The Experience of Divine Guidance Research Presentation

The Experience of Divine Guidance from Mark Allan Kaplan

The Experience of Divine Guidance Research Presentation is a presentation given at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in June of 2005 presenting the research findings of the doctoral dissertation "The Experience of Divine Guidance: A Qualitative Study of the Human Endeavor to Seek, Receive, and Follow Guidance from a Perceived Divine Source" - Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., Dissertation Abstracts International, 2005, 66 (05), 2855. (UMI No. 3174544).

ABSTRACT: This research study examined the experience of seeking, receiving, and following guidance from a perceived source of divine wisdom. Nine advanced spiritual teachers (5 men and 4 women) from 7 spiritual traditions participated as coresearchers in this study. Coresearchers were North American or European born, predominantly Caucasian, California (USA) residents between the ages of 52 and 74. Coresearcher participation consisted of individual semistructured in-depth interviews. The questions and topics of discussion used for the interviews were developed through a process of researcher heuristic and spiritual self-inquiry. The results of a grounded-theory-based qualitative content analysis of the interview transcripts suggested that the experience of divine guidance, as measured in the current study, is characterized by a common structuring of the experience that includes general categories, factors, and patterns which appear to manifest into various particular and contextual forms depending on the individual person, event, and circumstance. The reported common structures of the experience included: The perception of a divine source of guidance; the experience of seeking, receiving, and following guidance from this perceived source; and various contributing, impeding, developmental, and mediating factors. Additionally, each coresearcher reported a unique metaphor of divine encounter that appeared to give them an archetypal and visceral way of describing and holding the experience. The researcher appeared to experience each of the coresearcher’s metaphors of divine encounter through some kind of resonant learning or mimicking process. A Guidance Experience Template, Guidance Experience Evaluation Checklist, and Synthesized Guidance Practice were developed as aids to counselors, practitioners, and researchers exploring the experience of divine guidance. The findings of this study, and the development and implementation of guidance-related applications in this research, may advance the understanding of this common and historically significant human experience, and offer a valuable contribution to the fields of transpersonal psychology, spiritual guidance, and spiritual psychology.

This presentation is available at SlideShare.

The complete dissertation is available at Google Play and Dissertation Abstracts International.

Announcing LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE Online Course

LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE

A Special 8-Week Interfaith and Integral Spirituality Holiday Season Course

With Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., internationally-acclaimed film and spirituality scholar-practitioner and author of the newly released book “The Search for a Divinely Guided Life”

MAKE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON A SACRED DANCE BETWEEN THE DIVINE AND YOUR SELF

From: December 7, 2014 (Sunday) at 1:00 pm Pacific Time 
To: January 25, 2015 (Sunday) at 5:00 pm Pacific Time 

About this Course

The LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE course is a transformational interfaith and integral spirituality journey through the holiday season. It is designed to foster a more sacred and deeply transformative season, and to help you more fully open to and embrace your own evolutionary quest for the Divine. Using holiday season celebrations from many cultures and traditions as archetypal containers, we will explore how the Divine has already been guiding your life through the creation of your own spiritual autobiography, uncovering and reframing your past and current life situations and challenges in the context of your evolutionary journey toward a higher, deeper, and more expansive way of being. You will also learn how to develop your own integral spirituality guidance practice for seeking, receiving and following guidance from your highest, deepest, and most expansive Divine Source on a daily and moment-by-moment basis.

Location:

This event takes place online.

Who is this Course For?

This course is for anyone who is interested in exploring and living a divinely guided life from a non-denominational, interfaith, and integral spirituality evolutionary perspective.

DETAILS

Join Mark for this transformative interfaith and integral spirituality course, which explores how we can open to, connect with, and more fully and deeply enter into a co-creative and co-evolutionary dance with the living universe. This course will be taught through eight weekly 90-minute conference calls (recordings for the calls will be posted for participants who are not able to join a call). Each week we will deeply explore a dimension of the process of opening to living a divinely guided life with assigned practices, readings and self-reflection assignments, along with online threaded discussions to connect with fellow participants and deepen your understanding and application of this work. Throughout this process we will be uncovering the signs and stories of your life that reveal the divine’s participation in your life journey, and developing skills and practices to help you more fully engage with and participate in your divinely guided life adventure.

