Spiritual Emergencies

My path to the door of Sanctuary for Mind, Body, & Spirit, sparked in August of 1987; the sign at the fork in the road read Harmonic Convergence, which meant almost nothing to me then. I felt it was media generated hype, giving it only passing interest. In hindsight, I can mark it as a time when a subtle but profound shift began to stir inside me. I was in my late twenties, on the career track,
and living in central California.

Come autumn, I accepted and started a job in Louisville, Kentucky. The Arts organization I joined began a series of lunchtime programs for employees as a means of stress reduction, hoping to foster more amiable working relations. One of the offerings was a free yoga class. The instructor came to our facility three times a week; the only condition to participating was showing up. She was an elderly woman, ensconced in her westernized perception of life, embracing the ideal of athletic perfection. She apprenticed with someone in America who developed new and improved techniques to ensure even beginners could assume postures in a manner attainable only by the Masters. This was accomplished by the utilization of small blocks of wood and terry cloth bands of fabric which propped one up and helped relieve fatigue on the body, allowing for the use of gentle force to push oneself into the proper position. In keeping with her perspective of reality, my trainer believed yoga was just another form of exercise and this regime was merely a series of slow, passive stretching maneuvers, albeit ages old, now modified for modern man to achieve the health benefits of what, in generations past, required years of dedicated pursuit.

I cannot claim to be a totally naive guinea pig. A student of religious and esoteric literature since early adolescence, I was well versed scholastically on eastern disciplines. Yet, without an experiential foundation to ground the principles, I put myself in a potentially dangerous situation with a “teacher” who had absolutely no idea what she was really doing. Yoga, from the Hindu, simply means a spiritual practice. In our country, we think of it as describing a discipline of physical movement, when in fact, this is only one form of yoga. There are seven yogic paths, covering such divergent meditations as dedication to humanity in service as a means of soul advancement. All are geared toward a single objective: enlightenment or a union with the Divine. Hatha yoga is a specially engineered system, deliberately developed over thousands of years by dedicated holy men for the purpose of intentionally activating the spiritual centers in the body (chakras). Gaining flexibility, muscle tone, and improved fitness are secondary; an external manifestation of an inner progression.

Although I did not know what it was called at the time, the explosive consequence for me in manipulating my body into these postures, was a spontaneous activation of kundalini (referred to as the serpent fire or lifeforce) and an instantaneous spiritual awakening, catapulting my life into chaos for the next several years. Without the advantage of a guide to assist me in understanding the process that turned on, I was ill equipped within our cultural paradigm to handle the psychic abilities manifesting.

Suddenly, I was acutely aware of every nuance and intimate detail of each person’s emotional life I came in contact with, whether passing on the street, standing in line at the grocery store, or conversing with a friend. This cacophony of feelings, images, and knowingness left me no foothold in normal consciousness and sent me reeling with the staggering unhappiness and hopelessness shrouding almost everyone. It shocked me, surprised me, but most of all, saddened me. I floundered in this morass of human emotions, barely treading water in the tumultuous storm of sensations once begun, loomed never ending. It occurred to me I might be losing my mind, yet, I had never been more lucid. Questioning people about the validity of my perceptions concerning their emotional states revealed my intuition was unequivocally accurate. None the less, registering the private, innermost, landscape of all those around one at every moment is paralyzingly crushing. What good could this potentially serve and what was I to do with it all?

The most frightening aspect was I had no idea how or why it had abruptly started, hence clueless to shutting it off. Out of necessity, I moved into self survival mode, going straight to work, avoiding as many people as possible, and returning directly home to my apartment. As an extra kicker, I no longer required much sleep. Not suffering from insomnia, my body seemed to be driven by some inexhaustible force and didn’t need replenishment during slumber. Nighttime offered no relief, allowing only more opportunity to contemplate my situation. I became a reclusive hermit, literally hiding out in my living room, sitting in an armchair, chain smoking cigarettes for countless hours, desperately trying to cope with this profound shift and afford myself some sense of equilibrium. It was clear to me I had not lost the ability to distinguish that which is considered “appropriate” in our society, even though I was undergoing something outside the range of what I had been taught was possible. I decided this was was not dysfunctional, but, in fact, “supra” functioning. I knew no one that might comprehend my predicament and I had no resources for seeking aid.
I was scared, I was manic, I was sane.

