Internet Radio Show
Challenges and Ordeals Lead to Spiritual Transformation
- Dr. Frank Pasciuti
- Download
- Click "" below to listen
Welcome to “Healing From Within.” I am your host Sheryl Glick Author of The Living Spirit Answers for Healing And Infinite Love and my soon to be released in January 2020 A New Life Awaits Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening which shares a higher awareness of Universal Source and our interconnectedness to each other with the personal intuitive nature to manifest a healthy purposeful and happy life by simply be open to change. Today I welcome Dr. Frank Pasciuti author of Chrysalis Crisis How Life’s Ordeals Can Lead to Personal and Spiritual Transformation.
When Frank is asked about to think back to his childhood and remember a person place or event that may have shown them something of the life they might pursue as an adult as I believe the life plan and destiny of the soul are already visible in the beginning of our journey he tells us of his mother who had had multiple sclerosis but still managed to have children and raise her family with a faith and trust in the Universal plan for each of us and to bring much joy through her spiritual nature into her family and the world. It is not a difficult challenge that undermines the best laid plans of man but their loss of faith and trust in themselves to do the best no matter what challenges arise. Attitude and love of self it seems is everything.
Frank goes on to tell us of why he selected Chrysalis Crisis as the title for his book and tells us what a Chrysalis Crisis is.
Recovering from a life ordeal whether it be the death of a loved one, a divorce, loss of a job or a serious physical injury or illness can sometimes result in personal and spiritual growth. Dr. Frank Pasciuti calls the transformative experience a “Chrysalis Crisis.” If properly managed these kinds of crises can result in increased physical emotional intellectual social and moral development. It can awaken our very real capacity for psychic functioning and lead to an increased sense of peace happiness and well-being.
Frank tells us a personal crisis within his own family. He tells the story of Lavinia who was the seventh oldest of 11 children living in Newark New Jersey. “It was in the 1930’s and though she was a bright inquisitive girl her formal education took her only through the 10th grade. Lovey as she was called eventually met Frank and within a few years they planned to marry. Not long after that Lovey started having trouble maintaining her balance. Her physical condition continued to deteriorate and she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis MS.
In addition to Frank’s support she had her parents and sisters and brothers. Not long after they married Lovey was confined to a wheelchair. She set out to find out about survival and the afterlife and also developed an interest in alternative cures for her illness. Her mother was Catholic and her father embraced the spiritualist movement in 19th century Europe. One belief of her father’s that particularly interested her was the notion that the mind can influence the physical world and affect the body. It seemed to her that the miracles of the Catholic saints and the reported results of spiritualists engaging in activities such as hypnosis might share a common cause. She also began to meditate and keep a journal and the result had a calming effect on her and she was able to accept her situation and maintain a positive attitude…Frank and Lovey decided to have a child and Frank, unfortunately, had a gambling problem which caused him to embezzle money from work and he went to jail for two years. During the time Frank was incarcerated Lovey had a second child, moved in with her sister and husband and three kids, in a small apartment and developed a serious bacterial skin infection Erysipelas which caused her to be hospitalized. Both Frank and Lovey accepted each other with their issues and remained loyal to each other over the next forty years. The many serious problems of his parent’s emotional physical lives led Frank to become a clinical psychologist and prompted him to understand what prompts our behaviors and how we can grow from crisis that we encounter.
Frank’s mother was inclined to follow a journey of self-discovery from which he feels he benefited greatly and his father was not inclined to seek an understanding of his emotions and continued to suffer from the uncorrected causes that gave rise to his self-destructive actions in the first place. As a spiritual energy healer and medium Sheryl has seen stories like this over and over play out. Many people who make a determination to allow and accept their challenges surrendering to them become the hero and not victim of their stories as did Frank’s mother.
Sheryl shares with us that she believes spiritually it is quiet possible as eternal souls we choose our life plan long before our soul incarnates into life in an effort to remember ultimately who we are as spirit. A physical life improve our inner soul energy not through the challenges, but the choices we make in regard to our most challenging relationships or hardships. The journey of the soul in a physical world offers many opportunities to feel and experience all emotions, ranging the most painful or negative to the most blissful. We must allow ourselves “to feel” with our entire being or soul.
Frank shares with us that Just as a butterfly struggles to free itself from the cocoon that gives it life, the struggle after that crisis contributes to its ability to survive and thrive. He offers ten keys that cover a broad area of human functioning.
The ten keys include your physical intellectual emotional social and moral development: your identity intimacy and existential growth and your intuitive and spiritual evolution. Chrysalis Crisis examines each of the ten keys through the use of case examples drawn from clients in Pasciuti’ s clinical practice and from ordeals of people close to him.
