Vogel’s Story
Jon Vogel, a 39-year-old man from Manhattan, was hospitalized in May 2010 for 5 days, and again 10 days later he admitted himself to the psych ward for 10 days. Jon thought he was dying: he was seeing blue lights, having heart palpitations, and was bleeding quite extensively from his nose and ears, amongst other frightening problems, like hearing voices. He told me, “Some days I would wake up and my pillow was red with blood.” His medical advisors wanted to convince him that these symptoms—especially the bleeding-- were occurring as a result of more than five years of serious addiction to cocaine and marijuana on top of the stresses of a gambling addiction. Jon told me, “I didn’t want to recognize what was going on; I didn’t even want to think about it.” As he couldn’t understand the unusual voices he was hearing and lights he was seeing, he just thought “I must be dying.”
Finally, his symptoms became so bad that he couldn’t ignore them any longer. He told me, “I knew within myself: it was going to be death or learning what I came here to do. In the grip of the intensity, I said to the beings I knew were behind the voices that I was hearing: You show me what I need to know and to tell others.” What he heard back from them was this: “It’s all about helping people understand what spiritual emergency is really about.” Although Jon heard this—he was being effectively given a vision of his future.
It took Jon 7-8 months to understand what was going on within him. He later came to believe it was a transformative process facilitating his movement into a higher level of consciousness as well as social action. He came to intuitively feel that the bleeding he had had was also part of his letting go of an old way of being in the world. But, there was much he needed to understand and he recognized from promptings deep within his soul that he had to work on himself and make the changes within himself. This direction did not come from a 12-step program or any personal sponsor or authority figure pressuring him to “do his work…no one is going to do it for you”. Instead, Jon followed his own intuition. He was intuitively led to read certain books and websites to integrate the experiences he was having.
The result? As of September 2012 he no longer has any of his prior addictions. It has been 6 months since he has had any marijuana and two years since he used cocaine or gambled. He used psychiatric medications for one month, years ago, and since that time stopped them altogether. He told me, “I hold myself in self-acceptance and self-love. I also feel a strong connection to Archangel Michael who sends me messages through my intuition that are positive for me and have been helpful for others.”
Jon is an example of a visionary who went through an evolutionary crisis perceived as mental illness by medical professionals. Seth Farber, Ph.D. gives many more examples of this in his book “The Spiritual Gift of Madness” (2012), in which he opines that many patients caught in the mental health system today are being over-medicated, and thus our society loses their gifts as visionaries and effective leaders.
Jon believes that the hospital wards and clinics set up to help those with addictions are in a deepening crisis. When he first was hospitalized he was seeing angels and alternately what he described as leering, negative entities. None of his nurses or therapists were equipped to help him sort out these phenomena. Jon believes, “Very few practitioners who work in these clinics understand that many of their clients are going through a spiritual emergency process that needs a different kind of treatment than they are used to offering. They simply don’t know the territory.”
Jon is passionate in his belief that these therapists need to be informed about the new understanding of spiritual emergency and the practical aspects of care of this phenomenon as soon as possible. Why? So they can be truly effective and meet the needs of a wave of people who are in a crisis similar to what he experienced. Jon feels that this wave is a result of the raising of consciousness that increasingly more people are now and will soon be experiencing.
The 12-step programs are too limiting, he believes. Jon says, “Young adults caught in addiction need to connect to the truth of their authentic hearts—the “Avatar” heart—that is fully free, profoundly connected to Spirit and their peers, empowered, and oriented towards a way of life that promotes health. This is what will lead them most effectively through their healing.” To assist in this effort, Jon now co-hosts a website, www.the-wakeup.com, to help individuals find the support they need.
When we care for those in spiritual emergency these days, we need to be open to using every resource at hand to insure a strong web of support to the person in crisis. This may mean in the future that diverse “spiritual emergence centers” will be created and they will collaborate with hospitals, health professionals including nutritionists, and diverse programs oriented towards wellness. Each resource has a place in the team approach to care and the fabric of community. Better we work together and expand the overarching concept of what we are working with, i.e., a person needing care is not just “the psychotic in Room 3” or “the addict who has been on cocaine for 5 years”, or “the kid in 5th grade whose attention is all over the place and has no self control”. Instead, each is first a soul reaching for more authenticity, more Light, more of the Truth of the Self...and each one may experience states of higher consciousness, as Jon did. If we can support the spiritual emergence of these people in the appropriate way, our culture will be enriched by the passion and brilliance of what each has to offer.
Building Community
An essential building block to success in recovery or creation of wellbeing is participation in community. That builds by itself as one attends support groups or classes. Each person is then no longer alone in their quest for a more workable, meaningful life, but is sharing with others. There is also a safe place to dialogue and to be oneself and a schedule offering something predictable, some structure to life that gives meaning. Convening regularly with those one is sharing deeply with becomes more and more like community—and can even become a “way of life” as one shares the path of honesty and skills necessary for increasing wellbeing. It simply feels good and works to support positive transformation.
In Del Ray, Florida, there is a peer group meeting called “Allyu” which means “extended family gathering” in Quichua (pronounced ketch-i-wa), an Incan language from the Andes of South America. Leadership rotates amongst members, and most importantly, all members coming from diverse cultures are given a time to feel heard and respected. Online forums are available to maintain connection. A leader in Allyu, Lise Neu, wrote me: “Ayllu has the intention of creating a world of harmony, balance and peace. A sister organization, “New Earth Tribes,” is a gathering in support of our young adults by way of passing down the ancient wisdom through ceremony and ritual. Through the support of like-minded brothers and sisters we create a Tribal-Peer Community that supports the building of a Global Community on the foundation of integrity, respect, honor, compassion and Love.”
Maintaining ongoing community is an essential component to success if these programs. One reader wrote about the Icarus Forum: “These forums saved my life, many times. People mentored me there, and gave me skills. Things I never would have thought of. These people and these skills are/were/will always be invaluable to my existence…[O]verwhelmingly, they gave me hope when I had none and MADE ME FEEL NOT ALONE. I am deeply, profoundly, eternally thankful for the Icarus forums." See the National Empowerment Center (NEC) for referrals to other community peer group support. Alternatives, Inc. in Framingham, MA offers more resources, particularly to those living with disabilities.
In sum, the core part of any treatment for disorientation with spiritual phenomena or disturbances related to addiction or emotional issues needs to be recognition of the phenomena being part of a larger spiritual emergence process, and using both the newer ways of encouraging spiritual emergence as well as collaborating
