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A review by rbruehlman
The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth Through Transformational Crisis by Christina Grof
4.0
Ah, how far from grace I've fallen, going from fastidiously reading psychiatry's DSM to reading a book that talks about chakras and the Kundalini awakening! I half-kid, sort of!
I would have never read this book in a million years even just a year ago, and if I had, I'd have hated it and written it off as complete pseudoscience. Part of me kind of still does; there's a lot in the book I kind of hand-wave off.
But I don't think you need to believe everything a book presents wholesale to still glean insights from it, either, so I'm actually pretty okay with accepting the overall spirit of the book (no pun intended), while not necessarily subscribing to the underpinning details.
Stanislav and Christina Grof posit the idea of "spiritual emergency," a transpersonal state where someone goes through a psychology crisis that shatters their sense of self and world around them, and potentially, if navigated through correctly, achieve a greater sense of awareness, purpose, and spirituality. It can be instigated by psychedelic drugs, or by near-death experiences, or illness, or just for no reason at all. It is called a "spiritual emergency" as a play on words, to imply one's spiritual self is emerging, while also noting it is also a time of genuine crisis. Crisis begets new beginnings. (The book notes the Chinese characters for "opportunity", 机会, are made up of the Chinese characters for "danger" and "opportunity," although when I googled this, it appears to be a myth perpetuated by none other than J.F.K.!).
A spiritual emergency can feature hallucinations, a sense of meeting a higher power, experience of rebirth/death, etc. Standard fare for psychedelics, I think, but, barring any drug use or near-death experience, it sounds an awful lot like the medical definition of psychosis. Grof admits as much. Where a spiritual emergency ends and a psychotic episode begins isn't entirely clear. As someone schooled in academic psychology with systemized diagnoses, this blurry distinction was hard for me to hold simultaneously in my head.
But it's fine! I could quibble about whether some people featured in the book had a mental illness, or not. It doesn't really matter. The reality is, as crunchy as "spiritual emergency" sounds, the general premise of what Grof describes does exist. People do, for whatever reason, subtly or overtly, have life experiences that force them to fundamentally rethink who they are and their purpose in life. Call it what you want, argue in a lab somewhere about what causes it. Who cares. Someone could hit rock bottom with alcoholism and start reconsidering everything in their life; someone brought up in a religious community could lose faith in God; someone could trip on acid and finally have a epiphanic radical forgiveness of their childhood self for being sexually abused after years of shame. All of those experiences, however caused, can be deeply life-changing and unmooring. Even "good" epiphanies can force you to reconsider your life and sense of self.
While on the whole, I subscribe to psychiatry, I'm also fairly jaded by the field--it's not a clear-cut field like, say, oncology or endocrinology--and, while some disorders, like bipolar disorder, are very clearly defined, many other diagnoses are defined not so much by biology, but rather, descriptive symptomology that is heavily influenced by the social mores of the day. Accordingly, I think much of the natural human experience is pathologized as a mental disorder (especially now, 30 years after this book was written). It's refreshing to see Grof radically accept psychological crises as a natural and exciting part of healing and being human. They are very careful not to deny the existence of psychiatric disorders, but also posit that there can be healing in leaning in and accepting psychological difficulty and working through the crisis, without labels. Suddenly, a "nervous breakdown" is reimagined as a a journey of self-discovery that is really hard, but can lead to positive change, if people are radically accepted and supported during the hard times. I can get behind that.
I don't believe in things like the Kundalini awakening, or chakras, or Jungian archetypes, etc. So I can't say I super bought into the details there. I do think they're theoretical frameworks, though. The details of a given framework don't matter particularly; the overall concepts, yes. So if I suspend my disbelief about those things' details and realisticness (is that a word? practical realism?), and instead focus on the overall ideas, they become more interesting and useful to me.
With my caveats out of the way, the tidbits that personally resonated with me:
1. Distinguishing religion and spirituality.
I've actually never really understood the difference between spirituality and religion. Wasn't spirituality a subset of religion, just less organized? The book had a brief paragraph that struck me--paraphrased, it noted that spirituality can be part of religion, and, in fact, organized religion crops up around spiritual concepts, codifying them. However, over time, organized religion can turn more into practicing the codified rules, completely divorced from spirituality, so the two concepts aren't actually very interrelated at all. (I think I'm explaining this poorly.) I absolutely cannot get my brain to yield to organized religion, and I don't think I ever will. I just do not believe in it, and, more than anything, I resist the concept of other people telling me how I should think and feel. Catholic priests who communicate with God on my behalf, definitely not for me! I can wrap my head around the concept of spirituality, because I associate that with an individual's own, unique relationship to being part of something bigger and cosmic. I don't know if I'm spiritual, but I like the idea in theory, and I like the idea a whoooooole lot more than the idea of some paternalistic Abrahamic god. (I don't mind if someone else believes in that, to be clear! I just personally cannot suspend disbelief for myself.)
