<p> This thesis explores the spiritual-bypass phenomenon identified by John Welwood and how it can be a defense against wholeness as defined in Jungian psychology. Using hermeneutic and heuristic methodologies, and drawing on depth psychological theories, the author discusses the various forms of spiritual bypass and the underlying shadow dynamics, such as emotional repression. The author examines the nature of psychological and spiritual development through states and stages of consciousness development, healthy transcendence versus unhealthy transcendence, and the Jungian process of individuation toward wholeness. The research also explores contributing factors to spiritual bypass including the effect of early childhood attachment style and demonstrates the significance of integrating psychological development in a spiritual path. Finally, the author provides suggestions for therapists working with clients who may be in spiritual bypass.</p>

<p> Travelers throughout time have attested to the profoundly moving and psychologically meaningful impact of their journeys, disclosing travel&rsquo;s potential as a soulful experience. Yet many travel experiences are better defined as &ldquo;ego-trips,&rdquo; with harmful consequences to host regions, individuals, and even the travelers themselves. Dedicated towards the notion of &ldquo;re-souling&rdquo; travel, this dissertation ventures into the typically unconscious aspects of Western travel. </p><p> Depth psychological in approach, this study employs hermeneutics and the symbolic perspective towards an interpretation of a few of the travel experiences recorded by two luminary psychological theorists: C. G. Jung and James Hillman. By exploring these guiding examples of soulful travel, this dissertation unearths key facets of meaning behind the impulse to travel, identifies certain ancestral and archetypal travel experiences, recognizes the role of ritual in the engagement between traveler and place, and regards the import of the traveler&rsquo;s relationship with Other. </p><p> Archetypal alienated seeking, influenced by a mythos of one&rsquo;s &ldquo;parturition&rdquo; from the natural world and spiritual belief systems, is an unconscious factor driving much of Western travel. Utilizing the symbolic approach can aid travelers in becoming aware of their consumptive and/or imperialistic behaviors, lack of meaning, the relativization of the ego, and the accompanying labor pains that are embedded in the collective history of travel as travail. Recognizing the archetypal nature of the journey can assist in uncovering the longing behind the call to explore. To that end, this study identifies archetypal experiences tied to Western travel&rsquo;s ancestry: the road trip, going south, aesthetic travel, therapeutic travel and poetic travel. Ritual can cultivate the Western traveler&rsquo;s receptivity to the psychological potency of place. Authentic engagement with other people and places can also be fostered through a reverent acceptance of liminality, reclaiming psychological projections, and courageous attendance to that which emerges in dialogue. </p><p> This dissertation concludes by positing that the impulse to travel is related to psyche&rsquo;s desire to be mapped as the Western culture moves away from the parturition myth and towards a new mythos of an interconnected world soul. </p>

<p> This thesis uses hermeneutic and heuristic methodologies to draw together the myth of Chiron and the phenomenon of spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is the tendency to use spiritual beliefs, teachings, and practices to avoid dealing with one&rsquo;s psychology, painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental issues. Chiron is a mythological figure who mentored a number of Greek heroes and Asclepius, the god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Chiron, like his mentee Asclepius, embodies the Wounded Healer archetype. Chiron&rsquo;s wounding and healing journey can serve as a roadmap for spiritual practitioners on how to navigate out of bypass and deepen their path toward self-realization and individuation. Developing an archetypal awareness of one&rsquo;s wounds appears to reveal the aspects of one&rsquo;s psychology defended against in spiritual bypass. This emerging roadmap and lessons from Chiron&rsquo;s journey may help therapists, healers, and spiritual teachers accelerate their own path and assist clients. </p>

<p> This thesis explores the healing effects of surrender to and trust in the alchemical nature of the psyche to produce psychospiritual transformation toward wholeness and wellbeing. Through alchemical hermeneutic, heuristic, and intuitive methodologies the research explores healing outcomes of merging with the divine through a relationship with a guru, consciously being in a love relationship, and engaging with astrology as alchemical processes that help to integrate unconscious content into consciousness. The author observes the alchemical process in the merging of heaven and earth, or cosmos and psyche, as it weaves through her own life. She tracks the alchemy through which an interpersonal love relationship and encounters with the guru Mata Amritanandamayi produced both physical and emotional healing. The thesis also explores the psychotherapeutic use of astrology and suggests ways to integrate experiences of the divine, interpersonal love, and one's astrological chart into psychotherapy to support healing and movement toward wholeness.</p><p>

