What Does It Mean to Wake Up Spiritually? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 97 minutes

Short answer: Waking up spiritually means coming out of the dream state you've been living in and bringing your consciousness into the present moment. It's when a spiritual knowing that has been dormant inside you starts to move, and you begin to see who you are without the labels and roles you've worn. Common signs include noticing your patterns, feeling more connected to people and the planet, letting go of attachments, craving inner peace, heightened intuition and synchronicity, and deeper compassion. It can feel messy, so the most important first step is to forgive yourself for having been asleep and follow a process rather than chasing answers.

Listen: ShelbyRADIO podcast · Watch on YouTube

Key takeaways

• Waking up is like waking from sleep: you've been asleep to a spiritual knowing inside you, and now you're being pulled into the present moment.
• The "problem" right now is that everyone is waking up without knowing how to process it, which throws off beliefs, emotions and relationships.
• Waking up means asking who you are without the costume: beyond your labels, roles and attachments.
• Signs include noticing patterns, feeling more connected, releasing attachments, wanting inner peace, stronger intuition and synchronicity, deeper compassion and less fear of death.
• When you wake up, you see your past choices clearly. Forgive yourself instead of falling into self-condemnation.
• Don't chase answers. Find a process and a mentor whose energy feels right, and stay accountable to your own path.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

What does waking up mean? (00:00)

Hello, and welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I'm Shelby Carino. You made it into the episode, and that's always the hardest part: getting started and committing to a process so you can move forward in your spiritual journey.

Today we're going to clarify what waking up means. In the human sense, we think of going to bed at night, putting the body to sleep, getting rest and waking up in the morning alert enough to go about our day. It's really the same in our spiritual awakening journey. We've been asleep inside our energies, asleep to a spiritual knowing that has been dormant inside us.

Now that's shifting. The universe is coming in with unexpected force that's moving our subconscious mind, our energy body, our physical body and our emotional body into the present moment. We're getting out of the daydream energy and the illusion, dropping into our bodies and bringing our consciousness with us.

So what does waking up mean? That's the episode. Just kidding. We're going to go much deeper, because if we don't, we might miss something that could help you with whatever you're waking up to.

Why waking up is a problem right now (04:40)

There's always a problem when we're moving through awakening, and the problem right now is that we're all waking up. How is that a problem? Because people are waking up in their energy with no idea how to process what they're waking up to. It throws everything off: belief systems, behavior patterns, emotional stability and anxiety.

Waking up is a very modern spiritual term, and it's basically telling us we need to be here, now, in the present moment, and bring our consciousness into now. So let's define "modern," because we're hearing a lot about modern spirituality. The dictionary definition of modern is relating to the present or recent times, as opposed to the remote past. If you've done any kind of spiritual work with a mentor or teacher, you've probably heard that you can't live in the past because it's already happened, and if you live in the future, that's where your anxiety is. All we have is the present moment.

The second half of the definition is a person who advocates or practices a departure from traditional styles or values. So modern relates to the present, and to moving away from tradition: traditional beliefs, values and religions. That's why "modern" is being put in front of "spiritual." We're having to go into a deeper God essence of what is here today, in this evolutionary walk of life, not what was done before or what we think will be done in the future.

I did a whole episode on what spirituality is, but as a recap: spirituality involves recognizing a feeling, a sense or a belief that there's something greater than self and that there's more to being human. It's this greater whole we come into, where we learn, feel or sense that we're part of a cosmic, divine connection. That's what sets us on the path to be bigger than self, which is why the little ego, the little self, has to die off.

So when you put "modern spirituality" together with waking up, we're waking up to a present moment where we let go of traditional values, beliefs and systems so we can transcend into the higher aspect of the cosmos. We've been held back by people skewing what spirituality is. Now we get to be here and experience it for ourselves, instead of through what others told us to believe or feel.

Deeper value, meaning and how we express it (11:40)

If modern spirituality focuses on deeper value and meaning in how we choose to live, it means embracing the idea that the material reality we live in isn't really serving us anymore. We need to envision a path inside ourselves that lets us discover the essence of who we are. It's letting go of the belief that material things make us happy. Instead, it's the deeper value and meaning by which we live, and then the material plane falls into place. We've been living the opposite of that, and now we get to straighten it out.

