You’ve gone through a tremendous spiritual awakening. Your life perspective has changed drastically. You’re no longer the same person you once were a few years ago.
But something has gone horribly wrong.
While others on the spiritual path are reveling in their deep insights, you feel suffocated under the weight of an existential crisis.
While others are busy reconnecting with their meaning of life, you can barely function in a job or even get out of bed to shower.
While others feel a deeper sense of peace and alignment, you feel like you’re on the verge of going crazy or being sucked into the black hole of depression forever.
What on earth has happened?
Is it something you did wrong? Is it because you’re not worthy? Is it because you’re not strong enough?
Answer: NO, not at all. What you are experiencing has nothing to do with your strengths or capabilities.
What you’re experiencing is something called a spiritual emergency. And as we’ll see throughout the rest of this article, it’s a normal process that many people experience during their spiritual paths, and it’s not your fault.
Table of contents
What is a Spiritual Emergency?
The spiritual emergency is a severe crisis an individual may experience after going through a spiritual awakening. Essentially, a spiritual emergency occurs when the spiritual awakening process speeds up so much that it becomes terrifying and destabilizing to the body and mind.
“Spiritual emergency” as a word was first coined Czech psychiatrists Stanislav and Christina Grof and was expanded in the 1989 book Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Since then it has increased in popularity, although is still relatively unheard of within mainstream spiritual communities. (I want to change that.)
Spiritual emergencies can happen to anyone at any point in life. Those who are not particularly ‘spiritual’ can experience it just as often as those who are actively engaged on the spiritual path. The common uniting factor is usually that a person undergoes a shock (in the form of illness, family death, major life change, etc.) that triggers the spiritual crisis.
The spiritual emergency can last anywhere from a few days to a number of years. The process is very much dependant on what kind of environment you live in and how supportive vs. unsupportive it is.
15 Signs You’re Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency
Cosmic love is absolutely ruthless and highly indifferent; it teaches its lessons whether you like/dislike them or not.
– John Lilly
If you’re going through a spiritual emergency, you have my love and support. This is probably one of the most painful, disorienting, and scary experiences you will ever go through – but please know that it does end, and it is worth going through. (I’ll explore why later.)
Below, you’ll find fifteen signs commonly experienced during spiritual emergencies:
- You find it impossible to cope with everyday tasks (like going shopping, showering, cooking, keeping up with the bills, etc.)
- You can’t hold down a job due to your intense sensitivity
- It feels like your whole world is crumbling around you
- You struggle to sleep properly and may experience night terrors
- Your inner and outer world blur confusingly
- You experience a rollercoaster of emotions
- You may experience strange hallucinations (e.g., images, sounds, physical impressions)
- Your grasp on the real and logical is weak (resulting in psychotic-like symptoms)
- You may believe, at some point, that you’re the reincarnation of enlightened figures like Jesus, Buddha, Mary, etc. (this is called ego-inflation and is a result of Universal Consciousness overlapping with your own personal consciousness)
- You may experience vivid past-life flashbacks
- You feel strange sensations in your body (e.g., vibrations, shivers, heat, burning)
- You’ve developed a medically unexplainable illness
- You experience more synchronicity or meaningful coincidences
- You feel like you’re being sucked into a different dimension or black hole
- You feel like you’re going crazy
Of course, this list is not exhaustive. I’m sure there are many other symptoms out there I’ve forgotten to include, so please share below if you think I’ve missed any.
More In-Depth Help
Want to learn more about the spiritual emergency? In our book The Spiritual Awakening Process, we give more in-depth guidance:
Also, those who work in the mental health field may have a thing or two to say about the above list of symptoms. Yes, it’s true that many of the above symptoms overlap with ‘bipolar disorder,’ ‘manic-depression,’ ‘schizophrenia,’ etc. We’ll explore this important overlap a little later – and what it means for you.
Why Do Spiritual Emergencies Happen?
Honestly, there is no single known reason why spiritual emergencies happen. The cause, I suspect, is unique for everyone.
But here are some explanations:
- It’s your destiny – by experiencing an accelerated spiritual awakening process, you are about to learn some profound lessons, work through a tremendous amount of karma, and transform into the most illuminated version of yourself possible in this lifetime.
- Your conditioning was particularly strong – conditioning meaning the beliefs, ideas, habits, and patterns adopted from your parents and society. To break through these forms of conditioning and dissolve them (so you can experience a conscious ‘upgrade’), you had to undergo a particularly intense spiritual awakening.
- You’re a gifted shaman, priestess, healer, or “walker between worlds” – part of your spiritual awakening process involves connecting you with the forces of the unconscious mind or “spirit realm” which you have not yet learned to navigate (hence why you’re experiencing a spiritual emergency).
