Spiritual Awakening or Psychosis? Understanding the Difference

Why This Matters

In the spiritual community, we often speak of profound awakenings, energetic shifts, and encounters with unseen forces. Many of us have experienced moments of altered perception, deep knowing, and even encounters with entities, implants, or external energetic influences. These experiences are well-documented in spiritual literature and taught by highly respected pioneers who specialize in energy clearing and entity removal.

At the same time, mainstream psychology describes similar experiences—hearing voices, seeing things others don’t, feeling disconnected from reality, grandiosity—as symptoms of psychosis and mental health disorders. If the symptoms overlap, where do we draw the line? How do we determine whether an experience is a spiritual transformation or a mental health crisis?

This question became urgent for me after a recent discussion in a workshop on Umana Technique©, an advanced energy modality. Unlike other healing practices that assume anyone drawn to a session is ready for it, Umana requires discernment. If someone is in an emotionally fragile state, experiencing high stress, or in the midst of personal upheaval, a full 60-minute Umana session may be too intense, potentially destabilizing them further. Similarly, the highly advanced Umana workshop is designed for individuals who have done significant self-work and are prepared for a high-frequency shift.

During this discussion, the issue of psychosis came up. A key red flag? When people begin to believe they have entities that need to be removed. At first, this deeply concerned me because entity removal is a real and widely recognized aspect of spiritual work. There are well-established practitioners who have spent decades specializing in this. So, I had to ask—is there a fine line between spiritual challenges and psychosis, or is the line clear? The answer is both simple and complex.

What Is Psychosis?

Psychosis is defined as a state where a person loses touch with reality. It can be triggered by extreme stress, trauma, sleep deprivation, postpartum changes, substance use, or an underlying mental health condition such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Common symptoms include:

• Hallucinations (hearing voices, seeing things others don’t)
• Delusions (strong beliefs that don’t align with reality)
• Disorganized thinking (speech that doesn’t make sense, jumping between unrelated ideas)
• Derealization/Depersonalization (feeling detached from the world or from oneself)
• Paranoia (believing others are controlling, following, or harming you)
• Emotional distress (fear, confusion, intense distress)
• Grandiosity (having an exaggerated sense of self-importance, believing one has a unique or divine mission, or feeling superior to others in a way that disconnects from reality).

These are the same symptoms that many spiritual seekers experience during awakenings. So where do we draw the line?

How Do We Differentiate a Spiritual Awakening from Psychosis?

The key differences lie in functionality, control, and integration.

1. Functionality: Can You Navigate Daily Life?

• Spiritual experiences, even intense ones, often lead to greater clarity, personal growth, and integration over time.
• Psychosis disrupts daily functioning, making it difficult to work, maintain relationships, or care for oneself.

If someone is unable to manage basic tasks, can’t sleep, or is spiraling into distress, it may not be a spiritual experience—it may be a crisis.

2. Control: Can You Navigate the Experience?

• In a spiritual awakening, even if overwhelming, there are grounding techniques, meditation, or energy work that can help. The person may have moments of clarity and a sense of inner guidance.
• In psychosis, the experience feels chaotic and uncontrollable. No amount of meditation or grounding brings relief.

If someone can’t find ways to stabilize themselves, they may need professional help.

3. Emotional Impact: Fear vs. Expansion

• Spiritual growth can involve discomfort but typically leads to deeper wisdom, peace, and transformation.
• Psychosis is often accompanied by intense fear, paranoia, or distress, without a clear sense of gaining insight.

If the experience is only frightening and brings no clarity, it may be a mental health concern.

4. Integration: Can You Make Sense of It?

• Spiritual experiences may be strange but often have a narrative, a lesson, or a transformative purpose.
• Psychotic symptoms feel random, confusing, or fragmented, making it hard to find meaning.

If someone is lost in their experience without gaining insight, it may not be a spiritual breakthrough

The Issue of Entity Removal and Spiritual Addiction

One of the biggest concerns raised in the workshop was that people experiencing psychosis often believe they have entities attached to them. This is deeply challenging because entity work is a real part of spiritual practice. There are highly skilled practitioners who remove attachments and implants, and many of us have personally felt the effects of these energies.

So, how do we discern the difference?

1. Is the person functional, stable, and in control?
2. Are they grounded, or are they spiraling into paranoia and fear?
3. Does energy work help, or do they become increasingly distressed?

If someone is obsessing over entities, feeling trapped in fear, and unable to find peace—this could be a mental health crisis, not a spiritual issue. This concern is particularly prominent in the UK, where some individuals with a history of addiction have turned to spirituality as a new high. In these cases, spiritual practice becomes another form of escapism rather than genuine growth. While I have rarely encountered this personally, I recognize that spiritual euphoria can become addictive, and discernment is critical.

Why This Conversation Is Crucial

We, as spiritual practitioners, have a responsibility to discern when someone is having a true awakening versus when they are in crisis. We must not contribute to someone’s mental decline by assuming that every experience is spiritual.

This is why:

• We must demystify psychosis and remove the stigma around it.
• We must recognize when spiritual work is unsafe for someone in an unstable state.
• We must encourage open dialogue between spiritual and mental health professionals.

This article is not written from the perspective of a mental health expert, but rather as a spiritual seeker and practitioner who finds this question urgent and necessary. If you are exploring this topic for yourself or others, I encourage you to consult mental health professionals who can provide insight beyond the spiritual framework.

Can You Navigate It? The Crucial Question

If you are experiencing a period where you truly feel that entities, attachments, or energetic disturbances are affecting your well-being—causing you distress, dysfunction, or a sense that something external is overpowering you—the next steps you take are crucial.

At this point, you may recognize that your experience could go either way. This is where discernment becomes key:

• Are you able to put in place a concrete plan for yourself?
• Are the steps you take actually helping you feel better?

