Catherine G Lucas
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Heroes Needed: Apply Within

25/11/2012

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Emma Bragdon, acclaimed author, reivews 'In Case of Spiritual Emergency' in the current issue of Caduceus.

It’s hard to cope with the news of the crises we are facing on every front--environmental, political, financial, and social.  Epidemic numbers of people are turning to psychiatric medications to stop feeling anxious and/or depressed.  We need more heroes, people of vision, who are not afraid to go into the wild and scary places, confront the powerful issues that are threatening us, and bring back the wisdom we need to rebuild our world on a foundation that sustains life.

Catherine G Lucas, author of “In Case of Spiritual Emergency,” (Findhorn Press, 2011) believes we are in a global spiritual emergency, similar to a dark night of the soul.  She says more individuals are being called to face inner demons, and align with the Higher Self in a different kind of life.   Those that complete the journey have a greater connection to their soul purpose, and greater ability to live a life motivated by compassionate action.

Lucas’ book describes her own and others spiritual crises, and how each first wondered if he/she was crazy and then came through it.  The bulk of the book revolves around the concept of “spiritual emergency,” an evolutionary crisis that can appear similar to symptoms of mental illness: with disorientation, dramatic mood swings, inability to concentrate, identification with perceptions that are not apparent to others.  However, in spiritual emergency, the individual is following the trail through the dark underworld that leads to the Higher Self.  They need encouragement and support.

Between 1994 and 2003 there was a 4000% increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder for people under age 21.  Are we perhaps using the diagnosis too loosely—maybe applying it to those who are trying to make the hero’s journey?  Are we putting them on a lifelong course of debilitating drug therapy that numbs feelings instead of providing more appropriate support?  Lucas reflects on such questions.

Since Dr. Stan and Christina Grof’s seminal work describing spiritual emergency in the 1970s, others have followed with further research that Lucas documents.  She also advises the experiencers how to care for themselves and whom to trust to give appropriate support. Lucas suggests learning and practicing mindfulness training and techniques for grounding, finding creative expression, and allowing caring people to create a safe environment, as needed.

It could be that ‘mental illness’ occurs when someone resists doing the inner work of facing his/her feelings,  inner demons and aligning with the Higher Self.   Lucas’ book is for those who are willing and able to do that work with some guidance.  The message of this book will not be of use to those unable to commit to increasing self-awareness.

If you give the book to someone who is lost in a ‘dark night’ and looking for reference points this read could make the difference between that person being “mentally ill” or completing the most significant journey of life, the hero’s journey. 

Fortunately, Lucas, based in the UK, has joined with others who are creating networks of support for those on the journey.  Her book offers up to date references for further reading, websites, DVDs and CDs –all tools that shed light on the path, including contact information for support people in every English-speaking country. 

Bio of reviewer: Emma Bragdon, PhD (psychology) is based in the USA.  She is the author of two previous books on Spiritual Emergency as well as 4 books that bridge spirituality and health, following models developed in Brazil.  www.EmmaBragdon.com


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Frontier Beyond Fear Radio Interview

19/10/2012

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Guest Blog Post by radio host Susan Larison Danz

Friday 11 AM Pacific on The Frontier Beyond Fear radio program, I am anticipating a very special conversation with mindfulness coach Catherine G Lucas, the courageous and inspiring author of In Case of Spiritual Emergency. Catherine will share important information to assist those experiencing dramatic spiritual emergencies/emergences.

Spiritual emergencies are frequently misinterpreted and misdiagnosed, yet have unique spiritual components, often triggered by dramatic events. It was Catherine's own emergence experiences that led her to research the true nature of these unique crisis situations.

As a mindfulness coach, Catherine has developed concrete tools to keep mystical experiences from spiraling out of control, circumventing dangerous mazes of dysfunction and misdiagnosis. Catherine has also partnered with the mental health establishment in England, as more and more people involved with crisis intervention are learning to recognize the unique nature of spiritual events.