- You’re dealing with past karma – in some belief systems it’s believed that we deal with unresolved trauma from our past lives in this lifetime – and that may take the shape of a spiritual emergency to help you purge ancient patterns and develop a ‘clean slate.’
- You’re more sensitive – we all have various levels of sensitivity, and those who undergo a spiritual emergency may be more sensitive and empathic than others. This may explain why the would-be spiritual awakening turns into a spiritual emergency; it’s simply too overwhelming for those already sensitive to life. Again, there is no way of proving this, but it is one theory that you might like to ruminate on.
So which theory are you more inclined to believe? Perhaps you’d like to combine a few of these explanations and discard the rest.
Regardless of what you choose, it’s vital here to stress that it’s important to give your spiritual emergency a purpose. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Are You Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency or Mental Illness?
Breakdowns precede breakthroughs.
– Lee Lozowick
You might be curious to know whether the spiritual emergency is actually just a fancy name for a psychotic break, manic-depressive episode, or other severe mental illness?
This is a tough question to answer as there’s no black or white “yes” or “no.”
Those who undergo spiritual emergencies are often committed to mental health wards – either forcibly or voluntarily. As author Catherine G. Lucas, founder of the UK Spiritual Crisis Network writes:
There are literally thousands of people who have been through the mental health system who have not had the spiritual aspect of their experience honoured. The spiritual dimension has been completely overshadowed by the interpretation given to their experience by the medical model.
These unfortunate individuals have been forcibly injected with high doses of medication, held against their will, shunned by their families, rejected by society, and labeled by the system as pathologically mentally ill.
Although it can be argued that the mental health system (which is a fundamentally flawed institution) is only doing what it knows best, a psychiatric unit isn’t the safest place for a person who is undergoing a spiritual emergency.
Those who don’t end up committed usually buy into the pathologizing perspective of the mental health system – there simply aren’t many other alternatives. They may be diagnosed with a mental illness, instructed to take medication every day to keep their symptoms under check, and shooed away like a herd animal until their prescription expires – and the cycle continues.
While I’m not trying to imply that it’s a good idea to get off your medication if you suspect you’ve undergone a spiritual emergency, it is good to be educated and have more options. Sometimes a small amount of medication is necessary to help prevent complete system shutdown – and that is a blessing the medical world offers us. But it’s not the only solution.
Being ‘Diagnosed’ or Hospitalized During the Spiritual Emergency …
As Lucas writes in her book, the process of being tossed through the medical system can be severely traumatizing and actually prevent us from fulfilling the natural cycle of the spiritual emergency – and reaping its rewards:
Overall, perhaps the greatest danger of ending up in a hospital, and certainly the saddest aspect, is that the opportunity for healing and growth, for living a fuller, richer, more awakened life, can be irretrievably lost. The natural process of renewal, as the psychiatrist John Weir Perry called it, can be totally thwarted. Both the trauma of hospitalisation and the over-use of medication can have this effect. And once the process has been stopped in its tracks it can be difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve.
Furthermore, having our mystical experiences dismissed as being purely ‘psychotic,’ ‘borderline,’ or ‘schizophrenic’ not only denies the spiritual validity of what we’re going through but also adds an unnecessary element of fear and terror to the experience. This fear and terror can be profoundly crippling and can make the whole experience much more difficult than it really needs to be.
Thankfully, there are some in the medical field (typically Jungian and transpersonal therapists who focus on spiritual psychology) who understand the spiritual significance of symptoms that would otherwise be dismissed as “ramblings of a crazy mind.” I encourage you to seek these sorts of professionals out and ask them if they are familiar with the spiritual emergency. You can also visit the spiritual emergence network if you need to find someone close to you.
Roger Walsh, an Australian professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology, is one such figure in the medical field who validates the spiritual emergency. He calls it the “developmental crisis”:
Developmental crises are periods of psychological stress that accompany turning points in our lives. They may be marked by considerable psychological turmoil, sometimes even of life-threatening proportions. These transitions can occur spontaneously, as in adolescent and midlife crises, or can be induced by growth accelerating techniques such as psychotherapy and meditation. These crises occur because psychological growth rarely proceeds smoothly. Rather, growth is usually marked by periods of confusion and questioning or, in extreme cases, disorganization and despair.
So is it a spiritual emergency or a psychosis?
We need to understand that sometimes experiences can be both/and not either/or. In this situation, you may be experiencing both a spiritual emergency and some form of psychosis – but they shouldn’t be seen as two distinct things.
As Lucas writes, “… I am not interested in trying to distinguish between so-called psychosis and spiritual emergency. I take the view that it is all the psyche’s attempt to heal and move towards wholeness, that each experience is potentially spiritually transformative.”
What you’re going through is valid and you need to seek out those who help you see your spiritual emergency through a positive lens, not a negative one.
