As a spiritual life coach with over 15 years experience guiding people through messy life transitions, I’ve borne witness to the soul-stretching growth adversity can unleash – if we rise up to meet it.
When unwelcome change comes barging through the door, it’s natural to feel targeted or mistreated by the universe. But after walking with thousands of clients through turbulent times, I’ve learned that unwelcome surprises or painful endings usually signal reality getting ready to shift us towards something expansive—if we rise up to meet them as teachers rather than oppressors.
While losing what we cling so tightly to never stops hurting, I’ve seen even the most despairing situation transmuted into one’s soul awakening once the tears cleared way for wisdom to dawn…
Here are 6 telltale signs reality is poised for positive change, even if it doesn’t feel like it:
1. You Lose Something (or Someone) Important
Few experiences hurt more acutely than feeling something you cherish slip away against your will. A job loss that upends security, a breakup with someone you still love, the death of a family member before you can process the finality, a mental or physical health crisis that steals former freedoms.
Experiencing great loss also makes you feel singled out by the universe for unfair affliction. I can’t count how many clients have sat on my candlelit floor, heart shattered to pieces, wailing “why me??” amid despair that the one great blessing life had finally given felt cruelly snatched away by indifferent forces wanton to their suffering.
But if we look past the blinding pain with eyes of wisdom, losing something we didn’t think we could stand to live without shows us that the attachments we cling to hardest often distract from unlocking our greater gifts hiding in the shadows.
- Letting go carves holes where soul leaks back through so we can remember ourselves again.
- It excavates precious metals of inner fortitude we didn’t know we possessed until no choice but to dig deep and forge them into courage, resilience, faith rising through the ashes.
- Endings summon our shadows out from hiding so we‘re no longer ruled by them – forcing us to mature into wholeness instead of remaining fractured between extremes.
While grief never fully disappears in loss, in time we look back with solemn gratitude for the bitter medicine that made us braver, wiser, and more grounded in living life’s full truth once the tears washed our sight clear.
Rumi wrote “The wound is where the light enters you.” What better illumination than realizing you survived the very loss that once convinced you that you could not live without?
This emergence of newfound light amid the dark night of the soul inaugurates your initiation into spiritual maturity, signposted by discovering untapped inner reservoirs you scarcely knew you possessed.
2. Progress Toward an Important Goal Slows to a Standstill
As a manifestation coach, I often work with clients trying to transform high vibration dreams into tangible reality. Together we vision board their goal immersed in faith and excitement while energetically unfurling red carpets for the universe to accelerate them into their hoped for outcome.
But then… nothing happens. Days slip into months as their inspired action yields no visible progress. My once ebullient client grows incredulous wondering “Why won’t the Law of Attraction work for me??”
Here lies another of the most common ways we feel the universe has betrayed us:
When you feel cosmically thwarted each time you try manifesting your inspired vision into being, it probably signifies that an important growth opportunity hides buried in this perceived rejection.
Our ambitions and egos crave the immediacy of visible results confirming “It worked!” But personal expansion works on a different kind of timeline – the patient cosmic clock aligning progress to occur precisely when we are energetically primed to receive it.
So while the ego screams “it’s not working!” – your higher self trusts all is happening perfectly. Because our dreams’ fulfillment relies less on what we’re striving for, but rather the type of person we grow into in that passionate pursuit.
In other words, life delays delivering outward success until inward soul work nears completion. Because if ego still rules your motivation once kinetic motion unfreezes, consequences could prove disastrous.
So what soul work most commonly keeps us waiting in limbo?
- Releasing attachment to controlling outcomes
- Relinquishing impatience
- Courageously confronting inner shadows rather than denying them
- Holding faith and taking aligned action amid no tangible evidence it is amounting to anything
Therefore, lean into trust and surrender when progress slows to a halt. Let the timeline dissolve into timelessness knowing the perfect culmination lives inside your continued commitment, not the timing your ego expected.
Validation rewards may occupy more space in our awareness, but evolution and awakening remain life‘s ultimate quest. When rapid motion suddenly suspends, the universe invites you to surrender stories of lack and powerlessness.
Keep pooling consistent effort into your dreams, but release impatient grasping at results. Align through inspired action without attaching to outcomes, knowing right-timing unfolds as you grow wise enough for expansive manifestation.