How do we express spirituality in this modern world? One way is developing dialogue with people in our circle who may already be awake or on a spiritual path, and talking about what we're experiencing. Simply having community around us creates that dialogue.

Another way is getting to a place where we choose to believe and do what's right for ourselves. Instead of listening to everybody else or thinking we have it all figured out, we go on the journey to figure it out, so we can empower ourselves to take the action step that works for us.

For example, when I talk to clients who are clearly on their awakening path, questioning everything, it's never my job to say, "This is what you need to believe, this is what you need to study." That's never a mentor's job. The mentor's job is to listen and study what the person waking up is saying. Then, only if the energy aligns, it may be appropriate to say, "Here's some information. Here's my process of waking up and what I experienced. If you feel it would be meaningful to you, here's where to find it."

Notice I use the word "feel," because waking up is feeling everything around you that's false and then feeling more of the truth and the love. We don't know what we don't know when we're waking up. That's why guides, teachers and mentors come in. But we have to decide for ourselves what we'll follow and explore.

Questioning religion, and my Christmas alone (18:12)

Another way we express waking up is moving away from religion, or questioning the religious ways we're still in. "I don't know if I can go back and believe that yet." When I woke up, I actually went back to church. I married at 26 and divorced at 30, and while I was married and living in Atlanta, my then-husband and I were referred to a non-denominational church there.

We loved it. For me it was the motivational message and the band and being in a room where I could feel the spirit. I was already waking up my energy, feeling it in a room full of people who were there to feel and connect.

When my husband left that October, I kept going. I spent my first Christmas alone, because I didn't have the money to come back to Texas to see my family. I wasn't even officially divorced yet, alone in a brand-new three-story townhome. I was reading The Purpose Driven Life and writing in its journal, and I had a Chris Tomlin CD, back when we had CDs.

A friend who was one of my personal training clients called and said, "Shelby, if you don't have anywhere to be today, come have dinner with my family."

I was upstairs getting dressed with the music playing, and one of the songs really touched me. I fell over the bed crying. In those moments before I went to be with my client's family, I connected. I woke up differently.

I understood God in that moment, because I had no family around me, my soon-to-be ex-husband was gone, and everyone else was with their families. I was there by myself with my animals. And it was the most liberating Christmas I ever had. I would never trade it, because being alone and crying with no one to comfort me made me stronger and more grateful, and made me realize I'm a powerful being connected to something far bigger than myself.

I had to get down to my little self to see I had a bigger self inside me. That was the turning point of my waking up.

From spiritual moments to a flow (22:52)

I was 30 and moving into a new decade. In your twenties, you're still coming out of that teenage and young adult phase, thinking you're invincible. By 30, you're really starting to search for the deeper meaning of life, and by your 40s, you're in it. Evolution is changing things, and the younger generation is more connected and doesn't have to lose its connection the way my generation did. But that's what happened for me.

I had to tell myself, "Shelby, you're a spiritual being. You've read it in books, heard it in church and from other people. You are a spiritual being, sister, having this human experience, even though it sucks right now." There's a difference between living a life with a spiritual moment every now and then and really waking up.

I wasn't living on "I go to church once a week, the message carries me a few days, then everything falls apart and I go back." I was starting to stay in that spiritual energy all the time and develop a flow of waking up, with that energy constantly getting pinged, triggered and tested. That's what created a breaking-down process in me.

Even though I was seeing angel card readers, doing drum circles, new moon rituals and Reiki and other spiritual healing tools, those were preparing me for my true launch. We usually go through this in stages rather than all at once. My Kundalini energy flipped in 2011, and that was abrupt, but I'd already had six to eight years of gradual waking up without knowing it.

Once it flipped, I had to become accountable for the journey I was on. I realized there was a serious responsibility to all these communication channels activating, to the information coming through me, to how I was acting and how my emotions and behavior were shifting. It was, "Oh my gosh, I have to grow up. I have to be accountable."

We spend much of our lives not wanting that much authority or influence, because we'll be held accountable for it. That's why so many clients find me and say, "You have a process for this? Give it to me, I don't know what I'm doing." And I say, "Don't worry, I've pretty much made every mistake in the book."