This is going to be quite a special, heartfelt conversation because of my own personal experience with dramatic spiritual emergence many years ago. Like others who have successfully navigated through the challenges of such life-altering experiences, Catherine and I are both aware of the tremendous gifts such experiences can carry despite literally traveling through the rapids in the process. The chat room will be open for questions, and callers with questions are not only welcome, but encouraged. The call-in line for the show is (310) 807-5104. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/susan-larison-danz/2012/10/19/catherine-lucas
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Spiritual Emergency: a Rebirth

6/9/2012

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Something is afoot. Something is stirring and shifting. It shouldn’t be a surprise, yet somehow it is. Spiritual emergency, which is all about rebirth, is going through a rebirth of its own. A term first coined back in the 1980s, interest in the phenomenon had waned; awareness and understanding of this transpersonal approach to psychospiritual crisis had fallen away.

Now, as we hurtle towards the 2012 Winter Solstice, people are waking up and realising that we need this understanding, this information, more than ever.

What am I going by? What are the signs? First, there’s the recently launched work of The Wakeup: New Earth Alliance for Addiction Recovery. The team approaches addiction from the perspective of spiritual emergency, which makes so much sense. You can find out more about their wonderful work at http://www.the-wakeup.com/. You can join their Ning community at http://thewakeup.ning.com/

Then there’s the initiative to launch a new Spiritual Crisis Network in Holland. I’ll be speaking at the conference to mark this exciting new development at the University of Leiden on 15 & 16 September. www.parapsy.nl May there be many more such national networks to join the existing ones!
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Emma Bragdon, who wrote a classic spiritual emergency text back in the 1980s, has two new books out: Resources for Extraordinary Healing: Schizophrenia, Bipolar and Other Serious Mental Illnesses (Lightening Up Press) and Spiritism and Mental Health: Practices from Spiritist Centers and Spiritist Psychiatric Hospitals (Singing Dragon, a Jessica Kingsley Publishers imprint). Her work today is still very much about helping to shift to the new paradigm of mental health.

To cap it all, George Noory on the American radio show Coast to Coast discussed this very subject recently with his guests Dr Seth Farber, dissident psychologist and co-founder of the Network Against Coercive Psychiatry and Paul Levy. Farber’s point is that many forms of ‘mental illness’ are actually spiritual and supernatural experiences. Check out Paul Levy’s website: http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/

Finally, the Beyond Meds blog is covering many angles of spiritual emergency these days: http://beyondmeds.com/

All I can say about these initiatives is ‘thank goodness’! Thank you to all these dedicated people for what they are bringing to the collective consciousness right now. When I heard recently of yet another tragedy caused by mental health staff dismissing the spiritual dimension, I was reminded of how desperately needed this awareness and understanding is. But then I never really forget.


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In Case of Spiritual Emergency - An NHS Conference Talk

21/12/2011

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Originally published Monday 16 May 2011

The following is a talk given by Catherine G Lucas at the conference 'Spiritual Care & Mental Health' organized by Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, London on 17 May 2011.

Well, I’m delighted to be here today. It’s a very auspicious day, as today is Wessak, when millions of Buddhists around the world celebrate the enlightenment of the Buddha. I’m also delighted to be here because the relationship between spirituality and mental health is at the very core of my work. So I’m always really pleased to see these issues being explored, especially within a National Health Service (NHS) context. For several years I taught trainee mental health nurses at the University of West of England – I did a part-time input on spirituality – and at the time it felt quite progressive of the programme director to include spirituality in the curriculum, whereas now, I'm pleased to say, spirituality is being taken more and more seriously within mental health care.

So, today I’m wearing three hats! They do in fact all overlap. The first is that I work as a Mindfulness Trainer. For those of you that are not so familiar with Mindfulness, this is what a Mindfulness classroom looks like!