This is a defining moment. If you can actively support your own well-being through rituals, clearings, meditation, energy work, or even external tools such as frequencies that promote a balanced energetic state, and you begin to feel better and more stable, this suggests that your experience is spiritual in nature and something you are capable of navigating.

However, if your situation worsens, if paranoia grows, if your distress increases, if you find yourself spiraling without relief despite everything you try—this is a clear indication that the experience is no longer within the realm of a spiritual challenge. Instead, it signals an urgent need for medical care and mental health support.

Again, this article is not a diagnostic tool, and no one should rely solely on it to determine their mental state or that of a loved one. If there is any doubt, it is always essential to seek professional guidance from a mental health expert.

From a purely spiritual perspective, the distinction becomes clear when we look at whether someone can effectively navigate their experience. While some symptoms may appear to overlap, the key is in understanding the trajectory of the experience—whether it leads to empowerment and stability or deeper distress and dysfunction. And now, being reminded that spiritual highs can become addictive, it is even more important to continue having these conversations and bringing these topics into the light.

The Fine Line Between Spiritual Purpose and Grandiosity

One of the more unsettling overlaps between mental health symptoms and spiritual beliefs is the concept of grandiosity—the idea that someone believes they have an exceptionally important role, divine intelligence, or a past life as someone of great significance. Many people on a spiritual path experience a deep sense of purpose, but where does it cross into unhealthy territory?

It’s easy to stop in your tracks when reading about psychosis and other mental health disorders and think, Wait… that actually sounds a lot like spirituality. The overlap can be jarring. Many people feel they have a mission, a divine role to fulfill, or past-life knowledge that informs their journey. And in truth, these ideas are central to spiritual traditions across cultures.

The distinction, however, lies in attachment and humility.

• A healthy spiritual perspective acknowledges purpose but remains humble about it. A spiritually aligned person understands that while they may have an important role, so does everyone else. Their journey is not about being superior but about contributing and serving in a way that honours the interconnectedness of all beings.
• Grandiosity, on the other hand, is often rooted in ego, superiority, and entitlement. It becomes unhealthy when a person believes they are above others, more advanced, more special, or deserving of special privileges. Instead of seeing their gifts as a responsibility, they see them as a justification for status or special treatment.

From a mental health perspective, grandiose delusions can be a sign of mania, schizophrenia, or narcissistic tendencies, where a person is convinced they are a chosen one, a messiah, or uniquely superior to all others. In contrast, in healthy spirituality, someone might still believe they have a calling but without an inflated sense of self-importance—instead, they recognize that every soul has an important purpose.

Navigating Spiritual Spaces with Discernment

The spiritual community is vast, and with the rise of social media, there is an overwhelming amount of information, practitioners, and self-proclaimed leaders. If you scroll through spiritual Facebook groups, YouTube channels, or online forums, it’s easy to see how much people are navigating, searching, and questioning. However, with that comes the need for discernment.

• Are spiritual leaders coming from a place of service, humility, and guidance?
• Or are they more focused on being special, making money, or standing above others?
• Is the emphasis on empowerment and growth, or on dependency and idolization?

This is where we need more conversation—not judgment, but discernment. What are the qualities we should cultivate in ourselves as practitioners, teachers, or seekers? How do we ensure that we are embodying humility, integrity, and supportiveness, rather than falling into the ego trap of feeling superior or ‘more advanced’?

The reality is, spiritual spaces attract all kinds of people—some genuinely seeking transformation, others seeking identity, power, energetic highs, medicinal highs or recognition. And because of this, discernment is essential in both personal practice and in choosing who to learn from.

When Spiritual Challenges Feel Like a Crisis

Just before I began the Umana Technique© teacher training, I was going through a particularly difficult period with my health. I was experiencing chronic migraines, exhaustion, and intense brain fog—I felt absolutely awful. Naturally, I took a spiritual approach to understanding what was behind it, working with other practitioners, clearing energy, and seeking guidance. But for a while, things only seemed to get worse instead of better, and it was a deeply frustrating and distressing time.

At first, nothing I tried was actually helping—it was making me feel worse. I sought out other practitioners for support, but the more I tried to resolve it externally, the worse it seemed to become. It wasn’t until I made the decision to fully take responsibility for my own healing that I saw a shift. I committed to clearing myself without relying on external help, working intensively with the tools and insight I already had, and following the guidance I was receiving. From that point, things transformed rapidly—I felt significantly lighter, clearer, and stronger. As always, the universe is infinitely intelligent, creating experiences with multiple layers of meaning woven into them. This was a powerful reminder that I am fully capable of supporting myself through any situation and that I have the knowledge, strength, support, and ability to navigate whatever arises.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this entire process was actually preparing me for the immense energy surge of the Umana teacher training. It wasn’t something negative happening to me—it was something deeply transformational happening for me. The work required for this level of energetic expansion is significant, and to receive such high-frequency light, you have to make space. That means going through layers of spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical clearing, whether you consciously realize it or not.

At the time, I felt like I was under energetic attack—which, in the lead-up to significant cosmic shifts like the equinox, many of us do experience. But now, I can see that even those difficult moments were part of the journey of light. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, was aligning everything exactly as it needed to be. Even when things feel painful, confusing, or overwhelming, even when we perceive something as dark or attacking, at the end of the day, the universe is all love—it encompasses all experiences within its full spectrum.

This experience deepened my trust in the process. It showed me that even when challenges arise, even when I feel depleted or unsure, there is always a greater intelligence at work. It reminded me to lean into my own power, to trust that I have the tools to clear, strengthen, and align myself, and to embrace every experience—even the difficult ones—as an essential part of my expansion.