<p> This theoretical study addresses the question of how spirituality affects a child's development of a sense of self and considers the role of the natural world in this process. The author uses a traditional hermeneutic method in combination with alchemical hermeneutics (Romanyshyn, 2007) in order to make room for the unconscious during the research process. The study is therefore both an examination of the interrelationships between self, spirituality, and the natural world, as well as a depiction of the author's use of self and the unconscious to penetrate the deeper dimensions of these interrelationships. Three main bodies of literature were reviewed for the study: children's spirituality, sense of self development, and the human-nature connection. In addition, the author made use of a logbook for the duration of the study to record dreams, symptoms, reveries, synchronicities, and the transference dialogues. These contributions from the unconscious were integrated with findings from the literature to articulate a new theoretical perspective on the child's development of a sense of self. The author finds that the spiritual life of the child is nurtured in communion with the natural world and that the child's sense of self is directly impacted by both the relationship with the natural world and her spiritual nature. Further, the author finds that the child's development of a spiritual sense of self in relationship with the natural world contributes to the reparation of the dissociation between human beings and the earth. The implications of this study for depth psychotherapy suggest that it is in our utmost interest to allow children opportunity to develop a sense of spiritual self in relationship with the earth. Both children and adults need opportunities to connect with the natural world in order for the spiritual self to emerge in the direction of human-earth unity. This study further implies that, in alchemical hermeneutics, depth psychology has an effective and reliable method of conducting research with the explicit participation of the unconscious in the research process.</p>

<p> This study of children's dreams used a mixed method to examine the dreams of 32 English-speaking children, ages 6-12 from the San Francisco Bay Area. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate dreams identified by the children as significant or meaningful, explore children's interpretations and meaning making, and to find if there was support for the hypothesis that some dreams might be connected to children's spiritual awareness, or influenced by their spirituality, beliefs, and practices, areas that have had little attention in previous dream research. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, participants were asked to tell the dream while drawing a picture of the dream. Major dream themes were identified, and the resulting dream data were correlated to participants' spiritual awareness, as measured by the Feeling Good, Living Life instrument (FGLL), specifically designed to measure spiritual health in children, and the Practice and Beliefs Scale for Children (PBSC) a 10-item instrument designed to assess connections between spirituality and religiosity. The FGLL was developed to measure four domains of spiritual well-being: Personal, Communal, Environmental, and Transcendental. The PBSC used a sentence-completion format to reflect the individual's language and assessed children's belief in the God of their definition as well as the importance and the role of the child's spiritual beliefs in coping in everyday life. Findings from the qualitative and quantitative results showed evidence of children's spiritual awareness in all domains, reflected their spirituality in the areas of awareness-sensing, value-sensing, and mystery-sensing, and found correlations between some of the dreams, meaning making, and their spiritual understanding. Implications are noted for therapists, spiritual directors, researchers, parents, and other adults who work with children regarding the benefits and challenges of dream work with children in this age group as a way of recognizing and nurturing their spirituality.</p>

<p>Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Disorder of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS) are physiological and psychological symptoms known to arise in the aftermath of trauma. Although lifetime prevalence of trauma capable of resulting in PTSD is 50-90%, lifetime prevalence of PTSD is eight percent, indicating that there may be factors that protect against the development of such symptoms. Spirituality has been implicated as a possible moderator; spirituality may play a protective or restorative role in lessening the relationship between trauma exposure and trauma symptoms. The purpose of this quantitative research was to examine the moderating role of different aspects of spirituality, including cognitive orientation to spirituality, the experiential/phenomenological dimensions of spirituality, and religiousness, on the relationship between trauma exposure and trauma symptoms when such symptoms are defined to include both PTSD and DESNOS. Data collected from members of the general adult population using a cross-sectional online survey design indicated that the cognitive orientation to spirituality and the experiential/phenomenological dimension of spirituality both significantly moderated the relationship between trauma exposure and DESNOS symptoms; both of these aspects of spirituality buffer the strength of the relationship between trauma exposure and DESNOS symptoms. Religiousness was not found to moderate the relationship between trauma exposure and DESNOS, and none of the aspects of spirituality moderated the relationship between trauma exposure and PTSD. These findings add to what is currently known about the protective role of spirituality, provide additional data on the differences between PTSD and DESNOS symptoms, and set the stage for further research. </p>

