An Ordinary Life: An Experience of Awakening

Karen Le Cussan

By Karen Le Cussan

A little over a week ago I had the most amazing experience of my life, something which has now changed forever the way I see the world and how I feel.

Before I go into any detail, I’d like to tell you a little about myself: I am forty nine years old, and I am married with three teenage children, two of whom live at home.

I am a personal trainer, Balance and Pump Instructor and I work at a local ladies gym in Queenstown, New Zealand.

I do not follow any particular religion, although I have always believed in a higher presence of some kind. I do not meditate, other than in my balance classes that I teach, which include five to ten minutes of relaxation.

I have a desire to teach yoga and have been attending two yoga classes a week for the past three weeks. This is the first time I have had regular yoga practices.

On this particular day, I had come home from a seven hour shift at the gym, ate some lunch and then felt a need to practice my Balance choreography (I teach balance but not Les Mills, so I have my own music and choreography).  I don’t usually do this after a day at the gym as I had already taught two classes that day!

After an hour or so, I was going through the balance track, the song was “My Immortal” by Evanescence – a very emotive song with a gradual build up to a climax in lyrics and music.

While I was practicing I was able to see myself through the reflection of the glass doors, and just before the lyrics in the song;

I’ve been alone all along.

I felt as if I was outside the door looking back at myself.

Then I felt as if I came back into me and I experienced a burst of energy starting from somewhere near my belly and slowly rising up through my body and up through the crown of my head.

At this point I felt an immeasurable feeling of joy and love and I was crying with goosebumps all over my body.

My breath was coming faster and as I looked around me I felt as if I was looking at everything for the first time, everything was so bright and crystal clear, it was fantastic!

I can remember saying things  like;

I’ve been dreaming. What have I been doing? I’ve been here all along.

I think there was an OMG in there too!

These descriptions can only touch on the immense amount of feelings I was experiencing at the time.

I literally felt as if I was part of everything and everything was part of me and I definitely didn’t feel alone.

I am a believer in past lives and it was as though every life, my previous soul or souls came back into me in that one moment.  I felt complete and yet at the same time utterly free.

For about the next five minutess I was still trying to control my breathing and tears, the goosebumps were still happening in waves.  I sat down and was trying to come to some understanding about what had just happened to me.

I kept blinking my eyes and looking everywhere especially outside to the mountains and the lake. It truly felt as is I had never seen them before.

As the day carried on I kept getting this rush of feelings rising up through me, and it was difficult to carry on as normal. I had my two boys to pick up from school not an hour later.

That night I couldn’t sleep, I had to find some answers to what had happened.

So I went to Google and Youtube! I found an amazing amount of information on awakening experiences, but not all of it was relevant. So I searched through to find something that resonated with me, anything that came close to describing what I had experienced.

There are a lot of people out there feeling something similar, but I couldn’t find anyone who had this happen to them without actively seeking it out. I hadn’t been actively seeking anything – I didn’t even know there was anything to seek! But from all the research, I come to the conclusion that I had an ‘awakening’ of some sort, as this seemed to be the only answer to the feelings I had felt.

The days went by and I had to continue on with every day things.

Concentrating at work was difficult. I felt very distracted and had an urge to be outside in the fresh air.  I still felt the ‘bubbles’ of joy at different times and found myself smiling for no apparent reason.

I just felt more connected with everything and everyone around me now.  I’m still having trouble sleeping. I’m also still searching Youtube, looking for any more information about all of this, and I have found that there is some very helpful advice on how to cope with the changes that something like this brings into your life.

I think the hardest to cope with is the changes to my sleep patterns. I can no longer go to sleep early, now it is midnight and it’s hard when I have to get up early for work. I feel as if I’m on this incredible journey, and I need to find a way forward from here. I need to find a path that is my path and not someone else’s.

Working at the gym is also hard as now I don’t feel the same desire to be there except when I am teaching my Balance classes, I feel as if this is no longer “me”.

The books I once loved to read, and sometimes over and over again, I don’t want to pick up again.  The  types of movies I used to love watching I no longer want to watch.

In my relationship with my husband of twenty two years, already strained and distant over the last seven years, I feel as though I am moving towards  letting go of this relationship and I feel that I will be able to cope better now.

I am starting to feel less fearful of changes happening in my life.

I’m worrying less about what will happen to myself and my children in the future.

I know I have many issues in my life that will need to be worked through, and who knows how long this will take?  I only know it has to happen for me to live the life I was meant to live, and for me to feel truly free.

I am so grateful that this has happened to me, and I am looking forward now to an amazing life.

Editor’s Note: Karen came to one of my yoga classes a few days before she had this experience. Afterwards, she contacted me and asked if we could meet for a coffee and talk about it. I admit – I was sceptical when she said she’d had some kind of awakening experience. However, as soon as we sat down to talk, it was apparent to me that she’d had a shift in consciousness.

Karen kept describing it like she’d woken up for the first time, and only now realised she had been asleep. And that’s why it’s called awakening… we literally wake up. Of course, we can also go back to sleep. Awakening experiences can either be abiding or non-abiding. Usually, the first experience we have is only the very beginning of a long journey toward an abiding experience. 

However, no matter where Karen is and what is now unfolding for her, it was a precious experience for me to sit with an ordinary person in an ordinary life who’d spontaneously awoken to a larger reality. If it can happen to Karen, it can happen to any of us. This shift in consciousness, or opening to a larger reality is the evolutionary destiny of all human beings.

Stay tuned for more articles about awakening experiences. And if you’ve had an experience you’d like to share, please get in touch.

My Immortal by Evanescence