Holding Sacred Space: Honoring the Subtle Ecologies of the Spiritual Emergence Process

By Michelle Anne Hobart

Spiritual Emergence is an ongoing process of deepening inquiry, opening to more aspects and gifts within ourselves, and releasing what has been completed. This may be soft and gentle like waves drawing us back into the sea, but more often then not, it is a purge through the fire. There may be pain, devastation, raw emotion, overwhelm, and surrender ever more into trusting the process and the support of our guides and helpers. So it is as much a deepening of our faith in the orchestration of the Universe, as it is a letting go of the old stories and energies that no longer serve us in these new octaves of awakening. Across time, we are shedding the old contracts, vows, and energies and trauma from past lives, and from our ancestral lines in this incarnation's own DNA and body. This initiation is an activation of soul purpose, gifts, and capacities to be of service in the unique ways that only you can.

Being a midwife of this type of soul birth, facilitating the unfolding of the psyche, is an honor and requires deep levels of attunement and sensitivity. We can orient through lenses of Existential/Humanistic, Transpersonal, and Jungian psychology to offer frameworks on clinical practice. But if we do not continue to evolve as practitioners to feel into and integrate this wave that includes Spiritual Emergence, Neurodiversity, Cognitive Liberty, and the new ethics that these lineages demand from us all, we will not be able to adequately serve those who are on the very crest of the upsurge, where co-creating and manifesting something entirely new is possible. Join me in this exploration of my lived experience and clinical practice, of the story and its deeper message, of calibrating our instruments to another octave of resonance and integrity, in Holding Sacred Space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543991406

Michelle Anne Hobart

Michelle Anne Hobart, MA is a practitioner of energy medicine and holistic health educator. She holds a BS in Biology, and an MA in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. Currently, she is doing coursework in Integral Counseling Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies. Michelle is an advocate for the Neurodiversity movement and is also completing her training to be a Spiritual Emergence Coach.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Michelle Anne Hobart

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without written permission from the author except for educational purposes and cited, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the internet, any web addresses or links included in the Resources section of this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for medical problems, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is to offer information to help you in your quest for holistic wellness and spiritual development. In the event that you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author assumes no responsibility for your actions.

Cover art and front cover design created by David Wyatt.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54399-139-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54399-140-6

Praise for Holding Sacred Space

Michelle Anne Hobart has made a magnificent contribution in describing a new paradigm for psychotherapy. She draws from her academic training, scholarly books, and her own personal experiences as (first) a psychiatric patient and (then) a trained psychotherapist. Following the thread of ancient wisdom traditions and brilliant psychiatrists like C. G. Jung, she acknowledges each of us is here on earth for spiritual growth. Thus, the new paradigm a psychotherapist needs to learn is how to create and maintain a safe space in which spiritual growth can effectively occur. This book is a handbook for psychotherapists wanting to improve their way of working as well as those seeking a kind of care that will minimize pathologizing and maximize spiritual growth.

Emma Bragdon, Ph.D.

Executive Director of Integrative Mental Health for You

Author: A Sourcebook for Helping People in Spiritual Emergency

I highly recommend Michelle’s new book that explores the multi-dimensional, ancient, but ever emerging complex ways of creating a healing sacred space- a compassion filled space of palpable transformative connection. That heart connection is such a merciful necessity for others in pain and need, and when it can be given and received unto oneself as well. Michelle draws on truly deep wells of personal experience, and unites that with a remarkably broad sharing of original humanistic understandings and concepts about the body, emotions, spirit, soul, trauma, negative and positive social realities, mysticism, and astrology. She weaves her uniquely brilliant synthesis of all that and more!

Michael Cornwall, Ph.D.

Mad In America contributor and Esalen workshop facilitator on Compassionate Care for People in Extreme States

This is a beautifully written and deeply felt book that brings a much-needed comprehensiveness to the field of spiritual emergency. Michelle Hobart combines the latest findings with an impressive depth of understanding that holds both the possibilities for psycho-spiritual healing and growth as well as its potential hazards. Her own personal experiences inform her understanding and allows her vantage point to be at once personal and highly professional. I highly recommend this book!

