Читать книгу The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis to Personal Transformation - Emma Inc. Bragdon - Страница 5

Spiritual emergence is a natural process of human development in which an individual goes beyond normal personal feelings and desires—ego—into the transpersonal, increasing relatedness to Higher Power, or God. There are usually critical points in that process when a person feels disoriented and for a time is unable to function as usual in ordinary life, relationships, work, chores, etc., while he becomes acclimated to more subtle levels of consciousness. The end result is positive transformation, observable in increased compassion, creativity, and a desire to be of service to all of life. Like crossing a sword-bridge, this transition time demands more focused inner attention and special care, so as to see things as they really are. The stress of the situation may make things appear more threatening than they actually are. As the story of Lancelot suggests, it may seem that one is walking toward two hostile lions when actually there is only a small, shy lizard on the other side of the sword-bridge.

When spiritual emergence is punctuated by profound emotions, visions, psychosomatic illness, and compelling desires to behave in unusual ways, including suicidal thoughts, the spiritual emergence becomes a crisis, a spiritual emergency. Although the course of growth toward higher levels of functioning and perceiving life follows a predictable progression; spiritual emergency is generally unpredictable, erupting chaotically and spewing forth contents of the psyche that demand attention.

Spiritual emergencies happen in a number of ways. Both spiritual study and inner psychological exploration can precipitate intense spiritual experiences. Resuscitation technology and many types of drugs, including anesthetics, can trigger intense spiritual phenomena. Other catalysts to spiritual emergency are emotional or physical distress, time of life, and extraordinary sexual experiences. How and when spiritual emergency happens is discussed in depth in subsequent chapters. A synopsis of techniques for helping someone in spiritual emergency is in the concluding chapter. The intention of this book is to build a bridge for positive communication between those people going through the experience and the people who care for them—both personal friends and professionals.

In order to address a broad spectrum of people, I have attempted to find simple terms and relatively simple instructions for managing a spiritual awakening. The path into transpersonal levels of consciousness is tricky, and tests us at every turn. People must seek the help they need relevant to their level of understanding of spiritual emergence.