Signs of Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Emergency, and the Dark Night of the Soul

Many people who experience a Spiritual Crisis ask a similar question:

“Am I having a spiritual awakening – or am I becoming unwell?”

It’s understandable why. After all, altered perception, profound loss of meaning, intense movement of energy and ego dissolution are not everyday experiences. This can combine to feel transformative, frightening, or both. The onset can be sudden, following psychedelic experiences, meditation, trauma, or life transitions, for example.

In this article we explore:

1. The Role of the Spiritual and the Medical
2. Spiritual Crisis, Spiritual Emergency, or Spiritual Emergence
3. Signs of Spiritual Crisis
4. Which Traditions of Spiritual Crisis do My Experiences Match?
5. What Can Trigger a Spiritual Crisis?
6. What Is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?
7. Practical Grounding Strategies During a Spiritual Crisis
8. Frequently Asked Questions

The Role of the Spiritual and the Medical

If you ever find yourself unable to function, extremely distressed, a risk to yourself, or others, or if it would make you feel more reassured to do so, please consult your GP, or emergency services to access medical support.

Spiritual frames of experiences are perspectives that can help bring clarity to non-ordinary experiences, potentially held by anyone. Conversely, diagnoses are made only by medical professionals in order to deploy appropriate treatment. For more information on the difference between a therapist, a counsellor, a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist I have a blog post which covers this*.

Spiritual Crisis, Spiritual Emergency, or Spiritual Emergence

A spiritual crisis, or a spiritual emergency are synonymous terms and they relate to an experience that is intolerable, without appropriate management, or help. A spiritual emergence is generally related to a similar spiritual experience that is more naturally and easily integrated into one’s life. More on that in my other blog post*.

Signs of Spiritual Crisis

The novelty of these experiences can be wonderful and/or distressing. It may feel overwhelming, or confusing, but you are not alone – therapeutic support and peer support is available.

Many feel that their experiences fit into more than one category.

Altered Perception

Spiritual crises are often accompanied by altered, or non-ordinary perception. Essentially this is a way of encountering the world that you may not normally be used to. Indications of altered perceptions can include:

• Synaesthesia – a blending of the senses. For example, seeing feelings, tasting colours, hearing smells
• Unusual and intense feelings, or energetic movement
• Distortions in vision, such as lights, shapes, movements, or presence of entities

Ego Dissolution and Identity Alteration

Your identity is how you (or others) encounter yourself. During a spiritual crisis you may not feel like you are the person you are accustomed to being. Examples of identity alteration can include:

• Ego dissolution – a disintegration of identification though personal history and habit, with identity becoming more of a malleable process than a fixed condition
• Self-Transcendence – expansion of identity, or sense of self, to incorporate consciousness, humanity, nature and/or the cosmos
• Unitive, or nondual awareness – a fundamental sense of oneness and awareness as a primary, or fundamental aspect of nature (as one with God, for example)

Unusual Beliefs and Experiences

Unusual spiritual beliefs and experiences can include:

• Visions, or sensations that impart meaning
• Communication telepathically, with entities, beyond the grave, or beyond this dimension
• Mystical insight, accessing information from beyond the physical realm (non-internet)
• Being guided, or counselled from beyond the physical realm

Psychosomatic Spiritual Experiences

Psychosomatic experiences are mind-body interactions and not necessarily through cause and effect. You may experience:

• Contortions
• Dizziness
• Heaviness, or weightlessness
• Tremors
• Sleep disturbance

A key aim of Spiritually Integrated Therapy* is for these impacts to reduce as you grow spiritually and this happens because they are seen, along with all of the other indicators I have mentioned, as meaningful parts of the whole spiritual journey. None of these experiences are regarded in isolation, because they don’t exist in isolation.

Which Traditions of Spiritual Growth do My Experiences Match?

The above signs are also described in the following traditions. Again, you may feel that your experiences span multiple traditions, or you may have the sense that your experiences are simply existential, without a spiritual component.

Kundalini Awakening

Kundalini has an ancient Indian origin and is generally characterised by somatic (bodily), emotional and perceptual elements, including:

• Internal currents of energy in body, particularly in the spine
• Contortions, shaking and spontaneous movements
• Fluctuations in temperature
• Waves and/or releasing of emotion
• Dramatic and rapid altering of states, with emerging meaningful insights

Unitive, or Mystical Experiences

Unitive, or mystical experiences are not rooted in any one individual religion, or culture. Instead they are common across many traditions, including secular spirituality and can involve:

• Dissolving of the boundaries of the self
• Expansiveness of the self
• Interconnectedness, or oneness
• A sense of the sacred
• An inability to explain the nature of your experience
• A distortion of time

Dark Night of The Soul

A dark night of the soul pertains to:

• Feeling emotional pain without a clear reason
• Detachment from, or uncertainty about purpose, identity and/or values
• Disorientation, depressive moods and loss of meaning
• A sense of internal death

The term “dark night of the soul” is also used colloquially to describe a depressive existential angst, without necessarily evoking a spiritual frame. It originates from a 16th century poem by San Juan de la Cruz which describes “passive purification” and conveys a sense of being abandoned by God before a transformation.

