Spiritual Emergency
I’ve been thinking a lot about spiritual emergency lately. It is a concept that I studied about in my masters degree at St. Mary’s in transpersonal psychology and I gave an in-service presentation about it at Lutheran Social Service when I worked there as an in-home family counselor. The idea about it is that people are getting mental illness diagnoses when they really are in spiritual emergency. They are experiencing a spiritual crisis due to a situation occuring in their lives. What can result is the hearing of voices and having “otherworldly” experiences that sound crazy to mental health professionals. Today, many people get mental illness diagnoses and medications, rather than what they really need to help them get through this crisis time.
I have been thinking a lot about this because I have had the year from hell with so many losses, changes and challenges that I am just soooooo tired and feel like I need a “time out” from life. Being that I live alone, I kept thinking that all I wanted was someone to hold me so I could cry, someone to nurture me and tell me everything would be alright. I recently had a friend come and hold me through the night, nurturing me, as I cried and spoke my heart and the pain of loss. It was such a comfort to just have someone there to just listen and hold me. No judgement, no trying to “fix” me, just allowing me to feel and grieve. And as I started to think about this, I realized that this is what spiritual emergency is all about. And I wondered how I could help others who are also going through what I am.
In spiritual emergency the first most important thing is to provide the person in spiritual emergency with a safe place to be. A quiet place, hopefully in nature, low light,no noise. etc. In Stanislov Grof’s book Spiritual Emergency he gives a whole list of what can be helpful to someone in spiritual emergency. I thought more about this and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there were enough of us in the spiritual community who would be willing to “be there” for another person in the spiritual community who needed a “time out”. I’m not talking about a one day “I feel sad today” episode. I’m talking about major transitions happening in someone’s life and providing some nurturing time, or time to hold and listen to another.
So what I am asking, is if anyone would be interested in forming a community, a spiritual community, who would offer help in time of spiritual emergency to others in the community. The times today have been very demanding with all the earth and life changes occuring. The old established way of doing things is falling apart and the new has yet to arrive. It is a time of great transformation, but until the transformation has occurred there is turmoil, chaos, anxiety, exhaustion, fear. We can reach out to each other in our spiritual community to help one another, to be there for another, to nurture another, to listen, to hold. If there were enough of us to do this, we could help one another. When someone is in crisis, we could send one person in every few days maybe just for an hour or two or whatever the person needed. I haven’t formed the whole vision yet, and hope you will do that with me, but we would be establishing community, and reaching out to one another in need. Again, the emphasis would NOT be on “fixing” the person, but just “being” with them. Or perhaps you are able to provide a space for someone to “be” for awhile. Or maybe you could make a meal for someone if you love to cook, or offer to do someone’s dishes or whatever might lighten the load for the person. Perhaps you are willing to pamper the person with a massage, reiki, a facial, wash their hair, etc. I’m looking at this as a volunteer offering, one that does not cost the person in spiritual emergency anything. It would be a giving from the heart, paying it forward, for when we are in need, we then would receive back.
My thought was that if there were enough of you interested, we could have a meeting with a conference call option for those of you who are far away and cannot attend but who may want to learn how to do this with other spiritually minded people in your own community. We could talk about how this could work, throw out options and see what is created from it all. I would be open to offering a free training on spiritual emergency and how to comfort another, identifying behavior that is helpful and that which isn’t.
So the first step would be to contact me via email at earthdrummer@hotmail.com, if you are interested in being a part of this spiritual community. We can set a time to meet and go from there. Please let me know your thoughts and concerns surrounding this idea. People used to reach out to one another in community without even thinking about it. Today we need a more active intention to move into compassionate action.
Thank you so very much,
Jeanne
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