Types of Spiritual Emergency
There are two main types of spiritual emergency. They can be classified as:
- Mystical Psychosis (hallucinations, mania, etc.)
- The Dark Night of the Soul (depression)
Historically, we can see Mystical Psychosis play out in figures such as St. Teresa of Avila, Vincent Van Gogh, Nietzsche, and Carl Jung. The Dark Night of the Soul, on the other hand, can be seen in figures such as St. John of the Cross, Eckhart Tolle, and Mother Teresa.
The main difference between these two types of spiritual emergency seems to be the direction in which energy flows.
With Mystical Psychosis, the energy seems to flow upward and beyond into higher realms of Spirit or Consciousness.
On the other hand, with the Dark Night of the Soul, the energy seems to flow downwards and in – or into the realms of the Collective Unconscious and Soul.
It is possible to have a little bit of Mystical Psychosis paired with the Dark Night of the Soul (and vice versa). It’s even possible to have both equally. But most people tend to experience only one type of spiritual emergency.
How to Cope With the Spiritual Emergency
There is a crack, a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen
I write “cope” instead of “cure” because the spiritual emergency has a mind of its own. What we’re dealing with here is a force of nature, a Divine movement of energy that cannot be tampered with without adverse effects (such as those stuck in the mental health system carousel).
There is no six-steps-to-happiness process here. I wish there was. I would so love to provide that for you. But that would be disingenuous and disrespectful to the process you’re going through. Perhaps what is most important to take away from this article is that your suffering has a purpose and your experiences are spiritually valid. If there’s anything you remember from this article, I hope it’s this.
While there is no formula for healing, as every journey is different, there are some practices you can try which have helped those on a similar path before you.
Please take these forms of advice very slowly and stop at any time if you feel worse:
1. Stop meditation, practice mindfulness instead
Many people who undergo spiritual emergencies simply cannot tolerate meditation. Why? Meditation can be very dissociating if you’re not grounded strongly in your body. (And those undergoing Mystical Psychosis or the Dark Night struggle to keep their grip on this plane of existence!) Meditation can also open up doorways within the mind and encourage the influx of unconscious material. For a person already being bombarded with images and visions from the deep mind, this can be profoundly destabilizing.
During this difficult time, it’s better to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness means consciously paying attention to the present moment. When we are mindful, we are fully engaged with our body and senses. Tuning into your sense of taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing can help to bring you back down to earth and your body.
Try to practice mindfulness a little bit every day. Wash the dishes mindfully and feel the cold water against your hands. Hang up the clothes mindfully, and listen to the birds chirping outside. Eat mindfully and notice the different textures and flavors filling your mouth. You get the picture!
2. Seek out earth energy
Try to bring the energy of the earth into your daily life. As you may already know, the earth’s energy is deeply grounding and nourishing. If you need help anchoring yourself into this realm, go outside and dig in the soil. Get your arms elbow-deep in the dirt. Plant some seedlings in your backyard. Take care of a pot plant indoors. Sit underneath a tree and feel the ground underneath your feet. If need be, bring a heavy stone to bed so you can literally become grounded. Ecotherapy is a good avenue to explore.
3. Temporarily stop your spiritual practice
To some, this may sound drastic, but the spiritual emergency isn’t something to be trifled with. It’s important to understand that some types of spiritual practice can intensify Mystical Psychosis and the Dark Night of the Soul. In the interest of your sanity, it might be best to put your practice aside for a while and focus on mundane tasks. If you absolutely cannot do without some form of spiritual nourishment, try earth-centered approaches to spirituality, like spending time in nature. Ultimately, whether you follow this advice or not is up to you and your situation. But definitely consider the possibility that your spiritual practice might be detrimental to your wellbeing right now.
4. Eat hearty food
During the spiritual emergency, it’s tempting to ignore what we eat (simply because we’re too preoccupied or have no energy). But please, try your utmost to eat at least one hearty meal a day. When I say hearty, I mean the food needs to be grounded. Focus on root vegetables like sweet potatoes and beetroots, and organic free-range meat. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, you might consider temporarily changing your diet to include meat – desperate times call for desperate measures!
5. Find the purpose in your suffering
Examine again the five potential reasons why spiritual emergencies happen (see the beginning of the article). Why do you think you’re experiencing a spiritual emergency? Listen to your heart and let the answer emerge. You’ll know you’ve found the truth when you feel full-body shivers, a sense of peace and clarity, or a sudden “aha!” lightbulb moment. If you can’t find any satisfactory explanations mentioned in this article you may like to pray to the Universe/God/whatever to help you find the meaning. This prayer doesn’t have to be religious, it can be spiritual or secular. Simply communicate your intention, and notice any signs that arise in the next week.
