11 reasons why we lose friends during a spiritual awakening

Spiritual awakenings are believed to be incredibly rare. 

Only very few people experience it, which means you should consider yourself lucky if you have one. 

Spiritual awakenings entail a radical change within yourself. Experiencing this means you’re bound to lose some people along the way. 

When this happens, you might feel like there is a problem with you that made these people leave. However, know that it’s perfectly normal losing friends during a spiritual awakening.

So why does this happen?

In this article, we’ll discuss the 12 reasons why we lose friends during a spiritual awakening

1) You’ve evolved and outgrown them

A spiritual awakening is a process in which you develop higher consciousness and a deeper connection towards life.

In Buddhism, this is called Nirvana while in Hinduism, it’s known as Moksha.

However it is called, a spiritual awakening usually causes drastic personal transformation and dramatic change towards one’s worldview.

In simpler terms, you might refer to this as a character development or a redemption arc if you feel you’ve been a bad person who is now being encouraged to change for the better. 

This dramatic change means you’re bound to evolve and outgrow your friends for many different reasons, and when you do, you’ll either leave them or have them leave you.

Because one of the effects of your growth might be that you no longer have anything in common, as the next section shows. 

2) You no longer have anything in common

Friendships are forged through common interests.

These interests could be something as simple as liking anime, watching romance or horror films, reading books, or having the same hobbies, among many others.

Some people, however, might find themselves bonding through gossip and drama. 

And when you have a spiritual awakening, a lot of these interests can change, especially in the case of our last example. 

When you grow through the power of spiritual awakening, you realize the implications of drama and gossip, which makes you stop engaging in it. 

And when you do this, you might even start to call out your friends who gossip about other people. 

If they haven’t grown enough yet to realize the implications and consequences of their actions, they might not be able to accept your criticism with grace.

Their refusal to accept your valid criticism can signal the end of the friendship, as people who bond in drama usually have an implicit contract to not judge each other’s questionable takes.

It can be painful to lose them, but for the most part, it is a good thing because it is through losing them that you can start being more true to yourself.

3) You start being more true to yourself

When a person has a spiritual awakening, at the end of the process, they’ll meet their authentic selves.

This means leaving behind traits that no longer feel like you, especially those you’ve adapted only to fit a certain social circle.

And sometimes, when you become more true to yourself, some people end up leaving you. This is because they liked who you were pretending to be rather than who you actually are.

When this happens, you’ll realize that your real self is not meant to be friends with these people.

Either you will leave them, or they will leave you because who you’ve become is not compatible anymore with who they are.

And because you’ve drastically changed, you will no longer be able to fit their perception of who you are.

4) You no longer fit their perception of you

Everyone in your life has a different perception of who you are. 

None of them are completely accurate, because different friend groups only see certain parts of who we are and not really the full picture. 

With that said, when you experience a spiritual awakening, you meet your authentic self, which means that some of these perceptions might end up being too far from who you actually are.

And when this happens, your friends will think that you’ve changed too much to continue being friends with them. And it’s okay. It’s not that they never loved you; you’ve really just outgrown each other.

And often, outgrowing them means you’re not willing to change yourself anymore to please them.

5) You’ve grown past the need to people-please

It’s an inherent human trait to want to be liked. 

This is because having a bad reputation means you’re less likely to find friends or find love. More often than not, you need people to like you first before they love you.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to change yourself to please other people.

And when you meet your authentic self after a spiritual awakening, you’re less likely to engage in people-pleasing. In fact, it’s when you get over the need to people-please that you’re more likely to forge more meaningful connections with other people.

When this happens, some of your friends might leave you because you’re not willing to compromise who you are anymore just to please them. 

6) You have a different understanding of spirituality

In order to understand completely why we lose friends during a spiritual awakening, we must also understand what spirituality truly is. 

Unfortunately, not all the gurus and experts that preach spirituality do so with our best interests at heart. Some take advantage to twist spirituality into something toxic—poisonous even. 

When this happens, we’re more likely to lose friends not because of a genuine spiritual awakening, but because we’ve adapted toxic habits that don’t even come close to real spirituality. 

I learned this from the shaman Rudá Iandé. With over 30 years of experience in the field, he’s seen and experienced it all. 

From exhausting positivity to downright harmful spiritual practices, this free video he created tackles a range of toxic spirituality habits. 

So what makes Rudá different from the rest? How do you know he’s not also one of the manipulators he warns against? 

The answer is simple:

He promotes spiritual empowerment from within. 

Click here to watch the free video and bust the spiritual myths you’ve bought for the truth.

Rather than tell you how you should practice spirituality, Rudá puts the focus solely onto you. Essentially, he puts you back in the driver’s seat of your spiritual journey, which then helps you find real friends who will truly get you after the long and arduous process of a real spiritual awakening.

7) They weren’t real friends in the first place

When you experience a spiritual awakening, you will realize that some of the friends who will choose to leave you in the process were never really your friends in the first place.

You’ll realize that these people are actually opportunists. People who take advantage of you for the things you can offer, instead of loving you for who you are like a real friend would.

Maybe they’re only with you because you have the money, or they want to share in the glory of your successes. If that’s the case, if you think they have ulterior motives underneath the supposed friendship, they are not your real friends.

And when you have a spiritual awakening, your authentic, more empowered self will threaten them. This is because you become unwilling to tolerate toxic, abusive behavior anymore, which means they’ll likely get called out or kicked out of your life.

This possibility threatens them, and it all ends up with them leaving you. 

On the other hand, if they were decent people who never really took advantage of you, the friendship ending sometimes means you’re simply meant to pursue different paths in life.

8) You’re meant for different paths in life

When we have a spiritual awakening, we’re set to pursue a certain path to find our true purpose.

Sometimes, this path is different from that of our friends. When the time has come, your friendship will reach a fork in the road, signaling a natural end to your journey together.

This is why we lose friends during a spiritual awakening. 

It’s not always because your friend was a bad friend who only wanted to take advantage of you. The reason is not always because of a conflict that couldn’t be resolved between you two.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as having different paths and purposes in life that causes you to part ways in the end. 

It is painful to part ways with a dear friend, but if we truly want to find our true purpose and it’s different from theirs, it has to happen. 

Not to worry, though, because there is a silver lining to this: when we lose friends, we appreciate solitude better. 

9) You appreciate solitude better

Being alone doesn’t always mean being lonely. 

This becomes all too clear when we experience a spiritual awakening and lose some friends in the process.

When we lose friends during a spiritual awakening, we’re taught to appreciate solitude better. We learn that it’s important to have some time on our own because this gives us time for reflection. 

While the company of others can greatly help our well-being, sometimes, being alone can help just as much, if not more.

It’s by being alone that we’re able to have the deepest self-reflection, that we become more mindful of our thoughts and actions. Both of these are necessary in order to reach the end of our spiritual awakening. 

It’s also when we’re alone that we’re given time to rest and experience some quiet from the noise of the outside world. This relieves our stress, enables us to breathe, and regenerates our energy. 

When we lose our friends during a spiritual awakening and appreciate the beauty of solitude, we heal the loneliness in our hearts as well. This means we won’t look for friends just for the sake of having friends—we start to desire deeper, more meaningful connections. 

10) You desire deeper connections

Having a spiritual awakening is a journey toward finding your higher self. When we lose friends in the process, it will hurt in the beginning—but later on, the pain will be replaced by longing for deeper, more meaningful connections. 

Even when you felt a connection in the past with friends you’ve lost, this new connection you’re about to forge with others will be so much deeper. It’s something you’ve never felt before, something you can neither imagine nor anticipate. 

So when you lose friends while having a spiritual awakening, know that despite the pain of losing them, it’s their departure that makes way for new people in your life—ones you will forge deep, lifelong connections with. 

11) You’re making way for new friends

Every ending is a new beginning. Losing friends during a spiritual awakening is not necessarily a bad thing when you realize you’re making way for new people into your life.

The clarity that a spiritual awakening grants us helps us learn that we’re still yet to meet people who will love us. Loss can hurt, but we must also allow ourselves to feel the excitement and anticipation of meeting new people we’re yet to make connections with. 

When we meet these people, it will become even clearer why we had to lose friends during a spiritual awakening. After allowing ourselves to grieve, we will be able to practice gratitude for the things they taught us, and the memories they made with us. 

After practicing gratitude for the past, we’ll be able to focus on the present and revel in the energy brought about by the new people we’ve met and we’re yet to meet. 

Get specific advice for your situation

When it comes to your personal spiritual journey, which toxic habits have you unknowingly picked up? 

Is it the need to be positive all the time? Is it a sense of superiority over those who lack spiritual awareness? 

Even well-meaning gurus and experts can get it wrong. 

Whatever these toxic habits are, one thing is for sure: it gets in the way of you having a real spiritual awakening, which results with you achieving the opposite of what you’re searching for. 

You will lose friends not because you’ve had a spiritual awakening, but because you’ve become toxic, which does more harm than good. 

I’ve mentioned the shaman Rudá Iandé before, and that’s because I truly believe he’s one of the only real spiritual gurus out there that could teach us what we need to learn about spirituality. 

In this eye-opening video, he explains how so many of us fall into the toxic spirituality trap. He himself went through a similar experience at the start of his journey. 

As he mentions in the video, spirituality should be about empowering yourself—not suppressing emotions, not judging others, but forming a pure connection with who you are at your core. 

Using this knowledge, we’d be able to forge meaningful connections with others, and the process of a spiritual awakening becomes easier even if you lose some friends along the way.

If this is what you’d like to achieve, click here to watch the free video.

Even if you’re well into your spiritual journey, it’s never too late to unlearn the myths you’ve bought for truth!