“Importantly, I realized that this subtle sense from within was intuition, my connection with the divine, my guidance, and yes it could be trusted even when it didn’t seem logical.”

Brian Farlinger has been a Director of the Canadian SES (Spiritual Emergency Service) for the last decade. Brian knows only too well that peer support is vital when we’re going through a spiritual emergence process, and that ‘the only way is through…’

Here he demonstrates the importance of the process being recognised for what it is;

I believe that my spiritual emergence began early in my life. I grew up in a very loving family environment with a sense of spirituality. When I was eighteen, I experienced weakness while I was in class at school. I went to the doctor who said that this was anxiety and prescribed a medication. I felt better for a little while and then things got worse. Eventually I was referred to a psychologist. This was not easy for me. I feared that I might be ‘crazy’. I saw this psychologist several times over the spring and summer. He was from New York and he gave me three books that would open new areas for me……….. a different look at spirituality and life. The authors were Hermann Hesse, Krishnamurti and RD Laing.

Thirty years later, I found myself in a bewildering state. There was tremendous fear that was unexplainable and nebulous, and ‘dark things’ coming up (through phrases and images), a sense of dread, a sense of impending doom. There was also tremendous remorse for things that I had done in the past. I felt that I was un-forgiven and had lost my divine connection. My life, my world was falling apart, spiralling rapidly downward and all I seemed to be able to do was watch.

I found myself becoming more and more isolated …………as I desperately attempted to escape/avoid what was happening to me……………… to a point where I would sit alone in a darkened room all day and taking a sleeping pill at night to get a little rest…….. for days, and weeks and months on end. Suicidal ideations began to come up as my ego desperately sought escape from this seemingly hopeless existence.

I saw an acupuncturist one time. After the session, I asked her opinion on what I was dealing with. She said “spiritual emergency”. This was the first time I had heard of this.………..and it resonated with me at a deep level. Yes, I was on a spiritual journey ………………one that was extremely challenging.

Remarkably I found a therapist who specialized in spiritual emergence and she helped me greatly, always honoring my journey. She was a fellow experiencer of a spiritual emergency.

My spiritual emergence continued to get darker and darker and more desperate until hospital became an urgent option for me, a very scary one at that. I was deathly afraid of going to a hospital, being judged and labeled in a western medicine psychiatric way. Eventually, I listened to my inner sense and just went, trusting that something would work out somehow ……….and miraculously it did …………….

I stayed for a week, felt safe, and found a medication that really helped me. Yes, my journey has involved medication and I have come to learn that it can have a place in spiritual emergency

More importantly, I realized that this subtle sense from within was intuition, my connection with the divine, my guidance and yes it could be trusted even when it didn’t seem logical.

I had discovered divine guidance ………… I had this loving divine presence within that would beautifully take care of me even through the darkest of times.

A few years later and much wiser I have experienced more very challenging spiritual emergence…..from which I continue to grow.