6. Exercise (even just for a few minutes)
Depending on your situation, you may like a full-body catharsis (like high interval training) or a gentle activity like walking. Pay attention to your needs. Exercise is vital for mental health and general physical wellbeing. It also connects you with your body and the surrounding world, which is important during the spiritual emergency.
7. Avoid stressful situations and reduce your responsibilities
Stress exacerbates any form of spiritual emergency – this is pretty obvious. Furthermore, holding onto many responsibilities tends to produce stress. If you have many projects or people needing your energy, it might be best to drop the vast majority of them. The spiritual emergency demands your energy and attention, and getting lost in workaholism is a recipe for disaster. So try to simplify what you can and give yourself some breathing space.
8. Seek support
Yes, in the midst of psychosis it might be necessary to be medicated and hospitalized (low doses of medication are generally better than high doses during spiritual emergencies – but I am not a medical professional, so please listen to your own common sense). But generally, if your experience doesn’t require 24/7 observation, it’s best to seek out a therapist or spiritual counselor who is familiar with the notion of spiritual emergencies.
Above I recommended transpersonal, depth, and Jungian therapists (but please do your research and ask them if they know about spiritual emergencies). This is a great option, and you can visit the Spiritual Emergence Network to see if any are near you or just do a google search and include the name of your city. If worse comes to worst and you can’t find any within a reasonable distance, you can always try a religious chaplain, community mental health center, or online Skype sessions. You can also check out our Dark Night of the Soul Journal for gentle guidance.
Why am I not recommending the support of friends or family members? The reasons why is because usually those close to us have no understanding of the spiritual emergency and tend to be negatively conditioned by medical institutions. In other words, it’s much more likely that they’ll get spooked by your experience (as they’re comparing it to the “old” you) and actually invalidate the experience rather than validate it. This is not a hard and fast rule, and some friends or family members are mature and may have gone through similar experiences. So try to use your gut instinct when making a decision, and above all, put your wellbeing first.
Most importantly, do not let anyone try to convince you that what you’re going through is purely a product of mental illness or that your visions/insights are “irrelevant.” Denying the spiritual element of what you’re going through is monumentally short-sighted and detrimental to your wellbeing. You have the right to honor your experience and find meaning in it, as indeed it is meaningful.
The Spiritual Emergency is a Sacred Process
When all is said and done, this spiritual emergency may be terrifyingly life-altering, but it is a sacred process of clearing out the old and welcoming in the new.
While the medical world may pathologize you and the mundane world may reject you, you are not crazy. You are not alone. And your experiences do have profound spiritual meaning.
Take care of yourself, dear soul. You are doing the best that you can, and you are so courageous for walking this path. Thank you for your unfathomable bravery.
Hi, and thank you for this written piece about Spiritual Emergency. To be honest, I’m sobbing as I write this. It’s been a really, really, really rough past several weeks….unbearably. I’ve been wondering if I’m going to survive. EVERYTHING here explains it to a T. I’ve been on my Awakening journey for a few years and have made a lot of personal progress, so I’ve been devastated that I’m in this horrible feeling place after so much conscious healing work. I’ve had many dark nights and have survived them all…this has been different. I started to feel convinced I must have something attached to me that is causing trouble. I have been feeling so, so alone and finding this today has been profoundly comforting because for several weeks/months I’ve been saying I feel like I’m in some sort of ‘existential crisis’, literally those words exactly. I’ve even begged to go home, out of here. I’ve been waking up in the morning, and crying because I woke up and have to endure again. I’ve been questioning my mental health, I’ve also been wondering if maybe there really is a ‘demon’ tormenting me, and it’s just been surreal and painful…I scrolled Pinterest while I was crying, again, and came across a pin that brought me here. I can’t even fully convey how much it has saved me in a desperate moment…I’m NOT crazy, and my journey is real, and I really am going through a Spiritual Emergency without a doubt. Now I have some state of relief, and information to help realign me. Thank you from the depths of my Soul. <3
Tammy, from the sounds of what you write, you’re most definitely not going crazy. I’m so glad you now can understand what you’re experiencing in a deeper way. Please take good care of yourself sister
I’ve tasted almost all of the different religions this planet has to offer; I am an ex-christian and was an atheist before all this went down and found me at my weak point. After confronting various traumas, I had a near miss with Death and that about did me in.
I found “new age” spirituality to be by far the most confusing path and full of veiled toxicity/bandaid solutions to big problems…that being said, being nearly tortured by hallucinations, confronting fearful realities that come from the inner landscape showed me my strength.
I eventually stopped seeing my psychiatrist and therapist because I was better on the surface, though a bipolar or PTSD diagnosis was never made for me.
I don’t know that I found reason or meaning in this truly awful experience yet, other than “it is a journey to be who I am.” We made a mistake when we thought there was anything to be fixed. To be other than what we are, which is consciousness embodied.
