The Tower phase of my spiritual awakening was a challenging period where I was ‘shaken to awaken’. The chaos and hardship I experienced were perfectly designed to dismantle the external life my ego-self had unconsciously built.
The Tower, the Hermit, and the Fool are all Tarot archetypes that I found perfectly represented three phases of spiritual awakening:
- The Tower – the initiation of awakening triggered by the dissolution of our external life.
- The Hermit – dark night of the soul, the subsequent isolation and introspection phase.
- The Fool – new beginnings, a phase of integration and reorientation of our new level of consciousness.
The Tower Phase – the life events that trigger a spiritual awakening – are unique to each individual. There are some general themes that act as indicators:
Shaken to awaken
The beginning of awakening, whether triggered by a shift in perspective, a natural life transition or an unexpected and sudden event, can bring on a wide range of emotions, from shock and confusion to disconnection and disillusionment with one’s life and the world at large.
If this was a ‘shaken to awaken’ experience that jolted you out of your life’s expected trajectory, you may be reeling from shock and feeling insecure and unstable about your life.
Inevitably you will feel compelled to begin soul searching, questioning the root of who you are, your thoughts and desires. You may be embarking on a profound life re-evaluation process.
You’ve lost motivation
It’s possible you’ll lose the drive to pursue what were previously your most important goals and aspirations. You may have lost all interest in the world’s material trappings and even lost the desire to have them.
This may make you anxious because you are beginning to doubt the certainty of the future you have been planning for, or have been preconditioned to desire.
You question your beliefs
Your long-held assumptions and worldviews start to crumble, and as a result, you feel disoriented. You may find it hard to view things from a conventional perspective.
You are questioning the way you think and act in the world. As Eckart Tolle says, “For many people, the first indication of a spiritual awakening is that they suddenly become aware of their thoughts. They become a witness to their thoughts, so to speak. They are not completely identified with their mind anymore and so they begin to sense that there is a depth to them that they had never known before.”
You find yourself pondering some of life’s most existential questions such as who am I, why am I here, what is the purpose of life, is there a God? You wonder about the duality of the world – good and evil, why some people suffer while others do not.
You begin to seek for deeper spiritual meaning and the purpose of your existence. You start questioning the origins of your beliefs and conditioning. You want to know who you are at a soul level.
You may become drawn to spiritual teachings, explanations, and beliefs that are different from your own.
Changes occur in your relationships
You might not share the same level of rapport with your peers, and this could lead to feelings of distance and separation. You may find you no longer have any interest in the things you once enjoyed doing or discussing with your family and friends.
You may long for more meaningful relationships with new people on the same wavelength as you. You may feel disillusioned with human nature.
What is the meaning of the Tower card in Tarot?
As humans we experience many transformational moments as we journey through the events and phases of our lives. Sometimes the changes are positive experiences, and sometimes deeply challenging.
The Tower card is the catalyst for deep change.
But the change is not a gentle transition.
The change occurs suddenly – the lightning bolt out of the blue sky – and so this card evokes an instinctive dread of unknown events happening to us, which we cannot control.
The Tower represents the fear-based, false structures of our ego’s making.
We sit at the top of this unstable fortress believing we are safe and invulnerable.
When life’s sudden events topple The Tower, it shatters the framework of who we thought we were, and the foundational beliefs our lives were based on.
This is shocking to our ego who was living in a false sense of security, structure and control.
Eventually the rubble clears and, if our lessons are learned, a new life can be built on more solid and authentic foundations.
Read What are the signs of a spiritual awakening process?
What were the Tower moments of my awakening?
The initial phases of my awakening were marked by multiple challenging events and experiences in my external life, occurring over a relatively short period of time.
They define a phase of instability, drama, chaos, hardship and personal loss on many levels of my life: bereavement, breakup of my long-term relationship, and financial, job and home instability.
Reflecting back on my awakening journey, the ‘Tower moments’ – those wrecking ball events I experienced – were perfectly designed to demolish the external structure of the life that I – as the ego-self – had unconsciously built.
My life was dismantling from the OUTSIDE-IN so that I could rebuild myself from the INSIDE-OUT
Dismantling from the outside in
I was broken down on so many levels, it was extremely challenging and relentlessly chaotic.
A blessing and a curse, these Tower moments shook me to the very core of my being and forcibly cracked me open.
Experiencing the destruction of something in my external life led to a corresponding deconstruction of internal beliefs.
The deconstruction of these beliefs created a huge destabilising effect on an internal level. The old paradigms of truths I believed were fast disappearing.
At its core was the dissolution of my ego-self framework, and this created the deepest feelings of fear, desperation, imbalance and total loss of control.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
Swami Vivekananda
Entering the void
Reeling from the loss of my old life, my personality-self had to adjust to an acute feeling of nothingness. Nothing that I had built or known existed anymore. It didn’t know how to operate in this terrain of no worldly structure.
The old paradigms of beliefs, goals, planning, achieving and tick-listing experiences were becoming redundant – they just weren’t working or they were losing their appeal.
Suspended in this space of not-knowing and lack of control was hugely uncomfortable and fearful to my personality-self. It was bleak, there wasn’t a future it could perceive or map out and this translated into a fear of of the future, even death.
Yet a deeper part of me sensed that in the rubble of change there was new space to grow and evolve, to carve a new path, to create a better way to live a harmonious, connected, light-filled life.
Moving on from the Tower moments
This sense of defeat and helplessness in the face of the full force of life’s shocking blows led the transition into the Hermit Phase of my awakening.
Whereas the Tower Phase was full of unexpected shocks and drama, the Hermit Phase slammed the brakes on my life.
This phase had a different nature to its challenges, focused more on an internal breaking down rather than shocking external events.
In the Hermit phase I withdrew from my external world and embarked on my most important work: the raising of my consciousness to a higher more expansive level.
Much of the time I had to navigate deep despair and spiritual depression as my personality felt utterly lost in the darkness of the Hermit Cave.
This was an internal rewrite of who I truly am.
Diary of an Awakening Soul 