That's when your guides and angelic beings show up, when people get interested in past lives, when your higher self activates and when you start seeking mentors.

Humanity is mostly asleep (28:28)

Right now, humanity is mostly asleep. A lot of people aren't aware that everyone and everything around us is part of us and that there's no separation. Humanity is in "you do you, I'll do me." But the way you do you affects me and the collective consciousness.

We're all feelers, all connected to the collective. The way your neighbor is affects you, the way your family is affects you, and the way you are affects them. So we all have to wake up and develop a higher level of consciousness, energy and accountability, so it's easier to live in the collective together.

What does it mean to be spiritually asleep? Your awareness of how you connect to what's around you has declined so far that you feel separate from everyone and everything. That's hermit mode. If you're listening and haven't woken up yet, where's your awareness?

Do you feel disconnected and like you're pushing everyone away? There's a time when that's important, when we're finding ourselves. When the spirit is dormant and getting ready to wake up, we often go into solitude, meditation and quiet, because we're about to knock the doors off our own ability to wake up and connect.

Then look at what fills so much of our attention. Even if you don't watch the news, people around you do, and much of it carries violence, greed, hatred, blame, comparison and he-said-she-said narratives. That energy lends itself to a more disconnected society and keeps us spiritually asleep. The positive news is that more and more people are coming out of their spiritual slumber, turning it down and choosing sources that are spiritually awake, and that helps them move away from habits that keep them in an asleep, zombie pattern.

When people are spiritually asleep, many have active addictions that help them avoid shifting what needs to change. They go further into isolation or will do anything, or take anything, to avoid discomfort. Some escape through drinking, hallucinogens or smoking pot. Plenty of people say they're spiritual and awake and still smoke pot, often because they haven't yet taken accountability for seeing the life they've created or the damage done.

They want to feel good without having to feel what they may have messed up. But the longer they stay disassociated, the more time they lose to fix it, balance it and bring in better feelings. It's repeated self-destructive behavior that distracts us from the spiritual reality we need to move into.

Getting quiet (35:00)

To create a conscious connection, we need to learn to be quiet inside ourselves. How many people really want to do that, when we're so distracted? Yet as we wake up, people are yearning for that quiet and that conscious connection.

In January 2011, my angel card reader told me my energy was all over the place and that I needed to get a job at the Gap folding jeans and listening to music. When I processed that, I got catapulted into a Vipassana meditation camp for 11 days instead. What she was probably trying to tell me was, "Shelby, you're trying to consciously connect, but you're doing all these other things. I don't know how to tell you to get quiet, so go fold jeans and listen to music, and it'll put you in a meditative state." I took that and ran with it in a different direction, but I still got on my path.

In that quiet, the separation between you and the world can seem to disappear. That's when you get to the presence of yourself, to God, source, what some call the God spark within you. It's unity with the universe. That's why people who are waking up, who are feeling more and seeing that the little self has been snuffing out their light, turn to meditation, quiet time and prayer.

You need it for your soul's growth and to keep your sanity as you become more sensitive to the spiritual energies flowing through you.

Who are you without the costume? Leaving the dream state (37:48)

There's a shift away from identifying yourself as "I am this" or "I am that": I'm a mother, a father, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a massage therapist, a healer, a teacher, a construction worker. We use labels to identify ourselves, and that's purposeful at times. But some people live only by how they identify and don't have a real personal connection to that identity. They're just acting it out.

When you wake up, you move away from identifying as this or that, and you ask, "Who am I really, when I don't have the costume on?" That's the waking up process. You're no longer on a stage playing out an act and wearing a costume. You have to go into the deeper part of you and figure out who you are, the part of you that exists without being shaped into something, because we're multidimensional beings.

Then you get more alert to the flow around you. "Life is all around me. Energy and motion exist. When this energy moves, this event happens, and they're connected. Why? This is curious. I want to learn more."

And then your mentors show up to teach you the way. You've got to understand that we're energy and multidimensional beings, and that the earthly things about us are very small parts of the bigger whole of who we are.

You're really waking up when you're no longer in the dream world. You don't even know you're in it until something pops in, shocks you and drops your energy into real time. Most of the time we're in a dream state. You'll notice more and more moments where you say, "I floated out for a minute. That was the dream state, the airy-fairy state."

