You’ve gone through a tremendous spiritual awakening. Your life and perspective have 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.
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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 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?
The answer is NO, you’re not crazy. You didn’t do anything wrong. What you’re 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 while on their spiritual paths.
Table of contents
- What is a Spiritual Emergency?
- 15 Signs You’re Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency
- Why Do Spiritual Emergencies Happen?
- Are You Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency or Mental Illness?
- Types of Spiritual Emergency
- How to Cope With the Spiritual Emergency
- Helpful Organizations
- The Spiritual Emergency is a Sacred Process
What is a Spiritual Emergency?
A spiritual emergency is a severe crisis that anyone may experience after going through a spiritual awakening.
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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 term was first coined by Czech psychiatrists Stanislav and Christina Grof and was expanded in their 1989 book Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis.
Since then, this term has increased in popularity, although it 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 them 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 dependent on what kind of environment you live in and how supportive vs. unsupportive it is.
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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 worlds 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.
Also, those who work in the mental health field may have a thing or two to say about the above list of symptoms.
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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’re 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 this 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 essential 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 a wise idea 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:
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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 can 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 emergencies. 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 emergencies 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. However, 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 were. 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 that 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 exercises. 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 practices 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 well-being 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, as well as 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! However, if you cannot bring yourself to do this, focus on carbs and heavy plant-based foods, and ensure that your iron and other vitamin levels are balanced.
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.
$3You’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 experiment by praying to the universe, God, or whatever else 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, so try your best to focus on crafting a peaceful environment in your daily life.
Furthermore, holding onto many responsibilities tends to produce stress. For instance, if you have lots of projects or people needing your energy, it might be best to drop the vast majority of them ASAP.
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 much-needed 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 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 general internet search and include the name of your city, e.g., “spiritual emergency therapists near me.”
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 reason why is that 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 well-being 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 well-being. You have the right to honor your experience and find meaning in it, as, indeed, it is meaningful.
Helpful Organizations
For further guidance, please check out the following resources:
These people and organizations are trained to help you get through the scary and overwhelming experience that is the spiritual emergency.
I also recommend our powerful Dark Night of the Soul Journal for further help and support.
If you’re looking for a way to ground and anchor yourself during this process, I also encourage you to take our immersive Spiritual Wanderer Course.
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 profound bravery.
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Thank you for A Good Piece, The Insights and Cues are enthralling. I was hesitant about the Word – Emergency, once more for what it portends, how it might be misconstrued, debauched or abused. The article nonetheless goes to the heart of Spiritual Enlightenment and what it entails.
In my work and spiritual intervention -or better part Spiritual Reifying and Reinterpritation of phenomenon, has tended to have a sudden gush, too much that it overwhelms the senses, the moments and even myself-recipients-spiritual director. The “What is this factor”, get stronger as God takes use of Him and Her, the distance grows also with the world, sometimes at great cost.- an awfully painful process, but one that is invetible or joy only being realizable on honourable precepts. In in its repeat and formation of language patterns, it gets easier to present and importantly to surrender.
I agree with Ecotherapy and Temporarily Stopping Spiritual Practice, to observe and listen a lot more than engagements that administer too much of shock therapy. I disagree with the distinction drawn between Meditation and Mindfulness. Meditation ought to be an eternal disposition – of what is and the ability to reify what lies yonder or deep beneath. It therefore undergirds Mindfulness and a healing disposition.
Lastly, this is difficult subject matter for Priests and Prophets, the common yet distinct and mutually reinforcing mission. The one to pray – offer sacrifices. The other to provide answer, cues, to rewire minds and reconcile with truth. I say this deliberaretly – “truths” are intermediate and wilfully manipulated, whereas Truth is Eternal and Communal Gift. Both have to alive to anchoring or anchoring bias, the work of flesh vs. the redemptive, to qoute one professor –
“Truth has nothing to fear from reason. What we abhor is presumptuousness that goes super-rationalism, reason conditioned by deceit and subservient to passions”
Hi Donald, thank you for sharing here. It means a lot to know that it was an enthralling read for you. As with the distinction between mindfulness and meditation, I agree that they seamlessly support each other. One complements the other. And while meditation “ought to be an eternal disposition,” the reality is that it isn’t, especially for people who are undergoing the spiritual emergency. Therefore, some level of division is needed here. We need to determine what grounds us vs. what opens us up – and too much openness (that the ego can’t yet handle) is often at the root of spiritual emergencies. Nevertheless, some people may find it useful to continue with this practice, but I would advise caution.
