User:DonKofAK/my sandbox

This is my personal sandbox for practicing my Wikipedia editing skills. //dk

Draft Wikipedia Article Spiritual Experience (Alcoholics Anonymous)


 * Need: Vaillant material
 * Need Varieties of Religious Experience-digital search
 * Need: Carl Jung info
 * Need: Carl Jung's definition of Spiritual Experience
 * Need: AA's explanation of experience vs awakening - appendix II
 * Need: Info from As Bill Sees It
 * Need: search electronic books from Anonymous Press sent by Shannon G.
 * Need: info on "Emotional Displacement".
 * Need: Oxford Group info

William James' Definitions
Psychologist and Philosopher William James described four characteristics of religious / mystical experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience. According to James, such an experience is:


 * Transient -- the experience is temporary; the individual soon returns to a "normal" frame of mind.
 * Ineffible -- the experience cannot be adequately put into words.
 * Noetic -- the individual feels that he or she has learned something valuable from the experience.
 * Passive -- the experience happens to the individual, largely without conscious control. Although there are activities, such as meditation (see below), that can make religious experience more likely, it is not something that can be turned on and off at will.

Carl Jung
Carl Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals. Our main task, he believed, is to discover and fulfil our deep innate potential, much as the acorn contains the potential to become the oak, or the caterpillar to become the butterfly. Based on his study of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and other traditions, Jung perceived that this journey of transformation is at the mystical heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the self and at the same time to meet the Divine. Unlike Sigmund Freud, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being.

Silkworth
Entire psychic change...

George E. Vaillant
George Eman Vaillant, M.D. (born 1934) is an American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder. He has spent the last 30 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service.
 * (2008), Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith, Broadway Books, ISBN-10: 0767926579