2. Zen Buddhism
I got introduced to some Buddhist principles in October, and I think this is where my life philosophy is going. I love, love, love, love the concept Grof delineates of the Zen Circle: 0 degrees: one's perception of reality of good-bad, pleasant-unpleasant; 90 degrees, the realization everything comes from nothing and turns into nothing; 180 degrees, when you realize nothing really exists; 270 degrees, where everything conceivable is possible; then 360 degrees, where you return to reality, but without attachments, because nothing is real and yet everything is possible--nothing is real, nothing matters, but because nothing matters and nothing is real, everything is possible, and you can exist within the moment. Reality becomes subtly different, the same but differently textured. I want to learn more about this, because it is simply something my brain groks. There is no meaning to life, and that's scary; but if there is no meaning, we can define it for ourselves, unafraid of failing or loss. We need simply be.
3. The nuances of psychological crisis
I'm tired of mental health pathologizing. It makes you feel like a thing broken, a thing needing to be fixed. The Grofs never judge anyone for their struggles; they hold space. Crisis is opportunity to grow into something fuller, if it's guided the right way. I really appreciated that, however you choose to define "spiritual emergencies" or their cause, prevailing through psychological difficulty is often not linear, with lots of setbacks ... and if you're not in the right environment or headspace, you can simply remain stuck in distress. Psychological crisis does not mean an epiphany where it's all rainbows and sunshine, nor are you guaranteed to work your way out of it. You can remain depressed or angry or alcoholic forever if you avoid working through the struggle and pain.
Diagnosis, yadda yadda, yes, they do have their place. But providing empathic, nonjudgmental support? That's money right there. Healing is so much easier to achieve when your struggles are framed as part of a natural part of life and something that begets fruits down the line, vs. something wrong with you.
4. Lean in to fear and distress.
The natural inclination of most people is to run away from psychological distress. Avoid it. Deflect it. Minimize the pain. There is tremendous value in leaning into discomfort. Yeah, pain fucking sucks! But what is worse? Do you avoid the pain of amputation of a thumb and let your entire limb be consumed by gangrene slowly? Or do you take the plunge and bite the bullet and be happier for it and get on with your life? Which is more painful in the end? Often, taking the "lumped" pain all at once is, in fact, better than suffering in dribs and drabs. Lean in to the fear. See what happens.
I guess you could say this book isn't one I would recommend to the average person, nor would I have recommended it to past me. From an academic perspective, the book reads as a bit of psychobabble. But it's also one I can still rate 4 stars, because I'm at a point in my life where I can extract meaningful interesting bits from it. Not all literature is absolutely useful or good; some literature can only be appreciated by some, or at certain points in our lives when we're ready to hear it. 4 stars on merit that aspects of the book made me think. 2 stars a year ago, for sure; 4 stars today. It's all relative ;-)
I would have never read this book in a million years even just a year ago, and if I had, I'd have hated it and written it off as complete pseudoscience. Part of me kind of still does; there's a lot in the book I kind of hand-wave off.
But I don't think you need to believe everything a book presents wholesale to still glean insights from it, either, so I'm actually pretty okay with accepting the overall spirit of the book (no pun intended), while not necessarily subscribing to the underpinning details.
Stanislav and Christina Grof posit the idea of "spiritual emergency," a transpersonal state where someone goes through a psychology crisis that shatters their sense of self and world around them, and potentially, if navigated through correctly, achieve a greater sense of awareness, purpose, and spirituality. It can be instigated by psychedelic drugs, or by near-death experiences, or illness, or just for no reason at all. It is called a "spiritual emergency" as a play on words, to imply one's spiritual self is emerging, while also noting it is also a time of genuine crisis. Crisis begets new beginnings. (The book notes the Chinese characters for "opportunity", 机会, are made up of the Chinese characters for "danger" and "opportunity," although when I googled this, it appears to be a myth perpetuated by none other than J.F.K.!).
A spiritual emergency can feature hallucinations, a sense of meeting a higher power, experience of rebirth/death, etc. Standard fare for psychedelics, I think, but, barring any drug use or near-death experience, it sounds an awful lot like the medical definition of psychosis. Grof admits as much. Where a spiritual emergency ends and a psychotic episode begins isn't entirely clear. As someone schooled in academic psychology with systemized diagnoses, this blurry distinction was hard for me to hold simultaneously in my head.
But it's fine! I could quibble about whether some people featured in the book had a mental illness, or not. It doesn't really matter. The reality is, as crunchy as "spiritual emergency" sounds, the general premise of what Grof describes does exist. People do, for whatever reason, subtly or overtly, have life experiences that force them to fundamentally rethink who they are and their purpose in life. Call it what you want, argue in a lab somewhere about what causes it. Who cares. Someone could hit rock bottom with alcoholism and start reconsidering everything in their life; someone brought up in a religious community could lose faith in God; someone could trip on acid and finally have a epiphanic radical forgiveness of their childhood self for being sexually abused after years of shame. All of those experiences, however caused, can be deeply life-changing and unmooring. Even "good" epiphanies can force you to reconsider your life and sense of self.
