In a nutshell, I think of a "spiritual emergency", "spiritual crisis", or "transformation crisis" as a tumultuous de-stabilizing period of time while a person is undergoing dramatic shifts in their fundamental sense of self and reality, which can lead to enhanced or damaged wellbeing based on how it's supported.
It feels right to say that there's never been a time in history when more people have been talking about and experiencing spiritual "awakenings," entering expanded states of consciousness and exploring new realities beyond the limits of our familiar sense of self and reality. More and more of us are crossing an invisible threshold, whether deliberately or spontaneously, between the consensual, shared sense of what is real, and a sense of reality largely un-shared by those around us.
What we perceive in these states of consciousness can dramatically challenges our paradigms of reality, and crossing back and forth between these thresholds is a double-edged sword, sometimes revelatory, liberating, serene, and other times disorienting, isolating, maddening and debilitating. Needless to say, these shifts in consciousness can thrust us into a process in which our inner and outer realities are re-arranging in often dramatically destabilizing ways. We can end up careening towards what feels like madness, and others may be inclined to label it as such. This is when spiritual emergence morphs into full-on spiritual emergency and we find ourselves desperately trying and failing to steer a ship with no helm and a floor that is splintering beneath our feet.
It's so important to be able to support and receive the right support from those who understand the process of spiritual emergency, because navigated in a certain way, they have such enormous potential for positive transformation, growth, and a newfound sense of flourishing and significance in our lives.
What we perceive in these states of consciousness can dramatically challenges our paradigms of reality, and crossing back and forth between these thresholds is a double-edged sword, sometimes revelatory, liberating, serene, and other times disorienting, isolating, maddening and debilitating. Needless to say, these shifts in consciousness can thrust us into a process in which our inner and outer realities are re-arranging in often dramatically destabilizing ways. We can end up careening towards what feels like madness, and others may be inclined to label it as such. This is when spiritual emergence morphs into full-on spiritual emergency and we find ourselves desperately trying and failing to steer a ship with no helm and a floor that is splintering beneath our feet.
It's so important to be able to support and receive the right support from those who understand the process of spiritual emergency, because navigated in a certain way, they have such enormous potential for positive transformation, growth, and a newfound sense of flourishing and significance in our lives.
Lack of understanding in both the medical and spiritual sphere
With spiritual emergency education, there are two main fronts - educating the medical world and spiritual communities. Much of spiritual emergency awareness is focused, importantly, on the medical world, and helping it understand that what can look like psychopathology can be a normative spiritual experience.
What needs to be seen is that it's equally critical for the spiritual world to be educated about it, and that what can look like a normative spiritual experience can often lead into psychopathology that requires appropriate intervention and professional support that takes a holistic, psycho-spiritual approach.
While the medical world is known to reduce all spiritual problems to having a medical solution, the spiritual world tends to do the inverse, reducing all psychological problems to having a purely spiritual solution (both perpetuating un-nuanced and imbalanced dualistic frameworks) and both have dangerous and tragic consequences .
With spiritual emergency education, there are two main fronts - educating the medical world and spiritual communities. Much of spiritual emergency awareness is focused, importantly, on the medical world, and helping it understand that what can look like psychopathology can be a normative spiritual experience.
What needs to be seen is that it's equally critical for the spiritual world to be educated about it, and that what can look like a normative spiritual experience can often lead into psychopathology that requires appropriate intervention and professional support that takes a holistic, psycho-spiritual approach.
While the medical world is known to reduce all spiritual problems to having a medical solution, the spiritual world tends to do the inverse, reducing all psychological problems to having a purely spiritual solution (both perpetuating un-nuanced and imbalanced dualistic frameworks) and both have dangerous and tragic consequences .
Lack of understanding in non-dual spiritual circles
Spiritual emergency is an extremely common, natural stage in deep transformation processes, so much so that a field of Spiritual Emergence and Spiritual Emergency emerged over 30 years ago, kicked off by Stan and Christina Grof, to study it, raise awareness and ultimately to learn how to best support others in a psycho-spiritual crisis. Today, research and support organizations for spiritual emergencies abound, yet much of the spiritual world, and in my experience, the modern non-dual teaching world show little to no acknowledgment, understanding, or experience whatsoever in supporting it, whether personally or by offering adequate support resources and this is contributing to a vast number of people reporting severe adverse effects from not just self-negating non-dual teachings, but also the experiential shift in perception they lead to.