I tuned inward. I discovered I had unexpectedly turned into a sort of radio or frequency antenna, receiving the broadband widths in the emotional spectrum of humanity. It seemed if I could “receive”, it also stood to reason I could “send”. This proved to be a pivotal realization, and upon applying, I also found when sending, it was impossible to simultaneously receive. As a defensive measure, I began constantly broadcasting unconditional love regardless of what else I was doing, unconditional love on the street, unconditional love at the grocery store, unconditional love in all my interactions. It worked, but I would not recommend it as a general rule. Such openness is an invitation of acceptance and was misunderstood by some, causing unwelcome solicitous overtures. Yet, this seemed a small price to pay as I sought respite from the ravages of the pain I felt in others.

In our euro-centric Newtonian view of reality, there is little context, encouragement or validation, and scant understanding for religious events which diverge from the mainstream judeo-christian tradition. After all, such things supposedly do not occur to ordinary people. Belief persists that only saints or prophets have mystical visions with extra sensory insights. Not true. Unfortunately, spiritual needs and concerns are still very much divorced from accepted mental health training and practice. This archaic stance posits such matters are the concern of the church with no relevance to science. Thus, these crises are mistaken for psychiatric disorders, promoting the tendency to ignore or psychopathologise paranormal experiences and classify them as symptoms of ego regression, borderline psychosis, psychotic episode or temporal lobe dysfunctions. Models to offer assistance and remedy are only beginning to be developed.

I realize now what happened is becoming more common place in our collective experience and has escalated over the years since the Harmonic Convergence. The trigger for me was unwittingly fired by yoga; for others it results from involvement with meditation or similar practices, and also includes events such as a serious accident, illness, a Near Death Experience, loss or death in a close relationship, or a series of life failures. The phenomena is so prevalent a movement began in transpersonal psychology circles in the late eighties, spearheaded by, among others, Dr. Stanislov Grof and his wife, Christine. Founding an organization in northern California to assist others burdened with the same sorts of symptoms as me, they even gave it a name---spiritual emergency---which evolved into the present diagnostic classification of spiritual emergence.

Many within the profession recommended a non pathological division be added to the analytic nomenclature of medicine. Recently, The American Psychiatric Association accepted and added the category “Religious and Spiritual Problems” under Axis II of the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual used by physicians. Such incidents were given a clinical definition and various criteria were established for spiritual crisis determination; it is now feasible for psychospiritural difficulties to be recognized and distinguished from mental illness. Also openly acknowledged was the fact many patients previously institutionalized could well have been affected by a problem relating to spiritual emergence, with some estimates putting the number as high as twenty percent. This raised the issue of proper training for therapists to differentiate between the two.

That’s the good news, but we still have a long way to go. It will take time, money, and research for the recognition of spiritual emergence as a bona fide rite of passage. I was left on my own to integrate the shattering effects. As with any latent talents, I gradually learned to incorporate and apply them. My keen awareness does not seem so overwhelming; I’ve located the volume control on my receiver and can regulate it at will. Sometimes, it is hard to recall who I was before. These gifts, a birthright of our divine nature, are welcome additions to my repertoire of human senses. Such ways of Knowing lead me to teachers helping to clarify, books holding explanations, and techniques making it comfortable. Every step has been a part of a journey in personal self actualization...a Remembering of The All of the ALL in me and in each of us. I’ve met fellow pilgrims along the way, struggling with similar spiritual issues, without the support of sanctuary. This path compelled me to becoming a minister. And it brings me to my practice at Sanctuary for Mind, Body, & Spirit, and the yoga of service, that others might find an empathetic haven
during the throes of Spiritual Emergence.

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