Your insights and cues are most commendable, and timely Luna. Thank you very much for this. Your advice on too much openess is also 100% correct, and my spiritual mentor had offered the same caution, advice.
I am just particularly leery of precepts-boxes when experiences should be observed, listened to, read and abstracted for either validation and correction which you do laudably. For one the Emergency part of “Spiritual Emergency” plays into the hands of pathologizing mystical and spiritual richness, metamorphosis and emergence, to a world or audience the debauches and dumps down lots of things. It can happen out of associative coherence and even the sheer force of noise that forces people to make start choice.
The outcome is that lots people can capitulate to a world or systems that are sick, short-termist in outlook and self -preservational, than actually renewing in any sense of the word. Put fairly though, not everyone gets stretched out of themselves to define value beyond self based ethos.
There are psychological issues, and even false semblance to mysticism – quite frankly also for all the value and insights it provides. As a general principle also, traumatic experiences – such as Broken Heart Syndrome, and deaths of closed or loved one can trigger mystical insights in ONLY A FEW persons. The rest can be pure psychological and psychological – and even pyschosocial pathology that must avail itself for healing or understanding. This is where words like “hate”, “crazy” and shouting have no place in emergence and proper definition of emergence. There are not crazy – but waking up to the violent and destructive nature of self based ethos, wrong definitions of success or security.
For one, A Mystic or Prophet can Emerge Spiritually to actually find out that the the time space(filial, business and social) they inhabited is sick – it is to be lamented, than to be celebrated or to participate in. The sickness it caused therefore take them higher or into deeper insights of what it is to be human – sadly some hidden, but others maintained in “contemplative mode”. This is where your counsel comes in handy – mindfulness, avoiding stressful situations . Great points these are.
I am greatly encouraged by the tenor of your writing, and insights. I get revelations quite a lot, some had been suppressed from childhood – but are of old as in literally oftentimes getting locutions of a sermon, “seeing”, let alone the more drastic ones biblical. What I would encourage is LOVE and charitable disposition of language, because nothing else enjoins those who are called than LOVE in what drives them, in their language and interventions they make in people lives
Thanks for writing this article Luna.
Ever since I experience my spiritual awakening, I’ve been struggling with episodes of emotional emergencies. And at first, I didn’t understand why it was happening. It was like a tug of war between peace & awakening and pain & chaos.
And honestly, I feel I’m going to go crazy. Sometimes it’s just so unbearable.
It’s been a year and a half ever since I started on this path of spiritual growth. And I’m really getting tired. But don’t get me wrong. I know this is important. But it just drains me so much. And on top of it all, I still need to study for exams and do my assigned tasks since I’m still in college.
I just really hope that I can rest and heal as much as I can during the Christmas break. ‘Cause, frankly, that’s the only thing I’m looking forward to in school.
I feel you so much! Sending so much loving support on your path. You got this and you’re doing great! There is no end destination ❤️
I hear you, Ryan. Take good care of yourself during this time. <3 Strangely, I find that creating structure/organization helps tremendously during tough times of inner turbulence. If you don't have a clear daily schedule (and if you haven't purged the tasks that are unnecessary) that might help. <3 Strength to you brother
Thank you for this article. I’ve been feeling so lost and down and as though something great had been taken from me, and I was thinking all my hard work was for nothing, and the joy and clarity that had come to me in recent months had gone forever. Now I am feeling comforted and will use your advice, knowing that I’m still on my path and that these dark times will pass.
Yes, that’s precisely it Tracy. In fact, feeling like you’ve gained and then lost a spiritual state is extremely common on the spiritual path and happens to most people. Keep going, you’ve got this. ;)
This is a great topic to discuss. In my experience with Spirit, it started for me as a child of five or six where I had an out-of-body, astral experience at night, floating through my family’s apartment. I was also able to feel Spirit’s presence as a mystical, direct experience and in addition, I could see the aura of everything. I was a child and was afraid of these things but did not lose my groundedness even though I had no human support. My mother then took me to see “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” with Michael Landon when I was six. This horror movie scared me profoundly and stayed with me for the rest of my life. It took me many years to realize that Spirit was showing me that my animal spirit guide and energy is Wolf. I feel that while Spirit was communicating with my Spirit which already knew this, my six year old persona/psyche/ego was not ready for this. I am fortunate in having an ego that was aware enough to allow my soul and Spirit guides to assist me throughout my life to come to a place of accepting and then functioning with my esoteric abilities without have a Spiritual Emergency although seeing a werewolf as a child definitely scared me where I couldn’t even go in a room alone without believing there was a werewolf waiting for me behind the door.