Our ability to cope with a given crisis will depend on how well these areas were functioning before the crisis. But there is an upside to that struggle. For we likely have a host of different feelings or emotions fear anger or a combination and we can learn how to experience the loss in order to heal then the suffering caused by the crisis will prompt growth and give us the opportunity to bring forth needed personal development that can benefit us thereafter.
Frank decided to use the chrysalis metaphor to describe the transformative potential of a crisis for three specific reasons. First, like the caterpillar in the chrysalis stage we are vulnerable when we are going through a crisis. Once the caterpillar surrounds itself in a cocoon it’s defenseless. It can be invaded and devoured by insects. It can get blown from it’s dangling hold and when ready to open can be blocked by an object which can lead to tragic outcomes from which it can’t recover. As humans we can be met with insurmountable consequences from certain types of crisis. But with a willingness to engage in the struggle for growth we allow for a certain amount of internal changes which can be life altering. Recall the early teenage years or the storm and stress of adolescence. If you learn to identify understand and manage the expression of your emotions that emotional growth will serve you the rest of your life but if you were told you shouldn’t have those feeling or that they were bad or you were ridiculed you would block all the feelings and hold onto the pain or suffering
Frank mentions a quote from Carl Jung the Swiss psychiatrist who said, The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parent. Sheryl finds Carl Jung to be a very spiritually guided and sensitive therapist who did not believe as Freud did that all psychological problems were the cause of physical and emotional distress, and talking about it repeatedly would help manage it, but never fully correct it, for it was somehow connected to sexual tension or childhood trauma. Carl Jung on the other hand, believed in actually helping clients to find what made them feel safe and happy, and not live in the past, but create themselves anew in the present moment. He was a spiritualist and even had a near death experience where he described the afterlife as too miraculous to even describe. Like Frank’s mother Lovey he found the mystical and spiritual aspects of life to be illuminating calming and offer a positive reason for why we have to deal with illness loss suffering and how transitory the physical world really is.
Frank writes, “Carl Jung suggests that these unresolved unconscious feelings are like emotional anchors that hold such dynamics in place. Even if you have an intellectual understanding as to what caused the initial establishment of a given dynamic if al the accompanying feelings associated to this dynamic are not uncovered, appropriately experienced or diffused, it’s like trying to row a boat out of troubled waters while remaining anchored to the dock.”
Dr. Frank Pasciuti tells the story of Bob who was having trouble with his marriage finances and health and it related to his rebellious side and his poor relationship with his father who had unrealistic expectations for his athletic ability and was very critical of him. Both his wife and he had trouble confronting the issues and asking for help. Although he wasn’t that young boy dealing with his father any more, those little boy feelings were still alive in Bob, and remained unchanged for years. Now the internal conflict he had between compliance and resistance was getting enacted with his wife but it remained outside his awareness. Like the butterfly that struggles to release itself from its cocoon, Bob worked hard in therapy to emancipate himself from old negative feelings and habits. He had to throw off outdated patterns that were holding him back from taking flight in his life.
Sheryl says that like Bob she had to let go of her earlier training and belief systems to embrace the world of Universal Energy, the afterlife and alternative healing modalities which were not embraced by her parents and family, but which in mystical experiences she came to connect to and embrace with a new understanding of herself and life itself.
In her book The Living Spirit Sheryl wrote, “ After realizing that my life was the result of my choices, as well as the result of the Divine plan I was born with, I have surrendered many of my illusionary fears and asked Spirit to direct and guide me towards the fulfillment of my spiritual purpose. Over the past several years, I have become free enough of the material world and close enough to the spiritual world to realize these truths. I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions, regardless of how other people feel or think. I say “no” if it doesn’t feel good or right for my development. Even after a lot of study and hard work, it is sometimes hard to do. Nonetheless I strongly believe that this is how the soul matures.
Frank goes on to tell us more about The Ten Keys which are physical intellectual emotional moral and social growth. These five areas of growth and development are basic to all people. They enable us to survive relate and function in community with others.
The next three areas of growth and development are identity, intimacy and existential growth. They help us find a personal direction in life, deepen how we function in relationships and enable us to discover our own meaning and purpose for living.
The last two key areas of development are the areas of Intuitive and Spiritual growth. Though these two areas are familiar to most, the particular experiences associated with their functioning are not. That’s because when individuals have actual intuitive or spiritual experiences they frequently can become boggled or frightened. Intuitive experiences tend to be subtle and elusive. They typically lie outside our usual state of conscious awareness and arise from the subliminal levels of our minds. Intuitive experiences can include but not be limited to functions of psychic nature. These phenomena are widely misunderstood feared or rejected. Similarly while many spiritual experiences are regarded as positive some can be viewed as foreign or frightening. This confusion can partially be explained by spiritualities long standing entanglement with religion. It is possible for people to have actual spiritual experience whether they hold religious beliefs or not. With specific techniques we can develop each key area of development an of course evolving synergy of all ten areas of growth can contribute to a life of greater contentment love and happiness.
