welcome to new connection where you can tune in and grow i'm your host vicky thompson you may be familiar with new connection magazine which has been enjoyed by readers in the pacific northwest for more than twenty years on new connection v we welcome arthurs practitioners and visionaries to share new ideas for alternative help spirituality and personal growth today i'd like to welcome to new connection kathleen lucas who is the author of in case of spiritual emergency moving successfully through your awakening a spiritual awakening can be a great time of growth but it also can be a time of confusion sometimes it might even feel like a mental breakdown as the founder of the u k spiritual crisis network catherine knows what to do in case of spiritual emergency catherine welcome to new connection it's so good to have you here thank you v you've traveled a long way to be with us today you're from the united kingdom you've come to the portland area to promote your new book in case of spiritual merge and see yup and it's a real pleasure to be here well it's a topic that really moved me as i read through the book i think there are so many people who go through a spiritual awakening and yet sometimes it can feel very overwhelming can you explain what is a spiritual emergency yeah and i think spiritual development of growth of zero awakening is is is a gradual gentle process over a period of time and now what happens sometimes is that that speeds up and challenges with it and you know it really operates on a lot of different levels a part of why it's so overwhelming is that it impacts on us physically emotionally psychologically know there is we have entered a period of a global spiritual imagines you know this awakening of consciousness is really speeding up at the collective level as well as the individual and there's a direct relationship between the where you are an expert on this because you've gone through your own spiritual awakening that felt like spiritual mergence you to you can you explain what happened to you a spiritual emergency yeah and you know i  if you like has been over quite a long period of time you know kind of twenty thirty years or so maybe i'll just kind of choose one on one time so in two thousand and three i found myself in crisis and i think it it can illustrate some of the sort of common themes if you like i mean obviously when somebody goes through this process it's it's individual it's different for every individual but there are certain the ego feels very threatened and so often we feel that we physically going to die so on the one hand there was the terror for me but at the same time you know this and i were talking about one week the intensity  week i mean the intensity of it i actually ended up in a wheelchair because it was so overwhelming that my body kind of went into shock are you having physical release as well as emotional changes going that is overwhelming per person to have that suddenly just bloom open like a volcano yeah yeah you know much and what is a spiritual emergency look like and what are some of the characteristics that people go through well  roller coaster you know you can go from one moment where you're feeling needs is really positive beautiful emotion and then within moments you can tip over into dread and and abject terror so and  and you know if you think that sleep deprivation is is used as a form of torture then this is what's happening the psyche is being broken but for our benefit no new parents might know what you're talking about whole process so for example when the when we get in touch with our inner divinity it can we give a very strong sense of power rather grandiose so this is where somebody for example might feel bad the reincarnation of christ for example and actually this is what's happening is very important  all schizophrenia you know terms which i find very difficult to accept because because i know you know what's happening to these people is really so important for such a sincerity to i have met someone who went to awakening and felt they were related to christ or work christ but i felt from this person was that they felt this deep connection to that energy and wanted so sincerely to embody that air and so i didn't feel that they had gone into that territory but it extremely confusing when you connect with something greater than yourself and it feels so different and you know because i experience the energy of mary and beautiful beautiful  psychiatric hospital and the experience was very much a pathologist which is very damaging and that was also part of your awakening process but it went to the point where you went into a mental hospital that was the beginning that was the first time  and so so that and of course the other thing is that the mind is we've moved into territory that's beyond the rational logical mind and yet you know we still have a mind that's desperately trying to understand what's going on and so we can come up with some quite unusual explanation quite the mind of a sieve so i think when you start to perceive the world differently around you you're kind of left with what are my perceiving it's not flesh and blood it's something more intangible and that's hard to tell out so you had to get a roadmap for that yeah yeah and again that's where we can sound right old to family and friends or health professionals so so this is why it's so important for people to know to have this information you know so  really understand what's happening based on your experience with the u k spiritual crisis network you've identified three steps that people go through when they go through spiritual emergency can you step us safe so that's the first key face the second key phase is making sense of it all and integrating the experience because we're likely to be left with a lot of questions because i was able to just step back just enough to see how the fear was distorting my thinking and so that gave me a little bit of space to not get completely caught up in the terror and completely overwhelmed by  tool and it comes from the buddhist tradition and it helps us to really be in the present moment of be with our experience as it is and that's what we need because  know because a lot of the time it's very challenging we tend to resist it and to want to push it away and for it to stop and actually the more we can being with it as it is and kind of open to it and the easier it will flow you know the easier things will be for an ability to focus in and just oh yes i'm experiencing this and just recognising it with our it being so dramatically overwhelming is really important and you know and it's so going to be challenging you know there are no easy answers unfortunately with sp yet you can look at the growth experience and track where you went and how you changed and got a new perspective or let go of something that wasn't working and to see yourself as a hero because i think it makes it so much easier to go through the difficult things if you c compassionate with yourself and see yourself as a good person going through a difficult time yeah yeah no that's that's that's exactly it and of course each and every one of us is is the hero of our own story of our journey we are at the center going through this and so so so yeah we allot of things will we need to just and people tend to maybe move so they may end up living somewhere that's more supportive you know maybe an and you know it's we need the help and support when when the going gets tough well touching in on help and support what type of support do they need when they go through this process yet when they need support  they need validation so they need our people around them who can recognize that although this is challenging overall it's a positive beneficial experience so the last thing they need is what they also need people who are not afraid around them because you know everybody can actually get caught up in the fear so so where professionals and carers and supporters can be well informed th they're less likely to be fearful themselves so support can come from a lot of different places and family and friends is an obvious one but it again family friends need to be careful but they don't get burnt out because somebody is likely to be needing support twenty four hours a day so so you know that we need a whole team of support effectively and and that's a whole range of professionals who can help as well you know whether they're energy workers you know maybe she had to can be very helpful for rebalancing the energies massa can be relaxing and grounding so there's a whole range of complementary therapists that can nice to have that support because i think to have people you can connect in who you you know are going through some of the things that you've gone through here is a really wonderful resource well as we've been going through spiritual emergency it can sound a little frightening it can sound a little intimidating but that's just one part of it i think there's also the massive growth that someone's going through so can you share a bit about what's inspiring about a spiritual emergency yeah and another visual analogy that i find globally as well you know i think this awakening of consciousness that we're going through globally is really giving us an opportunity to to evolve and and to yad to awaken  that's really beautiful there's another thing that you had said that really inspired me in your book and it's a poem about spiritual emergency an awakening can you share that with us yeah this is this is such a beautiful  a beautiful well catherine i appreciate you so much coming here today and sharing such beautiful wisdom about spiritual emergency and really helping us get through it thank you vicki it's a it's a real pleasure to get this information out there thank you thank you you can learn more about spiritual awakening at our website at new connection journal dot com join us 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