Shamanic Initiation Process

A shamanic initiation process involves a rite of passage that:

• Is symbolic, or narrative-driven
• Is a journey, often involving descending and returning
• Can contain a sense of being in-between worlds, or nodes of meaning – a liminal space
• Can involves encounters and communication with archetypes

Psychedelic Crisis (with, or without drugs)

A psychedelic crisis can be induced in a number of ways, including by ingesting psychedelic drugs, through meditation, trauma, fasting, or prolonged darkness, for example. Once it sets in it can involve:

• Ego dissolution – a move away from identification with personal history and habit, where identity becomes more of a malleable process than a fixed condition
• An altered understanding of reality
• Sensory distortions

What Can Trigger a Spiritual Crisis?

Here are some examples of events which can give rise to spiritual crises:

1. Ingestion of psychedelic substances, like Ayahuasca, DMT, Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms), LSD and Mescalin – A crisis can occur while under the influence of the substance and/or after and as a result of the experience
2. Loss of a loved one – This can occur due to the possibility of loss, immediately following a loss, or at any point afterwards
3. A major change in life circumstances. For example, divorce, retirement, moving area, or country, leaving education and job loss
4. Serious illness
5. Trauma, or abuse – A crisis can flare-up immediately during, or following trauma, or abuse, or it can emerge at a later date
6. Near-death experiences, where you become confronted with your mortality, or the mortality of someone else
7. Intense meditation, prayer, or contemplation
8. Prolonged darkness, as experienced during darkness retreats
9. Periods of intense distress
10. Periods of intense meaning loss
11. No apparent reason at all

The event alone is not sufficient to bring about a spiritual crisis. A triggering may be marked by an event, but it is the result of an interaction between an event/events, our own unique psychology and available support.

What Is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?

I integrate spirituality into my practice of (online) therapy, which means that I understand the signs and traditions of spiritual crisis and emergence described above and help you to work with them. Therefore, if it is your view that any combination of these fit your unique experience, I may be well positioned to help you integrate them into your life journey and embrace them as highly valued parts of your psycho-spiritual flourishing.

My approach to spiritually integrated therapy includes:

• A committed collaborative alliance
• The understanding that you are not broken, you are on a journey
• Your subjective reality as a domain for growth
• A foundation for emergent self-reconstruction of meaning and identity
• An embrace of spirituality, along with psychology
• Integration of domains, selves, beliefs and insights
• Development of self-grounding capabilities and emotional regulation

I’m not a medical professional e.g. a Clinical Psychologist, or Psychiatrist, but I can provide therapy alongside medical support where appropriate.

If you are seeking online therapy for anxiety and life meaning challenges, integration rather than suppression, or exclusion is often central.

Practical Grounding Strategies During a Spiritual Crisis

When you are grounded you have a calm nervous system, you are stable and peaceful. Long term groundedness can be achieved through therapy, or other specialist support, purposefulness and meaning in life and healthy relationships and supportive social networks.

It is also really helpful to have strategies and techniques in your back pocket to ground yourself moment-to-moment in your day-to-day life. Here are 10 grounding practices for you:

1. Incorporate a structured routine into your life
2. Engage your senses, without interpretation, through cold water practices, feeling the warmth of the sun on your face and mindfulness practices, listening to calming music, or other mindful practices
3. Spending time in nature – even a park, a garden, or gazing at the sky can be enough
4. Spending time with animals
5. Eating regular, healthy meals
6. Engaging in physical exercise
7. A progressive relaxation, or body-scan exercise
8. Deep breathing
9. Journaling
10. Limiting engagement with digital devices

FAQs

Is a Spiritual Crisis a mental illness?

No, but a person with a mental illness could also be going through a spiritual crisis. “Moral, Religious, or Spiritual Problem” is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as distinct from psychiatric disorders.

What is the Difference Between Spiritual Emergence and Emergency?

“Emergence” is more naturally and easily integrated into one’s life. “Emergency” is intolerable, without appropriate management, or help.

Can Kundalini Awakening Symptoms be Psychiatric?

They can overlap. Only a psychiatrist, or a clinical psychologist can diagnose psychiatric conditions, so you would need to consult one, usually beginning with an appointment with your GP.

Can Therapy Help With a Dark Night of the Soul?

Yes*. Existential and spiritually integrated* approaches focus on meaning reconstruction and integration of domains (spiritual and terrestrial), selves, beliefs and insights.