This is the second article of three where I share my story. If you want to read part one first, you can find it here: My story: ”You are here to lead humanity into the new earth” (part one).
A permanent shift in consciousness
I never planned to walk away from my old life. When it happened, it happened organically and almost by itself, because when I had let go of what connected me to that life internally, the outside more or less had to follow.
Looking back now, I know it was time, and it probably would have happened sooner or later anyway since I had clearly outgrown my old circumstances. But what ultimately led me to walk away didn’t have to do with the details of my external life.
It had to do with an inner transformation, a profound shift in consciousness, that was so powerful that it made me realize and experience a different reality.
The new state of consciousness I experienced as a result of that inner shift was so different from anything I had ever experienced that it changed my perception of reality completely.
After that moment, there was no going back.
The shift happened only a few months after the retreat with Eckhart Tolle in Assisi. It occurred in an instant, and I wasn’t the same person before and after.
When it happened, I saw through my conditioned reality, and there was no way for me to continue living my old life.
But that was not all.
I also had to walk away from my old spiritual path because the shift in consciousness I experienced wiped out that path and put me in a new destination.
Suddenly, I was living in a new reality.
Before self-realization
I had been on my spiritual path for about eight years when the inner shift occurred, and at that time, I had a sincere yearning to experience spiritual enlightenment.
The yearning for that profound inner state had been there in me for some time, and it had become stronger and stronger throughout the years.
When my spiritual journey began, my main focus was to heal and get well after the trauma. But almost eight years had passed since then, and I had processed and healed a lot. I had also dealt with a lot of my old conditioning that was there before the trauma.
As I had been doing so, that deeper yearning had started to reveal itself from within. It was a yearning to live in a state of stillness and inner peace, a yearning for spiritual enlightenment.
At that time, I had an idea about what spiritual enlightenment might be like. I also thought I had partly experienced that inner state because I had had many moments of profound stillness and inner peace on my path. Those were moments when my mind was still, and everything was quiet and peaceful.
I loved those moments and believed they were a taste of enlightenment.
Since that was what I believed and had experienced so far, I was also looking for enlightenment as a stillness, nothingness, or a higher state where I was just unconditioned consciousness – and”empty” of the ego.
But the day I experienced the shift I now call self-realization, it was not like that at all.
It was completely different.
The day the inner shift happened
I was sitting in a park in Stockholm city when it happened.
It was a sunny day, and usually, I would have enjoyed sitting there in the sun.
But not that day. I felt a lot of irritation as I was sitting there, and my mind was spinning around in circles.
I was thinking a lot about the awakening at that time, and as I was sitting there, my mind was relentlessly trying to figure out the answers to my questions about the deeper nature of reality.
Even though I used to think about those topics a lot, I wasn’t doing it on purpose that day. I wasn’t thinking actively. My mind was spinning on its own, and it was determined to find the answers to my questions.
There was a lot of inner noise, and I could not stop it. Instead, I was drawn into that loop of thinking time after time, and as I was drawn in, I could also feel the frustration of being unable to figure it all out. And that drew me in even more.
In hindsight, I think my mind was so relentless and agitated that day because I had been doing a lot of deep inner practice. My old defenses were also about to break down and make room for a new state of consciousness, and the mind was doing its best to hold on to something, anything, by keeping busy.
But it didn’t work and instead, it led to the opposite.
Because the constant spinning, and all the attempts to find the answers that the mind was engaging in, were exactly what made me see through what the mind was doing.
It was exactly what led me to see through the mind-made reality and realize the nature of reality beyond it.
A complete disidentification from the mind
What preceded the inner shift was that, as I was sitting there in the park, I suddenly became aware that two aspects of my mind were active at the same time.
One was the surface thoughts, and the other was judging and commenting on the surface thoughts.
The surface thoughts were about the awakening, and that part of the mind was spinning in circles and trying to come up with solutions and answers to my questions. It was moving from thought to thought, idea to idea, and it didn’t stop for a second.
The judging part, on the other hand, was trying to make sense of all that spinning. It was trying to determine what thoughts were true and spiritual and which were coming from the ego. So, as soon as I had a surface thought, that judging or analytical part came in and tried to analyze the thought.
This judging or analytical part, which I will call the judge from now on, was more difficult to discover than the surface mind, because it wasn’t making as much noise.
Instead, it was trying to make sense of the noise by putting the surface thoughts into categories or perspectives. It was also judging what the surface mind was doing, labeling it “spiritual,” “the ego,” and so on.
What was even more tricky about the judge was that it gave the impression that it was neutral or objective. It pretended to be the objective observer of my surface thoughts. It also gave the impression that it really was in a position to determine what thoughts were true insights and which were coming from the ego.
