A feast of revealing narratives expose the amazing story of how people deal with critical points in personal transformation, also known as spiritual emergency. With the increase of interest in yoga, meditation, mental health recovery, and recovery from addiction there is renewed interest in care that is not based on medication as much as empathy and compassionate companionship. This book helps anyone who doesn't have a language to understand intense inner experiences and confuses them with mental illness. If you have felt disoriented by intense spiritual experiences this book will help you understand where you are and where you may be heading. It is a map of the journey of spiritual awakening written by a psychologist who knows the territory well. Reading it may make the difference between heading off to the hospital to get drugs to stop the symptoms or staying home and knowing you are OK. Just because you have had a conversation with your spirit guide, or talked to the spirit of someone who has passed away doesn't mean you are having a breakdown. It could mean you are having a breakthrough to a higher level of functioning. The author is a psychologist and knows the territory.

Argues that many episodes of transformational crisis have been misdiagnosed as mental illness, and explains how to use such a crisis for spiritual development.

As more people practice meditation, yoga, and participate in workshops for personal transformation, increasing numbers of them are having experiences related to spiritual awakening. The problem is they don't know the territory. An intense spiritual experience can seem overwhelming and scary and even be confused with going crazy. This practical book is the classic text, newly updated in 2006 (3rd edition), defining the problems that can arise when someone is disoriented by intense spiritual experiences. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in spiritual experiences and their relationship to mental health and mental illness. It distinguishes the differences between various mental pathologies and indicators of spiritual awakening. It clearly describes the kind of care one needs in a spiritual emergency process and how the care is dramatically different than conventional psychiatric treatment. It traces the history of how signs of spiritual awakening have been perceived in the past. Graduate schools of psychology use this book as a text because it is such a clear statement about the nature of spiritual crises and appropriate treatment. However, it is written in a style that is also appropriate for any adult reader. The author, a transpersonal psychologist, has written five other books on spiritual healing and awakening. The title of the first edition of this book was "A Sourcebook for Helping People in Spiritual Emergency" and was published in 1988.

Humans have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishing, but they can also be dangerous. Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring. He sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader - and himself - learn the art of losing control. Jules' exploration of ecstasy is an intellectual and emotional odyssey balancing personal experience, interviews and readings from ancient and modern philosophers that will change the way you think about how you feel. From Aristotle and Plato, via the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis and Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny and life-enhancing journey through under-explored terrain.

Personal accounts exploring the shift from mental illness to spiritual awakening. The first book in which people discuss their own spiritual emergencies and share what helped them through. Our authors are the experts of their own experience, and they share their wild journeys with courage, insight and poetry. There are fascinating parallels in their experiences, suggesting minds in extremis go to similar places. These are beautiful postcards from the edge of human consciousness, testaments to the soul's natural resilience. Our authors have returned from their descent with valuable insights for our culture, as we go through a collective spiritual emergency, with old myths and structures breaking down, and new possibilities breaking open. What is there beyond our present egocentric model of reality? What tools can help us navigate the emergence? "This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the connection between spiritual awakening and what we normally term 'mental illness.' It is full of inspirational and moving stories that show that psychological disturbances often lead to significant personal growth, if supported properly. As a culture, we urgently need a new paradigm of mental illness and treatment, and this and this book makes an important contribution to that shift.' Steve Taylor PhD, author of The Leap and Spiritual Science

OneCry: A Call to Spiritual Awakening is a challenge, a plea for readers to shake off spiritual apathy and wake up to the hope of God moving with extraordinary power in our day. It paints a picture of both desperation and hope; without spiritual revival our country has no hope, but when it comes we will need no other hope. Drawing on an abundance of stories from ordinary people who have experienced the power of life-changing revival in their own lives, this books provides a contemporary roadmap for spiritual awakening and real revival. Passionate and story-rich, OneCry engages readers to seek God urgently at this moment in history, it inspires them with hope for what God can do, and it invites them to join a growing movement of believers who are uniting in one cry for revival and spiritual awakening. It is a summons to join together in a single focus: passionate prayer for revival in our nation like hasn’t been seen in nearly two hundred years.

