For over 25 years Phil Borges has been documenting indigenous and tribal cultures, striving to create a deep understanding of the challenges they face from the forces of economic globalization and environmental devastation. His work is exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. His documentary, CRAZYWISE, reveals a paradigm shift that is changing the way Western culture defines and treats “mental illness.” The film highlights a survivor-led movement demanding more choices from a mental health care system in crisis. He has hosted television documentaries on indigenous cultures for the Discovery and National Geographic channels. Phil regularly presents at universities, teaches workshops, and has spoken at multiple TED events.

I‘ve spent nearly three decades as a photographer and filmmaker documenting indigenous and tribal cultures, striving to help the rest of the world understand the challenges these vital but vulnerable peoples face.

When I started working on a documentary film titled CRAZYWISE five years ago, I had no way of knowing it would affect my life so deeply. The lives of the people I met touched my life in extraordinary ways. The wisdom I received from those with direct lived experience of these non-ordinary, extreme states, as well as the thoughtful reflections of the expert mental health professionals we interviewed will stay with me forever. What I experienced and learned during the production of the film was profound.

I didn’t realize it at the time but the seeds of CRAZYWISE actually were planted in 1994, when I was invited to watch a Tibetan monk known as a Kuten go into trance and

Matt Licata, PhD, is a psychotherapist and teacher based out of Boulder, Colorado, with students and clients worldwide. He is author of The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You, and has spent the last 25 years on the forefront of the integration of Western, developmental and depth-psychology with contemplative approaches to psychological growth, emotional healing, and spiritual transformation. Matt’s doctoral dissertation involved an in-depth study of how spiritual beliefs and practice can serve a defensive function, in the avoidance of unresolved somatic, emotional, and developmental wounding. Most recently, in addition to teaching, mentoring, and clinical practice, Matt served as Director of Professional Studies for Sounds True, where he designed and organized learning programs for clinicians seeking additional training in neuroscience, attachment, mindfulness, and working with trauma.

As a psychotherapist who works with clients committed to spiritual growth and transformation, I have discovered with my fellow travelers just how natural it is for us, at times, to use spirituality to hide from life: from intimacy, from feelings, from vulnerability, from unresolved emotional wounding, as well as from intense, exposing, naked experience of all kinds.

Despite our noblest intentions to live a life of authenticity and integrity, we can engage with spiritual experiences, teachings, and practices in a way in which we deny, stuff, shut out, and abandon real feelings of hurt, anger, anxiety, disappointment, and despair as if they are “unspiritual,” unacceptable, and further evidence of 

Steve Taylor is the author of several books on psychology and spirituality, including The Fall: The Insanity of Human History and the Dawning of a New Era and The Calm Center: Reflections & Meditations for Spiritual Awakening. For six years he has been included in Mind, Body, Spirit magazine’s list of the ‘100 most spiritually influential living people.’ His must-read new book is The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening, published as an Eckhart Tolle Edition (with a foreword by Eckhart). He is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. You can find him at www.stevenmtaylor.com.

In spiritual circles these days, it’s often suggested that the human race is in the process of a collective spiritual awakening. One of the aims in writing my new book, The Leap, was to investigate the evidence for this. Is it really true that we’re in the process of ‘waking up’ as a species?

Let me first of all explain what I mean by ‘enlightenment’ or what I prefer to call wakefulness. I think of it as a shift into a more expansive, higher-functioning state in which we experience a strong sense of connection with the world around us and other beings, a sense of inner quietness and spaciousness, and a heightened awareness of our surroundings. In this state, we transcend identification with the ego-mind, and let go of much of the anxiety and restless which afflicts us in our normal state.

There are a number of signs that this state is becoming more accessible and normal …

Loraine Van Tuyl, PhD, CHT, is a holistic psychologist, shamanic healer, Depth Hypnosis practitioner, and author. She has guided visionaries, educators, healers, artists, and psychotherapists from the Native American Health Center, the UC Berkeley Counseling Center, and at her private practice, the Sacred Healing Well. She’s the author of Amazon Wisdom Keeper: A Psychologist’s Memoir of Spiritual Awakening. She also designs retreats in Costa Rica for nature wisdom keepers.

Born and raised near the edges of the Amazon rainforest of Suriname, I’ve been listening and dancing to the rhythms of nature for as long as I can remember. Armed with a rusty machete and dressed in old clothes and oversized black boots, I pretended to be Mowgli, Tarzan, or a freedom fighter like the famous rebel slaves Baron, Boni, and Joli Coeur I’d learned about in history class. Thanks to my role models and imaginary friends, Anne Frank, Helen Keller, and Joan of Arc, I began to grasp and channel a parenting book around the age of eight, long before I knew what channeling meant and what my heroine’s journey would evolve into and ask of me.

Dr. Davis is the author of The Heart of Healing, Monastery without Walls ~ Daily Life in the Silence, My Little Flowers, Simple Peace ~ The Inner Life of St Francis of Assisi, and The Calling of Joy. His latest book is The Love Letters of St. Francis & St. Clare. Bruce is a regular contributor to Huffington Post. A graduate of Saybrook University, Dr. Davis is a spiritual psychologist and teacher of the essence of world religions. He has taught at JFK University in Pleasant Hill, California, and many spiritual centers in the United States, Germany, and Switzerland. To learn more about him and his teaching, visit his website at Silent Stay Retreat Center.

There are many paths to a spiritual awakening. Near death experiences are in the news and on many bookshelves. People are finding other realms with spiritual teachers, drugs, in nature, with music, drumming, dance, or chanting. Others find an experience of their own divinity in extreme sports, life crises, or in the course of losing a loved one. People can find awakening while gardening, parenting, and caring for the less fortunate. People report experiences of spiritual awakening in dreams, meditation, heart-full prayer, or simply just being very present in the moment. There seem to be many avenues to a spiritual awakening but they all have one thing in common.

Dr. Frank Pasciuti is a licensed clinical psychologist and ASCH certified hypnotherapist practicing privately in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a weekly collaborator with The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia, and an advisory board member at The Monroe Institute, Dr. Pasciuti has had innumerable clients referred to him who’ve undergone exceptional human experiences, like NDEs and various paranormal anomalies. Here he gives us a preview of his therapeutic model for treating spiritual emergencies described in his forthcoming book: Chrysalis Crises. He can be reached at frankpasciuti@hotmail.com.

Is it possible that spiritual emergency can become an opportunity for personal development? How might this time of psychological crisis represent an invitation to deep transformation, no matter if it results from a psychic opening, a near-death experience (NDE), a past life experience, or some form of paranormal encounter? And if it does present us with an opportunity for growth, what key areas of human functioning would likely change for the positive?

As a clinician, I’ve been grappling with these questions for decades. Over time I’ve come to see that the potential for growth from spiritual emergency will be unique to each person because the longer-term impact of the crisis is often predicated on the person’s prior level of functioning.

For 40 years it has been my privilege to treat clients who presented with various …