You don’t have to pray to anyone to find a home in yourself. You can pray if you want to, and experience some miraculous nonphysical phenomena and visions, but you are always you.
I’m still in process of these experiences, and it’s my opinion that it’s all “within”. But it does not have to be so ridiculously dramatic or painful, so maybe with more awareness from people, this will change.
I’ve been disassociated for almost seven years. As if I had died and brought back without my spirit or my soul or both. I feel I do not belong on earth anymore. I know it, feel it, and now my body yearns to be in its resting place. I’m fatigued to exhaustion, nothing life has to offer brings me joy, food is more of a habit along with sleep and showering. I feel and probably look like a walking dead, with no more purpose in life. I move aimlessly, senselessly, unwittingly, unfeeling, unnerved, never-ending. When will it end?
I’m not quite sure what I’m going through, but I very much appreciate what you have written, Sol and Luna.
I was strong, fit, happy, grounded, live an outdoors kind of life, a simple rural life, love Nature, eat healthy food, and am filled with a lot of gratitude for so much!
I am no longer young (late 60s) but followed various so-called “spiritual” pathways in my earlier life, and none of them fitted me.
Then I broke free of all of those ways and found a happy grounded life, a joy in living, a peace and contentment.
After a bereavement of a Soul so very dear to me just over eight years ago, there was a most profound spiritual awakening. It was the most lovely and beautiful thing I have ever known. That followed the natural grieving. Like a beautiful day following a dark night.
(I will try to describe that as briefly as possible) I was shown the eternity of Love, and was shown glimpses of the Other Side, and the State of Being on that level where my loved one now lives in Spirit. Such happy grace and sweetness.
My own Heart and Soul opened to this new awareness. I was profoundly moved and filled with gratitude.
So that continued for six years, and though I obviously missed my companion, and had natural times of poignancy and some tears, I was content spiritually. Then suddenly….a tremendously harsh darkness came. I remember the exact day and the exact time it all began, and it came out of the blue.
It started with vague physical and emotional symptoms that no-one could get to the bottom of. I’d had no warning. I had been fit and well, and was an energetic person with no illnesses or conditions, and taking no medication.
At the same time, my spiritual connection with a most graceful state was snatched completely away.
The symptoms continued over two years. And amazingly there were times when it was like the “eye of the storm” when I felt my absolute normal strength and normal health again, before I was plunged back into it. Sometimes that would last for hours, or if I was lucky -days.
I had thorough medical checks….heart, lungs, blood pressure, blood tests for everything imaginable, 3 separate stool analyses, CT scan, consultation with a neurologist….and every result was normal.
No-one could find a thing wrong. The symptoms are too numerous to list and would be tedious to read. But one of the hardest ones was a complete lack of trust in what the next moment might bring…whether I woul be able to eat or not….whether I would feel such a deep exhaustion and not long to live in this world…..whether tears would flood me….whether my body would respond in any normal way at all to anything….whether even though I might feel better one moment, the next moment I would feel dreadfully ill again. And it went on and on with no help or solution, only endurance, and small comforts I might be able to find at times.
I love music, and could hear it, but couldn’t feel the Soul in it any more. I got a very creepy feeling emotionally, anxiety, unable to bear even the slightest stress. Unable to concentrate or meditate.
I was not at all afraid of death after what I had been shown.
But life suddenly had all the light drawn out of it and became very hard to navigate any more. It was even hard to go for a walk on a sunny day or eat dinner. Sometimes it was hard to “just feel safe and okay”. And I was very alone.
Two doctors thought it might be ME/CFS. Another thought it might be a strange form of migraine. Yet I’d never had migraine in my life. Nothing completely fitted. Meanwhile more tests came back absolutely normal.
A somatoform illness was suggested. (psycho-somatic) But why -so suddenly like that? And something that never went away. And why days when I felt so normal in between? SSRIs were suggested but I didn’t want to drug myself. Thankfully I was given the choice. I don’t actually feel I have clinical depression, but something else, hard to define.
The sense of spiritual loss was the greatest pain amidst all this.
I now keep as steady as I can. I haven’t lost hope. I eat as much healthy food as I can and exercise daily. I send out my heartfelt love and gratitude whenever I get a respite long enough to be able to focus my heart energies. I also know this has given me much deeper empathy for all those who suffer; some of them confined to their beds in darkness, unable to bear any stimulus at all.
It drew me into doing some volunteer work whenever I can manage to; helping to support an online group who are very sick indeed.
I have become so highly sensitive. An ambulance with flashing blue lights and siren passed me the other day as I was driving, and my heart just rose up with a great pain. I had to pull over as floods of tears and impressions came to me. I prayed.
