At some on our journey towards healing, we feel a profound shift.
We step back from the surrounding nonsense. Maybe after spiritual insight or personal breakdown, we see through the illusion—patterns, chaos, everyone rushing to do their 'thing.' We awaken. After enduring turmoil, prolonged stress, or lifelong dissatisfaction, an unexpected silence emerges. At first, it feels empowering—look how zen we are. But over time, meaning fades. It doesn’t happen dramatically; it slips away quietly, as if life’s volume is turned down. We stop chasing, stop caring—not recklessly, but with a resigned sigh. And yet, the question grows louder: Why do I still feel so numb?
There’s an intriguing paradox at play here.
While we often expect spiritual awakening to ignite a fiery passion within us, for many—particularly those who are deeply introspective—it seems to have the opposite effect. Instead of fueling our drive, it leaves us feeling empty. Carl Jung alluded to the concept of awakening as followed: through the fog of unconsciousness the unconscious mind becomes conscious. Enlightenment is not achieved by simply envisioning figures of light but by bringing the darkness within to light. Awakening is not the conclusion, but rather the beginning—a psychological death, the end of who we once believed ourselves to be.
The foundations that once gave our life meaning—our goals, career, relationships and even our sense of time—seem to unravel.
Our ego hasn’t disappeared, it’s simply disoriented, like it’s lost its map. Without a new direction motivation fades. We’ve awakened from one chapter of life but we haven’t yet stepped into the next. Here’s where it becomes truly fascinating—and often deeply misunderstood. What we're experiencing right now isn’t failure, nor is it clinical depression or anxiety. Instead, it’s something ancient, profound and sacred. Jung warned that our modern world avoids this phase at all costs, this sacred pause, this void, this in between. We do not recognize anymore this phase is essential for true inviduation, the process of becoming our authentic self.
No-one tells us how this loss of motivation might be the biggest spiritual upgrade we have ever experienced.
We're undergoing a profound psychological shift—one so deep that it doesn’t just alter our thoughts; it rewires our entire operating system. The goals we once pursued, the endless to-do lists, five-year plans, the hustle, even the culture that used to inspire us—all of it feels distant now. It's not because we're failing but because our very system of motivation is undergoing a transformation. For most of our life it came from our ego identity, the 'I' we thought we were. We maybe wanted to prove ourself and fought tirelessly to fit in, to adjust to our social peers, to be acknowledged. It's how we humans 'work', human development is a natural process. We learn from our parents—if they are hurt, they will pass on that hurt; if they are autonomous, they will teach autonomy. If they seem happy yet carry underlying grief, we will absorb that grief and learn to coexist with unfamiliar, unrecognizable emotions. This phenomenon is known as the persona—the unconscious mask we wear to navigate and function within society.
Our awakening journey removes this facade.
Eventually our false persona will wear us out. Suddenly we are not trying to be liked, nor trying to win the game and that's where it gets weird, our old goals don't fit anymore. They were tailored to a version of us that never existed, leaving us like a character stepping offstage without knowing the actor. We feel unmotivated only because we're a bit lost, having outgrown the feeling that powered us.
Jung names this process individuation; the journey of transforming from a fragmented identity into a whole unified self.
We are not here to serve the ego, we are here to integrate it, to align it with something bigger. The essence of self that transcends boundaries—the soulful core within us, deeply connected to all things, devoted solely to expressing its truth. Once awakened, our psyche recalibrates, rejecting anything fake, forced or ego-based, including jobs, relationships and ambitions. That's why people often describe awakening as both freeing and disorienting because in the midst of the process we often loose almost everything.
Jung warnes if we stop here we get stuck.
Some people step into the trap of spiritual bypassing, start meditating in Bali or share profound quotes on the internet, convincing themselves that it's all just illusion. They identify with yet another social group in which possession or goals do not matter and start to push themselves to view lonyless as oneness. They again disconnect, float and numb out, all the while confusing detachment with disengagement.
The self wants something different, it wants to thrive through us.
It wants to bring heaven into the human body. It doesn't reject the world, it redefines our role in it. In order to step into that, we have to wait and ripen, like everything else does in life to get fully grown. It's a phase few people recognize when being in it or let alone talk about. It looks like sitting in silence, unable to explain ourselves or find direction while the world keeps rushing by. We feel lost but in fact we are in between. We dis-identified from the ego but haven't yet found a new way to live from the self. This free and silent time in our life is not a failure, as society seems to think, it's a rite of passage. It is a kind of stillness which, in our hyperproductive world, still gets misdiagnosed for laziness or paralysis. Exactly this type of judgement and supposed actions block the very energy our soul is trying to call back by raising it's vibration and possibly healing some last painfull remains.
