These conditions, when treated with respect and receiving appropriate support, can result in remarkable healing, deep positive transformation, and a higher level of functioning in everyday life. Stanislav Grof, "Spiritual Emergencies"
Those
of us engaged in efforts to deepen our self-awareness, if we're lucky,
have glimpsed moments of grace where we've transcended the demands of
ego fixations and have felt the veil of Maya lifting. Often this is a
gradual emergence of unconscious material into consciousness, where we
loosen the bonds of a particular Enneagram point. This kind of
transpersonal change has
also been described as spiritual emergence.
Most who undergo deep transformational experiences . . . go on to live seemingly rather ordinary lives but with an extraordinary inner perspective. (From Dance on Fire, Richard Jewett)
Becoming more familiar with the deep changes that are possible can help you hold steady when you experience one or more of the following:
- Powerful sensations of heat and/or energy pulsing through the spine, sometimes accompanied by an embodied sense that "something big is happening -- I don't know what!"
- A peak experience, mystical sense of awe, or feeling within profound love.
- Awakening of extrasensory perception, including precognition and telepathy, increased occasions of synchronicity or more than usual "coincidences."
- Feeling "possessed" by an archetype, a heretofore unknown and unfamiliar persona.
- An initiatory crisis, the sense of self as a "wounded healer" -- facing into our deepest wound to receive its blessing.
- Experiencing what we commonly know as "the dark night of the soul," a sense of something dying and not knowing what's on the "other side," even questioning one's own sanity.
- Similar to a peak experience but a more profound feeling of being at the center of or part of the cosmos.
Sometimes there's such a rapid, forceful shift in awareness we can be momentarily destabilized, which Stan and Christina Grof refer to as spiritual emergency. What first brings confusion and fear can lead to profound healing. Spiritual emergency "shatters your entire world only to rebuild it again. It occurs because it is time for the individual to awaken."
Here's a description of my first such experience:
I was at the airport, and as I walked toward my gate, the hundreds of people around me suddenly looked like pop-up figures, as in children's books where you turn the page and a scene pops up. I felt completely alone. The sensation passed. Then, as I boarded the plane, there it was again—as I looked down the aisles, the seats were filled with pop-up, cardboard passengers. I thought I was going crazy.With help from a friend, I was able to integrate this episode when I realized I'd had an unnerving and yet exciting realization of what my 'pop-up' experience symbolized— my worldview had so radically changed that everything I'd thought was true now seemed only an illusion.
The bad news is that your psyche just got blown to shreds, and the good news is that your psyche just got blown to shreds. (Dance on Fire)
So if, while experimenting with some of the suggestions here, you experience a psychospiritual/ transformational crisis, don't assume you're crazy. Tell your story to someone who will listen, someone who will celebrate with you the value of our psyches being blown to shreds.