On the contrary, what you do often see in the non-dual "ego dissolution" or ego death camp is that any acknowledged difficulties in the process of "ego deconstruction" come along with subtly or overtly mocking our egos for "kicking and screaming," stubbornly resisting it's own demise, along with all sorts of derogatory, shaming put-downs like weak, unripe, lacking spiritual warriorship, desperately clinging to your "me prison" bars trying to hold onto itself and its sanity. It can range from negligence, over-simplification and lack of empathy, to downright degrading, cruel, and what I see as reckless endangerment.
Any kind of dismissal and judgmental attitude create shame in which the person experiencing spiritual emergency makes them less likely to mention it and seek support for it, and follow dangerous blanket advice which typically involves some degree of seeing that the one experiencing the emergency doesn't exist/is illusory! Other common suggestions to just witnessing it neutrally, to engaging in deeper, more frequent meditation or contemplative inquiries into the non-existence/illusory nature of "the one who is suffering" such as asking "can you find the one who is suffering?" which can make the spiritual emergency, which often involves things like the unwanted loss of one's sense of agency and adverse effects of ego dissolution worse, putting people in even greater danger. I frequently have seen that when a student brings up severe distress they are experiencing from their teachings/teaching methods, the teacher's response will be un-empathic, dismissive, and often involve some degree of blaming it on the experiencer's misunderstandings of the teachings, their "unripeness," or any other number of inadequacies, while being unwilling to engage in mature thoughtful reflection on aspects of their teachings and/or teaching methods that might be contributing to harm, nor taking the responsibility to learn what they can do to minimize it, and showing compassion by making those changes.
I'm excited about new research studies that are revealing not just the ubiquitously advertised benefits, but the adverse effects of pursuing and/or "successfully" experiencing the loss of one's sense of self, and as this gains attention I hope it will become increasingly less possible/acceptable to dismiss it, downplay it, and perhaps most importantly, for teachers to forgo disclosing known risks of the ego dissolution path they have set themselves up as a guide for. It will help support my efforts to raise awareness about the negligence of teaching the loss of self indiscriminately, as a blanket solution for suffering/ as the pinnacle of wellbeing, and my suggestion that we begin to hold non-dual teachers accountable for the same attention to "set and setting" and ethical protocols of facilitating psychedelic ego dissolution including screening/assessment, preparation and support for integration, to help protect the safety and wellbeing of spiritual seekers. This is urgent because I believe that the spiritual circle today associated with the highest rate of spiritual emergencies is self-negating non-dual circles that teach indiscriminately teach ego dissolution/death and the loss of one's personal sense of self as the pinnacle of psycho-spiritual achievement and the end of of suffering. Read some first hand account from experiencers.
Spiritual emergency is an extremely common, natural stage in deep transformation processes, so much so that a field of Spiritual Emergence and Spiritual Emergency emerged over 30 years ago, kicked off by Stan and Christina Grof, to study it, raise awareness and ultimately to learn how to best support others in a psycho-spiritual crisis. Today, research and support organizations for spiritual emergencies abound, yet much of the spiritual world, and in my experience, the modern non-dual teaching world show little to no acknowledgment, understanding, or experience whatsoever in supporting it, whether personally or by offering adequate support resources and this is contributing to a vast number of people reporting severe adverse effects from not just self-negating non-dual teachings, but also the experiential shift in perception they lead to.
On the contrary, what you do often see in the non-dual "ego dissolution" or ego death camp is that any acknowledged difficulties in the process of "ego deconstruction" come along with subtly or overtly mocking our egos for "kicking and screaming," stubbornly resisting it's own demise, along with all sorts of derogatory, shaming put-downs like weak, unripe, lacking spiritual warriorship, desperately clinging to your "me prison" bars trying to hold onto itself and its sanity. It can range from negligence, over-simplification and lack of empathy, to downright degrading, cruel, and what I see as reckless endangerment.
