{"id":3661,"date":"2023-08-02T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T02:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chrismackey.com.au\/?p=3661"},"modified":"2023-09-02T12:16:21","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T02:16:21","slug":"synchronistic-experiences-and-spiritual-crises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrismackey.com.au\/synchronistic-experiences-and-spiritual-crises\/","title":{"rendered":"Synchronistic experiences and spiritual crises"},"content":{"rendered":"
N.B. Here is a link to a webinar on the related topic<\/a> of differentiating synchronistic experiences from psychosis, presented on Wednesday 29th August 2023 through TCP: The Coincidence Project<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many people feel overwhelmed if they start to experience a huge increase of weird coincidences.<\/strong><\/p>\n This may be especially unsettling if people haven’t experienced such frequent or striking coincidences before. It can be hard to make any sense of them.<\/p>\n In such situations, people may fear that they are going mad. Otherwise, they might believe that their experiences are genuine and meaningful, but family members or friends might think they are becoming mentally ill. For example, If the person is especially excited or energized by such experiences, it can seem to others that they are suffering from a bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n This raises the question of how you can tell the difference between non-ordinary states of consciousness, which overlap with recognised spiritual or mystical phenomena, and psychosis. This is a complex question as it can be difficult even for mental health professionals to tell the difference. Some people might even be experiencing a combination of both. It can be even more complicated when people have also experienced significant trauma reactions including dissociative symptoms, which may also have overlapping features with psychosis, including hearing voices.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s at least worth making the attempt to differentiate transpersonal experience from psychosis.<\/strong><\/p>\n Those who are experiencing such phenomena and are pushed toward psychiatric hospitalisation tend to respond poorly, especially if they are mainly treated according to a rigid medical model focussing on medication. They might not only feel unnecessarily invalidated, but their mental health may deteriorate. On the other hand, people who are suffering from significant mental illness may often experience loosened associations, which means that they are more likely to read extra significance into trivial or random events and to develop distorted ideas about themselves in relation to the world.<\/p>\n Before considering this diagnostic problem further, I’ll clarify that I am using the terms spiritual<\/em>, transpersonal <\/em>and mystical <\/em>as overlapping descriptions of experience that has a numinous, or sacred, quality. William James, an influential American pioneer of psychology and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience<\/em>, defined mystical experience as being extraordinary experience with four key features. It is ineffable<\/em>: that is, it\u2019s impossible to describe the experience adequately in words. It is noetic<\/em>, in that it conveys seemingly significant insight beyond what can be gained by the intellect. It is transient<\/em>, being unsustainable for a long period. And it shows passivity<\/em>: a sense of being influenced by something beyond our own will.<\/p>\n Striking and meaningful coincidences, also known as synchronicity, are one example of an experience that is recognized by many people and cultures as a potentially genuine spiritual or mystical phenomenon. Other transpersonal or mystical experiences may include hearing the voice of a deceased relative, d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu or near-death experiences. They can include suddenly developing psychic or other paranormal abilities such as clairvoyant visions of past or future events or telepathy. These experiences may arise in such a way that is overwhelming for an individual and they may fear that they are losing their mind. This is more likely if people have not discussed such experiences with others and don\u2019t have any mental framework for thinking about them.<\/p>\n The issue of helping to differentiate between transpersonal experience and psychosis relates to the theme of \u201cspiritual emergency\u201d, a little-discussed topic in mental-health circles.<\/strong><\/p>\n A spiritual emergency occurs if a person experiences what might be recognized as mystical or transpersonal phenomena at a time of crisis. The crisis might be related in part to various challenges the person is facing in their everyday life, or it can even be precipitated by the unsettling emergence of spiritual phenomena themselves.<\/p>\n Especially in the latter case, it helps for the person to understand that almost all cultures of the world recognize in some way the potential importance and benefit of mystical experiences. Most early cultures had traditional healers, or shamans, who were respected for their capacity to experience mystical phenomena. All religions include belief in such phenomena.<\/p>\n Even though mental health services in most developed countries might dismiss belief in mystical phenomena as superstitious, some of the most influential psychologists and psychiatrists have openly held such beliefs, including William James, Abraham Maslow and Carl Jung. Jung\u2019s Memories, Dreams, Reflections<\/em> has a particularly rich record of his own and others\u2019 transpersonal experiences, many of which had a powerful, transformative impact. We might say that they believed in mind, body and soul, whereas mental health services rarely go beyond considering the mind and body. This is gradually changing and one of the most noticeable shifts in recent times in the mental health field is greater recognition of a spiritual dimension in life, even for those people who are not religious.<\/p>\n