Unfortunately, rituals are considered to be of old-world and not accepted in our current times. It is brushed off as an irrational, superstitious and primitive act. The Church have totally rejected these rituals, quoting them as pagan acts and condemned by the Church. Through these rituals, people get to understand and journey towards spiritual awakening.

In the ancient times there were mystery schools dedicated in discovering and exploring the mysteries of life and therefore touching some aspects of spirituality. These schools flourished in Egypt, Tibet and Persia.

Ancient Egyptians have toning of special chants and sounds which took place during midnight in different locations like the sacred man-made lake and the secret chamber below the Great Sphinx. This chanting and sounds stimulates a part of the head that can open up the brain to universal energy and electrical stimulation. This could unleash or release your psychic gifts and abilities. Once it has been opened, more psychic and spiritual gifts will be experienced by the person. Gifts would include intuition, creativity, clairvoyant abilities, and emphatic abilities.

Aside from that ancient Egypt recognizes the end of the year as the time of reckoning, reflection and engendering towards spiritual enlightenment. Ushet Rekhat or Mother Worship starts with a meditation ritual which strengthen the understanding and devotion of the follower. Meditation would also draw wisdom and health to those who share the ritual.

Homa is an Indian ancient fire ritual which is done with the intention of helping you have good relationships, find a partner, have children and even remove bad karma or negative aspects in a horoscope.

In Buddhist and Hindu traditions, tantra is used to express and advance spirituality. Tantra is not really a tradition but are rituals that maintain spiritual core. Tantra, the word itself, means web and enlightenment. This has been used in ancient India to attain spiritual enlightenment and advancement. Today, Tantra has evolved into a sexual/spiritual phenomenon. Unfortunately, the ritual which is used to be a path to awakening is now used for sexual perversion and scattered among pornography and prostitution.

Ancient Iran also have a unique way of looking at spiritual awakening and enlightenment. To achieve awakening, it is important to attain spiritual perfection and later on immortality of the soul. Spiritual strength is also important in realizing God.

In Tibet, interestingly the making of the Thangkas paintings is supposed to lead to developing attitudes like peacefulness, patience, perseverance, concentration, self-development and spiritual enlightenment. Thangkas paintings are similar to the art of pata chitra, which is very much known in India as early as 1st century. The ancient practices are still being used until today.
Whether these rituals are credible and applicable until now, most of the indigenous tribes who have started these rituals are still practising and believing them until now. Spiritual awakening is not only achievable by undergoing different rituals among different regions, this inner and self-communication should start from the person looking for spiritual awakening.

Enlightenment is subjective since it fits on the individual’s perception and understanding divinity and religion. It is also something which other people who do not share the same views may find different and sometimes frightening. Even though, different religions have different understanding of the divine and supreme being, awakening experiences seem to have commonalities, as well as their differences.

Different religions and traditions share that spiritual awakening and other religious experiences includes the person to detach from the world and unite with God or gods and goddesses. The person would have deeper connection to the world after the awakening. They would also attain innate knowledge and understanding of the world and other people.

Spiritual awakenings are not only experienced through religious activities and methods. It can also be experienced through peak experiences, life and death experiences and situations, psychic openings and past life experience. Those who have awakened would say that they would experience physical, mental, emotional and spiritual changes and difficulties. But the awakening, even with its turmoil and difficulty, has bee called blissful by some people.

It is a personal transformation and the awakened can experience different changes on their actions, habits and way of life.

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, states that a spiritual awakening brings certainty and insight to truth which is unfathomable by usual sensory and intellectual means. The experience can change the outer behaviour, attitude, character and outlook of the person who have experienced the awakening.

For example, people who have a spiritual awakening would experience sudden waves of emotions. Food intolerances and allergies develop after the religious experience. Some traditions say that because the human mind and body is opening to the divine and the spiritual, it gets more sensitive. Getting more sensitive means that your body can have lower tolerance level to some things compared to how it was before the religious journey and completion.