3. You are Hit With the Unexpected Just When You Least Need it
Few experiences make us question the universe’s care for our plight more then when another blow unexpectedly rocks us amid barely recovering from the aftershock of a previous massive setback.
Just when we have finally stopped hitting snooze and willed ourselves to wobbly feet, suddenly it’s like the universe sneaks up to kick us back down with another dose of awful:
- A layoff notice arrives the week after your partner moved out
- The friend you confided in betrays your trust right after your parent dies
- Your house floods the same month your struggling business finally gains a bit of traction
In these moments of compounding misfortune, we often desperately pray: "Haven‘t I been tested enough?? Why this too when I‘m barely holding things together??"
But subsequent struggle arising amid the rubble of earlier crises rarely amounts to cosmic cruelty. On the contrary – the universe ups the ante again because it sees how much resilience and spiritual strength already awakened in you from conquering the initial battle.
We build psychological stamina similar to physical endurance – through exposure to incremental adversity, not avoidance of it. So right when you feel confident things are settling down, a subsequent obstacle purposefully emerges to check that fortified foundation built from weathering the first storm.
Consider hardship nature‘s spiritual weight training granting you graduated dosages in proportion to your expanding capacity. Just as muscles require measured levels of strain in order to increase vigor, unchosen difficulties strengthen spiritual resilience.
A new crisis is not there to break you, but to give your newly forged faith and courage further opportunity to shine. So when difficulty repeats before comfort restored, view it as confirmation of how empowered you‘ve already become in working through the initial crisis.
Summon that same inner fortitude now deepened through fresh experience with the process of responding to adversity. Grow talons from the tension and you’ll feel unexpectedly powerful facing the next unexpected blow. For unwelcome repetition proves you’ve amassed much more spiritual stamina than when limping away wounded from just one devastating loss alone.
4. People or Situations Start Shaking Up Your Close Relationships
Human psychology loves keeping the status quo intact – and avoids changing course even in the face of clear evidence it may be time.
So when collaborators, friends, parents, children, or intimate partners start stirring the waters of the placid pond you prefer to peacefully float upon, it throws your whole reality into question by daring to disrupt equilibrium and awaken dormant fears of abandonment.
This psychological attachment breeds resentment once we feel the foundation of trust, rapport, validation threatened by their contrary opinion rocking the boat – or worse yet, directly challenging your worldview in ways ego does not like accommodating.
But just like with the other trials by fire already discussed, the friction of this conflict bears productive opportunity for awakening.
Any destabilization of important relationships signifies it‘s time for an expanded new chapter between you. But rather than mature into this needed change phase consciously, egos dig heels in resisting to cling to what feels safe and familiar.
So when clashes and uncertainty enter an important bond, recognize it as sign to honestly reevaluate its current healthy. Are buried resentments or incompatible values embroiling the waters needing to be addressed? Did you fall into stagnant relating patterns in need of resuscitating revitalization?
View the destablisation as offer to either mutually mature the relationship into its next level… or begin grieving what needs to fade to make room for new vibrant connections eager to meet your readiness for more transparent relating.
Either way, these periods of questioning bonds stretch us to extend more compassion while firmly asserting boundaries. They strengthen our relationship with self by learning to speak up or walk away when values no longer align — rather than suppressing self for sake keeping things calmly afloat.
So next time turmoil unsettles a relationship’s smooth sailing, breathe through reactivity and align with the invitation to courageous authenticity beckoning through the burning friction.
5. Life Feels Exhaustingly Bleak, Boring and Devoid of Happiness
Few feelings plague sensitive souls quite like arriving in extended periods where each laborious day bleeds lifelessly into the next white-knuckled grind.
When passion, stimulation, delight no longer punctuate your everyday routine, it’s easy to feel unseen by the universe or woefully out of sync with your divine timing. The drudgery of restless mental chatter or unfulfilling obligations erase memory that contentment or inspiration ever flowed freely in your lived experience before.
But these fallow cycles of dullness and disenchantment serve an integral role in readying the seedbed for your next creative outburst into expansive fulfilment.
So before reprimanding your current season of discontent as evidence you‘ve lost your spark, consider it the gestational stage essential for nurturing your next period of blossoming.