In describing a client, Dawn an empath who exhibited that quality according to her Myers Briggs inventory of psychological types she expressed a strong preference for intuition as her dominant form of perception. Combined with her synesthesia and empathic abilities, Dawn’s intuitive capacity provided rich material for her work as an artist and provided her with dependable gut reactions to situations and people. She mentioned she had various psychic impressions specifically instances or pre-cognition awareness and telepathy. She also showed a capacity for automatic writing. The words or downloading of information arise from a subconscious soul spiritual or supernatural force.
Sheryl says, “As an intuitive Reiki practitioner and medium I believe we all have the capacity to tap into this higher consciousness and connection to Spirit but many resist out of fear or perhaps religious beliefs that suppress this talent and personal connection to the Divine.
In her book The Living Spirit Sheryl wrote, “Some people believe that spirituality and self-awareness, a connection to the universe, and understanding of life and death are only available to the old and wise, the well- educated, or the affluent seeker or traveler. But in reality, there is no age, race, gender, socioeconomic, or religious requirement necessary to discover who we are and what we want or need for a successful life journey. Reiki energy healing sessions have enabled many of my clients to feel their own flow of energy and to become aware ot heir intuitive natures. A more comprehensive knowledge of individual assets and powerful life force factors is the payoff for this exploration of self.”
Sheryl goes on to say, “Personally I don’t’ think anything is normal abnormal or supernormal I think that fear and poor living conditions in childhood might traumatize a person creating fear but in actuality for the soul there is no good or bad right or wrong….only experience for us to reach.
We might also begin to o differentiate spiritual from religious.
Frank writes “Is there a higher purpose for human evolution? Does growth in the key areas of foundational personal and transpersonal development have meaning beyond this life?
If it’s suggested that your growth may occur over many multiple lifetimes what would be the reason for such a long trajectory of development. Some speculate it contributes to the evolution of the Higher Self. Teilhard de Chardin a twentieth century Jesuit Priest addressed that topic. He proposed that the ultimate outcome of our personal growth and spiritual evolution takes us to the Omega Point. It’s predicated on a spiritual belief that everything in the universe is fated toward divine unification. De Chardin contends that we each have a built instinct to return to our source. He calls that instinct a teleological drive. It refers to our ultimate reason for that Omega Point. It’s consciousness that constitutes the landscape of spiritual evolution.
How is consciousness different than conscious. The word conscious means aware cognizant or awake. However. when Frank uses the word consciousness he is describing the path of Nichiren Buddhism which views consciousness as that which implies a capacity of energy that operates whether we are consciously aware of it or not. In other words, consciousness exists in or out of our conscious awareness and it can manifest in us as a capacity energy or both. It is Dr. Pasciuti’s contention that the ten keys of growth are energies and capacities of consciousness. Max Plank the founder of Quantum Theory believed consciousness was the ground of all being. And regarded matter as derived from consciousness.
These days the predominant physicalist view is the opposite. It holds that physicality or the brain gives rise to consciousness. But Planck and an increasing number of scientists beg to differ. Their position align more with the notion that consciousness is the source of all creation. It is the source of the physical universe the source of energy spirit life mind knowledge and the source of love.
Frank might hope that after reading his book Chrysalis Crisis you come to view God as Consciousness for it does not demean or disrespect God or distract from all that is attributed to God. And just as how little we know about God there is much we have to learn about consciousness. Yet viewing God as Consciousness provides a bridge between religion and spirituality For instance a scientist who’s committed to empirical fact does not need to embrace a particular set of religious beliefs to accept the existence of consciousness.
While viewing God as consciousness may sound radical or blasphemous to some, the idea that a foundational consciousness creates underlies and permeates all existence is not new. The philosophic worldview that embraces this position is known as “panentheism.” It posits a God or consciousness that interpenetrates every part of nature but is distinct from nature.
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within we have come to realize that by setting intentions and giving attention to personal and spiritual growth through the challenging times or events of your life, you acquire skills and tools that aid this walk towards understanding who you are and how to accept life, yourself and others, so you can manifest the best quality of health positivity and happiness in this lifetime. Frank wrote, It’s important to be aware you are always in contact with God. Though you may not consciously realize it, the connection can be directly accessed through your mind. Remember, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” But in order to access that kingdom you need to awaken its higher subtle and transpersonal nature.”
Dr. Pascuiti and I would have you remember as spiritual beings having a physical life, a Chrysalis Crisis or simply curiosity about the way life really works you will discover greater joy and find the opportunity to realize the truth of our Universal connection to Spirit each other and eternal life. We simply must allow and accept while surrendering to change and conquer judgment and negativity so we may reside in our true divine nature which is love.