The more streamlined you become and the more you stay in the present, the more you filter what your ego is doing, focusing on what you're building for your future but bringing it into the now.

So instead of living in the dream state, you're in a place where you're aware of your individual self and the connection you have with everything around you at the same time. It's not dreaming to escape. It's, "All of this is happening around me, here I am, and how do I navigate it?" This fifth-dimensional energy we're moving into is really a higher form of vibrational consciousness, and it's not letting us live in that dream state anymore.

Sign one: noticing your patterns (43:52)

People ask me, "Shelby, when I wake up, what am I doing? What do I do?" One of the first things I tell people is to start learning your patterns. That's why one-on-one sessions help, because you're the one running the pattern, and a neutral third party with no connection to you can say, "This is your pattern." Once you know your patterns, it's much easier to maneuver your waking up.

One of the first signs you're waking up is that you start noticing things. You observe your patterns and other people's patterns, and they start to irritate you, or your patterns start to irritate others. You realize you've been walking through life on autopilot, not giving any thought to who you are, what you want or why you're here. Then it's like a light switch turns on, as if you'd been in a darkroom developing film and suddenly you can see what you're doing.

You might ask, "Why is there so much drama in my life right now? Why is there chaos every time I walk into a room? Why is everyone blaming me and trying to get me to change, when I notice it's really them?" You might look at your diet and wonder why you're eating so many carbs or so much sugar, or whether you need this much red meat or should try more vegetables. I did that.

This also happened to me: back when I still worked in what I call the matrix, I lived by an alarm clock, and when it went off I didn't want to get out of bed. My energy was saying, "No, not today." Noticing that moved me along, because I realized I was looking for something else. I didn't want to keep doing my day-to-day public school teaching job by someone else's clock.

I had friends who were more awake than I was who helped me notice the patterns shifting in my behavior, my emotions and the questions I was asking.

I also compared myself a lot, my life and career to other people's. I'd never cared about that before, but when I woke up, I did, because you can become more judgmental as darker, deeper layers of ego come up. I got more irritated, agitated and angry than usual. Some people notice they're drinking or smoking more, because their energy is moving and they don't know what to do with it.

When you notice these patterns, that's when you want to find your mentor and bring in your teachers. Don't chase the answer. Chase a process, and your answers will come.

Waking up and growing is really awareness of what you're doing now, in this present moment. When you have the impulse to change something, you start noticing your behavior patterns, emotions that feel more out of control and relationships falling apart. Those are the observations and the patterns.

Sign two: feeling more connected (50:52)

Another thing that happens as you wake up is that you feel more connected. Your senses open, not only sight, sound and taste but your empathy and your spiritual senses. You're sharing more in the collective consciousness and the human race, so you may want to be part of a community. I did this. You might want to volunteer, help a neighbor or help a co-worker.

You become open to someone else's perspective, and that's huge. We're all psychic, so those parts of us want a different viewpoint, because the way we've seen things before maybe wasn't working. You start asking people questions: why they wear a certain designer, why they organize their recipes the way they do, why their tattoos are placed a certain way. You want to know what other people think, because you want to connect.

When I felt a deeper connection to humanity, I stopped eating a lot of meat; I just didn't want it. If there was a spider or bug in the house, I'd catch it and release it. I felt a connection to people and to the planet, and I didn't want to do things that could hurt it. I used to be awful at recycling, and then I met my husband Joe, who recycles all the time and cares about the planet.

I came to value that, because it was a perspective I'd never looked at before. You become environmentally conscious because you feel the connection. That's part of the sensitivity of waking up.

Sign three: letting go of attachments (54:36)

Another thing that happens is that you begin to let go of your attachments quickly. Whether you're aware of them or not, you have energetic, physical and emotional attachments, and they shape how you see yourself. Some people define themselves by the cars they drive, by fashion, shoes and jewelry, or by food. Some are attached to who they spend time with because they don't want to be alone.

Some are attached to the movies they watch, the books they read or how they spend money. Some are attached to group labels they've always identified with, and even those labels are changing now.