Because in truth, it’s impossible to perpetually sustain those temporary supernova moments of rapid acceleration and explosive growth. We chart our evolution in a spiral, cycling between periods of active expansion and passive integration in order to fully embed lasting embodiment.
Think of it like breath – each inhalation aerates surface area awareness which breathes life into visions and inspires ideas. But the subsequent quiet exhale cements their manifestation by concentrating and consolidating all that vibrant energy into grounded embodiment.
The exhale‘s not as fun. But skip it, and inspiration scatters too thin to substantiate – starving flow from adequately being inhaled to maximum potential next round.
So before reprimanding boredom as evidence you lost your spark, consider it the integration essential for readying your next creative outburst. Use this period to actively nourish bold visions that will shoot oak tree roots during this fallow winter. Soon enough spring stirs and dormant seeds burst into the blooming abundance budding through your patient cultivation when ice thawed.
The key is utilizing this period for preparing and making conscious space rather than lamenting what feels lacking. That way when the hour strikes signaling your ripened readiness, you stand fully prepared for the universe to hand you sudden serendipity and golden opportunity setting your world ablaze with positive shifts toward meaningful expansion.
6. You Have an Eerie Premonition Something Big is Imminent
Sometimes without evident reason or catalyst, we are suddenly gripped by ominous sensation of charging energies headed our way – like the eerie stillness enclosing around us signals the calm building before a storm soon to strike and irreversibly change things.
It’s a hair-raising premonition – something cosmic feels afoot. Invisible matters subtly realigning behind the scenes in ways we can sense but not yet fully behold. It’s the dizzying anticipation that any minute, something is going to radically redirect your life with little warning.
And while easy to interpret this as foreboding crisis brewing on the horizon, this palpable shift is more accurately likened to the death throes of your former existence preparing to catapult you into expanded form…
Consider this ominous sense of imminent change as initiation – the onset labour contractions prophetically telling your psyche: “Get ready, your reality is undergoing rebirth!”
The Universe is tuning your instrument in readiness so you sound the clarion note that vibrates in resonant harmony with awaited destiny the moment exterior conditions lock into alignment.
Right before external reality shapeshifts, we undergo rigorous inner recalibration. Assimilating influxes of higher consciousness means shedding limiting beliefs, healing emotional wounds, fortifying spiritual connection through devoted practice.
It’s rigorous shadow work and profound transformation prodded by premonition. This concentrated effort feels so all-consuming that life as we know it indeed dies to make way for expanded existence commanded by soul purpose rather than fears that formerly restricted access to your gifts.
So next time you’re ambushed by sense foreboding upheaval ahead, recognize it as the first flickers of rebirth beckoning your awakening. Even if no outward evidence supports this premonition yet, trust something more powerful is breaking you open to receive those fated blessings and destinies awaiting on the horizon once your inner realignment nears completeness.
Stay conscious amid consuming change with steadfast faith: the Universal Midwife is preparing to deliver you unto profound awakening. Fear not the death throes of former versions of yourself. Instead celebrate how new joy and abundance fills the space that emptying creates. Know that clearing way for better suited realities always means disassembling limiting structures built by smaller versions still needing to evolve.
Rebirth stands ready to awaken you into long awaited destiny. Allow what needs purging to fade. Soon you’ll grasp just how worth this purgatory passage across the threshold truly becomes…
Unchosen change and unwelcome endings arise to spiritually strengthen us – yet that truth offers little consolation when we’re doubled over in grief agonizing through the loss.
When blinded by sorrow, little feels worse than well-meaning folks trying to silver line trauma with “It’s happening for you!” But once enough time passes for loss to carve a chamber within where soul seeps back through…we inhale that sacred wisdom. We witness with solemn gratitude how passing through a portal of pain birthed bastions of blessings we never could have known absent this initiation into unfamiliar strength.
So when you are emptied through loss, nurse your wounds through necessary darkness – but don‘t lose faith. At the right hour, new seedlings of profound gifts will pierce that black soil watered with your tears. For on the other side of despair – no matter how distant and unforeseen it feels today – rich abundance awaits should you steel yourself to endure the long night alive until first light cracks the dawn anew.