Читать книгу The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis to Personal Transformation - Emma Inc. Bragdon - Страница 12

Spiritual emergency is a term that describes critical points in the process of spiritual emergence. Spiritual emergency marks a period of spiritual experiences that is overwhelming, when a person is struggling to integrate the feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and energy associated with the episode. It can happen that the crisis may be incapacitating for a time, making it impossible to carry on normal activities of work or childrearing. In this case, the person needs the care of someone who perceives his inner experiences as meaningful. This helper would be a support person who follows him through the full cycle of his crisis and helps him find a conceptual framework to make sense of the experience.

Intense spiritual experiences and inspired states of mind may often look similar to psychosis. In a purely spiritual experience persons may be preoccupied with an inner experience to the extent that they may not care to communicate with others. Instead, their communication is taking place with inner guides or higher forces. If given the proper context and guidance, persons undergoing these experiences can reach higher levels of functioning and bring spiritual gifts to their human community. On the other hand, visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, and inability to communicate are symptoms of psychotic behavior that may indicate a person is falling from a normal level of functioning into a diseased state. Psychotic states that are pathological, rather than gateways to higher functioning, are very real, and need to be treated by health professionals.