I had no more value in his world.

That created an abrupt shift and a massive destruction of my security. He drained the bank account and left me in another state, in the house that was in my name. On top of losing the person I married and thought I'd spend my life with, I had to process the reality of that loss. Most people's experience of losing everything has to do with relationships: relationships in a job, a marriage that ends in divorce, or family members and friends who die.

At 30, that divorce forced me to ask, "Why did I believe this person? Why did I choose someone with no ethics, who only cared about himself?" That spun me into, "I've got to be better, I've got to choose better, I've got to fix myself." I had to let go of my own self-condemnation for choosing, yet again, an unhealthy relationship that was weighing me down.

I was ready to ascend and was doing the emotional house cleaning, and because I was growing, that energy was pushing him. He wasn't ready to grow. He wanted to stay in that third-dimensional energy and emotional immaturity, and he found someone who would do that with him. For me, it no longer worked.

I wanted to get closer to God and source. If I hadn't lost all of that at 30, and thank God it was only four years, I wouldn't be where I am today.

That loss wasn't just the marriage. It was a brand-new townhouse, money, possessions, everything, and it catapulted me into my parents' house. That was my tower moment, forcing me to face an ugly truth. I had tried to run from what I didn't want to see in my generational pattern, and it caught up with me.

The stages of grief (44:48)

Once that unhealthy relationship let go and I wasn't being weighed down, I engaged more in my spirit and cleaned myself up emotionally. As the memories lessened, the emotional piece started shifting, and I had to feel how much it hurt to give up the precious cargo of the life I had built. I struggled through it because it was real and I was alone, the one thing I didn't want to be. Yet being alone was the greatest experience I could have had, because it taught me I was never alone.

I went through all the stages of grief. First, "I can't believe this is happening," which is denial. Then anger. Then bargaining, trying to figure out how to save something.

Then you slip into sadness because you're disappointed in a decision you made, and you feel guilty. These are stages. You get in them and you get out of them. It's common to cry; I've had so many soul cries.

It's common to withdraw from society for a minute, to scream into your pillow, then drop down and pray, "God, please change this." Eventually you say, "Okay, I've got to regroup," because as humans we have fight in us. You cling to something that makes sense so you can get some traction to move forward.

When we're losing everything, we try to return to anything that represents normal again: a normal relationship, a normal job, normal acceptance in society. But this experience of losing things, forced on us or not, is the transition we go through to change and gain a new perspective, so we can enjoy a new life. To accept the new way to be, we have to grieve what was left behind and what no longer serves us. That grief leads us to seek a different kind of companionship and a tangible connection with what we call God, source or the divine, something that eases the pain.

That's the biggest piece of spiritual awakening. It's what gets us on the path. That's why they say healing is ugly. It's destructive, because we have to lose the things we built before we woke up to God.

We have to spiritually grieve what we created before. I created things in that marriage, and I had to grieve them. We have to give that defining moment some credibility, because it's the springboard we launch from when we rise from the ashes.

So stay present with your feelings. Sometimes plan a special moment in your day, a friend's birthday or a holiday, just something to keep you moving, so you can understand your feelings and see how grief expands and contracts. Then you learn to move through grief with more fluidity and understand the ebb and flow.

Grief tests your beliefs (52:16)

When you're losing everything, some people lose their minds, their spirit, their egos, their money, their possessions or their relationships. Either way there's grief, and it affects every person spiritually at some point. Loss tests our belief systems, because in grief we try to reconnect with something.

In my work with relationships, many people ask me every week, "Is my ex coming back?" That's a prime example: a loss in a relationship, grief, and the need to feel connected, so you go back in time to when you felt connected. Your brain is trying to rebuild and have faith that maybe this was the person, justifying a return to the old pattern. Very few of those people get a yes.

That person is an ex for a reason. They're not here to go the rest of the way with you. Then that's a loss again, because they have to face that they can't go back to what was normal and comfortable.

Whether you lose a friend, a partner, classmates or colleagues, a home, possessions, an animal, a job, a car or even your sense of sanity, you'll probably have some shock. It's unavoidable. When you haven't yet learned how to manage the energy in your force field, it can create chaos and situations that send you into shock. You can get better at how you work with energy, but even the best at energy alchemy still get shocked, because we're always ascending to another level, and there's some grief each time.

