My spiritual awakening changed the trajectory of my life – I left my successful 20-year financial career on Wall Street to become a soul entrepreneur and spiritual mentor.

For some people, awakening takes years. For others, it’s instantaneous and is usually triggered by a catalytic event. For me, I’d say it was both.

It was Deepak Chopra who came to my corporate job in New York and meditated with an audience of 200 people. This was the first time I had an out of body experience where I found myself weightless and vast, floating above the crowd.

A few days later, through a beautiful synchronicity of events, I started to read a book called “Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. It expanded my consciousness so much that I realized I am not just my body and my mind but an energy being, observing my human experience.

That event and that book rocked my world and it was the beginning of my path of deep healing and self-discovery. In that moment, in 2015, I realized everything in my life led me to becoming aware that I was an energy being.

I grew up in the Soviet Union, where words such as spirituality, entrepreneurship, abundance, creativity, sexuality and free speech did not exist. My parents lived in extreme scarcity and constant fear. I was sick pretty much all my childhood – born with a tumor on my head, had NDE when I was 2, and was in and out of hospitals with heart, liver, and digestive issues. 

Then the Soviet Union collapsed and my parents lost everything they saved and everything they believed in. When I was 16, my father received a green card and we came to America. That period was a tough time in my life as I was completely broke, had no friends or connections, didn’t speak any English, gained a lot of weight and was dealing with the emotions of being a teenager. I got myself into a toxic and abusive relationship, received my share of bullying, and fought feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness. However, these experiences built my character big time and brought me lots of “come to Jesus” moments.

They say that old souls who come to Earth on the agreement to help raise consciousness of the planet often choose hard childhoods. This is the way to learn and to heal themselves first in order to then help others. There may be some truth to that…

When I turned 22, my life took a huge pivot. I met my husband, graduated business school with honors, got a high paying job on Wall Street, started to travel the world, and had my children.

I started to pray, practice the law of attraction, and read books such as “The Alchemist”, “The Secret” and “Conversations with God”. I was always a seeker, looking for meaning and bigger purpose in life.

But I was still pretty much asleep, on the hamster wheel and in my head, with my limiting beliefs and the same thought patterns running on autopilot. But in my dreams at night and sometimes during the day, I would get this glimpse of self-awareness and a nagging feeling that I forgot something and a need to remember what it was.

That’s when things really started to happen…

My daughter getting very sick with a rare virus, my father getting into an accident with life threatening injuries, my husband losing a job in the financial crisis, running from the falling twin towers and surviving the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and evacuating my family from one of the biggest hurricanes in US history.

Each experience deserves its own chapter in a book. And each experience brought me to my knees, in prayer, asking, “Why? Why did all these things happen?”

They were my wake-up calls. And only through spiritual awakening, “dark nights of the soul” and ultimately, daily meditation practice, traveling to sacred sights, getting guidance from spiritual teachers, and my own self-healing, I was able to have a vantage view of my life and see the beauty in all these experiences. There was so much beauty and wisdom. It was such a beautiful screenplay written by my soul.

Each of us has a story and mine is no more special than others. We all go through hardships one way or another. And even though I’ve shared my story, it’s really not about me. It’s about us and what we all go through collectively.

Are you hearing your wake-up calls?

Have you realized that God is hiding behind your every misfortune? 

You may not have one dramatic experience, but many different experiences that gradually bring you to an awakening and reshaping of your beliefs.

I realized that life throws us experiences for as long as we keep growing. As long as we keep questioning the known and embracing the unknown. 

Awakening is a journey.

It’s a journey of stepping into your power and realizing you had it all along. It’s a journey of healing and radical reframing of your whole existence. It’s a journey of realizing our existence is far beyond the physical. It’s a journey that never ends, but gets to be so deep, profound and fun, every day, with every new realization.