This research inquiry is an autobiographical exploration and elucidation of the lived-experience of Self-Transformation; Self-transformation connoting a comprehensive framework that comprises personal, professional, social and spiritual renewal. The study emphasizes a mind-body-spirit holism as the whole experiential reality of the person is considered. Thus, transformation is viewed as a psycho-spiritual process. An integral aspect of the transformation process is listening to the inner voice, “the voice of a fuller life, of a wider more comprehensive consciousness” (Jung, 1954. p. 184). The degree to which the transformation process ripens and the integration of the personality realized, seems directly contingent on the conscious listening to and actual follow through on the guidance of the inner voice (Assagioli, 1965; Jung, 1954; Sinetar, 1986; Luke, 1984).
As an autobiographical inquiry, lived-experience refers to the actual living-ness of experience: becoming, indwelling, the heuristics of experience. It is about floundering in the flux, living the paradox of knowing that one does not know yet yielding into the flux and the ambiguity inherent in experiencing the phenomenon and conducting the inquiry.
The analytical psychology of C.G. Jung (Collected Works, 1953–1979) is used as the main theoretical framework in which to ground a psychology of transformation. The phenomenon of Self-transformation is termed the process of individuation (Jung, 1959), spiritual psychosynthesis or Self-realization (Assagioli, 1965), and spiritual emergence (Grof and Grof, 1989). Individuation is viewed as an evolutionary growth process. As a lifelong existential project, it entails undergoing several rounds on the transformation spiral—ongoing, punctuated episodes of personal transition and psychological shifts in consciousness, in which we go through the process of passage between one life phase and the next in a cyclical pattern of death and rebirth (Bridges, 1980). Sharp (1991) says that individuation is a process of psychological differentiation informed by the archetypal ideal of wholeness, the Self, which relies on an vital relationship between the ego and the unconscious; the goal being the development of the in-dividual personality. Jung (1966) viewed individuation as an internal, subjective process of integration and a process of self-and-collective synergy. The synthesis of both these processes constitutes wholeness.
How this process manifests as lived-experience is the focus of this inquiry. The phenomenon is elucidated by employing and blending two modes of inquiry, heuristics (Moustakas, 1990) and autobiography as in Allport's (1942) idiographic research, both components of a qualitative (interpretive) methodology. The six phases of heuristic research, (initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and creative synthesis), are naturally operative within the transformation process and are used to describe the unfolding of the inquiry process and the lived-experience, and as the means for data collection and analysis. Analysis of the autobiographic data revealed the following salient features of the transformation process—a renaissance call to wholeness (premonition phase), light bows to darkness (holistic disintegration), the unformed silence (excursion into the abyss), awakening of the heart (illumination and initiation into rebirth), and return to innocence (a second dark night of the soul and a deeper integrative synthesis). These stages entail overlapping and divergent psychological processes that illuminate a unique pattern inherent in the renewal process. Implications for professional practice, education and research are discussed, including a call for a broader conceptual framework that encompasses the spiritual as integral to the healing and educating of lives. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/10179 |
| Date | 25 October 2018 |
| Creators | Persaud, Shanti Meeradevi |
| Contributors | Hett, Geoffrey |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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