When we awaken our inner pendulum swings from 'ego driven striving' to 'soul level stillness'.
Jung called this kind of psychological pause enantiodromia, the process where things flip into their opposite. During this particular process we switch from 'I must do everything' to 'why do anything'. This swing is sacred. It's how balance is restored in myths and ancient teachings, this is the hermit phase, the death before rebirth, it's the moment the caterpillar turns to soup inside the cocoon, not a butterfly yet, not a bug anymore. It's an internal transformation, quietly unfolding while outwardly all appears unchanged. It's the exact moment the ego starts to panic because it's need for action, identity and direction.
Modern spirituality often skip this as being the hard stuff, it teaches to follow your joy and high vibes only.
Surely we must, but not only. Doing so involves the risk of purely living hedonistically as not many can differentiate or balance. We are human, both light and darkness should be adressed, the one not existing without the other. Jung tells us if we try to skip the darkness we skip transforming our iron into our gold. Shadow integration, facing the repessed uncomfortable parts of us, is essential for becoming whole. It's not optional, it's not extra credit, it's the core curriculum of being a human soul. This sacred nothingness we feel is where the unconscious Self finally has space to rise.
So we are not failing, we are metabolizing.
Our psyche is incredibly wise, it will stall our motivation, our drive, even our access to clarity on purpose so we are forced to feel, witness and reclaim what we've buried. That's real work and here's the beautiful twist, when we stop resisting the void something strange starts to happen. Motivation begins to return, only it feels different this time. It's not anxious, it's not performative, it's something older and quieter, a kind of soul led movement that feels like remembering. Jung calls this the emergence of the self as a living inner compass. This is where the self begins to speak, not in words but in nudges, in resonance with the symbolic of life. Once the ego has surrendered and the unconscious is integrated we become capable of living from a place deeper than our personality. We often start meditation or contemplation of some kind. We naturally tune in to everything life ís and has to offer, experiencing guidance and renewed faith in the rythm of life. Jung calls this living symbolically, with soul, it is where we begin to trust our inner imagery, synchronicity and gutt feeling.
This is when life stops being about survival and becomes about meaning.
It's often beautifully ordinary, when the self leads we don't hustle, we respond, we're no longer afraid or stressed but guided by what feels aligned. We no longer chase clarity, we recognize it on arrival. Living from the self doesn't mean we're always happy and content, we still feel waves of fatique, confusion or grief. It means we easily let go of our fears and doubts to regain faith and trust. It means loosing that vague always present sense of inner betrayal as we shed a life that didn't fit. Balance enters our being, joined by faith. We feel joyeus moreoften, we feel light, we might start to create, we say no to things that don't resonate, we start following our curiousity instead of our checklist. We choose peace over performance and alignment over adrenaline.
So what does this look like in real life.
It’s as simple as refraining our innate questions.
- Refrain what should i do into what's quietly calling me.
- What's the plan into where is life nudging me.
- How can I prove myself into what feels real.
- How to impress into how to express.
- I deserve into what do I offer.
This is where we begin to participate with life instead of trying to dominate it.
This doesn't mean giving up ambition, on the contrary, it means transforming it into something that fits our core being. Ambition becomes devotion to truth, devotion to truth becomes devotion to presence and growth. The irony is that this kind of energy gets things done way more effectively than ego ever could. Now it's sustainable, now it's soul powered, now it is the self's motivation which often leads us to create, to serve, heal, built and to teach. Our old fire burned down in order to find a deeper flame and it has discovered this new motivation rooted in wholeness. We burned out only to rekindle a quieter, stronger and everlasting light. We awakened and healed, not as ending but as the beginning.
Dit artikel bevat bewerkte tekst afkomstig uit de video Fractal Wisdom - Why You Have NO MOTIVATION After Spiritual Awakening. Credere Counseling & Advies raadt deze video aan voor verdieping, bewustwording en kennis.Ontdek meer waardevolle inzichten van Fractal Wisdom op YouTube.
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Artikel - Tekst video vrij bewerkt, Catharina van Helmond juli 2025.