The senses are in a high and can be extra-sensitive. Enlightened people would see auras around living things and some glittery particles. The colours would appear more vivid and even see shapes and brilliant colors with eyes closed. Hearing is also sharper than before. But some would testify that they would experience a decrease in hearing since they would hear different kind of sounds and have difficulty identifying the different sounds.

Smell, taste and touch are also enhanced. Which is why, some would be sensitive with food and smell. Rashes can happen on the skin that can happen in the same time with healing moments or completion of some memories or anything that could have happened in the past.

There would also be moments when the awakened person would feel a sudden rush of power. Some people would say that they would experience hotness running from their head to toe, while there are others who would say the feeling was cold.

Just to stress on the point, the transformation that a person undergoes upon a spiritual awakening depends on the how they see and understand divinity and religion. Not all of these personal transformations could happen to everybody who has experienced enlightenment. In some religion, some of these transformations are not acceptable while other traditions and religions would foresee these transformation essential.

Spiritual awakening is not the end of the end. It is in fact can be seen as just a stepping stone where you can provide change to other people and the environment you live in. In some religions, spiritual awakening is the pre-requisite to spiritual healing. If spiritual awakening is the finding of your true self, the spiritual healing part is the part where you collect all the positive physical, emotional and spiritual elements and use them to live a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life. It is important that this person pass to other people these positive energies to promote spiritual healing to all. There are religions that would suggest or even require people to accompany spiritual healing with prayers and going to their church. They insist that prayers will provide or reinforce the guidelines they need to reach, repeat and maintain spiritual awakening.

For Christians, spiritual awakening is also attained upon realization that they are sinners and begin to repent. They have this enlightenment that God is the only true path and going to back to him and being faithful to the doctrines of the Church is the way to spiritual healing. This is, of course, only one religion interpreting the essence of spiritual awakening. One cannot say that their interpretation is wrong for the experience is really a subjective one based precisely on interpretations of what should and should not be.

Now those who are far less attuned to religious influences believe that spiritual awakening can be achieved through meditations. Through proper meditation, inner peace and serenity are attained. Healing can be achieved as well. But meditation is only a step towards spiritual awakening. One has to go deeper into the process to achieve the true enlightenment as some people would rather believe.

Meditation can come in different forms and techniques. There’s the mantra meditation where you need to repeat a certain sound which appeals to your mind before you reach that meditative state. There’s the trataka meditation technique where instead of sound, one has to focus his attention or mind on a particular object. This technique has been used in the past by a number of religions. Chakra meditation on the one hand is more of energy based mediation where the goal is to open the chakra points in the body to achieve a higher level of awakening of the consciousness.

Religion and spiritual awakening are connected but depending on the religion as well as the approach and techniques, the interpretation of spiritual awakening varies. But one thing is certain, achieving spiritual wakening results to having a positive outlook in life making living in this world happier and more content.

Now, if we base our definition to the Buddhist and Christian approaches, we have a spiritual awakening rooted on the enlightenment or awakening of the consciousness and knowing their true or their original self. It is a higher form of awareness where the consciousness is able to see past the more obvious physical self. It is being aware, sensing and feeling one’s very existence that accounts for a spiritual awakening.

Perhaps among the more obvious signs of enlightenment is having a certain level of calmness. People who have awakened spirits have proven to be more focused in attaining their goals. They seem to have reached a degree of calmness where experiences, memories, events, issues, problems, and even desires are no longer causing confusion and interruptions. It is like, every distraction have been set aside and stored away resulting to a having a clear path from the start to the finish line. And just like the song: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.”

Among the signs of spiritual awakening is having self control. When one reaches the level of spiritual enlightenment, he not only exercises free will but knows what bad things need to be cast aside and choose only the right path based on proper wisdom and good judgement. Those that offer temporary pleasures are no longer entertained since these acts or things often lead to suffering in the long run and only provide momentary and earthly happiness.

Humility and selfless love are other signs of an awakened spirit. Part of having an awakened spirit is the eagerness to learn, understand, and work for the well being of not only one’s self but of others as well. Pride and arrogance are not really marks of a good person to begin with what more a person with an awakened spirit. The same thing goes with unconditional love. With an awakened spirit, people will begin living in harmony with both nature and other people. Compassion and love would be equal regardless of race, nationality, culture, and the like.

