Integrating Spiritual Experiences
Scientific psychology cannot fully explain spiritual mysteries. Parapsychology has made important advances but is often unfairly debunked by rationalists who ignore repeated findings of well-controlled experiments (see Radin, 1997). 1 But no pronouncement of science can deny that spirituality and religion are crucial inner realities for many people. I believe that psychotherapy can uniquely help people on spiritual journeys.
People may have intense and challenging experiences on that journey. Sometimes they may find themselves in a spiritual crisis, where they feel overwhelmed. Some psychotherapists who accept that people can have spiritual experiences are also trained in stabilizing those in crisis. Also, there are clergy who are also trained in counseling. A skilled member of clergy can help someone explore their unique, personal experiences and use religion as an emotional container instead of limiting experience in favor of dogmatic beliefs.
My Journey
In 1977, I had an unexpected spiritual awakening that included a near-death experience without any physical illness. Less than two days later, I met a Christian spiritual teacher and renowned psychic. Within two weeks, I encountered and took refuge with a Tibetan Buddhist master who further quickened my journey. Thus began a conscious, personal relationship with spirituality that continues today. I later trained with teachers in other traditions, including Kundalini Yoga, and made many small steps toward bringing together the seeming opposites of worldly life and spiritual calling.
After my spiritual awakening, I didn’t see psychotherapy as an option. I feared that most therapists would dismiss my spiritual experiences or pathologize them. It would take years before I learned that there were depth approaches to psychotherapy that honor spirituality and religion. The branch of transpersonal psychology I chose was Jungian analysis, which helped me further develop my intuition and creativity, my connection to spirit, and my emotional strength. This work was accomplished in the deepening relationship with my analyst who was also a student of the shamanic traditions. He helped me see the wisdom revealed in my dreams. Although Jung’s psychology was the path that helped me, I believe that each person’s journey is unique and should be honored as such.
My spiritual awakening included a vocation to write, and that became my first professional career. It also motivated me to become a psychotherapist, where one of my specialties was helping people with spiritual or religious concerns. Now that I have retired, I hope to write more about my own spiritual experiences and the scholarship and inner work of integrating them into a pragmatic life.
The Call of Spirit
There are many paths to spiritual awakening. The transcendent reaches out to people in due time, often activated by spiritual yearning and practices. A connection with spirit may reveal itself through the world’s religious traditions or through personal revelations to those who hadn’t considered themselves religious.
Spiritual experience may come through dreams, synchronicities (meaningful coincidences), the yearnings of the heart, and the strivings of the mind. It often first appears during times of crisis, great loss or personal challenge, despair or emptiness, or when one suffers and sees no solution. For some, spiritual awakening can come out of the blue, without any personal crisis, or as the result of prayer, meditation, or an intense physical experience, such as childbirth or life-threatening injury or illness.
Typical Issues
When one has a spiritual experience, it usually stirs up personal issues and wounds. It can also raise important questions by disrupting one’s previous worldview and calling into question old habits. Emotional turbulence that follows such encounters can be grist for the mill of psychological growth. Psychotherapy occupies a place in between transcendent experience and worldly life. It can serve a bridging function, helping one forge stronger connections between spirituality and everyday life.
For successful psychotherapy that engages a person's spiritual concerns, respecting their religious beliefs is commensurate with honoring ethnic and cultural diversity. Although the following list is not complete, issues that may be addressed psychologically include:
Struggling with belief and doubt
Questioning one’s faith or beliefs
Wondering whether to cling to belief or also allow learning through experience
Concerns about a spiritual teacher, guru, pastor or priest
Perplexed with the Higher Power concept in 12-step programs
Discerning spiritual bypass — where spirituality is used as defense — from giving spiritual practices enough chance to succeed
Overcoming spiritual inflation — often people first having spiritual experiences can develop a sense of specialness. I don’t believe that a person needs any spiritual experiences to live a spiritual life, one that is focused on love, truth, integrity and service
Health issues and spirituality
Discerning spiritual experience from mental illness
Coping with mental illness without denying spirituality
Wondering whether physical symptoms are spiritual side-effects 2
Relationships and spiritual concerns
Conflicts caused by differing spiritual or religious beliefs
Friends or family don’t respect, support or understand your spirituality
Maintaining relationships despite inner turmoil and ecstasy
Increased needs for time alone
Exploring your relationship to the divine by recognizing your concept or image of God 3
Outgrowing old relationships
Increased sensitivity
Spiritual emergence activating repressed thoughts and feelings
Coping with intense emotions, thoughts and perceptions
Contagion of feelings
Intuitive perceptions
Sensing non-physical presences and discerning this from mental health issues or brain phenomena 2
Exploring the mystery of dreams and visions
Precognition
Clairvoyance
Lucid dreams
Big dreams that seem to comment on larger realities than your life
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs)
Exploring dreams that seem mundane to find guidance for living
Self-discovery
Increased self-knowledge
Increased love
Finding one’s vocation
Readers familiar with Jungian psychology will find a detailed discussion of spirituality and psychological transformation in my dissertation. Its introduction and a full copy in text-searchable format can be accessed through the following link: Individuation and Subtle Body: A Commentary on Jung’s Kundalini Seminar. (An excellent study aide for reading the dissertation is Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Inc.)
Footnotes
1. Radin, D. S. (1997). The conscious universe: The scientific truth of psychic phenomena. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
2. Psycho-spiritual phenomena can be experienced physically. However, a person who is undergoing spiritual awakening may dismiss physical sensations as being spiritually caused. I believe that it's important to be assessed by medical professionals to rule out or treat a physical illness. This approach to ensuring physical safety is something I do for myself and my loved ones.
3. Just as people have relationships with other people that may be healthy or unhealthy, their attitudes toward spirit may be shaped by what they learned in early family relationships. Or, in some cultural worldviews, attitudes may be shaped by past life experiences. For example, a person who was made to feel guilty by their parents may feel guilty when they attempt to relate to God. As they heal the negative impact of their early relationships, they may open more fully to their experience of God. I differentiate the image or experience of God, otherwise known as the Godhead, from the Creator, because one’s God image may be distorted by conditioning. It is for this reason that some religious traditions refer to the actuality of God beyond the God image as being indescribable or transcending attributes.