Are You Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency, Kundalini Awakening, or a Spiritual Crisis?
If you have sought out this page, you’re probably feeling scared, angry, or maybe even despairing. When we begin a spiritual practice, we are seeking deep peace, bliss, and healing. But it’s not uncommon for us to end up in a place of overwhelm and confusion, wondering how the very thing we thought was the answer instead turned out to be the cause of our distress.
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What is Spiritual Emergency?
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Spiritual Emergency Symptoms |
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Spiritual Emergency occurs when the spiritual process or a person's meditation practice triggers their unresolved ego or wounds and amplifies them in a way the person isn't prepared for. This can happen through many different pathways.
Meditation can lift old trauma that is too intense to be digested with meditative practices alone. It can open up the energy we sometimes refer to as kundalini. We can be thrown into an awakened perspective prematurely, and be terrified, or struggle with unmoving dissociation from our sense of ourselves or of relative reality (DP/DR). We can go through a dark night of the soul (DNOTS) and have no idea why we feel so despairing about the nature of things. Eastern spiritual practices can also disempower us instead of empowering us. They can lead to spiritual bypassing which prevents the practice from working as it's intended to. Teachers can be abusive and spiritual communities can be cults, creating new trauma or compounding old trauma. A process of spiritual awakening can bring online gifts or "siddhis" that we have no clue what to do with. I too have faced spiritual emergency and spiritual crisis and I know how incredibly scary and disorienting it can be. It’s often a huge challenge, but in taking one simple step at a time, you can emerge from this period into something better. I promise, I don’t say that lightly. |
*Please keep in mind that none of these symptoms can diagnose spiritual emergency alone, and all can be symptoms of other things. We look at the whole picture to conclusively diagnose spiritual emergency.
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Awakening and meditation bring into consciousness what has been unconscious.
This can be a good thing when we can digest the energy and emotion of the newly conscious material as it arises. But often, the unresolved material that becomes conscious, whether that be an old trauma, a suppressed emotional pattern such as rage or grief, previously unconscious judgment towards others or oneself, or the like, can be overwhelming to the person's system and create instability and at times, internal chaos.
The practice would tell us we need to surrender, to accept, to love what is arising. When that's not available, often we either suppress what we're feeling or we abandon the practice all together as not being right for us.
The practice would tell us we need to surrender, to accept, to love what is arising. When that's not available, often we either suppress what we're feeling or we abandon the practice all together as not being right for us.
There is a middle way, where we seek out more appropriate frameworks for egoic healing so that we can return to the wisdom of ultimate practices.
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We typically need to meet trauma first on the level on which it was created - which was on the relative level, or the level of self. We need to give love and support to our internalized young self, we need to re-empower a disempowered self, we need to understand the cycles of our nervous system and how to move towards regulation from freeze or fight/flight.
This type of work allows the ancient practices, which were developed at a time when people didn't struggle with self-hate or disempowerment or nervous system dyregulation in the way we do today, to do what they were designed to do. Surrender becomes possible without forcing. Awakening can also release the energy that was trapped in the egoic structure into the body; this is what is meant when we refer to kundalini or shakti. This energy can also be unleashed in other ways - through taking plant medicine, shaktipat, trauma, or even just while walking down the street. It is released during a moment of time when the ego stops creating the world in the way it believes it to be. In that moment, our entire system begins energetically reorienting to be in alignment with what is seen. This reorganization almost always takes years. |
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Free Kundalini Resources
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Sometimes this energy is gentle. Often it is not, and we sometimes refer to that as kundalini syndrome. Having navigated a very difficult kundalini process myself, I have had my share of very dark nights and days. I also now know many pathways through, and I know that the intensity of an experience doesn’t preclude something beautiful emerging later on.