I feel what others are going through, whether I want to or not. Something has broken wide open in me.
I have learned a lot. But it is a daily struggle. Like trying to see glimpses of the sun through thick heavy cloud. I have to accept, yet keep hope that this shall pass, or develop into a new “light”.
This is exactly what I have been through the last 1-2 years, I feel almost fully recovered, at a new level of conciousness. I relate my experience so well with spiritual emergency as you have described. I got very strong beliefs from my parents, was addicted to khat,and early during the process I felt like I was Jesus, it was so confusing, very painful period, I resigned from job. I was briefly treated for psychosis and depression and though it helped, I knew for sure that was not my exact problem. Now reading your articles I have come to fully relate. How I wish I read this earlier, or had someone to guide me. Thank you so much, your articles have transformed me
Oh boy! 12 out of 15 on the above list, (no hallucinations, nor incarnations, and no illnesses) for 11 years… Has not been easy by any measure. I’ve had a very long and Dark Night of the Soul emergency for, yes, 11 years. I lost everything: home, family, job. I have managed to barely survive a babystep away from homelessness, and in the midst of it all, extremely hard to find a kind soul to echo my feelings on, that is, haven’t found even one that has fully understood and not end up discarding me as just crazy. Even a recently acquired AA friend sometimes just smirks at me as all the old ones have gone with the water…Loneliness has been brutal. I’m just holding on to a faint glimmer of hope whilst trying to work on whatever I can to get myself out because I just simply love life.
Thank you for this article. I now know I had a spiritual emergency in March of this year. After the loss of my sister, and months of depression and deep meditation, I had what the mental health world calls psychosis. I hallucinated for 12 hours and had lucid moments in between hallucinations. I had a rebirth hallucination, and hallucinations of empaths rising above and helping heal the world. But also some hallucinations that were frightening. Unfortunately, my teenage boys were home, and it scared them something awful. They called the police, and they came out one in the evening and again in the morning and ended up taking me to the hospital. I was treated like a criminal. I was terrified, and forced to stay in a county mental hospital and moved to a crisis nursing facility for a total of 3 weeks being gone. I was medicated, and told it was mental illness. I have never hallucinated before in my entire life. Prior to this episode, I had started feeling better and more in tune with nature and healing. My 16 year old is still afraid to be near me. He is living with his Father, who he was never close to. My 19 year old is speaking to me, but he was very scared as well and it took a few months. I have been afraid to meditate and even go for walks. I have isolated for 7 months now for the most part. I started finally walking again a few weeks ago and started meditating again a few days ago. I have been self loathing and filled with shame. I stopped therapy and psychiatry a few months ago because it wasn’t helping and they just want to medicate. I am not currently taking and medications, as they don’t help and the side affects are not to my liking. I have been trying to figure out what actually happened for all this time, and now I think I know. I wish there was support where I live. I have detached from my friends and family due to not understanding what has happened, and being judged negatively. Thank you again for your insight on this topic.
Pretty sure i know what religious cut that was. The same one that broke me. I been in the dark night of my soul my entire life. I managed to cut it out of me by going full atheist up until this year i broke out of it due to a series of events that triggered a spiritual awakening.
But I’m back again in this shit… again.
I honestly thought all ive to do is to queit my mind to get enlightened and thats it, Because thats what they all say. I didnt realize then the kinda horrors that was waiting for me in there. Im so afraid to life now, Im so afraid to die, Im afraid to go in there. That place is just crazy all kinds of things that NOBODY around me can understand. Planet is full of stupid people that thinks they see and understand everything around but they dont see anything. Im afraid to see, Im afraid to not-see. Im afraid of myself. Im afraid of these cruel human beings im afraid of nonhuman beings im afraid of the immensity thats in there waiting to swallow me whole, im afraid i would ever get enlightened, im afraid of having nothing else to do, no purpose, no desires, or a lot of desires that i know can never fullfil me, nothing on this planet can. I feel like a programmed machine, I thought i can finally run away from all the craziness of this planet, but that place in there, is infinitly more crazy. What a terrible torture? I just cant believe this. Im afraid of everything. How can i survive in this place? Im so alone in this and nobody understands me. I like to think its all a dream but it feels so real.
Everything feels real.. My fears and pain and lonliness its all real. I dont like this at all. And they say life is beautiful? LIFE IS TORTURE
The John Lilly quote is beautiful and accurate, or so I think.
I tried not stepping on ants but they are everywhere here where i live. What to do? I feel pain.. Everything makes me feel pain.. How i can i live like this? Thats the reason i numbed myself. Im starting to feel it all again. What to do but feel? Im not Loki anymore. What to do but feel. Im meant to feel all of this. Im meant to feel all the pain of the world. Im the world. So much for evolution. The more i evolve the more pain i feel. Ha. The sad music universe playing in perfect timing in the background is not helpin. Its all q big scheme against me. Its fully scripted. Universe is trying to break me open. It wants me to feel.