Any kind of dismissal and judgmental attitude create shame in which the person experiencing spiritual emergency makes them less likely to mention it and seek support for it, and follow dangerous blanket advice which typically involves some degree of seeing that the one experiencing the emergency doesn't exist/is illusory! Other common suggestions to just witnessing it neutrally, to engaging in deeper, more frequent meditation or contemplative inquiries into the non-existence/illusory nature of "the one who is suffering" such as asking "can you find the one who is suffering?" which can make the spiritual emergency, which often involves things like the unwanted loss of one's sense of agency and adverse effects of ego dissolution worse, putting people in even greater danger. I frequently have seen that when a student brings up severe distress they are experiencing from their teachings/teaching methods, the teacher's response will be un-empathic, dismissive, and often involve some degree of blaming it on the experiencer's misunderstandings of the teachings, their "unripeness," or any other number of inadequacies, while being unwilling to engage in mature thoughtful reflection on aspects of their teachings and/or teaching methods that might be contributing to harm, nor taking the responsibility to learn what they can do to minimize it, and showing compassion by making those changes.
I'm excited about new research studies that are revealing not just the ubiquitously advertised benefits, but the adverse effects of pursuing and/or "successfully" experiencing the loss of one's sense of self, and as this gains attention I hope it will become increasingly less possible/acceptable to dismiss it, downplay it, and perhaps most importantly, for teachers to forgo disclosing known risks of the ego dissolution path they have set themselves up as a guide for. It will help support my efforts to raise awareness about the negligence of teaching the loss of self indiscriminately, as a blanket solution for suffering/ as the pinnacle of wellbeing, and my suggestion that we begin to hold non-dual teachers accountable for the same attention to "set and setting" and ethical protocols of facilitating psychedelic ego dissolution including screening/assessment, preparation and support for integration, to help protect the safety and wellbeing of spiritual seekers. This is urgent because I believe that the spiritual circle today associated with the highest rate of spiritual emergencies is self-negating non-dual circles that teach indiscriminately teach ego dissolution/death and the loss of one's personal sense of self as the pinnacle of psycho-spiritual achievement and the end of of suffering. Read some first hand account from experiencers.
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These two studies show findings that challenge the assumption that the loss of personal sense of self in a non-dual awakening context is the pinnacle of psycho-spiritual wellbeing:
Complexities and Challenges of Nonduality - Elizabeth Stephens, research study
Losing Oneself: Persistent Nonduality, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Mental Health, and Memory - Elizabeth Stephens, dissertation
Research studies by the Cheetah House team- Incredible organization leading the charge in researching, bringing to light, and supporting the adverse affects of meditative experience:
The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists - Jared R. Lindahl, et al.
I Have This Feeling of not Really Being Here - Buddhist Meditation and Changes in Sense of Self - Jared R. Lindahl & Willoughby B. Britton
Somatic Energies and Emotional Traumas: A Qualitative Study of Practice-Related Challenges Reported by Vajrayāna Buddhists
Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention Criteria for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives From Buddhist Meditation Teachers and Practitioners
related article:
The Dangerous Art of Depersonalization - What psychedelics, psychosis, and mindfulness can teach us about no-self, and why set and setting play such an important role in ego deconstruction - Alex Tzelnic
*Header Art - Jeffrey Derring
*2nd Painting - Joan Sonnenberg
These two studies show findings that challenge the assumption that the loss of personal sense of self in a non-dual awakening context is the pinnacle of psycho-spiritual wellbeing:
Complexities and Challenges of Nonduality - Elizabeth Stephens, research study
Losing Oneself: Persistent Nonduality, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Mental Health, and Memory - Elizabeth Stephens, dissertation
Research studies by the Cheetah House team- Incredible organization leading the charge in researching, bringing to light, and supporting the adverse affects of meditative experience:
The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists - Jared R. Lindahl, et al.
I Have This Feeling of not Really Being Here - Buddhist Meditation and Changes in Sense of Self - Jared R. Lindahl & Willoughby B. Britton
Somatic Energies and Emotional Traumas: A Qualitative Study of Practice-Related Challenges Reported by Vajrayāna Buddhists
Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention Criteria for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives From Buddhist Meditation Teachers and Practitioners
related article:
The Dangerous Art of Depersonalization - What psychedelics, psychosis, and mindfulness can teach us about no-self, and why set and setting play such an important role in ego deconstruction - Alex Tzelnic
*Header Art - Jeffrey Derring
*2nd Painting - Joan Sonnenberg