Topics covered will include:

• Searching for the Divine Through Time and Memory;
• Deconstructing and Rebirthing our Relationship with the Divine;
• Transforming the Primal Wound into the Primal Calling;
• Cultivating the Witness;
• Tapping into the Evolutionary Impulse;
• The Art of Transformational Reframing;
• Interpreting Life Situations and Events from a Transcendent Educational Perspective;
• Using Holy Days as Gateways to the Personal and Collective Kosmic Curriculum;
• Discovering and Applying Universal Patterns and Practices of the Experience of Divine Guidance;
• Living in the Divine Flow in the Everyday World.

This course uses an Integral Spirituality approach, which is a form of spirituality that seeks to integrate the theories and practices of all faith traditions in a way that recognizes the universal aspects of all paths while also honoring the unique gifts that each path offers. In addition, the Integral spiritual approach helps us integrate spirituality itself with all other dimensions of our being and becoming. From this Integral Spirituality perspective, the “Divine” refers to a higher, deeper and/or more expansive source of wisdom and guidance that can be perceived in various ways, including as a 1^st Person Higher or Deeper Self; a 2^nd Person “Thou” or “Other;” a 3^rd Person Force or System; and/or a simultaneously individual and collective Evolutionary Impulse.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity – to open more fully to the blessings, graces, miracles, and tender mercies of a divinely guided life.

Dates: 8 weeks: December 7, 2014 – January 25, 2015   

Cost: $345.00 USD plus handling fee (Includes a free download of the book The Search for a Divinely Guided Life* in PDF eBook format)

Scholarships and Discounts: Discounts and Sliding-Scale Scholarships are available for those in need – For more information contact:  divineguidanceproject@gmail.com

Number of Participants: Up to 20

Instructor: Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.

Weekly Conference Calls:  Sundays 1-2:30 pm Pacific Time

• December 7
• December 14
• December 21
• December 28
• January 4
• January 11
• January 18
• January 25

PRESENTER

MARK ALLAN KAPLAN, Ph.D. is an internationally-acclaimed integral and transpersonal film and spirituality scholar-practitioner. He has conducted and published groundbreaking lived inquiry and academic research in integral and transpersonal approaches to art, media and spirituality, and practices professionally as an interfaith spiritual director, transformative personal development coach, award-winning filmmaker, and media psychologist and consultant. Mark is also a celebrated transdisciplinary artist, author and educator. His spiritual writings include the newly released "The Search for a Divinely Guided Life" and "The Experience of Divine Guidance," and he is the founder and Executive Director of the Divine Guidance Project, a trans-denominational research initiative devoted to the study and advancement of the experience of Divine guidance across religious traditions, cultures and domains of experience. Mark has studied and practiced the experience of divine guidance for over twenty-five years both personally and in an academic setting, and he is the researcher and author of one of the first cross-cultural and cross-traditional academic studies on the experience.

*The Search for a Divinely Guided Life book is also available in paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon.com. SPECIAL OFFERS INCLUDE: Free Kindle Edition with Purchase of Paperback Edition and Kindle Unlimited Subscribers Read for Free

New Book Release: "The Search for a Divinely Guided Life"

Announcing the publication of 

THE SEARCH FOR A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE
A Spiritual Autobiographical Inquiry into 

the Experience of Divine Guidance

by Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.

NOW AVAILABLE
IN PAPERBACK AND KINDLE EDITIONS
 AT AMAZON.COM

THE SEARCH FOR A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE is a first-person true account of one individual's quest for the Divine through time and memory, across many cultures and traditions, through dark nights, gentle graces, and unimaginable miracles and wonders, ultimately leading to the discovery of the one path within the many and the heart of divine wisdom and guidance itself.

SPECIAL OFFERS INCLUDE:

Free Kindle Edition with Purchase of Paperback Edition

Kindle Unlimited Subscribers Read for Free

New Edition of "A Mystical Passover: A Transformational Passover Haggadah" Now Available

A brand new 3rd Edition of my integrally-informed trans-denominational Passover Haggadah is now available in paperback for purchase online at: https://www.createspace.com/4128956.

A MYSTICAL PASSOVER: A TRANSFORMATIONAL PASSOVER HAGGADAH offers a powerful trans-denominational psycho-spiritual approach to the Passover experience that includes individual and group psycho-spiritual exercises to help transform the holiday into a deeply mystical and magical experience for young and old alike.