A person with kundalini process needs enough egoic healing to be able to open to and trust the energy - enough healing of the conditioned tendencies of the ego, enough self-love, enough stability, enough empowerment, enough inner safety - then, the energy can take care of the rest of the process. The energy knows exactly what to do, but letting it do that - is another matter entirely! Let’s address Depersonalization/Derealization (DP/DR) in the context of spiritual practice. The awakened state can interact with our ego in such a way that in achieving a glimpse of the ultimate perspective, we become triggered. We may get stuck there, or we may react in terror, reminded of a prior trauma we associate with that state. We need to understand how the ego is relating to the ultimate perspective, and work with its fears and traumas. We can also gently coax the system back into the relative perspective, titrating as that is tolerated. And we can explore the ultimate perspective itself, seeing if we can find some small pleasure in any aspect of it. Together, we can rebalance our system such that we can integrate the ultimate wisdom we encountered while also being in touch with our relative experience of ourselves and the world. |
Another challenge often faced by people on the spiritual path is the opening up of abilities or spiritual gifts that they previously had no or limited access to. These abilities can allow us to interact with the spirit world, experience past lifetimes, experience consciousness leaving the body, and the list goes on and on. This can be very scary and destabilizing for people, but these abilities of course can become a normal and useful part of our experience if we have the right tools for navigating them, and I love to help people with this.
The dark night of the soul is a common stage of spiritual maturation, but perhaps the most difficult phase occurs when we don’t know it’s happening to us. Don't get me wrong, being in it is no picnic either. A dark night of the soul happens to us when our process is ready to challenge a fundamental and foundational way we relate to the world.
For example, the dark night of the will challenges our belief that we can control life. That one runs super, super deep and usually brings up a lot of suffering as we’re asked to address it. In understanding our experience, gradually seeing and integrating what’s true, and slowly processing the emotions the dark night brings up for us, we can land in a place of deep freedom.
Here is an article I love that I think describes the experience and journey we face when going through a DNOTS.
The dark night of the soul is a common stage of spiritual maturation, but perhaps the most difficult phase occurs when we don’t know it’s happening to us. Don't get me wrong, being in it is no picnic either. A dark night of the soul happens to us when our process is ready to challenge a fundamental and foundational way we relate to the world.
For example, the dark night of the will challenges our belief that we can control life. That one runs super, super deep and usually brings up a lot of suffering as we’re asked to address it. In understanding our experience, gradually seeing and integrating what’s true, and slowly processing the emotions the dark night brings up for us, we can land in a place of deep freedom.
Here is an article I love that I think describes the experience and journey we face when going through a DNOTS.
I do not hold a monopoly on Truth.
Lastly, spirituality and psychotherapy both have been rife with abuse and immaturity masquerading as care and maturity for...well, perhaps, forever. Teachers with their own undigested or unconscious emotional material can act in ways that are harmful. Sometimes teachers with personality disorders seek the power of the role of spiritual teacher as a way of defending themselves against their own trauma.
We're all aware of the teachers who have been called out for abusive behavior while in their role. If you're a person recovering from an experience with a teacher or community that was abusive - that disempowered you, disrespected your boundaries, gaslit you, shamed your humanity, took advantage of your vulnerability and integrity, lied to you, manipulated you, or otherwise harmed you - I understand these patterns, what causes them, and how to heal from them.
It also feels important to say that integrity is incredibly important to me in my role as therapist and teacher. Don't take my word for it - don't take anyone's word for it. Trust your own experience of me. I encourage and empower my clients and students to live awakening as they see it, not as I see it. I see the beauty in what each of our unique perspectives offer the world.
Truly facing my own shadow and doing the gritty work of integration has been the most important aspect of my life for many years now.
We're all aware of the teachers who have been called out for abusive behavior while in their role. If you're a person recovering from an experience with a teacher or community that was abusive - that disempowered you, disrespected your boundaries, gaslit you, shamed your humanity, took advantage of your vulnerability and integrity, lied to you, manipulated you, or otherwise harmed you - I understand these patterns, what causes them, and how to heal from them.
It also feels important to say that integrity is incredibly important to me in my role as therapist and teacher. Don't take my word for it - don't take anyone's word for it. Trust your own experience of me. I encourage and empower my clients and students to live awakening as they see it, not as I see it. I see the beauty in what each of our unique perspectives offer the world.
Truly facing my own shadow and doing the gritty work of integration has been the most important aspect of my life for many years now.
Dark Night of the Soul or Depression?
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When suffering from intense feelings, people may at some point wonder if they are experiencing a dark night of the soul or if they’re having a Major Depressive Episode. The answer is often not simple, because the two can occur together, their symptoms can look remarkably similar, and they use some of the same bodily pathways.
