Fatigue After Spiritual Awakening

Q: I went through 4 years of debilitating insomnia due to anxiety about being sleep-deprived the next day (a cruel vicious circle...and catch-22...), and then had a profound and complete awakening to the vastness of the present moment. Since then, however, a chronic fatigue has developed and continued unabated, and for the past 26 months I've been on my parent's couch in a drained, often exhausted, quasi-depressed state.

I haven't been able to resist what is, or avoid what I feel in the energy body, since surrendered, so in that sense, I have been at peace. Basically, I know all is well. But, my parents see me unresponsive, depressed, and fatigued, and are very worried and sending me to doctors.

I am doing herbal treatments for chronic lyme, and have had blood tests and everything is good and healthy. I'm physically healthy, but I think my energy body is fatigued and depressed. I feel strongly and deeply that this process is some sort of integration and transformation of the energy body, which uses all my energy, and thus requires me to "incubate" and lie on the couch. But, I suppose I can't be sure, that's why I'm treating for lyme. If you ever come upon some more information on this "awakening fatigue" situation, I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd pass it on.

A: I am not sure if it is much comfort, but the kind of experience you are having is not uncommon, even among well known spiritual teachers. There are many levels of truth, so it is hard to determine what is really cause and what is effect, but a profound awakening does seem to have effects on the body. These effects are often more extreme when the awakening is sudden and profound as there is naturally a clearing process that happens before, during and after an awakening. When the awakening is profound, the post-awakening clearing process can happen more rapidly and dramatically leading to symptoms like what you are having.

And of course, it can also just be a case of genetic and/or environmental causes coming to the fore.

Here are some suggestions I can offer on different levels:

1. You might check out Monolaurin as a physical treatment for Lyme and other disease agents:
2. You might want to explore both psychological and even metaphysical clearing processes to help the process unfold on those levels. Here is a woman who lives near us who offers multi-dimensional healing.

My wife, Gina Lake, has written a book about clearing called Getting Free that might have some useful info and exercises for you.

3. You might experiment some with motivating in spite of the lack of energy just to see what happens. I wrote about this some in two blog posts:

• • Motivation After Spiritual Awakening
  • Your Happiness Does Not Depend on Doing Anything

The worst that can happen is you collapse again, or maybe you will find that the energy you are lacking shows up when you start doing things again.

4. As you seem to know, all of this is temporary and does not harm your consciousness. This is the largest truth and is a great comfort when approaches on other levels do not bear fruit immediately. Here is an article about this level of truth:

You Cannot Be Harmed

I experienced some of what you are describing after my own awakening, so I have lots of compassion for what you are going through. Please do keep me posted as to how this unfolds for you.