Existential & transpersonal crises

Have you ever felt completely lost or gone through periods where it was difficult to find meaning? Perhaps you've had dreams that worry you or that you want to understand from a broader perspective. You might have dream experiences that you find hard to understand or manage.

Maybe you've had spiritual experiences that are hard to comprehend or integrate, such as glimpses of past incarnations in dreams or while awake.

Have you perhaps experienced a Kundalini awakening? Kundalini energy, which remains largely unknown in the West, is the force of life’s development. At its best, it expands your consciousness, but it can also cause intense problems until it is balanced.

Maybe you’ve had an out-of-body experience, perceived a shift in time, experienced strong synchronicities, felt a sense of death, or watched your life flash before your eyes. You may have gone through dark periods that made you ponder profound concepts like "the dark night of the soul."...

Many of these experiences can occur during a so-called transpersonal crisis, which has deep existential implications. Transpersonal means that your sense of identity and consciousness extends far beyond your normal daily awareness for a concentrated period. For example, if the Kundalini energy opens up violently and spontaneously, it can move through your body uncontrollably, causing pain or numbness in different areas, yet also acting as part of an intense purification process and expansion of consciousness.

You might encounter spiritual openings, even extreme spiritual openings. One of the foremost pioneers in the field of transpersonal psychology, Stanislav Grof, refers to such extreme life periods as "spiritual emergency." According to Grof, we can have profound realizations or openings through dreams, meditation, or triggered by life crises, pregnancy, or childbirth. A transpersonal approach to the phenomenon can also be found in psychosynthesis (Roberto Assagioli) and in transpersonal astrology.

“Spiritual emergency” is characterized by rapid insights and realizations; time may seem to move much faster, and you may periodically access altered states of consciousness, changes in your perception of reality, profound joy, and peak experiences. However, you may also face worries, anxiety, or disorientation. This often happens so quickly that those around you, if they lack perspective on what is happening, might perceive you as crazy.

Grof has spent decades researching what he calls non-ordinary states of consciousness, and he uses the term "spiritual emergency" for these states and periods. These are crisis-like extreme spiritual openings and experiences that can contain both light and dark aspects of our psyche, such as forgotten traumas that we need to integrate into our new worldview to avoid losing touch with reality.

"Spiritual emergency" can be a soul's invitation to quickly heal past psychic wounds and traumas. However, it can also temporarily knock you over because of the rapid insights and purification processes. In such a period, we must delve deeply and traverse a landscape that can feel very uncertain, like moving over burning ground.

A transpersonal breakthrough might initially appear as a breakdown due to the intense forces at play. Being able to distinguish between a breakdown and a breakthrough can be crucial for the outcome of such a period, and we might even doubt ourselves along the way.

It's important to emphasize that spiritual openings likely involve both dark and light elements and insights within our psyche emerging at a furious pace. Integrating both the light and dark sides of our psyche is crucial for such experiences to lead to authentic spiritual development. Purification and healing of old wounds or karmic bonds from the past always precede transpersonal development. Genuine spirituality and transpersonal growth, in my experience, always involve thorough work with our shadow sides, our traumas, and grounding ourselves—there are no shortcuts to love and light.

Finding guidance and support during such a period can be challenging. Mainstream psychology typically doesn’t deal with such crises and often fails to recognize that this is a natural, though extreme, developmental process, making it hard to provide support and help during such processes because the concepts and theories fall short of understanding the phenomenon. At worst, they may not acknowledge these experiences at all, possibly categorizing them as psychosis due to a lack of broader understanding of the phenomenon. Transpersonal psychology is still in its infancy.

During a deep existential or transpersonal crisis, we often need to reformulate our entire worldview and may overwork to integrate the experiences into our psyche to stay balanced. Everything can change in these periods: our relationships, our view of ourselves, our perspective on life, our life itself, and our sense of purpose and meaning.

We may lose interest in our relationships or jobs, and our previously familiar life can fall apart, yet we are also presented with new opportunities. In the long run, such experiences, in my experience, are very likely to change our lives in a positive and more meaningful direction. However, there can be long periods where we feel lost before we stand on a new solid platform with a new perspective and meaning, having fully integrated the experiences into a new worldview.

A search for meaning often starts with a form of loss, crisis, or a sense of meaninglessness. If we want to follow an authentic inner path, we must, in my conviction, confront and work with our wounds, losses, pain, and illusions. The greatest soul development, in my experience, always happens in connection with deep crises or an experience of spiritual emergency. It is through the experience of pain and meaninglessness that we truly begin to long for our soul.

For nearly three decades, I have studied and experienced the connection between transpersonal crises and the activation of the natal horoscope.The activation of the natal horoscope occurs when we look at the projection of the horoscope through so-called progressions and transits. The natal horoscope in motion. Therefore, an astrological consultation, combined with a transpersonal perspective on what is happening, can be a great support during such a period.