We do a wonderful practice called the Body Scan, which is a body awareness meditation and we do it lying down, hence the mats. I’m not going to say much at all about Mindfulness today, except to say that the work has been an enormous privilege. I’ve had the opportunity to train NHS dialectical behaviour therapists, Mindfulness being at the heart of that therapeutic approach. I’ve also been very privileged to work with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

So why did I become a Mindfulness Trainer? In 2003 I went through a major spiritual crisis and it was my Mindfulness practice that helped me through. So I experienced for myself the sheer power of Mindfulness. The following year I set up the Spiritual Crisis Network (SCN) to offer information and support for people going through spiritual crisis; to help raise awareness and understanding of the phenomenon. And a couple of years ago we gained charitable status. So that’s the second hat I’m wearing today, as Founder of the SCN and you can see that there’s a direct relationship between that and why I teach Mindfulness. In fact I’ve just started offering courses specifically using a Mindfulness-based Approach for Spiritual Emergency.

The third, and most recent, hat I’m wearing today is as author of In Case of Spiritual Emergency and I’m going to draw on material from the book quite a lot in my talk today.
 
By now you’re probably starting to wonder ‘what is spiritual crisis or spiritual emergency?’. How am I using the term? It comes out of a branch or school of psychology known as transpersonal, that’s to say, beyond the personal or, in other words, spiritual. Transpersonal psychology brings together ancient spiritual wisdom from the various different faiths with the scientific enquiry of psychology. So transpersonal psychology is rooted in both. And we can chart the development of transpersonal psychology right back to the beginning of the 20th Century, to the early 1900s. A chapter in the book does just that, charting the development of the psychology of spiritual experience up to current times.

A key player in what I call the transpersonal lineage was of course Carl Jung. He himself went through spiritual emergency, which he recorded in great detail in his fascinating Red Book, which his family only allowed to be published a couple of years ago. He says that all his subsequent ideas and theories originated in that life-changing experience. Again, he’s covered in the book.A key player in more recent decades has been the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, who coined the term spiritual emergency.

The idea is that as we grow up from childhood into adulthood we develop and mature physically and emotionally and that we also grow, develop and mature spiritually. You might simply experience this as your values and priorities changing as you get older. Sometimes this gradual process of becoming more spiritually aware speeds up. As it does so things can get out of hand and we can find ourselves in crisis, unable to cope. There are many reasons why this might happen and the various triggers and catalysts are outlined in the book. The point is that you don’t have to be consciously on a spiritual path for it to happen to you. I remember one guy, when I was working on an acute psychiatric ward in Liverpool, who had been doing fine in life. Until his son committed suicide. And his life fell apart. When we start to question the meaning of life, the purpose of life, these are deeply spiritual questions, whether we belong to a faith community or not.

So what does spiritual emergency look like? Let’s take a look at some of the key features.

Key Features of Spiritual Emergency

•         The intensity of the experience can consume our whole being
•         We can find it impossible to cope at an everyday level
•         Our inner world can take over and blur confusingly with the outer world
•         We can have unusual physical pains and sensations and find it impossible to sleep
•         We can experience a rollercoaster of powerful emotions
•         There can be a sense of everything falling away, including our sense of self
•         There may be ego-inflation
•         Thinking can become confused as the rational mind desperately tries to make
           sense of what is going on
•         Symbolism and mythological themes become very meaningful for us
•         Synchronicity often becomes more frequent
•         We might see unusual things
•         We can experience sudden and strong energies

In the book you’ll find a lot more detail on each of the key features. I’d like to come back to just one of these in particular, by way of illustration. I’d like to look in more depth at ego inflation, because I think this is one of the single most misunderstood aspects of what can happen, especially amongst the broader public. There was a media story a while ago about David Shayler, the ex-MI5 agent who revealed to the newspapers that the secret services held files on Labour Government Ministers. The story that broke more recently, in 2007, was of David Shayler living in a squat and considering himself to be a reincarnation of Jesus. Because the media as a whole has no understanding of spiritual emergency they completely missed the point. Again you can read the full story about Shayler in the book.