When we let go of these attachments, we start looking at how we've defined ourselves by them, so we can get to the heartbeat of who we truly are. Before I really woke up, I identified with my parents' beliefs, or I'd try on my friends' beliefs. I'm relational, so for me it was more friends and family than media or science. That was part of being asleep, before my veil lifted.

Some people say, "I'm smart," and they're attached to that. Others say, "I'm always late," and they're attached to being late. Some do it with diet: "I can't eat gluten," "I'm vegan." Or "I'm a cat lover," "I'm a dog lover," "I'm a yogi."

It depends on how healthy the attachments are. But once the veil becomes transparent to you and you see through your attachments, you start waking up. You realize, "I need to go into an energetic process and heal these things on another level, because I'm creating one attachment after another so I don't have to see what I need to see." When you wake up, you start wanting to see it.

Sign four: craving inner peace (59:16)

When you're waking up, you don't just want to get quiet in meditation. You want inner peace. "I'm ready to be calm. I'm ready to stop having anxiety and panic attacks."

There's an insatiable urge to be peaceful, and you're okay with the idea that things can still show up in your life that you didn't expect, as long as you have inner peace and don't get thrown off the rails. You're not on the emotional roller coaster of anger, frustration, despair, victimhood and martyrdom anymore.

You can be very peaceful inside, walk across the living room and stub your toe on the couch, and even though a sensation runs through your body and you feel the pain, it's fleeting. It doesn't throw your day off. You choose what emotion you'll have with it. Are you going to cuss and scream and let your world fall apart, or just observe, "I stubbed my toe"?

Until you clean out a lot of emotional baggage, an emotional charge will more likely send you to a negative place, because you haven't done enough shifting yet.

Sign five: intuition and synchronicity (62:04)

Another thing that happens is your intuition goes through the roof. You may get to a place where you think you know it all, because you have a thought and then it happens. In my relationship work, people often dream about an ex and then see them on social media, or the ex reaches out. That intuition fires a spark into the collective.

Whatever your subconscious mind hasn't yet balanced or neutralized is still floating out there, so it heightens the intuition, and anyone who feels or senses it shows up. Things start dropping into your world, often things you thought you were done with. That shows you're not done with them, and you need to revisit the energy. That's usually when your teachers and mentors come in, because they have processes for what you're pulling in.

It's no longer just hearing a text come in and knowing who it is before you look. We're going way beyond those symbols and synchronicities now, because we're getting deeper into ourselves more quickly and connecting into energy more consistently. Intuition is going into your dream time. Everything is more intense, because the veils are really lifting.

Intuition goes hand in hand with synchronicity. You think, "The universe is helping me and conspiring to make everything happen." What's really happening is your energy is moving around trying to get into alignment, so it brings in physical realities and symbols to help you put the puzzle pieces together and see where you need to go next. Again, that's why teachers, mentors and guides show up, because you don't know what you don't know, but someone before you does.

A good spiritual teacher would never force you into their process. They'd only encourage it if it felt right for you, because your energy has to align with theirs, or you won't absorb the information as well. People like me who have woken up and gone through a lot of fire and tests know there's a certain group meant to find us, and they'll find us at the right time. But as humans we still have to do the physical part.

I still need a website, a podcast, a presence on social media and tools for people. If I just sat in a closet and tried to meditate my way into helping people, it wouldn't work. Synchronicities trigger a chain of events so people can get on the path of their destiny and see where they are in their waking up process.

Compassion, death and authenticity (67:40)

Once the synchronicities came in and I was getting sensitive and connecting with people, I became very compassionate. My empathic nature, where I could feel other people, went through the roof. I learned what an empath is, because I was actually taking on people's feelings and emotions. I suffered more in other people's feelings so I could go through a deeper process and wake up to compassion for myself.

That's when people often go into guilt: "I finally get it. What have I been doing? I can't believe I've been asleep this long." You feel for everyone, the planet and all animals.

You want to hug everyone; you'll go hug a tree. Then suddenly the light turns on: "I forgot to have compassion for myself." People find me saying, "I feel so bad. I've been asleep so long. I've ruined my relationships, taken on a lot of debt, wrecked career opportunities."

You see how you navigated your life, and you learn you need to be kind to yourself. It's not just about feeling other people. It's about feeling yourself. In these energies it's trial by fire, and it's rapid-fire.

