Spiritual Encounters
Image of the shadow of a hand
Transpersonal spiritual experiences can be controversial topics for therapists
Unlike practices grounded in the physical experience, such as religious attendance and contemplative practice (yoga, meditation), when clients describe seeing god or their late grandma in the kitchen, or report sensory perceptions that don’t quite fit consensus reality, therapists often feel a sort of anxiety. In some clinical contexts, therapists may primarily interpret these events through the lens of psychosis or paranoia. However, are these phenomena always a cause for concern?
My colleagues and I conducted a study exploring the spiritual lives of 6000+ individuals in China, India, and USA. Participants described events like the one above so frequently that we were able to identify complex emergent thematic categories including extrasensory perception (e.g., precognition), persistence of consciousness (e.g., near death experiences, out of body experiences, spirit or ancestor visitations), and faith and energy healing (e.g., reiki and prayer) (Lau et al., 2020). We are certainly not the first, nor last to do this kind of work!
In my grounded-theory approach to the study of spiritual life (bottom-up analysis), we further considered these experiences through the lens of meaning-making around how it felt (soul-affirming, anxious superstition, overwhelm), why it occurred (to heal, inform, punish etc), and what psychospirtual transformations took place (a sense of connection to something vaster than the self, feelings of shame, defectiveness, and alienation). There was a wide spectrum of attributions, reactions, and meaning-processes that emerged in the aftermath of these spiritual encounters.
Like all types of important relationships that we may discuss in therapy, spirituality can provide equally complex and process-laden relationships. Whether it’s a connection with a higher power(s), ancestors, the soul, the earth — these dynamics contain webs of meaning that have the potential to be deeply life affirming when challenges are worked through with compassion and culturally integrative education.
Learn how to assess and support clients’ spiritual processes in psychotherapy
Resources
Lau, E., McClintock, C. H. Y., Graziosi, M., Nakkana, A., Garcia, A., & Miller, L. (2020). Content Analysis of Spiritual Life in Contemporary USA, India and China. Religions, 11(6), 286.