This is a life-changing story. It is about Claudia Navone, a former fashion editor of many publications in the UK and Australia who became renowned for her love of luxury and decades of decadent behaviour. Crushing divots on the polo field with her Yves Saint Laurent Tributes, she approached every party with aplomb and generally lived large. But then it all changed. Now she is a writer and teacher of consciousness. This is her story.

I never wanted a spiritual awakening. I don’t think I ever knew what it even meant. Everything that happened to me was a huge surprise; I wasn’t expecting it and I wasn’t prepared for it. And yet, I experienced this major spiritual awakening from one day to the other and all of a sudden I was shown everything that was, let’s say, hidden beyond the veils. I realised that when we return into physical incarnation we are born with these veils of illusions so we do not remember the real essence of who we truly are. Spiritual awakening simply means to remember.

It was in 2006 in Byron Bay, Australia, when I experienced this seminal moment that showed me so much more exists beyond our superficial perceptions. Immediately I began a journey of shedding a lot of my stuff – my heaviness, my wounds, my fears – and my life as I had known it was no more. I was in the fashion industry and I loved it, I loved every aspect of it, but when people are extremely creative there can be ego as well and of course I had my own very large ego. When I started to have this awakening I knew I couldn’t possibly stay in this world if I wanted to have a deep transformation on the level that was required of me from the Family of Light, these very large consciousnesses or spiritual presences as angels, archangels, enlightened masters that guided me from day one through the many upheavals, twists and turns of my sudden awakening.

I didn’t know it at the time, but really they were preparing me for something that I call my mission: to help humanity shift consciousness when it is needed, to write books like The Shapeshifter: A Tale From Glitter to Light, which there is no way I would have been able to do before. I had to go through this deep transformation and give up everything material. I was obsessed with what I wore, [but] I had to give all my clothes away – the decades of Prada, the Celine, Dior, all of it – and I gave up my home as well, my life as I had known it. Doing all these drastic things enabled me to get on this path and supported me to face myself in everything with full honesty, love and acceptance.

I began to shed all this heaviness and opened my heart because the spiritual journey is one of love and light. It’s a journey of love, as our hearts can be closed. We may have a beautiful heart, but we may also be afraid of loving and receiving love. That was very true for me. Why? Because I had this big ego that was protecting me. The ego is our protector and sometimes the heart shuts down to protect ourselves because we don’t know any better and we believe we need to follow this pattern in order to be strong, but actually it’s the opposite.

I had to relearn everything and understand that a strong heart is one that is open, a heart that can fully love, a heart that can fully forgive. That is something which is essential to the spiritual journey and which brought about an enormous transformation to me.

The other important element is our consciousness/light. I had to shed all of the belief systems and illusions which did not serve me at all. The illusions kept me in this state of fear, anxiety and insecurity, and that was all down to believing certain things that I grew up with. To transform ourselves is a journey of many learnings and I’m still learning every day.

Through all of this I have received a great stability, a great [understanding] of all of these teachings, which makes me much less fearful and allows me to create this amazing reality for myself, which I love.

And finally, after a decade, my love of fashion is returning – I’m enjoying dressing up again! And it makes me laugh. So, I guess I’m also breaking with this belief that, if someone is spiritual, they can’t enjoy fashion. You can be very spiritual and enjoy absolutely everything, but you have to truly free yourself firstly from all of this stuff and learn to live in the moment. To be really present, to live in the now instead of projecting oneself ahead in the future or back in the past.

Mine was a magical healing journey for which I am profoundly grateful. When your heart is open everything comes to you. Life becomes so easy – and you forgive, you don’t judge people. You know how everybody judges and talks about other people, the gossip? You lose all of that. There is no need for that because you are in a state of love, basically. You have a lot of love for everyone. Everything happens for yourself. You stop criticising yourself every five minutes. Without judgment you become a much more loving observer of yourself. You can discern what triggers you. You can observe yourself patiently. You can come out of those belief systems and bad habits and all of the blaming and judging games, which are still very powerful in our society. All that negativity suddenly disappears from your reality and you enter the most incredible flow in your life. You are always guided to fulfil the highest outcome in every situation and you truly experience internal freedom, as freedom comes from inside and has nothing to do with external actions affecting you.

Quite frankly, when you’re becoming conscious you can create a reality for yourself that suits you, that fits with what your heart wants and needs. Not your mind, but your heart. You’re mastering your consciousness and mastering your mind. Those thousands of thoughts you may have had aren’t there any more. That’s achieved through learning how to meditate, for example, which is a really important aspect of the spiritual journey.

Since 2007 I have been practising meditation. Sometimes I have long meditations, but really what I do every day is simply connect to my heart and switch on some of the key elements of my body of light – because with our physical body we also own a body of light. The secret to transformation is connecting with this body of light that we all have. You can do it through meditation; you can do it very rapidly once you know what you’re doing. In the beginning everybody needs to spend time connecting to their light and heart through the practice of meditation.

I don’t have any regrets and I would never go back to where I was before experiencing all the suffering and not quite understanding what to do about it. Now I live in what is called a high vibrational state of being and this is why everything grows in my reality in such a graceful way. Physically, I’m in 3D, which is the density of the earthly dimension, but in reality I live in a much higher frequency and that is what I teach others: to ascend. How to transform their consciousness, how to become freer. How to connect to their higher self, which is our super-consciousness. Everything you need to know to lift yourself off the heaviness of 3D.

I do this by teaching groups around the world in the physical and on Zoom, writing books and occasionally offering private sessions. Witnessing people evolve and grow is what gives me fulfilment.

Florence, where my family lives, Ibiza and London are the three places where I spend most time every year. There is the faraway travelling, too, which I haven’t done much of because of Covid, but I love going to Brazil and America. I’m going to Los Angeles next year and of course to Australia, which is very important to me as it’s the place where my spiritual mentor, Qala, lives. She is the founder of the Divine University, where I am now a mentor. Recently, I have taught in London, Milan and Ibiza, and I have begun to write my next book. I have a life as busy as when I used to be in fashion, maybe more so, as I live in many different dimensions simultaneously.

My own journey has obviously been intense, and maybe extreme, as I needed to develop all my spiritual gifts to be able to manifest my spiritual mission. Not everyone needs to go through this, to give away all that you own, but everyone can get on their own spiritual journey for the simple reasons of being more at peace, of being happier and creating a better reality for themselves.

Doing courses and workshops will begin to shift consciousness from our fears and conditioning. Because – and this is important – we are all the creators of our own reality. We create with every thought we have and every word we say. That’s why we need to be positive, because every negative thought creates some negativity in our reality. Every negative doing creates negativity and karma. You can get stuck in a lot of things. That’s why I had to relearn the way that I spoke and thought, in order to manifest a reality I could truly love. We all have this power to manifest, all of us. So be careful about what you want to manifest, and be careful about what you think, say and do, because your reality is absolutely created by yourself.

To begin to open your heart and learn to switch on your own light: that is the most important thing, because everybody has so much love and light within themselves already, and when you start to switch it on you’re really beginning to transform.

Portrait by Fernanda Negrini. Taken from Issue 19 of 10 Magazine Australia – FUTURE, BALANCE, HEALING – out NOW.

@navone_claudia