The trials don't last long, because people are saying, "I need a mentor, and I need it now."

Waking up is not a small task. Another thing that has to happen, and I went through this too, is releasing the fear of death. I used to be weird about death and how I'd feel if people died. As you wake up, the fear of death stops resonating, because you realize there is no death.

We may leave the body, but the energy keeps going. Fear in general smashes your ability to wake up more. It weighs you down. The more attachments you have, the more fear you develop, which is why you have to lose the attachments so you can lose the fear and let go, expand your perspective and your consciousness and get into compassion for yourself. That's the waking up process.

When you're no longer regretting the past or fearing death as much, and you're not worrying as much, you transcend more into knowing this is just a body and you're more than that. You accept that death is part of the process and come to a peaceful resolution with it, and that removes fear. That's why people who are waking up sometimes experience a lot of death around them. I once had a client who lost six close family members within eight months.

That can create a rapid-fire waking up, because when someone leaves their body they leave behind a lot of energy, and if you're connected to that ecology, you feel it and it wakes you up.

This is where you become more authentic. When you wake up, you gain more of who you are at a soul level. You build confidence, value yourself, know your worth and realize you don't have to control things anymore. You can be part of the solution, but you can't control it.

So you learn to stay in your truth, value and worth, which keeps you in your authenticity. Then you become a congruent influencer.

That doesn't mean you need followers, but people start following you because they want to know what you know, feel what you feel or experience what you experience. Your authenticity brings that energy forward so others can experience it through you, and it helps them figure out how they want to show up. That's an energetic shift. Social media talks about influencers, followers and algorithms, but in an authentic waking up process, none of that matters.

What matters is your message, your purpose, your value, your confidence, your worth and your ethics. When your energy is ready, people organically follow, because they want the energy and we all want to follow a process.

A deeply awake person has something about their life and well-being that seems congruent, aligned and consistent, like they're going somewhere. People at the beginning of waking up study them: "You're so connected. How are you calm and stable? How are you no longer creating triggers and drama?"

That's how I was when I found my mentor. I thought, "You're like Yoda, but your life is flourishing. You're calm and consistent, but powerful. How do you do that?"

She'd tell me a story, and another story, and I'd get a download, because the greatest shamans are usually the greatest storytellers. I'd get the energies and a mind-body connection, and I'd flourish. I'd go through a test and hopefully pass, and if not, the test would come back. And that helps other people when they wake up.

Forgive yourself for being asleep (80:44)

So what can you do to help yourself wake up? The first thing I'll tell you is to forgive yourself for being asleep. Forgive yourself for not feeling the energy as much, and for the choices you made that created negative reactions or decisions. The universe is forgiving.

When you wake up, it can feel that your energy has shifted. All those things you feel you wasted time on, the relationships you damaged, the financial tailspin, that's when you start rebuilding, and the universe understands that.

The last thing you want is self-condemnation for the life you just detached from. If you go into blame and condemnation and don't jump into forgiveness, you'll just swirl in your own mess, and it won't get you anywhere. That's why a forgiveness process matters so much when your spiritual energy starts moving. You have to build the new version of yourself.

When you're spiritually asleep, even with spiritual moments, your consciousness isn't awake to what your ego has done. When your energy breaks down and your consciousness rises, you see all of it: the bad decisions, the dramas, everything. That's when I start educating people about the time we're in now and put them into a positive process, so they don't get stuck in, "I've sinned, I'm a horrible person."

Many of us were taught through old-school religion that we're unworthy sinners. That's a negative, controlling belief, and it's the opposite of a spiritual waking up process. It leaves people believing only A, B, C and D, with no expansion and no ability to see other perspectives. Spirituality is about everyone connecting to themselves, everyone's spiritual gifts showing up, everyone having perspective and expansion instead of just following what others think we should do.

On a connected path, the universe and energy will teach you your lessons, especially in these higher frequencies. You'll get the learnings one way or another. I just tell people it's a lot easier with a mentor, teacher or guide who has gone before you. If they have a process, it may be easier than what I did, flailing on my own for a year before my mentor truly showed up.