It’s no revelation that in today’s world many people suffer from some form of spiritual crisis. But, fortunately, there is hope. In Spiritual Crisis: Surviving Trauma to the Soul, you’ll discover how you can reverse the impact of spiritual crisis and apply healing balm to the traumatized soul. A comprehensive, real-life approach to spiritual care, it gives you the understanding necessary to put a lid on the daily chaos that seeks to destroy those whose lives have been shattered by tragedy, terror, and disillusionment.Written from the perspective of a compassionate professional who has navigated the dark and turbulent waters of his own spiritual crises, Spiritual Crisis represents a loving cross-section of aid from the fields of pastoral theology, psychology, and health care. Christians and non-Christians alike will benefit from its frank approach to aiding troubled souls through the tough times of belief transition, loss of faith, and potentially damaging extremes in living and thinking. Specifically, you’ll read about: understanding the effects and roots of spiritual crisis and trauma coping with loss counteracting disillusionment with the church negotiating belief transitions dealing with religious burnout intervening in denominational identity crisesOftentimes, it’s hard to know what will make a loved one survive or succumb to the impact of seemingly insurmountable personal emergencies. However, this book is a “call to care” that will enable you to help others turn back the tide of debilitating hardship in their lives and restore the tempering unity of mind and body. Whether you’re a beginning pastoral counselor, a marriage and family therapist, or friend of a troubled loved one, Spiritual Crisis will show you and those you work with how to turn crisis into care.

When philosophy rescued him from an emotional crisis, Jules Evans became fascinated by how ideas invented over two thousand years ago can help us today. He interviewed soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, and anarchists and discovered the ways that people are using philosophy now to build better lives. Ancient philosophy has inspired modern communities — Socratic cafés, Stoic armies, Epicurean communes — and even whole nations in the quest for the good life. This book is an invitation to a dream school with a rowdy faculty that includes twelve of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons on happiness, resilience, and much more. Lively and inspiring, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life.

Magical, paradigm-shifting, terrifying, and awe-inspiring, the spiritual awakening process is at the core of every human’s quest for freedom, love, and happiness. In this groundbreaking book, spiritual counselors Luna and Sol detail the many stages, paths, and pitfalls connected with this sacred evolutionary process. By reconnecting with your Soul, you will discover how to experience the joy, liberation, and peace that you have been searching for all along. In these pages, you will discover: 1. What is happening to you 2. Why you’re experiencing a spiritual awakening 3. The many spiritual awakening symptoms and stages 4. The three inner worlds of the spiritual journey 5. What to do when your awakening becomes a spiritual emergency 6. Signs you’re experiencing Soul loss 7. How to retrieve and integrate any fragmented pieces of your psyche through self-love, inner child work, and shadow work 8. What spiritual “traps” you need to be mindful of 9. How to communicate with your Soul Through the inner work practices of Inner Child Work, Self-Love, and Shadow Work, this book gives you the tools to initiate your own deep psychological healing. By removing the blocks and walls that surround your Soul, you will be able to access deep levels of joy, creativity, energy, courage, peace, fulfillment, freedom, and love. The Spiritual Awakening Process is a psychospiritual manual that is composed of various articles that we have published on lonerwolf.com in the past. We have also added extra content to help illuminate your path and guide you through this sacred time of life.

Many people are undergoing a profound personal transformation associated with spiritual opening. Under favorable circumstances, this process results in emotional healing, a radical shift in values, and a profound awareness of the mystical dimension of existence. For some, these changes are gradual and relatively smooth, but for others they can be so rapid and dramatic that they interfere with effective everyday functioning, creating tremendous inner turmoil. Unfortunately, many traditional health-care professionals do not recognize the positive potential of these crises; they often see them as manifestations of mental disease and repsond with stigmatizing labels, suppressive drugs, and even institutionalization. In The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina and Stanislav Grof, the world's foremost authorities on the subject of spiritual emergence, draw on years of dramatic personal and professional experience with transformative states to explore these "spiritual emergencies," altered states so powerful they threaten to overwhelm the individual's oridinary reality. This book will provide insights, assurances, and practical suggestions for those who are experiencing or have experienced such a crisis, for their families and friends, and for mental-health professionals. It is also a valuable guide for anyone involved in personal transformation whose experiences, though generally untraumatic, may still at times be bewildering or disorienting.