Thank you for sharing here, John. :)
Thank you for this article. I had similar experience 10 years ago, when my husband died suddenly from heart attack and I was left alone with two small children. ( 4 and 6)
It was really overwhelming and scary. I didn’t know anything about spiritual emergency or spirituality .
I haven’t told what is going on to anybody.
I was scared that I will be forced to take pills if I say that to a doctor and I decided firmly that I will not take any medications. It took about 3 years until I managed to calm down. It was darkest period of my life and I was isolating myself from others as much as I could Additional challenge was that I had two children so I had to stay calm on the outside.
I had feeling that once I start with any medical treatment, I will be “finished”, “they” will destroy me like many others
So, on top of really demanding challenges on spiritual level I had a paranoia on mind level, I was scared of coming even close to anybody from mental health system. I decided to go through everything alone -“survive” or “die” .
Third year of my despair, paranoic avoiding of any doctor and hiding my “darkness” under the mask of everyday life as much as I could , my friend gave me a book ” A New Earth” , Eckhart Tolle’s book and after reading it, I felt like someone took all the heaviness from me and I am new and free. :)
I started to listen to him and was re-reading his books many many times. It helped A LOT.
It’s amazing how a few words can change the entire course of our lives, isn’t it? :) Thank you for your vulnerability and for opening up here about your journey. I can’t imagine what you went through. Now it’s onwards and upwards!
This article has arrived in my mail in just perfect time. My experience was slightly different from how you explain it though, as I have fully experienced both: the mystical psychosis and the depressive dark night of the soul.
It’s quite terrifying, because all we know is the pathological resembling form of it, bipolar disorder with its maniac and deppressive episodes. As I have trained in the medical field and dealt directly with patients I knew for sure that this was not what I had. I was able to conduct complex logic, control extreme emotions, and carry responsibilities efficiently despite all pressure. This has proved to me I was not mentally ill or anything.
I believe I have experienced the mystical psychosis 2 years ago, at the beginning of my awakening, due to the loss of a loved one. I thought it was just the shadows of the magical child’s archetype, lack of awareness and spiritual immaturity that has resulted my vulnerability. Two years later, speaking of now.. I am very much experiencing the second type of spiritual emergency “the dark night of the soul”. It’s funny I have noticed how I have been intolerant towards meditation, spirituality and responsibilities. Now that I read this here, I feel some sort of trust towards my inner guidance and feelings. It has been so difficult to just live.
This has pushed me to seriously look into and confront a fear that has been stagnating my life for over a decade. I got to shovel out alot of shame and pain.
Thank you for offering your knowledge and support for people like me. You cannot imagine how much this has consoled me.
Yes, so well said. Most people don’t have the language or knowledge in this day and age to understand that what they’re going through might actually be a spiritual emergency (hence why this phrase and idea needs to desperately enter the mainstream more). The fact that you’ve experienced both mystical psychosis and the dark night is a testament to your strength. <3 I'm so glad this article has helped to console and support you!
I too experienced this when my mom died 9 years ago. I ended up in a psych ward for a week and heavily medicated. It has been a very challenging road, but I can FEEL the light. I have a toolbox full of alternative methods (most of which were free). I learned last year I am a modern Shaman. Two inexpensive and available items were instrumental in my healing that I can’t recommend enough: doTERRA Balance essential oil and Bach Rescue Remedy. They can be used safely, with intention & awareness, with medication. On 1/1/20 I will celebrate one year free of all pharmaceuticals; but give gratitude to their existence. I send positive healing energy to anyone walking this path
Thank you for sharing these tools and letting others know they’re not alone, Laura. Much love for your continued healing <3
I feel so alone I have no one literally I have been in the mental health system most of my life + have been treated like I’m crazy or something really wrong with me even by people who are suppose to be like me I feel no hope now I’m so lost because even after everything I’ve been through I always knew the universe had a reason for everything but I’m finding it hard to see that now I’m sorry I’m a downer but I feel so alone + in so much pain + it just keeps getting worse not better I never knew so much pain existed
Please, just get in touch with god / goddess/ soul/ spirit… whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same. Just pick one (that doesn’t scare you!) and talk with her/him. You can begin bitter as hell, no problem! :-) YOU ARE NOT ALONE. EVER. JUST DO IT! <3
Thank you again Ariana <3
E, thank you for reaching out and sharing the pain that you’re going through. From my soul to yours, here is a big hug full of love. I hope the guidance in this article (and website) continues to be of comfort to you, as well as the comments of all the other souls here who are sharing their pain as well. Although you feel alone, although the night is dark, there is always day. After winter always comes spring. This darkness you’re experiencing is a process of death and rebirth — like the phoenix or caterpillar. You are stronger than you know, and you can get through this. Hold this close to your heart and let it grow.
<3
I’m experiencing all of this, thank you so much for your guidance I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar and am struggling with the medication. Thank you for your ressuring words and advice. I feel less alone now
Dear Flora, my third dark night of the soul has just finished. It has lasted 10 months, and it was very ‘subterranean’, purging the subconscious. Truly, what doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. (more of Nietzsche :-)) Just follow your feelings and give the soul to resolve whatever comes up. You can get in touch with your soul or spirit or god easily – they are there to support and help you. Trust your intuition. Be patient. A few days ago I discovered that “meditation music youtube” pieces – I sleep with them, they are beutiful and really useful. BE BRAVE. <3 IT WILL PASS. :-) … Another thing – if you go bellow feelings, to the energies, feel them and then release them through the crown chakra. After you let the light energy in, to clean the rest… You may want to check Quantum Energy Healing by Melanie Tonia Evans… It will pass and you will learn a lot and you will get very strong, and wise. <3 Don't worry. :-)
Sorry, Quantum Freedom Healing… LOTS OF LOVE!!! :-)
Aletheia, please, can you send it to Flora’s e-mail? Thx for EVERYTHING! <3
Thank you Ariana for your motivating words of support and love <3
And Flora, I'm so glad this information and guidance has helped you!
Thank you so much for writing this article, this is so important and yet so little known.
I experienced something similar this spring. After an unexpected out-of-body experience I handled only thanks to a colleague (she is fairly knowledgeable in spiritual field), I had a session with a therapist who helped me “get down to earth”, then I went from euphoria to confusion and before I knew it, I was overwhelmed with thoughts about reality. Reading things like “this world is an illusion” made me feel terrified I could disappear at any moment and that nothing has any real value. Every night at 3 AM, I used to wake up, sometimes feeling disconnected from my body. My emotional range shrank to apathy and paralyzing fear. I couldn’t listen to songs I used to love, because it made me feel wrong. I was unsure who I was. But underneath it all was something that would not let me give up. I wanted to believe that what I was going through had a purpose. Once, I thought – maybe I have to choose. I have to choose life, choose this world – not leaving into “somewhere else”. I’ve always been a dreamer and not very connected to material world (at times to the point of resentment of the physical), and in those months before my unusual experience I was going through a lot of frustration. I even found a note in my phone that I don’t remember writing – about how I want to leave behind everything, all the pain, this whole limiting physical existence. I think one of the reasons behind this crisis was to make me accept there are many “layers” of existence and none is better then the other and that I can enjoy the material world as well.
I don’t think there was just one thing that helped me to get through this, but here’s what I did (and mostly still do): grounding visualization every morning and evening and also before and after mediation – at first I limited meditation to once a week and then stopped completely (I was advised not to meditate, at first it felt so wrong and scary, now I’m fine with it), daily gratitude, spending time in nature, walking barefoot (and climbing trees barefoot), spending time with other people, eating more meat, chocolate and spicy foods, using patchouli oil (basically everything in my room smells like patchouli at this point :D) and drinking Lipton Warm Me Up tea (it includes cinnamon, ginger, orange peel, cardamom and cloves).
I was afraid “getting down to the ground” would affect me negatively, I thought I would lose my “creative spark” or that I would lead a boring life, caring only about “earthly” things like food or money. But it didn’t happen. I’m still a little lost and unsure who I am and what my purpose is, but this was a valuable lesson and now I feel happy exploring life and learning.
To everyone experiencing a crisis – please believe in yourself. Even if you’re scared and you don’t know what will happen next, don’t give up. You might feel as if you were in the middle of an ocean with nothing to hold on – but you can swim, trust me. Lots of love to you.
(Sorry if my post is too long and if there are some mistakes, I’m not a native speaker.)
Soňa, thank you so much for sharing your experience. <3 You highlight something crucial: the importance of being grounded in this physical reality during the spiritual emergency. Any grounding activity is vital -- and they can come in many forms. I've noticed that what helped you was heat: hot spices, food, and herbs. (As well as the other activities you mentioned.) Heat is comforting and a great way of getting earthed back into the body. Your story is inspiring, thank you for helping others not feel so alone!