A component of shamanism that makes it different from other esoteric paths is servitude to a community. How one defines community can be as unique as the shamanist, herself. When I began my Masters work in 2010, learning what community I serve was a key focus. From my admissions essay through my thesis, I aligned my work with creating the Tribe of the Modern Mystic. I don’t know how it dawned on me, as I’d spent 12 years creating and sustaining The Saferoom Project, a peer support nonprofit for adult survivors of child sexual assault. I’d also devoted 12 years to deepening my shamanic path, personally and in working with others. I fully expected my formation of community to comprise some facet of assault survivors, though no matter how much I devoted to that work, I was pulled to mentoring intuitives in spiritual emergency. No matter how I put out the intention for working with survivors to be my community, the clients and students who darkened my doorway were budding seers and healers, every day people reeling from some experience of the wyrd that left them wholly changed and oppressively alone in their transition.
But I didn’t want that to be my community.
The first time I heard the phrase “spiritual emergency” was from my therapist in 1994. It had just been added as a diagnosis in the DSM-IV the year before. The day we met she told me that she could help me with symptoms of dis-ease in my life–depression, low self-confidence, PTSD, though she said flat out that she felt my distress was of a spiritual nature. She explained spiritual crisis as an awakening, in which the soul or consciousness is expanding more rapidly than the emotions or psyche can process. I can’t express what a unicorn she was, in the mental health care profession back then, able to make that statement with certainty. I spent just under 3 years working with her, experiencing great improvement of my symptoms, though the day we terminated, wholly affirmed that I was still experiencing spiritual crisis. Within two weeks of that last session I committed to deeper teaching on my shamanic path, had a soul retrieval, and felt relief from crisis for the first time in my life.
I didn’t want to walk back through that. To explore my capabilities in helping others assimilate spiritual crisis into soulful awakening required me to re-examine my rootless beginnings as an intuitive. It would force me to recall decades of knowing I was different in a way that defied vocabulary, the endless frustration and depression around feeling called to something that had no boundaries or guidelines, the loneliness of a solitary path, and the fear of many inexplicable phenomena that were part of my norm. I didn’t want to walk back through any of those things or the feelings they stirred. Yet in greeting the stories of others, mine re-emerged as a strong shamanic narrative, encouraging others to stay the course and affirming that they weren’t alone. Along with reviewing my history of spiritual emergency came unexpected emotional snarls tangling my abusive childhood once again with my spiritual path, even if only that both were occurring at the same time, that despite trauma from those different sources, the pain felt the same.
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In indigenous cultures, this dialogue would likely never happen. Not that they don’t experience spiritual emergency. They do–it’s called initiation. It’s called enlightenment, because they understand that enlightenment isn’t a sudden, dazzling solution to all of your problems. It cracks you open from the inside and requires you to rewire, start over, and do nothing the same. Shamanic cultures wouldn’t have this dialogue because they are born into their communities. They come into the world with the support system to witness, honor, bless, and grow their wild, intuitive selves from day 1. Such is not so clear in the west.
I’ve been on my healing path since I was six years old. From the age of seventeen I began my shamanic path. At twenty-seven I began working with others as a facilitator of healing. I realize now, as with all spiritual truths, the shaman doesn’t find the community, the community finds the shaman.
If you feel a need for such support not only of your experience, but in the development of your mystical life, learn more about the Tribe of the Modern Mystic. My life’s work, my heartsong, and my compassion welcome you.
My story
I kept notes during my spiritual emergency. It was definately worthwhile…
In the onset of my SE, my awareness had opened up to a deeper state than usually known and my attention was hyper alert. My mind seemed to dissolve boundaries and lose the faculty of making discriminations- ie of good and bad. Overall my mental process gained a deeper dimention. Madness, I observed is the confrontation of the mind with something inconceivable. It was a holy madness where I believed that I was that by which I know I am.
Also at the onset I felt like I was being shown signs and symbols that had meaning- such as mirrors and water. This to me is typical jungian stuff. I felt I had a role in the universe and a mission. This became a big assed burden but whatever it was I believe I fulfilled it a year ago somehow. The whole thing I experienced as real but it sounds very made up!
A lot of the knowledge I felt that I possessed was that God was real but there was much more that was being presented so rapidly and so plainly that I was surprised I didn’t know it before. This happened for a few weeks. Some of the things I felt that I now understood was that this is all love and it’s all energy. I was in a state of complete openness. I felt raw and naked before the universe. In this state it was like it says in the bible- and i was in no way religious- that in the light all will be revealed. I literally observed myself reaping the effects of my karma from years before. This happened for a few days continually then I went to hell and after was purified and made as white as snow.I came to know that we are all divine beings and that God is omnipotent. I lived is a state where I was continually being bombarded with new insights and revelations that overwhelmed me. I had no time or energy to integrate them and can’t recall them anymore. My mind was existing in this new, exposed state and I couldn’t stop or control what was happening to me.
For some reason it seemed like I could communicate with the world. This still confuses me as I don’t know if that is true or not.
The experiences developed until I found myself in a timeless unconditioned world.I felt I met God in eternity and like a fundamental note to my experience of being alive. It felt like a priveledge to experience the world in the way and when I noticed it starting to slip away I think I drive myself back into it and ended up on the psyche ward!
At times I would have no sense of I and existed as cosmic consciousness then I would gain a sense of I but not my former one. I would see that we humans are experiencing a case of mistaken identity- believing ourselves to be small egos when what we are is vast and not very well known. This threatens the ego but after my experiences I am happy to be a limited ego again- too much spiritual adventure for me for one lifetime!
Nothing in the universe was as it seemed. I guess that has to do with destroying my beliefs though I can’t really remember that part too clearly. There were many sychronicities and I felt I was undergoing a period of rapid personal transformation. I searched for the true nature of reality and I think this is when I found it was all love. Also all One.
When I wrote about feeling that I was living in what I’d read in Indian scripture, this was a part of it- ‘recognize that the apparent is unreal while the unmanifest is abiding. Through this initiation into truth you will escape falling into unreality again’ hindu Gita
I assumed that all of these states and this knowingness would stay but it gradually left. I’ve read that this is common- to go back to an ordinary life after such experiences but I didn’t really believe I would.
I believed when all was said and done that I was being cared for like nothing in the world mattered more to the universe.
I kept this all to myself cuz who would believe me. And who would not be threatened by my insistence that the ego is not the true self. People have been living with their egos and ways of understanding things for all their lives and I knew I just couldn’t run around challenging all that!
To tell you the truth I don’t remember my scary time with God. It was one intense incident or something that happened when I was alone in the basement of our old house. It wasn’t dread or anything I just remember saying like a small child- God, you scared me. One incident in a host of other strong good ones.
During all this time I couldn’t function very well. I was totally consumed and had no idea what was happening to me or did how long. The crisis lasted about 3 years but the whole thing is still ending 15 years later.
I feel fine now and call it my favorite mistake. It cost me 15 years of a normal life which in my world means great carreer, kids, husband, house, vacations but how could I compare that with the opportunity to go through something realler than real? It may have been dangerous to my sanity- don’t mess around with reality- its not a plaything- but I will never speak against what happened to me.
What I’m doing now is finding myself reconnecting with people I went to highschool and university with. I was very much on my own for 15 years and I’ll admit I’m dying to know what everyone has been doing this past 15 years. It’s been a bit painful to reconnect. I tend to breeze Over my past -‘…spiritual journey, long time. Ask if you’re interested’ …
Lastly my beliefs that were destroyed we’re pretty much everything I’d been conditioned to believe or had come up with details. I just remember that it felt like my whole world was overturned and all my believes felt like things other people who didn’t know anything had told me and I’d accepted. Probably true but I noticed after 10 years my believe system seemed to rebuild itself and I’m definately satisfied with it- I worried I’d be continually questioning it.
I’m currently integrating the experiences
If you want to chat about spiritual emergencies please contact me at jetanoir@hotmail.com or on Facebook
Wow. If I understand you correctly, when you started on this path of shamanism, providing shamanic services to survivors of sexual assault seemed less daunting than providing shamanic support to people experiencing spiritual emergency. I think that comparison conveys the way spiritual emergency can wallop you more than any description I’ve ever read.
It wasn’t less daunting. I had processed my own engagement in that identity for longer and more deeply than I had my relationship to spiritual emergency. I didn’t feel prepared to address the range of issues spiritual emergency touches on, though I’d spent a decade and a half with survivors, by that point, and 25 years on my own assault healing story.