Dear Twee, I had to remove your other comments (there were over 20 of them on this page) as I want to give space for others to share their pain and experiences. I can see that you’re going through a breakdown or perhaps breakthrough. Have you considered reaching out to someone (like a transpersonal counselor) who can hold space for this? Sending lots of love
Thank you Luna , truly
❤
Sadly, I was hospitalized and medicated during my spiritual emergency and felt I wouldn’t be able to get myself together ever again. I have done a lot of shadow work since which helped tremendously, but how do I know if the natural process of renewal wasn’t totally thwarted? I’m not sure.
I am currently medicated.and I hate having to be on meds. But when I’m not on them I see and hear things.i also lose touch with myself as a hole.i seen the devil when I was off my meds.i walk the streets for no purpose.i alwas feel in guard.i also have destroyed all electrioncs things I’m being watched or recorded by the government..like they no who and what I really I am.i feel and no I am a fallen angel and a energy drainging vampire..my dad all was told me I was very special. And no body could no about me. He hide me from the world..I don’t no how to feel about any of this.. I just want to no my porpese to this life because I no I play an important part of somthing yet to come..
I have been through a spiritual emergency and the dark night. I am empathic. I had a couple experiences that stick out and honestly I need some insight. I feel a littlw lost. My fiance and best friend committed suicide. The morning it happened (about 5hrs after he put a bullet in his head) he was on life support at a hospital about an hr and a half from me. I lost it obviously. I went numb then tingles and finally cried till I passed out. The following wasnt a dream… I saw him. Laying in the hospital bed, AND standing at the end of his bed. I was walking to him thru a tunnel like atmosphere. I asked why. Why did he do this? And he turned looked at me and asked me what did I do? He said I shouldn’t been there. But I was. The following week was sweetest day. On the wind he said he was sorry and he loved me and told me happy sweetest day. The next month I saw a group of angels. They dont have Cupid faces either. But they are huge! Commanding. It was during this point that I believe I had my spiritual emergency and my dark night. Could the purpose be because I am empathic with a gift to travel between planes? Is that what I had done? I just need a little guidance.
I cried through reading this. I have almost all of the symptoms, and I am going through both the Dark night of the soul and the other one. Tonight was really bad, and today I felt called to sit in front of my computer, journaling and such, and that’s when I found this. It feels great knowing I’m not alone, not going crazy and to know what this actually is. I’ve been terrified of it (still am in some ways), but I’ve also felt that this was “more” than a psychotic thing, but the thought of what society would think and so on has really scared me and I have been scared of it being a psychosis, but deep inside I felt that that wasn’t it. That this was something spiritual, but I couldn’t, for my life, understand it… It feels a wee bit better now though and I will continue to read up on this and I will follow the advices and my gut feeling, trusting that this will make things better, not worse, by going through the pain and suffering for a while. Thank you! Love and light! <3 <3 <3
I really feel you! It made me cry too. I’m experiencing 95 % of what’s said in this article and it’s honestly very overwhelming sometimes and I feel like I’m going insane. But I’ve been through this before and I know that it’s always for the best even though it doesn’t feel like that at all when in the midst of it!
Hello everyone,
My life has gone to total shit since this diabolical ‘Ascension’ began in 2013. My body is reaching the point where it will not be able to tolerate ANY food or drink passing through it. The people who live with me are now being affected as well, suffering periodic indigestion and stomach problems. My dogs are also getting sick periodically, and two of them have died with the same stomach complications since this shit started. But HEY! who gives a fuck? People like me are just left to our own devices and are only really noticed when its too late and our lifeless bodies are discovered in the woods.
We hear a lot about the Universe and God on these blogs, but nothing about the reality. Which is that this planet is an experiment and those conducting it dont give a flying fuck about us. Mengele didnt give a shit about his victims after all, nor the vivisectionist about his/her animals. These ET people now want Earth to ‘ascend’, and if it makes you uncomfortable or mentally ill, TOUGH SHIT! Ive been put on antidepressants TWICE since this shit started, and bear it in mind, I spent six years of my life on dialysis and never needed antidepressants then. Of course, Ive said all this before on here, but no one wants to take any notice. Perhaps they dont know what to do with us.
I’ve been going through this shit as well and its unspeakably horrible. i’m there with you man. & i know what its like to get into those dark negative spirals where everything feels out of control and fucking terrible. at first i thought this was all a joke, that something evil was happening to me, but then i had this breakthrough moment where i realized my resistance to it & negative judgment was making it 1000x worse and since then things have started getting bettter. i got a therapist, but not one of those shit ones who treat you like a robot but an actual good one. mybe google for someone who can help you as the human contact really helps. peace brother, you have my thoughts & prayers
this helped me when i tried to find someone: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/spirituality/il/chicago there’s a shit ton of them and most do skype etc
Presumably so.