Genuine happiness, non-attachment, having the right intuition and feelings of non-attachment are other signs of spiritual awakening. If you find any of these signs present in you when and after you accomplished a session meditating, it would be prudent to ask consider that you have actually experienced this deep, philosophical enlightenment.

We need holistic spiritual healing to deal and attain spiritual awakening. Spiritual healing can be a bit weird coming from an age of modern medicine and technology. But it is difficult to ignore the fact that there is a Supreme Being, God or Allah, that are behind every things’ existence.

In a survey published by USA Today last October 8, 2010, 65 percent of American adults regardless if they are agnostic, atheist, or religious, believe that there is a guardian angel or similar entity that protects them from harm. This only shows that spirituality and its acceptance has significant importance on a person’s life.

In spiritual healing, it is said that physical healing depends on how the spirits heals. With spiritual healing, it treats not only the body, but the mind and the spirit as well. Spiritual healers, uses the concept of “light and love” to relax the body. Aside from relaxing the body, it also has several benefits like it releases tension and anxiety. Relieving these negative thoughts would increase the stimulation of self-healing.

The basic principle with spiritual healing is that you would get a connection with God and at the same time, secured and safe feeling. Patients would get the strength from the fact that they are not the only one who are experiencing what they are feeling. This would teach or give patients security and confidence to seek somebody for help. In a nutshell, spiritual healing is about paying attention to life and the living.

So what are the methods of spiritual healing?

Spiritual healing can be performed in different religions. It can be performed through prayer, visualization, devices that transmit healing forces, concentrations process and advance levels of it, and personal spiritual realization. These kind of methods would help patients recover from illnesses or slows down the effect of illness trough self-healing.

Counselling sessions are reinforced with spiritual healing. Spiritual healing is done with full rational understanding of its principles and not by blind faith or superstition. Undergoing spiritual healing with full understanding would provide you the awakening and enlightenment that would benefit you in the future.

The Kabbalah is a school of though concerned with the mystical aspect of Judaism. According to Kabbalistic teachings, the body is the vessel or the ship for the soul’s expression and if the connection between the soul and the body is broken, diseases and disorders can happen.

To maintain the connection between the soul and body, here are some tips that can be done easily:
• Eating a balanced diet and regularly exercising
• Express yourself.
• Feel your surroundings.
• Never give up.
• Do not be afraid to ask for help.
• Spend time with friends and family. They would provide you the support and intimacy you would need to heal.
• Make sure to remember that you have a purpose and you are the one who create the meaning of your life.

With the help of a spiritual healer, not only would you attain a holistic better health, you can also dig deeper to your feelings and start your journey to spiritual awakening. With the help of breath work, creativity and experiential mind and body, your body can release the pain and start its journey to healing.

In reaching spiritual awakening you need meditation. And meditation itself has lots of benefits. Meditation can relieve stress for one thing which is highly ideal especially in the busy lives we have today. Working in the city and a highly stressful environment can bring a toll to the mind and body. Having daily meditation time can help relieve the stress and can in the long run make you healthier and your life longer. It will lead you to finding your true self and determining your real potential.

The effects of meditation might not be felt immediately. Some might even feel a little stress from the exercise but eventually when you do this on a more or less regular basis you will start to feel the effects kick in. It might take some time before you feel a certain level of calmness and peace but it will come. You will start to feel happier with yourself and with your surroundings. You will start finding the best out of a situation and not feeling depressed or angry all the time. You will become more patient and you can connect with other people more now. And not only that but you will find that you have a better understanding of who you are, a better understanding of your own consciousness. You will find that not only did your physical body improved, become healthier but your overall emotional and spiritual state have grown to some extent.

There are different meditation techniques. In fact, there are numerous schools of thought that provide different styles and approaches in finding your true self. Some would insist on having a mantra, a word that you have to repeat in order to calm your mind to begin the meditation process. There are some who would find having someone guide him or her through the meditation process as the most effective way to reach a calm state of mind. They seem to find it difficult to do it by themselves. The goal in meditation is to get to that place where you are totally relaxed, where nothing, including your mind interferes. It is a level of consciousness where you don’t have unnecessary thoughts, or no thoughts for that matter play a role. Imagine yourself in a pitch black room. Even if you don’t see anything you are aware that you exist. That is very similar to what we plan to do during a meditation process. You look into yourself and become aware of what or who you are without thinking. It is a higher level of awareness that we’re looking for.

Okay, I do hope I am not complicating things nor making things ambiguous. But the truth is spiritual awakening cannot be described by simple words or in my case series of paragraphs. It is more than just words, it is more than just an experience. The important thing is that what spiritual awakening can do to you is more than you can hope for.

Meditation has different schools. Each school would have its own thought about meditation. There are also different techniques for meditation and it can also be classified based on their focus. There are meditative techniques which focus on a field or a background perception, while there are others which focus on a specific object.

Meditation is used to calm the mind and relax the body. Tension, stress and anxiety can be relieved by performing simple techniques. Aside from the inner peace that meditation brings, it can also improve the body’s total and general health. It is also a great way of improving your concentration. There are studies showing the relation between meditation and other concentration exercises with the performances of athletic and sport professionals.

Health benefits of meditation would include better circulation, deeper level of relaxation, increase in exercise tolerance among heart patients, regularizing blood pressure, reduces anxiety attacks and muscle tension, helps against allergies, arthritis, and shows significant help for those who are recovering from operation or surgery.

With this concentration process, you get to listen to the inner self and separate from the pressures of daily life. Understanding the inner self would lead to understanding of our higher self. This would increase our knowledge and understanding how the higher self unites with the universe. In meditation, you get the chance to tap into your inner self and get in touch on how it sees your life. Getting in touch with the inner self will provide guidance towards our happiness and fulfilment.

There are religions which advocate the use of meditation to reach enlightenment. As mentioned, there are different schools of thoughts and focus that each religion adapts. But the method or the technique used is not as important with the underlying concept that behind meditation.

Meditation is about listening to the inner self, therefore it has something to do with controlling your attention and focusing. There are too much distractions that it is very hard for some to focus their attention into what it is important and keeping the attention on fixed object. When focused on a fixed object or field, one-pointedness could be experienced and could take the person to a completely different state. This one-pointedness is not that easy to achieve though, there are some who would need to meditate for years to achieve it.

When one-pointedness is achieved, the person would experience bliss. Bliss is referred to as a natural state of the soul which cannot be experienced easily in daily lives. During this meditative state, spirituality and also the mind expands its consciousness and understanding of nature and the universe. Destructive thinking and behaviour brought about by the materialistic and fast-paced world can be flushed away by focusing more on the your spirituality.

A deeper understanding and knowledge would be felt and the body would be in one with the universe. This they say would be what would link us to the Supreme Being. Attaining this one-pointedness could somehow be compared to a spiritual awakening, where the body and the mind can fully understand what cannot be seen or touch in the material world.

To achieve an awakening, one might have to go into deep meditation. Others might suggest a different approach though. It is still meditation but more of an involved observation. Observing closely the inner workings of your mind would be a different approach but can be as effective as meditation. Being a third party observer to your thoughts could be a good exercise of separating yourself from your own thoughts which can lead to discerning who you really are. You might find this concept a little different or even outwardly weird. But still there’s no harm in trying though since you’re in the process of knowing yourself, giving different means or techniques a shot is not that bad.

Techniques may vary but what is important is that you are meditating on what is happening on the now. The realization will not come if you keep thinking of the past or paying too much attention to the future. Thinking, meditating and concentrating on your thoughts at this very minute or second would be the right way to go. You don’t think about past exploits, former employments, the days during those college years, and all that stuff during meditation. You think of the present, you think why you exist right now. You observe what you are at that moment and enlightenment might come quickly to some or might take some time to others. You might need more patience and keep trying to get something out of the exercise.

Others, however, would insist on leaving everything as they come and dealing with them as they enter your consciousness. All those things are part of your existence. Resisting them is like resisting part of yourself. These things are happening now and not paying much attention to them does not really help. This is why other people insist on not blocking those emotions. Living in the moment means not trying to change.

The thing is it to continue feeling peaceful. Remember the moment and keep coming back to that moment. That will be your base for your meditation. Always remember to leave everything behind and always pay attention to the moment. I may have said this over and over again but the fact of the matter is you need to always pay attention to the moment. If you suddenly found yourself drifting from your meditation, go back to that moment where you are at peace. Just be there at that moment and do not worry if you’re doing everything right or wrong.

So we go back to that question of who are you? A spiritual awakening is indeed the answer but it might not come instantly to others while it comes immediately to others. You just need to be patient if you belong to the group that enlightenment does not come easily.

The overall result is that it relieves pressure from places in the body which in turn allows the body to heal or overcome the problem.

Scalp acupuncture is simply a specialized form of it. You may hear about this form when you are talking to others that have had problems with the nervous system. It has proved to be one of the most unique forms of acupuncture in the way that it specifically targets the nervous system. If you would like to find this type of help, be sure to seek out professionals that provide it as a specialty. In most areas, this will not be a problem to find.

There are several conditions that can be helped by scalp acupuncture. These are generally nervous system disorders. Some that have been helped include spinal cord injury, which is also known as SCI as well as multiple sclerosis or MS. When this type of acupuncture is done, it is done alongside traditional acupuncture. In acupuncture, it is believed that the energy flow or qi within the body is upset when there is an illness of any part of the body. By targeting the specific pressure points associated with that illness, it can be overcome.

With scalp acupuncture, a specific area is targeted based on studies of acupuncture. Some areas that are very specific, such as the foot, hand, ear and scalp are called Microsystems and provide acupuncture benefits to the entire body. When doctors concentrate on the scalp acupuncture areas, they can target the individual’s health in virtually any areas of the body.
Most believe that scalp acupuncture is most effective when treating nervous system disorders such as those having to do with the spinal cord. In fact, one of the most studied areas of this field is in Chinese stroke patients of which thousands have been helped through scalp acupuncture.

For those that have a condition that has to do with the nervous system, or those that want to take advantage of this region for standard acupuncture help, do so with a perfect physician specializing in this area. You will find many of them available to help you today that offer scalp acupuncture treatments.

When it comes to yoga meditation, there are a few different things that must be followed in order to have the meditation work correctly. In fact, there are four yoga meditation steps that are usually used for the proper meditation practices. Besides following certain steps for meditation, there is usually a specific amount of time that should be followed; which is usually an hour length of time.

As for the steps to follow for yoga meditation, there are also a few things that should be done before following the meditation steps. Some of the things that should be done for practising yoga meditation is bathe your face, feet and hands, empty your bladder and bowels, as well as setting aside a regular time and place to practice the yoga. The first step that should be done is stretching. The main purpose of stretching before yoga meditation is to allow the body and muscles to become limber; so that they do not get stretched or pull improperly. Next what you will want/need to do is get the body relaxed (relaxation). The third step to yoga meditation is making sure that you’re breathing correctly. Not only will you be breathing normally, but you will also be breathing with your diaphragm as well spinal breathing. Once you learn to breathe correctly, it will eliminate and jerks and pauses which allows your mind to begin meditating.

Once you have the first three steps down, you will then begin the last step; which is meditation. When you’re meditating, you are allowing your mind to become still while you are you breathing throughout the body. While meditating, many people will focus on a certain object in the room, or even a word of some sort. After you become good enough at meditating, you will/should be able to examine the unconscious while you are uninvolved with any of the present.

Whether you are a beginner at meditation or have been meditating for quite some time, it is very important to learn and follow certain steps to yoga meditation. In fact, the very most important step that one should learn right away is the process of breathing; as you can not meditate without learning it. Even though yoga meditation seems as if there is a lot to learn, it is definitely worth learning it; especially once you are able to clear your mind!