Supernatural Experiences and Spiritual Emergency

Hi Kelley my name is Lucy. When I was around 14 I went to church on a regular basis. One night after saying a prayer I got in bed and I started feeling a weird sort of electricity running up my legs, then suddenly I couldn’t move, scream, or think. A really disturbing voice next to my ear whispered bunch of random numbers. At church they’d said demons sometimes attack and told me to pray, “In God’s name I repel you.” Since I couldn’t scream or talk I said it in my mind until this thing finally let go of me. It was horrible. I was terrified at being paralyzed, though the voice scared me.

I’m 24 now and I can’t get over that event, or all that happened after. I still sleep with a light on, and when alone I feel someone is watching me. I cannot walk alone in the dark because I feel I’m gonna see something I even have panic attacks. I really need help I don’t want to be afraid anymore.

Thanks for your note, Lucy. My feeling about what you went through and how it has affected you is one that is common for many intuitives: spiritual emergency. A spiritual emergency or crisis occurs when we have an experience outside our belief system, or when we experience spiritual growth in a way that we can’t emotionally process. In short, it is PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) of the soul. On an unconscious level, a switch gets flipped, that compounded by fear, doesn’t just unflip on demand. The result of this heightened state of consciousness is that you feel is if you never left the moment the voice spoke to you. Part of you feels like you are still there, creating a state in which everything feels frightening and predatorial. Some symptoms of spiritual emergency range from irrational fear, changes in personality, feeling attacked by atmospheric forces, depression, hypervigilance.

Often a trauma induces this reaction, though it can also occur after intense wonderful brushes with the supernatural. Some refer to such an experience as the classic “shamanic death” or “initiatory shamanic wound.” Regardless of the nature of the catalyzing event, when you have a spiritual experience that alters your ability to enjoy your life, you have experienced and are in spiritual crisis. Having established that, the question then becomes, “What do you do about it?”

You are a very sensitive person, who demonstrates an ability to connect with the unseen. Whether that is something you want to pursue under your control is for you to decide. What is important at present is that you find a way to reclaim your power and release the pattern of PTSD from this experience.

When I look at the moment that you heard the voice, I see that you experienced soul loss. This is a naturally occurring result of trauma, in which an aspect of the soul leaves and can’t return. A soul retrieval with a shaman can bring the soul part back, or help it return to All Things. What is peculiar about this particular moment is that your fear doesn’t center around the voice, or even the experience. The ongoing PTSD is about your fear that if you return this fourteen-year-old soul part, that it will happen again. The thing is, this soul part is highly intuitive, and she has information for you about how to use this ability, control it, set boundaries for it. In fact, by not returning her–thus your personal power–a self-fulfilled prophecy is being sustained. Without the wisdom of this soul part, the experience of the voice–the fear–is repeating, constantly. By bringing back this soul part, it can finally stop, you can set some limits on how you engage your intuition, and you can feel in control of your life again.

I recommend that you find someone who can stop the spiritual emergency with a soul retrieval. There are other approaches; this is the one I am most familiar with. I can help you with that remotely, or I can possibly recommend someone near you, to help you do it, in-person. However you move forward, I understand that you are asking for help. This means that you are ready. In order to move beyond that experience at fourteen and feel whole in your life now, you will have to face the fear. In doing so, you won’t have it anymore. You will finally step out of that frightening moment, and have your life back. The anxiety and the hpyervigilance will end.

My best to you, Lucy.

Gift of the Dreamtime – Awakening to the Divinity of Trauma. Revised second edition now available, with a foreward by shaman, Christina Pratt.

Along with it, look for Gift of the Dreamtime Reader’s Companion

Recently released is Real Wyrd – A Modern Shaman’s Roots in the Middle World, my collection of true paranormal experiences as a lifelong intuitive.