Ever feel like you’ve lost your mind or everything has come crashing down around you?

Be sure to read to the end where I share some tips on how to deal with it!

To kick us off, firstly. Why don't we define what a spiritual emergency is?

What is a Spiritual Emergency?

The term “Spiritual emergency” was first named by Czech psychiatrists Stanislav and Christina Grof (Sounds pretty Czech to me, it Czech’s out!) and was expanded in the 1989 book Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis (1).

In the book, a spiritual emergency was defined as…

“Critical and experientially difficult stages of a profound psychological transformation that involves one’s entire being.
They take the form of non-ordinary states of consciousness and involve intense emotions, visions and other sensory changes, and unusual thoughts, as well as various physical manifestations.” (Grof & Grof, 1989, 1990).

In summary, it's a significant and unexpected internal paradigm shift of consciousness due to circumstantial anomalies giving rise to a forced spiritual awakening.

So the next question is why?

How it Occurs.

In a word, karma. But let me unpack that a little more.

As, Carl Jung would say, (that conniving old bat), this circumstance would be a manifestation of our collective unconscious.

So for my Jungians out there, you'll know what this is but for the rest of the world, this is a pretty dense topic so I'll be sure to make a separate article about this and summarise it quickly here for now.

In essence, the collective unconscious is the totality of the deep, ancestral and collective psyche or consciousness of the world that has and will continue to exist.

Basically, our unconscious core beliefs, patterns and deep psychic awareness which hold the wisdom of our soul’s desires and innate needs, finally burst out to manifest itself upon the world.

So, if there is an extensive amount of repression of your soul’s desires and innate needs not being met, to advocate for this change, your unconscious will manifest low and behold, a "spiritual emergency".

The emergency you could say has been like a dam bursting with too much water building up behind it to break down the wall in order to create the change.

To any of my neuro-psych's playing at home, it’s basically like a hyper-aroused state where our nervous system is so overwhelmed and we go into panic from a build-up of too much underlying tension and dysregulate.

It’s spiritually flipping your preverbal lid.

In summary, a spiritual emergency occurs to assist us in reducing our egoic attachments, defence mechanisms and negative life patterns in order to help us connect more deeply with our authentic selves.

How to Deal With a Spiritual Emergency?

Focus on your own life path.
- With so much madness going on around us it's so important that we stay in our own lanes.
- There are so many distractions and things flying all over the place, it's more important than ever to go after what you and your soul truly want.
Find flow state-inducing activities.
These can be anything that collides your creative, expressive or mindfulness practices together in experiences that take you out of mind and further into the present moment awareness.
Things like...
- Creative writing
- Reading
- Surfing
- Ecstatic Dance
- Etc.
Meditation.
Ahh, the classic response and cure to all, meditation, bet you didn't see that coming right?
Well, it's important. It's like a juicy ringing out of a towel for your mind cut through the ego.
Meditate man, it's good for you!
Stop Watching the News!
Or at least, watch it a little less/moderate your time with it.
If you watch it and stay overly attached, you'll lose your mind, trust me I've been there.
Reduce time on social media
Another one, heaps of cray cray stuff going out there in the world.
Focus on you. You do you. You're all you've got.
Don't stress too much about others, the world has been around for a long time, it'll be there tomorrow.