Then I created my own process from the one I'd been through, and the people who resonate with my energy find me, whether through my work or by listening to this podcast. There's a contract somewhere where we said, "I'll learn these lessons, and at some point I'll create something," and then you find your people. It's not rocket science. It's spiritual science.

When we wake up, we often think, "I need to save the world and help everyone wake up. I need to bring love and light to the world." I did all of that. I swear my whole mission when I woke up was to go wake everybody else up.

Then my mentor said, "That's kind of egotistical. Who do you think you are, that you could wake other people up?" And I thought, "Oh my God, you're so right." People wake up when they wake up.

I can't tell you how many times I got caught in that trap before I finally said, "Okay, ego, be quiet. You're not the one waking people up. You're here to support people who are waking up, because you're a teacher and you have a process." That was part of my ego process.

So be gentle with yourself. Those feelings are real, because this is the life you've lived, and you're forgiving the self-condemnation of the life you created before you woke up.

Practices, obedience and what's possible (88:40)

If you feel you're on the verge of waking up and not just having spiritual moments anymore, you can increase your knowledge and education. If you're meditating more, wanting to slow down, feeling more gratitude, being part of a community, laughing, dancing, volunteering, spending time in nature or going on spiritual retreats, these are all practices of waking up.

To get to inner peace, you don't necessarily have to change all your circumstances. You realize, "This is who I am at this deeper level," and then your circumstances, decisions and experiences start to change, because you're spending your time becoming who you want to be at the deepest, fullest level. Everything around you changes. When you reach that level of awareness and accountability, you'll eventually look back and ask, "Why did that take me so long?" and go through forgiveness.

I did a forgiveness exercise over and over again when I was waking up, "Why did I do this?", and it saved me from getting caught in the swirl of anxiety, depression and feeling sorry for myself. It kept me above the wave, and then I pulled in my mentor, and here I am. We all go through it.

Wherever you are in your waking up process, accept it. If the mentor is sitting right in front of you and you feel it, do it, because the only thing holding you back is you. A lot of people who start waking up aren't ready to be accountable. They take on a lot of empathic feelings right away and life spirals.

When their mentor shows up, some take the suggestions for a minute. When I suggest A, B, C and D, some follow it in real time, others do one or two things and go away, and then they come back, and I ask, "Are you ready now?"

At the end of the day, waking up is about obedience: wanting to be obedient to the spiritual journey and the spiritual process of self. Your ego will do anything to keep doing what it's doing without that obedience, because you're getting to God. It's a different prayer and a different walk of life, and it's what so many people want. They're just afraid because they don't know what it looks or feels like or how their life will change if they follow this walk with God and their higher self.

What I can guarantee is that it will be better than anything you could imagine on your best day living in your ego. Being connected to who you are and having the presence of God inside you, something you can only understand through experience, is a game changer.

I have high goals. Imagine every person on this planet at that level. That's peace and true community. We have a long way to go, and that's why we're waking up, so we can help each other along this journey.

So that's what it means to wake up. You may want to wake up every morning to this episode until you feel you're at that level of accountability and awareness and ready to take action toward your next steps. Have a great day, and I'll speak to you soon.

Frequently asked questions

What are the signs you're waking up spiritually?

Common signs include noticing your own and other people's patterns, feeling more connected to people and the planet, letting go of attachments, craving inner peace, sharper intuition and synchronicity, deeper compassion and less fear of death. You may also find yourself questioning beliefs you used to take for granted.

What does it mean to be spiritually asleep?

Being spiritually asleep means your awareness of how you connect to everything around you has dropped so low that you feel separate from everyone and everything. It often shows up as living on autopilot, staying distracted or using habits to avoid discomfort.

Why do I feel guilty after a spiritual awakening?

When you wake up, you suddenly see past choices, damaged relationships and decisions clearly, and that can bring guilt. Shelby's first step is to forgive yourself for having been asleep instead of falling into self-condemnation, so you can rebuild the new version of yourself.

Can a spiritual awakening cause anxiety or changes in eating habits?

Shelby describes emotions feeling more out of control, comparison and irritation, and noticing new patterns in what you eat as energy starts to move. If anxiety, panic attacks or changes in appetite feel overwhelming, please also talk with your doctor.

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: What Is Spirituality? Signs, Practices and Benefits
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions