Inflation after awakening

After an awakening or deep insight, there is often a rebound phase that gets misunderstood. Something real opened. Perspective widened. The sense of self loosened. But instead of integrating quietly, the ego reclaims the experience and grows around it.

This is inflation.

It shows up as certainty instead of curiosity. Identity instead of humility. The feeling is “I see more than others now,” even if subtly. Language shifts toward teaching, correcting, or diagnosing others. Boundaries blur. Ordinary limits feel unnecessary. The person is not pretending. They are mis-locating the insight.

Awakening reveals awareness.

Inflation confuses that awareness with the self.

Nothing is wrong with the awakening. The issue is timing and digestion. Insight arrived faster than character, nervous system, and relational maturity could absorb it. Stoic terms would call this a failure of judgment, not a failure of truth. Yogic terms would call it prana without grounding. Psychological terms would call it ego compensation.

Healthy integration looks quieter:

Less need to announce understanding

More patience with contradiction

Willingness to be ordinary again

Respect for limits, roles, and responsibility

Real awakening simplifies. Inflation complicates.

The correction is not suppression or shame. It is return. Back to work. Back to practice. Back to being a student of life instead of its narrator. Over time, the insight sinks below identity and becomes orientation rather than posture.

Awakening that survives integration becomes wisdom.
Awakening that resists it becomes distortion.