Dark night of the soul, twice blinding terror like I’ve never known could exist- once when my son’s father hung himself- I found him – and the other was when I was delusion after 3 days no sleep and thought my skin irritation meant I was going to die. Got rushed to the ER and they assumed I was psychotic or on drugs.
That’s what I get for trying to raise Kundalini and practicing seeing Auras.
I can, by the way, it just requires a bit of concentration. Mine is a bit lighter than royal blue. Looks like a cool floating body force-field. I can only observe them in small snippets.
I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 2 weeks later.
That was 8 years ago.
My Numerology Life Path number is a 11/2. Makes a ton of sense.
Lots of trauma, loss, growth, drug abuse, madness, anger, child abuse and abandonment.
I just want to pain in my back and neck and head to stop for once.
I miss having actual energy. I miss life without pain.
I’m always incredulous about some responses to these sort of things, but hell – animals and I seem to converse just fine regularly. And I don’t merely mean cats and dogs. The Black Bear in the Smoky Mountains who came within arms length of me and we stood facing each other. The skunk who I discovered after he blindly walked his nose right into my bare foot in the backyard.
And the food allergies! Clearly I’m allergic to gluten And complex sugars. No High Fructose corn syrup for me!
I used to be able to feel the uncomfortable person in a crowded room and can tell when someone was lying. Just maybe not what part of it was the lie.
I need to reconnect with my soul. I don’t know how. But I am at a spot in my thinking where I don’t see the point in this journey.
And I do not mean suicide. I mean I’m stuck and my ego? It might have diminished but it refuses to die.
If I wait for it to be snuffed out completely, there might not be anything left to salvage after.
This is agony.
Not sure what I’m asking for. Just figured if I put it out to the universe, it will ease some in intensity.
Hey Paul? Hope you’re still around, man. Gotta release that bitterness or you won’t find any relief.
Of course they aren’t going to know exactly what to do with us. Spiritual emergencies and awakenings – there’s like a somewhat map. But the experience is different for everyone.
I’d say, meditate and feel your breathing. Consider whether you need those meds or not. Release the anger if you can. (No judgment. I am a fire sign and obviously, my tolerance and patience is extremely low right now so it’ll happen)
To those having a spiritual emergency or suffering at all, I wish you relief in a timely manner and answers to your questions.
M
Thank you for your work! You have been the most kind and loving and I truly feel and understand your writer. I love your books and articles I’ve been through so much trauma and always numbed my pain and I’ve decided after knowing my past 3 generations being admitted (one being my mom, I watched the white coats drag her out of grandma’s house) I want to break the cycle I know they just had a spiritual emergency and being sensitive and giving they just broke, I feel bad they were treated like wild animals) im fighting for my life and my freedom and I’m seeing the light but I’m having to step back and really focus of me healing, I do feel like my family thinks I’m being selfish but the pain I’ve seen and felt for myself and around me I’m sticking to what my heart says and it wants me to fall back in love with it, so thank you for helping me through this most important journey so I can be so much better for my family and friends.
It’s my pleasure, Surina. <3 Take good care of yourself and don't be afraid to reach out for support from trusted and truly empathetic individuals.
Can you have a Spiritual Emergency when on the Twin Flame Journey? And also experience Kundalini Awakening?
Yes, absolutely Leslie – it’s more common than you may think.
I am going through this also — the TF journey has been catastrophic and very awakening. It’s been almost three years of soul chaos and growth, and it’s just becoming a little less chaotic. Or perhaps I’m just on a plateau. Regardless, you are not alone!
Luna, I am completely BLOWN AWAY by your page! And articles. I was intentionally guided by someone/something to read your page. I have NEVER found anyone who actually gets it. I have been horribly confused about everything and my spiritual journey and awakening. When my traumas and addiction truly took over and I started the path to recovery, I could not understand as to why I could not get back in tune with anything. I miss feeling so alive. Naturally. I’m slowly getting there. But after reading a bunch of your articles, I truly have faith that I will be on the path to love, light, and positivity. All I want to know it Love and Compassion. Always. I’ve never felt more scared and alone. I miss enjoying independence. I’m tired of sitting alone each and everyday. On the couch, staring out into space while anxiously picking the skin off my lip… Thank you Luna and Sol for being here for the world.
Absolutely Leslie. My kundalini awakening happened after meeting my twin flame
In my experience, tf is just another attachment. Some people can have the “same” tf, or the same attachment. It only lead me astray from myself, which is true longing (for the self). Unfortunately I am still deeply attached but only in certain ways now. If anything, it let me know the understanding I desire.