So, while the surface mind was spinning and more or less “screaming” and doing its best to draw me in, the judge was quietly working behind the scenes pretending to be helpful and an important part of my awakening.
It was very subtle.
The judge was also very convincing, and if I had not seen that part of the mind so clearly as I suddenly did that day, I would easily have believed that those judgments were reality. I would probably have believed that the judge was part of the unconditioned consciousness watching the ego, and that only the surface thoughts were the ego.
But the judge was (of course) not unconditioned consciousness, and it was not an objective observer at all. It was just one part of the mind judging another, and that suddenly became very clear to me.
I had seen this before at some point, but this time it was magnified, and when I saw both parts at the same time, the mind could do nothing.
The result was complete disidentification from the mind.
The disidentification opened the door
When the disidentification happened, I saw through the mind completely and there was nothing the mind could do to pull me in again. I could see clearly that the thoughts were not reality, and when I saw that, they lost their power and importance.
When it had happened, there was no going back. There was no way to unsee what I had seen.
But even though the disidentification freed me from the conditioned mind and was part of the shift in consciousness, it was not the final realization.
It was rather what opened the door for self-realization to occur because the moment I saw through what the mind was doing, I was open for the shift that was about to happen.
So, there was more to come.
What happened next was that it was as if I floated upwards in my inner world. It happened the moment I saw through the mind, and it felt like taking a step up internally.
Suddenly, I found myself in a place where I was above both parts of the mind and all that was happening on those lower levels inside me. It was as if I was looking at the inner noise from above. And that is when it happened.
That is when the realization came.
It came as a thought, and yet it was a knowing, and that thought or knowing was:
“All I have to do is be who I am.”
Self-realization
In that moment, all the inner noise dropped away.
It was more or less wiped out from my inner world the moment the thought “All I have to do is be who I am” entered my mind.
In that moment, I fully realized who I am, my true self. Another way to say it is that who I am realized itself in me, or that consciousness realized itself in me, as me.
And when I realized who I am, there was no room for anything else inside me.
I will explain more as I go…
The instant the realization occurred, I also became fully aware of who I am not.
In that moment, I saw through the ego, the mind-made identity completely. I realized that there was no such identity or that there was no reality to that identity. It was just a perception, and I could see that clearly (even though it is a perception with many layers to it).
So now, I didn’t just see through the two aspects of the mind. I also saw through the perception at the core of the ego, the place inside where the identification begins.
And the reason I saw that place inside myself was that I realized who I am underneath or beyond it.
The separation or core wound
Before I move on, I want to give you more context. So, I will add some words here about the ego, and the core perception of myself as a separate mind-made identity that I suddenly saw through that day.
The perception I am referring to is at the core of the ego, and it is the place inside where the separation from our true selves begins.
You can think of it as a place inside where we humans are cut off or separated from our true nature.
You can also call this place the core wound. It is the wound of all wounds, the separation of all separations, the hurt of all hurts – the place inside where we become separated from who we are in the first place.
In that same instant, the ego is born.
From that moment, we also forget who we are, our true selves, and start living as the ego.
Some believe that the separation happens when we incarnate in human form, while others think it happens at a young age. But either way, it cuts us off from who we are at the core and causes us to believe we are someone else: a mind-made identity (the ego).
From that moment, we perceive ourselves as that identity. So, we see it as who we are.
However, we are not aware of the perception itself – the perception that makes us see ourselves as a separate identity. We don’t walk around thinking about it because it is not a thought. It is there before the thoughts. It is a perception that is hidden deep inside us, in our unconscious mind.
It makes us believe that we are the mind-made identity. But we don’t think about it. We just act as if it was true, as if that image of ourselves is who we are, and we see life from that perspective.
As long as that core perception of ourselves is inside us, we perceive ourselves as the ego.
And as long as we have not seen that core perception directly in ourselves (or seen who we are beyond it), we still live with a sense of ourselves as a separate, mind-made identity and believe it is who we are, even if we are conscious in many other areas.
But again, it only happens because that perception is still there.
And since it is not reality, it is possible to see through it and become free.
Also, remember that this has been and still is humanity’s dominant state, so it is not personal. It has been part of our earlier evolution to experience life in this way. But now, we are moving forward and realizing who we are beyond that so that we can evolve and live in new ways where we are embodied instead of separated from our true nature.
Back to what happened in that moment
So, back to what happened the day I experienced self-realization.
The moment I realized who I am, my true self, I also saw who I am not.
The moment the inner shift occurred, I saw the perception that had made me believe I was the ego identity. It was right there in front of me.
And the reason that I saw it was that I realized who I am underneath or beyond it. And then, there was no place for that core perception to hide.