Shock, depression and the reset (56:56)

You'll still have shock: "I can't believe this is happening." You may feel anger because you realize you were carrying a burden you didn't need to carry, even if you thought you'd let it go. Then you bargain that you'll never carry something like that again, which is a typical light worker scenario. The last thing you want is to fall into a depression and stay there.

If you do fall into it for a day or two, don't let your energy stay in that state. Depression can be the reset of your subconscious mind, your energy body and your physical body, so you can rebuild and make the jump. Then you move into, "This is good again. Life doesn't suck."

You accept the loss and the transition, there's hope, and you get back on track with your goals.

What you lose could even be a belief system or an old pattern. Loss is different at every stage of awakening, because you're always losing something at a different level.

If grief is a strong emotional response to losing everything, depression may be the hardest stage to get through, because that's when you finally let yourself feel the deep-rooted sadness. That's where the questioning of the soul comes in: "Why did I let that happen? I can't handle this. I hate this person. I can't believe it."

The sadness brings the anger back, because you're having to accept what you lost and make some kind of meaning of it so you can move on.

That's why, when you get to the place where you're depressed and you feel like you can't do this anymore, I tell people to give themselves 24 to 48 hours to feel the sadness, because you're finally experiencing the hurt your soul took on, and you're reconnecting with your truth, your value and yourself. If you don't let yourself see what comes with the loss, you can miss the healing and the greater side of yourself that you can't just think your way into. You have to experience it in the energies.

Finding out on the airwaves (61:36)

Some people say they just felt numb. That happened to me. During my divorce at 30, I found out through the airwaves that my ex-husband was having an affair with an intern on his radio show. The program director, a friend of ours whose house I'd been to, called him out live on the air.

It wasn't something that could be edited; it was already out there. Then my ex came to the house to play it for me and convinced me it was a lie.

I was getting shock from every direction, so of course I went numb. I didn't know what the truth was. Do I believe the person I married? Why would the program director say that on the air?

I was being led down a path of thinking I had to take legal action against the station, only to find out my ex was being fired. Then he left with the intern.

All of that created sadness, denial, despair and anger. I went through every level of grief, because I was enduring such a massive loss, and then I had anxiety and depression on top of it, because I didn't know how I was going to live. I was in a different state, he had left it, and I was the one who had to file for divorce. I went through a lot of guilt and helplessness, and at some point relief, because the right people showed up to help me through it.

In the end it was the best thing that could have happened to me. It catapulted me into a massive spiritual awakening and journey where I swore I would fix myself so I'd never get into something like that again. And it worked.

The value of loss (64:52)

This is why we have to lose at some point and go through the grieving process. We're on a God journey, and on that journey we have to reflect on our life choices. I married at 26 and left the state because I didn't want to deal with the generational trauma surfacing in my family. That's what made me trust a man who had been lying to me the whole time, just so I could have hope that it would be easier than healing a generational line.

When I got onto a deeper path, I saw that choice clearly. When I started going back to a non-denominational church in Georgia, things began unblocking, because I could bring God's grace back in for myself.

Grief through loss really hits the heart chakra. We feel emotion in the gut, but the heart is where we process a deeper space of love and grief. Then it moves through all the chakras, because we're healing through the whole system.

There's value in loss, because it gives us the chance to bounce back stronger than before. It lets us look at where we were weak, where we weren't strong enough, so that we brought in that situation, programming, belief or outcome, and where we can improve. Loss and failure are a big testament to a person's grit and resilience, and to their character and ethics. I grew up playing sports, so I was used to being coached, being on a team and taking losses.

Every loss was just a new opportunity. You have to train and condition yourself, because through life there are layers of healing and grief.

Right now, people are going back through their timelines to things they created long ago. As we open into higher frequencies, the Pandora's boxes open: the choices and decisions we've made before. Those energies come up from our Akashic records, so to speak, to test whether we healed that experience at the level we thought we did, or whether there's something to revisit, fine-tune or feel, so we have more energetic immunity to that pattern. When we're grieving, we're finally blessed with the chance to complete the natural process of spiritual death and rebirth.

