the Effect of Spirituality on Human Development
...ribing to a dogma. As stated above, Eugene W. Kelly (1995) lumped spirituality and religion together, as significant and essentially positive dimensions of reality. I make a distinction between spirituality and religion. Some authors make that same distinction by using the words intrinsic and extrinsic. The spirituality that I refer to in this paper is a real, intrinsic, spiritual experience that happens “inside” of a person and affects the behavior of their life. Religion, as I define it, is an outward (extrinsic) action that has spiritual connotations, but may or may not have any real spiritual (intrinsic) motivation behind it. Ellis’ (1980) revision of Bergen’s table included some descriptions of theistic verses humanistic values. He described theistic values as producing self-control, personal responsibility and forgiveness. In other words, theistic (what I am referring to as spirituality) produced real life results. Barbara Nielsen in her dissertation (2000) described spirituality as pertaining to “divine, non-material, power and to its life giving infusion into human beings. This divine power has many capacities; it can create, prophesy, reveal true reality, inspire and be an agent of righteousness working through human beings. It can empower them to think, act and become committed to sacred and holy virtues such as faith, hope and love as well as to seek answers to the meaning and purpose of life” (p. 4). Tart (as cited in Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999) says that, “the term religious implies, too strongly, the enormous social structures that embrace so many more things than direct spiritual experience. In contrast, the term spiritual implies more directly the experience that people have about the meaning of life, God, ways to live, etc... with compassion, with purpose” (p. 4). For the remainder of this paper, I am going to imply that whenever any author or I refer to words like religion or spirituality that they and I are referring to that real entity and invisible force that affects people’s lives. THE RESULTS OF THE LITERATURE Worthington and Kurusu, McCullough, & Sandage (1996) did a 10 year review and research prospectus about empirical research on religious and psychotherapeutic processes and outcomes. They cited also from other research by Cheatham, Ivey, Ivey, & Simek - Morgen, that religious experience is definitely a part of the direction within the post modern culture. They documented consistent results in comparing 148 articles in the last ten years that: a) “religion does not affect mental health negatively” (p. 451), and b) infer that the positive affects of religion correlate higher with a positive mental health of clients. Their research indicated that spirituality positively affected people’s development in the form of internal locus control, intrinsic motivational traits, sociability, sense of well-being, responsibility, self-control, tolerance, wanting to make a good impression, achievement by conformity, and intellectual efficiency” (p. 451). Worthington et. al (1996), also found in his summary of Empirical Research that, “individuals with strong religious faith reported higher levels of life satisfaction, greater personal happiness, and fewer negative psycho social consequences of traumatic life events” (p. 452). “Religious belief was correlated with lower levels of depressive symptoms and a higher ability to walk as assessed by physical therapists” (p. 453). “Parents with high religious scores correlated with good mental health, greater social support from friends, more favorable parenting practices, higher SES, and lower hostility;...Religion plays a diverse role in problem solving styles which affects level of competence” (p. 454). Bergin (as cited in Worthington et al.), generalized that “intrinsically religious people - as has been shown by a large amount of research - are more likely to be mentally healthy and may actually be more open to change than extrinsic or indiscriminately pro religious people” (p. 457). In other words, again, people with a real experience of inner spirituality, were more likely to change and, thus, be able to develop into a more healthy existence. Worthington et al., explained that for people who were in critical care, days in the hospital, had a number of medications at discharge, and had a number of new symptoms develop, the “patients who were prayed for did substantially better than did patients who were not prayed for” (p. 474). Bergin, Masters, & Richards (1987) did a study of how religion affected mental health. They found a correlation of lower anxiety, better self control, higher tolerance, and a positive normal personal functioning with people who possessed an intrinsic religion. In a review of 12 studies (Gartner, Larson, & Allen, 1991), a negative relationship was reported between religiosity and suicide. Subjects with religious spirituality reported having fewer suicidal impulses. They reported less psychological distress for people who participated in religious activities, and lower rates of hospitalization for schizophrenics who attended church. They found a negative relationship between religious commitment and depression. As can be expected, a lower anxiety of death was also found in those with a religious commitment. People with an intrinsic religiosity and religious commitment were also found to be less prejudice. Gartner, Larson, & Allen concluded, “that the preponderance of evidence suggests that religion is associated with mental health benefits” (p. 16). Patricia Roth’s (1988) research provides support for her hypothesis that, what she calls, lived out spirituality is an important factor in marriage happiness. Her results, as reported in a Pearson correlation analysis, “indicated a significant relationship between spiritual well-being and marital adjustment for both husbands and wives” (p. 155). She postulates that perhaps the acceptance of God’s love and how He interacts with us be used as a model for spiritual people to enhance their ability to have an intimate and satisfying relationship with each other. She thinks that in therapy, clients should be encouraged and helped to integrate their spiritual beliefs into their unique way of relating and being. In a book review (Quesada, 2000) of Addiction and Spirituality, Oliver Morgan and Merle Jordan’s identification of “spirituality as a way out of addiction” (p. 72) is discussed . They relate the consistent theme that alcoholics and drug addicts refer to as an emptiness that exists inside of them. Addicts try to fill their empty “black holes” (p. 73) with all kind of pleasure producing substitutes: chemicals, sex, food, compulsive spending, gambling, workaholism, or other addictive behaviors. Harold Doweiko was mentioned in the review as an author who has published a number of well-know addiction counseling textbooks. He says that, first of all, “our educational system is designed to ‘crush the spirit’” (p. 73). He relates that believe to the difference in the enthusiasm of young school children compared to the diminished enthusiasm of high school students. He asks people in his existential counseling approach, “who they think they are, and where do they think they fit in?” He probes at that same meaning and purpose question. He thinks that “addiction is a self-centered disease, devoid of humility and spirituality”. Lee Jampolsky is referenced in the same review as believing that “feelings of incompleteness promote hopelessness. He identifies low self-esteem and self-judgement as sentencing the addicted individual to a life of guilt and shame, keeping him or her at high risk for relapse and continued addictive behaviors and attitudes” (pp. 73, 74). In that same review, Robert Albers, a pastoral counselor, “identifies love and acceptance as critical components of recovery, filling the emptiness within” (p.74). The authors of the book, Morgan and Jordan, explained that spirituality is the entity that provides those love and acceptance elements (from a loving, forgiving God), and is a critical element to the long term recovery for the addict. The Human Quest for Meaning Ralph Piedmont (1999) reported on the results of two studies that outline a construct called Spiritual Transendence. A Spiritual Transendence Scale is a measure designed to describe aspects of a person that are not included in the well known and respected Five-Factor Model of Personality (Costa and McCrae as cited in Sigelman, 1999). He suggests that this Spiritual Transendence be considered a potential sixth major dimension of personality” (p. 985). To Piedmont, “Spiritual Transcendence refers to the capacity of individuals to stand outside of their immediate sense of time and place to view life from a larger, more objective perspective” (p. 988). He correlates this definition to the “innate need of people to find a deeper sense of meaningfulness and connection” (p. 988) in life. People want to find purpose in their life. Erikson (as cited in Sigelman, 1999) described this desire in people as “Generativity vs. stagnation” (p. 32), and titled it as a latter stage of human growth in his development theory. “Costa and McCrae say that...Transcendence is something that continues to evolve over the adult life span. Our experiences help lead us to see larger patterns in human endeavor. This development is further augmented by the aging process where our inevitable movement toward death carries with it a need for us to find final closure and meaning” (p. 990). According to Erikson, if people do not attain meaning and purpose in their lives, they go through a final stage of development called “Integrity vs. despair” (p. 32) with bitter regret. Spirituality is that all important entity that is necessary and very affective in our human development to find that meaning. It is the entity that allows that Spiritual Transcendence construct to activate and produce the meaning and purpose that people need to find fulfillment in their lives. An Entity to Help Eradicate Poverty Dr. Ruby Payne (1998), in her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, makes a fascinating description of the Poverty, Middle, and Wealthy classes of our society and describes the distinctive “culture” that envelopes each one of those classes. The Wealthy Class culture focuses on status. The Middle Class culture focuses on achievement, and the Poverty Class on relationships. The Poverty Class does not value “getting ahead” like the Middle Class culture does. In fact they do not even have the formal concrete abstract reasoning ability to understand the cause and effect relationship of making goals to get ahead. They only value relationships for purposes of either support for each other or entertainment. If one of their members in this Poverty Class culture tries to get ahead, they are rejected and treated as an outcast. Ruby Payne explains how formal education helps the kids in that culture to develop their cognitive abstract reasoning skills so they can understand the ramifications of working hard to get something better in the future. For that reason she is a strong advocate of education. I think education is necessary for those kids, but I think spirituality and Spiritual Transcendence as Piedmont (1999) named it, would also help them form an existential awareness, a cause and effect reasoning, and a motivation to obtain meaning and purpose in their lives. Piedmont says that one of the components of a Spiritual Transcendence construct is, “existentially, a desire to live in the moment and to embrace the experiences that life confronts us with as opportunities for growth and joy” (p. 989). Piedmont makes the statement that, “These (Spritual Transcendence) constructs represent unique sources of motivation that play an important part in forming direction” (p. 1010) ... to our lives. In other words, this kind of spirituality can produce an awareness in the minds of these poverty cultured kids that there is something missing in their life, that the possibility exists for something better “out there”, and the motivation to attain it. A Spiritual Psychotherapeutic Experience Suzanne L. Lewis (2000) did an exploratory study that incorporated data from her own experience as “a profoundly depressed woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder to show how she was healed through a psychotherapeutic and spiritual journey into her unconscious mind” (p. i). Lewis was a victim of sexual and Satanic Ritual Abuse. She had repressed and dissociated from those memories. She eventually became very depressed. It was only through a spiritual “light giving” (Lewis, p. 55 & Appendix A) (Time Line Therapy and Theophostic) counseling that she was able to obtain complete healing and freedom from her disorders. Lewis (2000) said that one of the reasons she did this project was to examine “the relationship between spirituality and healing” (p. 2). From her own experience and the success with the spiritual approach to therapy, she made this statement: “It is time to look at our very spiritual nature and not just our biological nature” (p. 2). Suzanne Lewis challenges her readers “to question (the current medical-biological model of human memory) that we are only biological beings and that memory is stored only in the brain” (p. 67). She further postulates, “Maybe the brain is only like the hard ‘CD-ROM’ part of memory, but true memory, the ‘music’ per se, may be stored and played in our ‘spiritual body’. Just as the music cannot be found nor heard by looking at the CD-ROM, human memory cannot be found by strictly looking at the anatomy and physiology of the brain. My conclusion, therefore, is that we need to open our minds and think about a more spiritual paradigm for human memory” (p. 67). She draws some of her theory from Jung’s concept of the “collective unconscious” (p.7). She states that “the unconscious mind (psyche) is the route to the co...