While on the whole, I subscribe to psychiatry, I'm also fairly jaded by the field--it's not a clear-cut field like, say, oncology or endocrinology--and, while some disorders, like bipolar disorder, are very clearly defined, many other diagnoses are defined not so much by biology, but rather, descriptive symptomology that is heavily influenced by the social mores of the day. Accordingly, I think much of the natural human experience is pathologized as a mental disorder (especially now, 30 years after this book was written). It's refreshing to see Grof radically accept psychological crises as a natural and exciting part of healing and being human. They are very careful not to deny the existence of psychiatric disorders, but also posit that there can be healing in leaning in and accepting psychological difficulty and working through the crisis, without labels. Suddenly, a "nervous breakdown" is reimagined as a a journey of self-discovery that is really hard, but can lead to positive change, if people are radically accepted and supported during the hard times. I can get behind that.
I don't believe in things like the Kundalini awakening, or chakras, or Jungian archetypes, etc. So I can't say I super bought into the details there. I do think they're theoretical frameworks, though. The details of a given framework don't matter particularly; the overall concepts, yes. So if I suspend my disbelief about those things' details and realisticness (is that a word? practical realism?), and instead focus on the overall ideas, they become more interesting and useful to me.
With my caveats out of the way, the tidbits that personally resonated with me:
1. Distinguishing religion and spirituality.
I've actually never really understood the difference between spirituality and religion. Wasn't spirituality a subset of religion, just less organized? The book had a brief paragraph that struck me--paraphrased, it noted that spirituality can be part of religion, and, in fact, organized religion crops up around spiritual concepts, codifying them. However, over time, organized religion can turn more into practicing the codified rules, completely divorced from spirituality, so the two concepts aren't actually very interrelated at all. (I think I'm explaining this poorly.) I absolutely cannot get my brain to yield to organized religion, and I don't think I ever will. I just do not believe in it, and, more than anything, I resist the concept of other people telling me how I should think and feel. Catholic priests who communicate with God on my behalf, definitely not for me! I can wrap my head around the concept of spirituality, because I associate that with an individual's own, unique relationship to being part of something bigger and cosmic. I don't know if I'm spiritual, but I like the idea in theory, and I like the idea a whoooooole lot more than the idea of some paternalistic Abrahamic god. (I don't mind if someone else believes in that, to be clear! I just personally cannot suspend disbelief for myself.)
2. Zen Buddhism
I got introduced to some Buddhist principles in October, and I think this is where my life philosophy is going. I love, love, love, love the concept Grof delineates of the Zen Circle: 0 degrees: one's perception of reality of good-bad, pleasant-unpleasant; 90 degrees, the realization everything comes from nothing and turns into nothing; 180 degrees, when you realize nothing really exists; 270 degrees, where everything conceivable is possible; then 360 degrees, where you return to reality, but without attachments, because nothing is real and yet everything is possible--nothing is real, nothing matters, but because nothing matters and nothing is real, everything is possible, and you can exist within the moment. Reality becomes subtly different, the same but differently textured. I want to learn more about this, because it is simply something my brain groks. There is no meaning to life, and that's scary; but if there is no meaning, we can define it for ourselves, unafraid of failing or loss. We need simply be.
3. The nuances of psychological crisis
I'm tired of mental health pathologizing. It makes you feel like a thing broken, a thing needing to be fixed. The Grofs never judge anyone for their struggles; they hold space. Crisis is opportunity to grow into something fuller, if it's guided the right way. I really appreciated that, however you choose to define "spiritual emergencies" or their cause, prevailing through psychological difficulty is often not linear, with lots of setbacks ... and if you're not in the right environment or headspace, you can simply remain stuck in distress. Psychological crisis does not mean an epiphany where it's all rainbows and sunshine, nor are you guaranteed to work your way out of it. You can remain depressed or angry or alcoholic forever if you avoid working through the struggle and pain.
Diagnosis, yadda yadda, yes, they do have their place. But providing empathic, nonjudgmental support? That's money right there. Healing is so much easier to achieve when your struggles are framed as part of a natural part of life and something that begets fruits down the line, vs. something wrong with you.
4. Lean in to fear and distress.
The natural inclination of most people is to run away from psychological distress. Avoid it. Deflect it. Minimize the pain. There is tremendous value in leaning into discomfort. Yeah, pain fucking sucks! But what is worse? Do you avoid the pain of amputation of a thumb and let your entire limb be consumed by gangrene slowly? Or do you take the plunge and bite the bullet and be happier for it and get on with your life? Which is more painful in the end? Often, taking the "lumped" pain all at once is, in fact, better than suffering in dribs and drabs. Lean in to the fear. See what happens.
I guess you could say this book isn't one I would recommend to the average person, nor would I have recommended it to past me. From an academic perspective, the book reads as a bit of psychobabble. But it's also one I can still rate 4 stars, because I'm at a point in my life where I can extract meaningful interesting bits from it. Not all literature is absolutely useful or good; some literature can only be appreciated by some, or at certain points in our lives when we're ready to hear it. 4 stars on merit that aspects of the book made me think. 2 stars a year ago, for sure; 4 stars today. It's all relative ;-)