Both can cause difficulty functioning, loss of pleasure, difficulty with sustaining attention, with thinking, or with memory, loss of meaning or of identity, confusion, fatigue, insomnia, changes in appetite, suicidal ideation, or feelings of sadness or hopelessness. But it is possible to distinguish them. While the dark night is meant to depress, in the sense that it’s putting pressure on a foundational belief or way of relating to the world that we hold in order to push us to let it go, it is not meant to cause freeze in the nervous system. Major Depressive Disorder is always associated with a freeze state. A dark night should not significantly amplify feelings of self-hatred, whereas that’s extremely common for Major Depressive Disorder, (MDD). Both MDD and the dark night often raise existential questions and anxieties, but a dark night will revolve around these types of questions. Both sufferers might ask “what’s the point of life?” but the depressed person will be asking in the sense of their relative concerns - their job, their family, their finances, their own worthiness, etc.. The person in a dark night will be asking more about the nature of existence, what life is, or whether it is worthwhile given their insights. Both might ask “who am I,” but again, the depressed person will be asking about that more in the sense of not valuing themselves enough to know who they are, or their generalized hopelessness will cause them to see their identity through a very negative lens, while the person in a dark night will more so be questioning the nature of the self and of existence. A dark night should feel like pressure and heaviness. It has a direction it’s trying to carry a person in. If we can relax through our deep existential pain during a dark night, we will be delivered into more and more peace. If we are in a state of freeze, as we are with depression, trying to relax almost always keeps us stuck or even amplifies our freeze. And in this case we need to take different action to address that freeze. A dark night also most often occurs in the midst of a significant spiritual shift, though sometimes it can happen due to trauma or otherwise unintentionally. The shift in perspective that precedes it can go unnoticed in its significance in the moment itself but still cause major consequences. |
If a person is experiencing BOTH a dark night and depression, the depression or freeze will need to be prioritized before shifting primary focus to the dark night.
If a dark night is happening in a pure or ideal sense, the person will have already owned their ability to exert power and control in the world, as well as their right to be themselves. Remember, we have to have a self to lose a self, and we have to have power to acknowledge our lack thereof.
If a dark night is happening in a pure or ideal sense, the person will have already owned their ability to exert power and control in the world, as well as their right to be themselves. Remember, we have to have a self to lose a self, and we have to have power to acknowledge our lack thereof.
Cheetah House is an important resource for meditators in distress. They have many useful resources for practicing and healing from the above meditation-related difficulties, and I highly recommend checking them out!
This article provides a good description of adverse experiences in meditation and elaborates on the need to improve our understanding of these experiences in spiritual communities.
To learn more about my approach to working with trauma on the awakening path, check out my Awakening with Trauma page. For generalized support on the spiritual path, check out my Spiritual Support page. And for more on trauma support, here is my Somatic Therapy for Trauma page.
Kundalini . Spiritual Abuse . Spiritual Bypassing . Spiritual Trauma . Codependency . Energy Difficulties . Siddhis, Mediumship, Psychic Abilities . Depersonalization/Derealization (DP/DR) . Dark Night of the Soul .
This article provides a good description of adverse experiences in meditation and elaborates on the need to improve our understanding of these experiences in spiritual communities.
To learn more about my approach to working with trauma on the awakening path, check out my Awakening with Trauma page. For generalized support on the spiritual path, check out my Spiritual Support page. And for more on trauma support, here is my Somatic Therapy for Trauma page.
Kundalini . Spiritual Abuse . Spiritual Bypassing . Spiritual Trauma . Codependency . Energy Difficulties . Siddhis, Mediumship, Psychic Abilities . Depersonalization/Derealization (DP/DR) . Dark Night of the Soul .
Book Recommendations:
Biology of Kundalini, Jana Dixon
Stories of Spiritual Transformation, Joan Shivarpita Harrigan
The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof
Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis: Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof
Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven
The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You, Matt Licata
A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, Matt Licata
Falling in Love with Where You Are, Jeff Foster
You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life, Jeff Foster
Grounded Spirituality, Jeff Brown
Biology of Kundalini, Jana Dixon
Stories of Spiritual Transformation, Joan Shivarpita Harrigan
The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina Grof and Stanislav Grof
Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis: Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof
Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven
The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You, Matt Licata
A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, Matt Licata
Falling in Love with Where You Are, Jeff Foster
You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life, Jeff Foster
Grounded Spirituality, Jeff Brown
"You are a ruby in the heart of granite.
How long will you try to deceive us?
We can see the truth in your eyes.
So come, return to the root of the root of your own self."
~ Rumi
How long will you try to deceive us?
We can see the truth in your eyes.
So come, return to the root of the root of your own self."
~ Rumi