In order to explain a very different perspective on ego inflation I’m going to draw on the work of Roberto Assagioli, who founded Psychosynthesis. This is a spiritual approach to psychotherapy that has been very influential. Here in London alone there are at least three Pyschosynthesis training schools.

Assagioli explains very well what happens in ego inflation; that basically there is confusion between the egoic, personal self and the higher, spiritual Self. The ego appropriates to itself the powerful spiritual energies that are coming through during spiritual emergency. As the personal self experiences the spiritual self we have a sense of greatness, of expansion. It’s not that we are Jesus or the Buddha, for example, but that we are experiencing the energy of the Christ consciousness. So, whilst ... 

        ‘…the inflowing spiritual energies may have the unfortunate effect of feeding and inflating the personal ego...instances of such confusion...are not uncommon among people dazzled by contact with truths which are too powerful for their mental
capacities to grasp and assimilate.’
                                                                                                                                    Assagioli (Roberto Assagioli,Psychosynthesis, Turnstone Books, 1975, pp. 44-5.)

 In Amma’s case (Amma, if you haven’t come across her, is the Indian known as the ‘hugging saint’) it was Krishna. When she was going through spiritual emergency she experienced herself as merging with Krishna. In fact she took the process of spiritual emergence to its ultimate, and very rare, conclusion and became a fully awakened, fully realised being.

To bring this into the more personal, I mentioned that in 2003 I went through a major crisis. It actually only lasted a week but it was phenomenally intense, as spiritual emergency invariably is. It operates on all levels, physically, emotionally, mentally. As we’ve seen it consumes our whole beings. I actually ended up in a wheelchair because I was so overwhelmed that my legs gave way and I couldn’t walk. I don’t want to paint a totally hellish picture because aspects of the experience were incredibly beautiful. And at one point I experienced the energy or the consciousness of the Virgin Mary, in much the same way as I’ve been talking about. I had enough insight not to tell anyone that I was experiencing myself as if I were the Virgin. The energy and the feelings were extraordinarily beautiful. I had an overwhelming sense of peace, gentleness and the deepest compassion I’ve ever felt.

So when somebody temporarily has such an experience, rather than dismissing it, we can know that something very important is happening spiritually. These are very precious experiences. My therapist at the time very wisely encouraged me to explore what that connection with the Virgin Mary meant for me. He certainly didn’t dismiss it as delusions of grandeur. To do so would be to do the person a great disservice. Which is not to deny that the person may well need mental health care. I’m certainly not saying that, but they need mental health care that is sensitive to their spiritual concerns and in particular to their spiritual experience.

So that’s just one of the key features of spiritual crisis. Not everybody experiences that. Rather than what we can call mystical psychosis some experience more a dark night of the soul. Those of you interested in depression might like to explore the literature on that and the relationship between dark nights of the soul and depression. In the book there’s a very powerful story of someone who went through over 30 years, on and off, of crippling depression. What saved her was her sense all along that this was a spiritual process, a dark night of the soul.

That’s pretty much all we’ve got time for and I haven’t even begun to touch on the most important dimension; how do we get through spiritual emergency? How do we cope? Based on my research, our experience through the SCN and my personal experience, I’ve identified Three Key Phases of moving successfully through spiritual emergency. It’s all there, in the book.

Just to say that I think many of you may also be interested in a talk I gave at another NHS conference, which I entitled ‘Psychospiritual Crisis: Where Mysticism and Mental Health Meet’. You can listen to that as a free MP3 audio recording and it’s available on the Academy of Living Wisdom website. Enjoy!
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    Author of four books on the holistic, spiritual approach to mental health, Mindfulness Trainer, Founder, UK Spiritual Crisis Network.

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Banner photo: Alex Caminada • Website tuition: Graham Boston
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