So, when I realized who I am, the perception that had made me see myself as a separate identity surfaced into my conscious mind. Because when I realized who I am underneath it, that perception couldn’t remain in my unconscious. It couldn’t remain unseen. There was no place for it to hide. It had to come up to the surface.
So what happened was that my unconscious let that belief go, and when it did, the belief surfaced into my conscious awareness, and I saw it. And when I saw it, I realized it wasn’t reality.
It was real in the way that it was there, but it was not reality. It was a perception – and I saw that clearly.
I didn’t become empty or an emptiness, I became fully myself
As you may remember, I had a sense of what I thought spiritual enlightenment would be like. And when I had imagined becoming enlightened, I had imagined myself becoming empty, like an empty container that had previously contained the ego.
I had imagined a peaceful emptiness, a still and quiet nothingness, but what I had imagined was still that I would become an emptiness or space.
But that was not what happened.
I did not become empty or an emptiness when the inner shift occurred. I became empty of the ego, yes. But not empty. I became full – or a fullness. Fully myself.
Because the moment I realized who I am, my true self filled up my entire being – all the places inside where the ego had resided before this moment.
Suddenly, I was fully inhabiting my body and inner world, and when I was, there was no room for anything else inside me.
So, the moment it happened, all the noise the mind was making stopped. It was as if the ego and the inner noise were wiped out from my inner world because there was no space left for anything else to be there when I was fully myself and fully inhabiting my inner world. There was no room for the ego inside me.
But again, I didn’t become empty or a space as I had imagined. And I didn’t find myself in a higher state where I was just unconditioned consciousness and empty of the ego, the way I had imagined enlightenment to be.
The moment the realization happened, my true self, who I am, took back all the space and all the places inside me that I had given away to the ego. So, instead of becoming empty, the ego was replaced by my true self.
At the same time it happened, there was also a higher knowing present. I was aware of what had happened. I was also aware of myself. So, I was both fully embodied – fully inhabiting my body and inner world – and fully aware of myself and what had happened.
What I experienced was another state of consciousness.
The moment the inner shift occurred, my perception of myself shifted completely from the ego to my true self. It was a shift from one state of consciousness to another.
When this inner shift happened, I knew I had found what I had been looking for. I knew that this was what I had been yearning for all along, without knowing it.
It was as clear as this moment.
How I understand it now
What I have been trying to describe is something that can’t be put into words. It has to be experienced. But I am doing my best to give you a sense of what it is like.
This inner shift happened over ten years ago, and it has taken many years to understand and integrate it and to be able to live in that state even in the external world.
It is not difficult to understand it on an experiential level. What is difficult is to understand it in a way that enables me to give it context – or to explain or describe it in a way that makes sense.
Here is some short clarification before I put this shift into a larger context:
The moment the shift in consciousness occurred, I realized who I am, my true self. I also saw through the illusion of the ego, the separate or false self. I saw that there was no such identity. It was all a perception (although it was a perception with many layers to it).
The moment that inner shift occurred, I knew that when I am myself, the ego doesn’t exist. I also knew that when I am myself, I am awake and live in the present moment automatically. I don’t have to do anything to be present. It’s my natural state.
The state I was experiencing was a full integration of my soul and human self. I was fully inhabiting my body and, at the same time fully aware of myself and what had happened.
I also want to add this:
Before this moment, I had seen myself as the watcher watching what was happening inside me. That had been part of the awakening – I had become self-aware and been watching my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I had experienced myself as the consciousness watching the ego.
But when this inner shift occurred, that separation disappeared, so I was not the watcher nor the one being watched – I was whole. Fully myself. Human and soul as one. And there was no separation. No separate self, no false identity, no ego. Nothing to watch.
The perception of myself as the human self was still there, but there was no separate identity on top of that perception. I was just me, embodied, and I was aware of it at the same time.
Self-realization and 5D consciousness
After years of integration, I have come to call this shift self-realization – because I realized who I am, my true self.
I sometimes also call it an internal shift to 5D consciousness (which is a full integration of the soul and human self).
But whatever I call it adds a layer to something that can only be understood by experiencing it.
The true self is not a thing. It is who you are before anything else arises. So, you can only BE yourself and BE AWARE of yourself at the same time.
It is not a thought about yourself. But it is still you, the individual form that consciousness takes in you.
As some spiritual teachers say: We are not the sun (consciousness itself which is in all of us) but the rays of sunshine.
So self-realization means that the ray of sunshine becomes aware of itself as that ray of sunshine.
You become aware of yourself.
And when you live and fully embody that state in the inner and outer worlds, you are yourself fully, and you live and embody the new state of human consciousness, 5D.
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Thank you for reading this far! In the next and final article in this series about my journey, I will share the moment I received my life mission.
I hope you want to read it!
Love,
Hanna
