It is seemingly hard to distinguish between a psychological disorder and a spiritual crises. Caroline Myss says it well when she says, “when the root is spiritual the person lacks the motivation to blame other people for causing the crises. Rather, he or she realizes that the cause of the crises is within. The inadequacy of the external components of the persons life is a consequence of the spiritual crises, not the cause.”
And also from personal experience and from what I hear is the norm- when a person is in a spiritual crises, then they are able to function in the every-day life adequately, almost normally. Usually only the people closest to them can recognize that something is wrong. In my case almost nobody knew, only one or two I told, but I didn’t have many people around me at stage of my life, I kept to myself then.
The crises usually comes after a period of ease in meditation or another spiritual practise. Things seem to be going very well indeed, a person feels they’re growing and learning and they are filled with all kinds of new understandings and joys about themselves, life and the Universe. And suddenly…
The Void. An endless, dark, horrifying Void. Nothing makes sense. Nothing to hold on to. Your sense of self and identity is not there. You have no idea who you are. All you are is empty, but this emptiness is not the emptiness of no-thought state where you found bliss before. It is an alien, depressing Void. Reading other peoples experience I see that depression is a very common experience of the spiritual crises. Everything in life, everything that you see and experience is totally without a meaning. More than that- it is cruel and filled with suffering, so much suffering that you cannot bare it at all. In one of those “dark nights” I survived from one panic attack to the next. I felt I simply could not exist in this world of suffering anymore, I tried to breathe but the air, the atmosphere seemed so filled with energy that my body did not want, that breathing seemed to be the most difficult thing in the world. But at the same time that you cannot bare the thought of living, you know that suicide is not an option. It is a wish, to be sure, it is a wish to go back to your source and rest in peace, the longing to join the eternal is great, almost unbearable, but you know that it is not a solution, you know that it is not an ending to your troubles, and you would rather work on yourself in this life, than escape to the next life and start all this again.
Also the messiah-complex is easy to come at this period, for me it was anyway. Because your heart is VERY open, you feel the whole suffering of the world, it seems to press down on your neck like a mountain and the weight of it is killing you. You cannot bare to see all the people and other sentient beings suffering, you need to help, yet you know you cannot. You know that all of them are exactly where they need to be and the only transformation for them is within themselves. But the heart goes to the place of messiah-complex anyway, because it seems the only possible solution. This was the point where I actually thought I was going insane, and this fear and realization brought me back out of the crises.
Another experience that you can have is a feeling of utter disconnection. I call this experience of mine as the meeting with no-form. It was a sudden falling away of all concepts. I could see all objects around me but my mind knew no meaning to them. I looked at my arms and I knew at the back of my mind that they were connected to my body but at that time I had no idea what their purpose was, I simply wondered at these amazing dangling things from my body. I knew I was looking at a cup but had for that time lost all memory it seemed- of what a cup was for. It was beautiful, I felt I saw things as they were. But the utter disconnection was extremely frightenening.
And yet another physical side-effect- vertigo. Vertigo is a physiological disease that many people experience. Yet with me- I have only experienced it during spiritual crises. The earth literally seems to be a wave underneath your feet. I used to sing the Doors song "The end" while I was waving and walking in the streets as if I was drunk with no balance. "Ride the snake. The snake is long..." It is a natural side-effect of feeling groundless I believe. Your body reacts to what is going on in your mind.
One crises of mine was connected with Vipassana meditation. If you are a sensitive person then Vipassana can be a really hard thing to experience. First because suddenly there is an out-burst of all your inner hidden psychological insecurities, feelings that have been buried for so long are suddenly out in the open. Even though I thought I had worked through my childhood issues, there were scars and issues that suddenly overwhelmed me. And second because I started to feel the energy of the body in such an extreme way that meditation sessions were literally torture sessions where I felt I was being swallowed up in the intense pain and pressure of the energy of my body. Panic attacks, feeling of loosing your mind, how to get out of this? By forcing yourself through and continuing- there is no other way. Realization that everything rises to pass away of course in the end leaves you walking out of the place feeling you are rather floating than walking. After all the suffering I felt I lost about 10 kilos of my weight, but the process itself- so hard!
So in the end- I know that people are always encouraged to seek a therapy, a support group or whatever, during these really hard transformational processes. I never had any. I believe that you have these experiences, because you can handle them alone, you are never given anything more than you can handle. Yes- it might have been easier with a therapy. Yet the things that you learn on your own- these are the things that stick with you.
Stick with it. All the suffering of these times is a blessing. Any transformation is hard. Sometimes you feel that you cannot possibly deal with this. But you can. And you will look back at these times as the most profound periods of your life. Why is growth so painful? Cause all that we were before, it is like a solid wall inside you, that needs to be dissolved into a river of fluidity and freedom. It will hurt. But the hurt is temporary, while the gains will last.
Here is a video with Ken Wilber talking to a student who is experiencing a crises of spirit during meditation Dark nights of meditation practise
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