“What the heck is happening to me?”… and other stories from my spirituality awakenings..

I recently returned from a Rachel Pringle retreat where I connected deeply with someone whose journey mirrored mine, someone who shared an inexplicable spiritual awakening experience.

Just like when I started having my spiritual awakening experiences, she, too, had searched online, grasping for some shared language, a reference point from other people — something to hold onto in the vast unknown of these experiences — and found nothing.

It made me realize that perhaps by sharing some of my own story, someone might stumble upon it and feel some small comfort, a sense of being less alone.

So here it is, the stories of my spiritual path, of the origin points that lit up a trail through life that is still winding, still unfolding to this day… With my experiences now being very different than they were initially, but profound in their own ways.

Awakening #1: The First Out-of-Body Moment

It began, perhaps, in a most unlikely place: a sterile room where I was simply having my wisdom teeth removed. The year was 2004 and I was 18, expecting a quick in-and-out. But at some point, as the anesthesia flowed through me, my body stopped breathing for me and my heart rate began to slow toward a stop.. My consciousness drifted and suddenly I found my awareness to be outside my body.

I was sensing and hearing and hazily seeing the whole scene as if it were a distant memory, but in real time.

Obviously, I was resuscitated and came back into my body not long after that, but this strange, suspended moment marked something pivotal; it was as if a door had been opened to an ability to step outside of myself whenever I needed. I could witness without fully attaching, and over the years, this ability would become a source of profound strength during my emotional and spiritual and physical peaks and valleys.

Awakening #2: The First Psychedelic Sensations

Years later, in Los Angeles in 2013, I found myself one night lying in bed, gripped by what I can only describe as an overwhelming psychedelic-like vision. Stories, lifetimes, and potential futures were all unfurling in front of me… possible timelines and outcomes for my current life that filled me with terror because none of them felt like what I truly wanted.

My third eye seemed to be stretching open, showing me a realm of potentialities that I didn’t feel prepared to navigate or comprehend. I spent a lot of time worrying that I was going crazy, that my then-boyfriend (now husband!) was judging me for being weird and too much. The experience was overwhelming, yes, but it served as an initiation—a trial by fire that built my resilience for even greater revelations down the line.

Awakening #3: Codes and Energy in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico was my next teacher in 2015, and this time, the lessons felt expansive, joyful even. I lay immobilized on my bed once again, but this time, energy streamed through me like light through a stained glass window. There was still fear and overwhelm, but not as much as last time, and a much greater sense of surrender that I was able to tap into as well. I was able to remind myself over and over again to receive, open, allow, and surrender..

In hindsight, it feels like I was receiving codes, blueprints for the next chapter. I emerged from that experience with a heightened sensitivity to the land, as if the island itself had become a part of me. I could feel life around me in a way I hadn’t before — nature was suddenly singing directly to me, and I was singing back. :) I was much more connected with the flow and magic of life, experiencing so many more synchronicities and beautifully inexplicable coincidences than I ever had before.

Awakening #4: Near-Death Initiation at the Cliff’s Edge

Then came a near-death experience, also in 2015, which I still hold as one of the most humbling and transformational moments of my life. I went out to “teach myself to surf,” deciding I wouldn’t need an ankle leash for my board since I only planned to observe and befriend the movement of the ocean from outside the break.

One wave, however, had other plans. It threw me under, pulling me away from my board and the rip current immediately caught me and brought me toward the sharp rocks of the sheer cliff face next to the beach.

Ultimately I was pulled into an underwater cave in the cliffside, and in that moment, I knew I was going to die. There was a full release of any panic, into an overwhelming embodiment of peace, as if I had already let go.

And then, before I knew it, I was spit out of the cave and onto the half-submerged side of a jagged rock. That brush with death stripped away something deep within me; it restructured how I saw the world, how I felt it. It Colors were brighter, each breeze and ripple in nature was heavy with more complex information than before, and I walked with a renewed sense of wonder.

This also taught me how to separate myself from my experience even more, to become the witness, and then to pull back even further into choice… choosing surrender and peace on such a more profoundly deep level. Since then I’ve been able to resource and touch back into the felt sense of that choice of peace and surrender, over and over again.

I ended up having one more less severe near death experience a couple months after this, when the brakes went out on my RV as we were driving down a mountainside road full of sharp switchbacks… We ended up smashing into the side of the mountain and totaling our RV, but both my partner and I ended up with not much physical damage from that experience. The main take-away from that one was more of the profundity of life, how close we always are to death, how magical life and nature truly are…

Awakening #5: Spirit Babies and Pre-Conception Connections

As I began preparing for motherhood — a spiritual journey unto itself — later that same year, I began tangibly feeling the energy of my yet-to-be-conceived daughter hanging around me… and I found out about and read Spirit Babies, a book that introduced me to the concept of connecting more intentionally with the spirit of my child before her conception.

I reached out to her in meditation, feeling her presence like a bright light I could sense but not overtly see.. a flicker of a glowing orb I could see out of my peripheral vision. And then from the moment she was within my body, I sensed a shift.. an embodied liberation from so many old traumas. She expanded my heart, grounding me into a deeper knowing of life’s beauty. It’s because of HER that I began studying the goddess traditions, and reading ancient spiritual texts.

Prior to conceiving my first son, in 2018, my spiritual journey crescendoed.

During an intimate moment with my husband, something indescribable happened. As I orgasmed, my heart burst open, not in a physical way obviously, but it felt very energetically physical at the time, if that makes sense… And an unstoppable freight train of all of the love energy of the entire universe poured through my heart.

It brought me to rapturous overwhelmed joyous tears.

I was a conduit for love, pure and powerful, like I had touched the edge of the Divine herself. It was both grounding and expansive and otherworldly — a feeling of seeing God, of being the love that holds everything together. This was yet another sacred initiation into a new way of relating to both myself and the world around me.

After this experience, I was connected to the spiritual realms, straight up. I could see my past lives, and my husband’s and son’s past lives during orgasm. I could see alternate realities (that I KNEW truly existed), I saw giantesses, otherworldly creatures! It was like a spiritual and energetic portal opened every time I orgasmed. My dreams were so potent and detailed during this time, too. Truly such a magical time that I really relished but didn’t appreciate as much as I truly should have (because it shifted pretty significantly after my son was born and I missed it!).

Awakening #6: The Ongoing Journey

Now, as a mother of three, my awakenings are different. They come in waves, each with a different tone, a different frequency. Where once I connected to the etheric realms, now my journey has brought me into my own body. My spiritual practice has transformed into a somatic experience. Today, I find myself releasing, through movement and sound, the generations of unprocessed emotions and traumas stored within my cells.

The work is not always easy, but I allow myself to surrender. I know that spiritual awakening is not one grand bliss-filled experience, but an ever-evolving journey with peaks and valleys, each one leading me further along my path.

For those who feel like they’re alone in their spiritual journey, I hope this story brings you comfort. Although it very much CAN be, generally awakening is not a single lightning-bolt moment; it’s a sequence of encounters with the sacred that keep drawing us deeper, deeper, deeper.

And while the journey can be isolating, it doesn’t have to be.

Please reach out if any of this resonates with you. I would love to connect and share in the magic of this ever-expanding, awe- and sometimes terror-filled (lol) journey with you, my friend.

We may each walk our own path, but we don’t have to do it alone.

Much love on your journey—reach out anytime. 🌹✨

Love,

Ashley