<p> Recent publications on the topic of safety, my observations of some church members' reluctance to be involved, and a serendipitous experience of added safety I had outside of the church coalesced to point me to lack of spiritual and emotional safety in my church as a possible cause of deficient personal spiritual growth in some members and of a resulting want for greater church efficiency. Emotional safety seems to be a core component of the ideals of love usually professed in the church. This indicated to me a possible need to focus on facilitating <i>practice</i> of emotional awareness and safety that would be experientially confirmed as conducive to personal growth in contrast to simply using the traditional methods of just preaching and teaching on these subjects. </p><p> The theological and biblical study specifically allowed me to describe the type of individual spiritual growth stemming from genuine personal awareness acquired through a sense of safety. I was able to legitimately equate such spiritual growth with the concept of personal stewardship or "sanctification" used in the Bible&mdash;in an understanding of it that encompasses the development of all of one's life as part of the spiritual endeavor. This involves all aspects of life and not just those commonly understood as "spiritual" in a narrower religious sense. Others have used the term "individuation" to describe this spiritual development. This is different from other understandings that associate "sanctification" with lists of concrete attitudes and behaviors which, in the mind of some outside observers, are "evidence" of spiritual growth, but may not always be reflective of such. </p><p> My assumption at the beginning of this project was that <i>practice </i> of emotional safety could enable increased awareness leading to spiritual growth. This foundational element, in my estimate, seemed to be the missing piece in the promotion of spiritual growth and organizational effectiveness in the church. However, my study revealed two more foundational levels of safety that must precede the practice of safety because they either enable it by their presence or foil it by their absence. <i>Practiced </i> safety is greatly impaired by a lack of structural safety (i.e., retained parts of organizational structures that enable lawful harm to some); and a lack of <i>structural</i> safety may be the outworking of a lack of <i>theological</i> safety&mdash;that is, retained personal and organizational elemental worldview, assumptions and beliefs about self, God, and the universe that generate unsafe space instead of a place of safety and trust. Lack of safety deters people from seeking awareness that can lead to growth, while the presence of safety can facilitate a fuller experience of awareness leading to satisfying and genuine spiritual growth. But such safety which enables awareness towards growth cannot occur without its foundational <i> theological, structural,</i> and <i>practiced</i> components being attended to, in this order. </p><p> Two circles of causes and effects are proposed to the consideration of the reader through this project. One is a circle of theological, structural and practiced safety which seems to facilitate individuals' willingness to engage in the pursuit of increased conscious awareness, resulting in greater spiritual growth and a safer world. The alternate circle is one which continues to perpetuate theological, structural and practiced dangers, thus apparently metastasizing individuals and organizations' inhibitions towards greater conscious awareness into regressive conformism and dangerous projections. </p><p> The process successfully used in this project at the Fox Valley Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, to increase a sense of safety conducive to conscious awareness and spiritual growth among project participants is proposed to all readers and entities willing to recognize a lack of safety as a reality to be addressed, and it may serve as a model to any such individual or organization to improve safety, with the ensuing increased spiritual growth and organizational efficiency, within their sphere of influence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) </p>

<p>This qualitative study explored the subjective experience of mutual eye-gazing functioning as a pathway to unitive consciousness through shared awareness. Research on the unitive consciousness is primarily viewed as an individual experience, rather than as two individuals engaged in shared awareness. In addition, eye-gazing is primarily viewed as eye contact using the physical apparatus rather than eye-gazing as a transpersonal occurrence. The participants of this pioneer study consisted of 12 exemplar spiritual guides who were recruited to explore the experience: 7 men and 5 women from 50 to 70 years old; 9 were from the United States, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Canada, and 1 from the United Kingdom. Based on the heuristic method, data were collected via semistructured interviews to obtain participant&rsquo;s subjective experience of mutual eye-gazing. Qualitative thematic analysis was used for data analysis to identify common themes on mutual eye-gazing across the group of participants. Seven themes identified from the data set included (a) experience of shared awareness through eye-gazing, (b) interplay between thought and awareness, (c) hindrance of eye-gazing, (d) presence of divine nature, (e) dynamics of energy, (f) sensory experience, and (g) feeling of love. Results showed that mutual eye-gazing functioned as a vehicle for shared awareness, potentially leading to a higher state of consciousness in which the personal and Divine selves are realized as one. Transpersonal elements included transformational understanding of self and with other and reduced influence of the ego achieved by allowing for a broader perspective than a purely individual one. The most marked discovery was the emergence of a transpersonal movement towards unity that evolved into a 4-step process that could be used as a guideline for the realization of shared awareness. The shared process of mutual eye-gazing may be a useful spiritual application to anyone interested in psychological or spiritual well-being and transformation. </p>

<p> Poetry can be a portal into the inner world, a doorway into the psychological space in which one might encounter the vast array of archetypal motifs&mdash;the seed forms&mdash;that structure human experience. Poetry compels a reexamination of the cultural stories upon which ordinary perception is based and awakens a mythic, or poietic, consciousness, leading toward more soulful and meaningful interpretations of life&mdash;what scholar James Hillman calls "soul-making." </p><p> There are two major reasons for this. First, the heightened and compressed language of a poem requires slow and careful reading, facilitating a more intimate encounter with its subject than typically occurs in other types of reading. Second, because it is based in metaphorical language, poetry demonstrates the art of analogizing&mdash;of making new connections between the layers of life. In its drawing of novel parallels between things, events, feelings, and relationships, poetry invites readers to likewise examine and re-imagine their own experiences in order to imbue them with a deeper sense of meaning. </p><p> Despite poetry's focus on universal themes, however, the reading and enjoyment of poetry is a less than universal pastime. Particularly in the West, engagement with poetry remains trapped primarily in academic circles, leaving too many people with inadequate access to its "soul-making" properties. By weaving together the threads of a number of disciplines, including depth psychology, phenomenological philosophy, literary theory, reading theory, and maieutic education, this dissertation examines poetry's potential as a tool for transforming human perception and presents a method for moving the study of poetry deeper into the cultural mainstream. The production piece that accompanies the dissertation, a curriculum for use with small groups of adults titled "Living in the Layers: Traveling Soul's Way through Poetry," provides self-explanatory study materials through which small group leaders and individual students may enter into a depth-psychological encounter with a variety of classic and contemporary poems. Key words: Poetry, Depth Psychology, Maieutic Education, Soul-Making, Spiritual Transformation, Small Groups</p>