We in the Western world do not understand the distinction between psychosis and spiritual emergency. Authentic spirituality is not honored and respected in the classical way through Western, colonized countries. The objective was to close down, not tune in to, the power within us, which is superior to illusions implemented in desperation by colonization.
We in the West never really were taught the difference.
Those who have power and gain from us not being in touch with our internal higher power do not want us to know.
Systems based on disconnection, domination, and profit will always misidentify the sacred as sickness. And they will always refer to soul awakening as some kind of pathology they must contain, tranquilize, or eradicate.
But even in clinical psychology itself, the blind spots are being pointed out—by those who are brave enough to look.
They will not know what they do not name.
What the psychiatric system calls psychosis, our ancestors called initiation.
What they refer to as mania, people once knew as the rising of the Spirit when it can no longer be stilled. What they refer to as delusion, in much Indigenous and African culture is walking between worlds, bringing messages from the unseen to the seen.
However, the Western model of the mind does not acknowledge what it does not name.
It doesn’t communicate in the language of energy.
It doesn’t converse in the language of the body as portal.
It does not use the language of the Divine.
And if you’re Black and on the verge of having a spiritual emergency, they will not perceive the medicine within your tempest.
They will perceive you as being dangerous.
They will view you as “untamed.”
They will perceive you through the lens of centuries of projections, control, and erasure.
But even within Transpersonal Psychology itself, one of the field’s founders suggested: “Many experiences which are now diagnosed as psychoses are actually crises of transformation or spiritual emergencies.”
In his book, Grof describes spiritual emergency as a normal, natural process of psycho-spiritual development which can resemble psychosis but should be treated in another way—via support, integration, and spiritual structures, not suppression.
His clinical work, in collaboration with others in the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN), demonstrates that when these experiences are integrated well, they have the potential to bring deep healing, personal transformation, and development—not disintegration.
The United States of Pseudo Sanity
The United States itself exists in pseudo-sanity. A culture of conformity where people are rewarded for being numb, dissociated from their true selves, spiritually forgotten and compliant with systems who consumed their own conscience years ago. A culture where they teach people how to be normal on the outside while dying on the inside.
This is the insanity they normalize. This is the sickness they shield.
In the work of R.D. Laing, who was one of the very few Western-trained psychiatrists to be questioning the system, he stated: “Society prizes its normal man very highly. It teaches children to lose themselves and become absurd in order to be normal.”
Laing suggested that what is termed as madness is actually an appropriate reaction to an insane world but one that is punished because individuals are seeing too much, feeling too much, remembering too much of what this culture requires us to forget.
In such an atmosphere, he who awakens is he whom they imprison. He who remembers is he whom they medicate. He who speaks the truth is he whom they declare insane.
Kundalini Rising and Spiritual Initiation
Kundalini rising is an energetic phenomenon. It may be spontaneous. It can shake the nervous system, the body, the mind. It can be overwhelming if one has no elder to guide it, no framework to contain it.
A spiritual initiation is something else.
It is an invitation.
It is a threshold.
It is a fatality.
It is a claiming.
It is not coincidental.
It is not voluntary.
It arrives whenever the soul indicates it is time.
If you confuse one with the other, then you will miss the medicine.
If you turn your experience over to people who cannot contain it, then you will be misdiagnosed, misnamed, and mishandled.
For Black Women, the Misdiagnosis is Twofold.
The misdiagnosis of a Black woman in spiritual emergency is not only medical but also historical.
It is the same old lie recurring:
That we are not to be relied upon to know ourselves.
That our anger is unreasonable.
That our visions are dangerous.
That our bodies are ever under suspicion.
It’s an attempt at suppressing the truth. Us.
This is exacerbated by scholarship from the Journal of Black Psychology, which evidences the overdiagnosis of psychosis in Black communities, specifically Black women—usually as the result of cultural miscommunications, racial prejudice, and pathologization of appropriate expressions of distress, anger, or spiritual expression. This is intentional.
Research indicates Black people are as much as five times more likely to be misdiagnosed with psychosis or schizophrenia compared to their white counterparts presenting the same symptoms (Bell & Mehta, 2019). But we do know the difference. We always have. We always will.
We Must Reclaim Our Language, Our Medicine, Our Rites They will not inform us of the distinction between spiritual emergency and psychopathy. So we must remember it for ourselves. We must identify our awakenings as what they are. We must guard them. We must create spaces in which our initiations are celebrated, not pathologized. Because their system was never designed to contain our medicine. But we were.
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