From the Introduction:

This Passover (Pesach) Haggadah represents a process of spiritual exegesis that I have employed as a vehicle for deepening and healing my relationship with Judaism, my religion of origin. This process consisted of a radical interpretation of the Passover rituals and prayers into a language and process that resonated with my own heart while also attempting to honor the heart of Judaism itself. Through this technique I have endeavored to heal old wounds and purge myself of the obstacles between the Divine and myself.

There are three basic levels of text interpretation in the Jewish tradition: Literal-Biblical, Theoretical-Talmudic, and Mystical-Kabbalistic (Fishbane, 1998; Kenton, 1980). Literal-Biblical text interpretation includes the historical, biblical and narrative levels of the material. Theoretical-Talmudic text interpretation consists of the extrapolation of the philosophical, ethical, moral and religious doctrines, laws and teachings that are woven into the fabric of the written material. Mystical-Kabbalistic text interpretation seeks to unearth the hidden and concealed metaphysical teachings buried in the text.

On the literal level of interpretation, Passover is a ritualistic retelling of the story of a historical biblical event, the Israelites’ exodus from bondage in Egypt. On the theoretical level, the story and rituals of Passover have many philosophical, ethical, moral and religious lessons to teach us about human behavior and the human endeavor to live according to the teachings of the religion of Judaism. Traditionally, the rituals of Passover, including the Passover Seder, tend to focus on these two levels of interpretation and understanding. In the Jewish mystical tradition, Passover can also be seen as a powerful vehicle for personal and communal psycho-spiritual development. From the Mystical-Kabbalistic perspective, the Passover story of a people being freed from the bondage of slavery is transformed into a road map for how an individual can be freed from the bondage of limited consciousness (Kenton, 1980); the land of Egypt becomes the realm of narrowness of body and mind, and Moses becomes the Higher Self being called upon by the Divine to free all the different voices of the psyche (the children of Israel, THE AWAKENING SELF) from the bondage of the ego (Pharaoh).

This mystical level of interpretation became my pathway through the metaphysical gates of these ancient and sacred rites of inner and outer freedom, and my attempt to integrate all three of these levels of interpretation, along with the interpretative constructs of the various denominations of the Judaic tradition, has lead me to the discovery of this powerful transformative psycho-spiritual Passover experience.

About the Author:

MARK ALLAN KAPLAN, PHD is a psycho-spiritual researcher, counselor, educator, and author focusing on integral, transpersonal, and transformative approaches to spiritual life and practice. His writings include "Prayers for the Awakening Self" and "The Experience of Divine Guidance," and he is the founder of the Integral Judaism Project, a trans-denominational research initiative exploring integral and transformative approaches to Judaic theory and practice.

My First Taste of an Integral Life

My first inkling of an integral life came upon me when I was sitting at the bedside of my dying mother in the spring of 1993. Alzheimer’s and a severe stroke had taken their toll upon her and she could no longer see, speak, or move her body, except for small motions of her hands, head, and feet. As I sat by her side with various members of my family for several days, I had a profound mystical experience. All my years of studying many different spiritual traditions, mysteriously and automatically coalesced into a multi-tradition integrative practice of prayer, meditation, and presence that appeared to assist my mother and my whole family through the dying and grieving process, while also transforming my own heart and mind.

 

After this profoundly sorrowful and grace-filled experience, I began to see how each spiritual tradition I had studied had its own unique gifts and perspectives, which when put together created a more complete picture of my self, the world, and the Divine. This gave me my first real glimpse of what it means to live an Integral Life; a life that strives to engage in a wondrous evolutionary journey of ever-expanding and integrating fields of awareness, revealing higher, deeper and more expansive visions of self, others, and the world.

Prayer for the Festivals of Light

The rebirth of the life-generating and life-sustaining sun
at the darkest moment of the seasons;
The oil of an ancient temple lamp burning beyond its limit;
A shining star in a dark sky illuminating the way;
The light of mercy revealed through prayer and devotion;
The guiding light of seven principles arising from the heart of
the Dark Continent.
This is the season of The Festivals of Light...
The Winter Solstice,
Chanukah,
Christmas,
Ramadan,
Kwanzaa
In the darkness of this Winter
during these terror filled and challenging times;
May we all find the light in darkness,
faith amidst struggle,
rebirth following change and loss,
and virtue and devotion in the face of great challenge.

Published in: Beben, M. T. (2002). New Wine: More Eucharistic Liturgies for 21st Century Small Faith Communities. Boulder, CO: Woven Word Press.