You always trade up (70:28)

Spiritual ascension is a death and rebirth process. Massive loss and grief give us the chance to mourn the death of one version of our spirit so we can rebirth another. My mentor would always say, "You always trade up." She was talking about relationships, but it goes for anything.

If you honor the natural process of loss, grief and expansion, learn the pattern and shift your beliefs, you'll always trade up into something better.

That's why losing matters. We develop opportunities to rebirth ourselves, and we develop empathy for ourselves, which grows our empathy for others. Then we can build platforms with ourselves and others to improve our situations, beliefs and communities. When we approach the same circumstances again, there's greater power and strength behind us, and that shifts what we create in the future.

We don't just learn; we win, because we take that wisdom with us. It's called wisdom because we've stood the test of time to have the faith to walk the path.

Fear is a powerful emotion, and many of us fear loss. But if you fear loss, loss is going to happen. We usually start with fear, then we lose something and get angry, then sad, and after we move through the sadness there's always joy, that light at the end of the tunnel. So we have to choose to embrace loss when it shows up and connect into the grieving process, so we can communicate with ourselves on a spiritual level that we're ascending into a different layer of our being, one we may not even recognize yet. Unless we build a plan, find a mentor and walk a process, it's hard to grow.

Loss and grief are a specific type of energy. Everything is energy: our thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Grief and loss each have their own signature vibration and their own way of communicating with us, and we have a choice in how we connect to them.

The light at the end of the tunnel (75:36)

My defining moment of loss came at 30, from a decision I made at 26. That four-year span catapulted me into an eight- to ten-year spiritual evolution that spit me out on the other side: finding my mentor and finding the love of my life, Joe, whom I'm now married to. We have a deeply rooted soul connection, and he carries the character, ethics and love of self, God and community that make up a spiritual relationship.

That's the light at the end of the tunnel. That's the joy, and it's not just emotional joy. It's spiritual, mental and physical joy, and even financial joy, because what you vibrate comes back to you.

That four-year process of hell that spun me into healing was worth it to get me where I am today. Any loss I've had since then has been nothing compared to that one. That was my tower moment, when everything collapsed at once. Other losses have been sad and painful, but nothing like the first.

So it gets better. You just have to see where you are in the process and how you move through these powerful emotions.

If you're going through something right now and looking for perspective or guidance, reach out, because loss is the one thing we should never have to go through entirely by ourselves. There's a time when being alone in the loss matters, and then there's a time when God speaks and says, "Pay attention. I'm sending you your teacher. Reach out."

That's an internal decision. It comes from the strength of choosing to connect back in, to communicate and to learn from others who have gone through loss before you.

That was a lot of loss talk, but I wanted to have this conversation because loss is a natural part of waking up spiritually, no matter what level you're on. Sometimes it's just nice to hear someone else talk about it, to know it's normal and fleeting, and to be reminded that you are always at choice to step into a process that helps you rebuild what's coming on the other side. Have a great day, and I'll talk to you soon.

Frequently asked questions

Why do you lose so much during a spiritual awakening?

As you move to a higher frequency, some relationships, possessions, roles and beliefs can't come with you into the next stage. Losing them clears space for a rebirth, so you can rebuild with better choices, patterns and connections.

What are the stages of grief after a big loss?

Shelby describes shock and denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and depression, and then acceptance and hope, eventually leading to joy. You move in and out of the stages rather than through them in a straight line.

Is depression a normal part of grieving a loss?

Shelby sees a dip into sadness as part of the reset after loss, but warns not to let your energy stay in a depressive state. If sadness lingers, feels heavy or affects your sleep and daily life, please also talk with your doctor, and if you have thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 (US) any time.

How do you get in front of loss instead of having it forced on you?

Let go consciously before life makes you. Declutter, release what no longer fits and notice the patterns behind what you keep losing, so the exchange happens with less drama and you can walk it in faith.

Where to go next

• Start here: my free 16-minute audio, When You Don't Feel Like Yourself
• The course: Expanding Consciousness Fundamentals, a step-by-step guide to what's happening during a spiritual awakening
• Listen next: How Do You Move On From Loss?
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions