Read Part One here if you like xx
What is a Spiritual Awakening?
Part Two
A spiritual awakening can be gentle or fierce, sudden or slow burning, its different for everyone and there aren’t any rules on how it should or could happen to you.
An awakening is a releasing of the ego, a time in someones life, when their ego begins to weaken and they start to connect with something higher, the soul, the spirit, the higher self. A person begins to see the world through new eyes, belief systems are questioned, depending on the culture lived in, perhaps religious dogma will be challenged, or consumerism, capitalism, materialism, no longer make sense.
On a personal level, an awakening can create more awareness of how we function in life, our emotional triggers and patterns, how we treat others and how we allow others to treat us. Old emotions can be healed as we realise the ego is holding onto old grudges, resentments, judgements and past injustices. The need to be right and to be the best, to win, to have status, money, power, control, this begins to dissipate as an awakened being sees the truth, that love, compassion, kindness are important more than anything and a relationship with the divine consciousness is vital, as that divine love melts away pain and the suffering of the ego.
Then I woke up!
In 1998, whilst pregnant with my first daughter Betsy, I began to have experiences that I could not deny. Very real and obvious visions, dreams, messages and endless coincidences and synced events that I could not ignore what was happening.
The first visions I had were so simple, I would close my eyes perhaps to take a nap or meditate and I would see shapes, silhouettes of very random items that I would then see later that day. Once, there was a shape of a toy that a visiting family brought with them later that afternoon, the face of a person I would then bump into in the supermarket a few hours later, letters with company logos on them that would then arrive in the post. That ‘deja vu’ feeling was heightened and I’d realise an event that was happening during the day, I’d dreamt the night before. It was gentle, nothing crazy or mind-blowing at first, just simple nudges that let me know something was happening.
I had a dream one night when I was in the last few months of pregnancy that I have never forgotten and I’m reminded of frequently. In this inspiring dream, a friend of mine Nick Cadman, pointed to a beautiful, coloured bird and said “See that bird, how can you not believe that there is a God when you look at a stunning creature like that?”. I awoke the next morning in my ground floor South London flat and sat on the fence outside my kitchen window, was a Jay, all gorgeous and blue feathered, I stood there, huge belly and a cup of tea in my hand, absolutely stunned.
Over the past 22 years I have seen Jay’s frequently, early on after the dream I would see them the day before something significant would happen to me, not always positive events, it felt as though the Jay was a messenger from the Gods, letting me know they were there, not to worry, I was safe, protected and to watch out.
The last time I saw a Jay was on the 31st October 2018, in a clients garden where I was giving her a massage, the day before I made the decision to give up alcohol, the most incredible, fearless year of my whole life, was to follow.
Spiritual Downloads
In the years that followed my first spiritual experiences, they came often. I had been suffering with anxiety for many years and after the birth of Betsy, living in London and in an unhappy marriage, panic attacks were becoming common and debilitating. In 1999, my mother-in-law at the time, gave me a cassette of what I would now call ‘Yoga Nidra Meditation’. It was incredible, she had been using it to help with some tension, but for me it was literally mind blowing!
I would put the cassette on whilst Betsy was having her afternoon nap and I began to feel transported to another dimension entirely. It was very scary at first but also so intriguing and impossible not to want to try again and again. I would feel lifted out of my body, I would see and hear all kinds of people, faces, places, I had no idea what was happening, I was awake and really aware, not asleep, I now know what I was experiencing is called Lucid Dreaming.
Some of the experiences were messages for me, I remember very clearly being told ‘We are very pleased with you’, I will never forget that it was amazing. I would see a ring of peoples faces looking down on me, like a circle of angels all looking in to see how I was doing. Then it felt as though I was being educated by my angels. They would show or tell me things and I had a sense that I was meant to then begin to research that further online, find books, or watch films. This started with a clear vision of a DNA Spiral, that led me to one of the first books that really showed me something I’d never known of before, ‘DNA and the Cosmic Serpent’ by Jeremy Narby, all about Shamanic Amazonian Tribes and the mind altering plant Ayahuasca.
I was shown Fractals that led me to begin to explore the Crop Circle phenomenon in the Uk, particularly the Julia Set Crop Circle at Stonehenge of 1996 that I found quite astonishing in its beauty. This fascination went on for many years and I still love to look at the circles as they told me just looking at that them was helping us to open up our DNA codes, a little like looking at a Mandala.
I was shown incredible visions, like blueprints for what looked like cars and machinery, co-ordinates for parts of the world I had never been to, I seemed to be surfing some kind of cosmic web, past and future, other dimensions all coming together at once, as I was in deep meditation. I had a conversation with a young man in the army who had had a motorbike accident, but had not yet realised he had passed away, he was fine and it didn’t feel strange, he then said goodbye and went to the Light. I saw disasters, rubble, brief visions of destruction, but nothing ever scared me, it was like I was watching a movie but completely detached from it. These are just a few of the visions I had, it was constant and daily, like another world.
The only time I would come back feeling unsettled would be when I would sometimes feel knocked, bumped, prodded or if my name was called very loudly. All of these happened sometimes, once a bird flew into my face, I’d wake up with a jolt, often coughing, it was like I was being shaken spiritually to wake up not only back into my reality, but also more deeply to wake up to my soul.
Looking back its wonderful to remember these experiences from over 20 years ago. All of this was happening to me, over a period of a few years, in our flat in East Dulwich, often with Betsy curled up next to me having her long afternoon naps. Life was very hard then, my mental health was at a terrible low, I was very unhappy and struggling. I had no one to share any of these experiences with at all, I mentioned something to my then husband a few times and he told me I was obviously even more crazy than he had thought. I kept quiet and never once spoke a word to my friends, who I can’t imagine would have understood, or I just wasn’t prepared to take the chance and be further ridiculed.
My children have always been the ones to keep me grounded and sane. I often wonder how much of what was happening to me, was also happening to Betsy, my gorgeous, cheeky little girl, who would often lie next to me. I’ve been told since, when I later met Wren Murray, that Betsy was bringing a lot of this energy in for me.
During my second pregnancy with little Mimi, I would talk to her, she was an old lady and the soul that was going to come and be my baby. I didn’t realise that until I was going into labour in the early hours and I saw this old lady lying in a bed with her husband. A voice said ‘she’s ready to come’, and another said ‘but I’m still here’, it was as though Mimi was in a transitional space between one life and another, four hours later she was born and has brought me nothing but joy for the past 17 years.
Finally, after seven years of awful marriage it ended, January 2004. By September of the same year, I was starting to see my angels, a giant blue orb of 
Light. Seeing this, really scared me at first and sent me into complete melt down, but through the incredible support of my loving mother Pat, who helped me recalibrate, ground back down and then found me my first Reiki teacher, I settled into this new being as though life had always brought such gifts to my door. I honestly believe my angels were waiting for my husband to get out the picture, so they could really start to work with me, they knew I would never be fully able to embrace them so long as he was in the way.
I don’t know why I had the experiences I did early on, or why it took so many years for me to begin to understand what I was perhaps meant to be doing here to help others. But I am so grateful for what happened to me then. I feel that a lot of my experience was around the time that the energy on the planet was shifting rapidly, a lot of people, like me, were waking up.
A lot of us had been through the ‘rave’ years of the late 80s and early 90s, a lost youth culture trying to make sense of a lost world. Looking for our tribes and turning to drugs to replicate almost exactly what I now feel, when my angels bring me beautiful healing. A little like the hippies of the 60s, we were that next generation looking for something other than what life offered. It does not surprise me that the feeling of ecstasy we all felt whilst dancing in fields at parties back then, is so incredibly similar and loved filled as a spiritual experience. I love that so many seekers I have met a long the way, were also in those fields searching for their missing parts, I love that so many of us did find those parts eventually, our souls and now we are using everything we learnt and the struggles we had, to help others to heal. Beautiful.
The next chapter of my spiritual journey took me on the most incredible ride. A single mum with three beautiful children, Lenny arrived in 2005 and I lived alone with them all until 2017. The visions and guidance began to consolidate, I listened more, followed the steps I was being asked to tread, I found God, a Divine connection that changed me so much I wonder if people I knew back in the late 90s wonder what on earth happened! This crazy, party, wild child, found herself, thank goodness xx
How could I ever have known, listening to that old cassette tape, exhausted, anxious, self-destructive and in a terrible state, that life was going to be come one big, long, magical adventure.
Part 3 coming soon, thank you so much for taking the time to read my story so far. Love Saira xx