Brant Cortright, Ph.D.

Professor emeritus, CIIS

Author of Psychotherapy and Spirit, Integral Psychology, and The Neurogenesis Diet and Lifestyle

This is a seminal work for the fields of psychology, spiritual emergence, and the healing arts. As a psychotherapist, astrologer, and teacher, I experienced on every page a deep sense of connection to the sacred healing journey that Michelle so lucidly describes with heartfelt clarity, deep compassion, and piercing insight. I would like all of my students to read Holding Sacred Space, both for their personal growth, evolution, and healing, as well as for their work as healing practitioners. While transmitting a mind and heart expanding vision, this book remains deeply relatable and invitingly accessible. The generosity of spirit that Michelle exemplifies, in her being and through this work, helps to light the path for the rest of us upon its way.

Jessica DiRuzza, MFT

Psychotherapist, astrologer, teacher

Michelle Hobart’s book Holding Sacred Space elegantly addresses what is needed to be with people who are in the process of Spiritual Emergence. She writes from well-researched theory and practice, but more importantly she brings original thinking and unique ideas about how hold space and support without harming people or even interfering with their process. She is an excellent storyteller and writer and her book is accessible and important for clinicians and anyone who wants to understand, and be with, trauma and spiritual emergence. I will recommend it to everyone.

Nita Gage, DSPS, MA

Author of Soul Whispering; How to awaken shamanic consciousness, ITT & Co.

To all my teachers, healers, and allies

on this journey into sacred service

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model

that makes the existing model obsolete."

-R. Buckminster Fuller

Aknowledgments

I would like to begin by thanking my therapist Laila. I know this book, this life, would not be possible without her Sacred Witnessing of my process, and support to re-myth and return to my Self. Before it became explicit, she internally held the stance that I was not crazy, but psychic, and that made all the difference. Next, I’d like to thank my Shamanic and energy work mentors Steve and MaryAnn. We are constantly finding new horizons to explore and heal together. Next, to thank my unseen guides and helpers, my Evolution Team, for their presence and support in my own healing, and being of service to others. Deep bow to the sacred land of Esalen and Sedona, for challenging me and holding me to be my full Self. Then, I’d like to thank my Spiritual Emergence mentors: Brant Cortright, Emma Bragdon, Michael Cornwall, Stan Grof, and all my other professors at CIIS, without which this book would not exist. I’d also like to thank my supervisors Antonia, Jan, and Laura, who help guide me in the MFT path and how to be myself fully within it. I dedicate this book to: Jordana, whose intervention at a key moment brought me to this path and to ICP; To Elizabeth, the compassionate voice on the other end of the phone when I was in Hell; To Jessica my former neighbor and co-healer, an inspiring and visionary psychotherapist, astrologer, and teacher; To Valerie and the Center for Sacred Studies for the catalysis and support of this sacred Work of transmutation; To Emerson who supported me in my early SE integration and coming back to mySelf; To Joanna and Nochlin, who are teaching me about home as Sanctuary; To my siblings: Carson, who supports my self-care and truth, and Kellie and Kyle, who remind me every chance they get that they are my family no matter what; To my PCC Soul Siblings Debra, Jessie, Aaron, Brian and Bear; To Ana Maria mi Hermana del Alma and Soul Collage facilitator; Kyle Buller my SE collaborator for visioning and co-creating our offerings, and to all our awesome and inspiring Awakening Healers; To Marlee my first SE circle co-facilitator, singer/songwriter, and Akashic Sis, and our teacher Lisa Barnett. Thank you to Nita my Shamanic Breathwork teacher, Dina, Will, and Jasin, who I get the honor of walking the floor with, and thanks to all the rest of my Gnosis tribe, where I can speak my truth, laugh, cry, sing, dance, and share my true s/Self. To my new ACISTE Soul Family, and all experiencer-practitioners who I get the gift of collaborating with to share our resonant messages; To all my clients and to those I support in the journey of returning to their Authenticity, Empowerment, and Love.

Preface

There are many vital roles to play in this time of awakening and transformation. Some hold the darkness, the Shadow, the sacred vessel of mourning and rage. That medicine is to be fully present in that way without being subsumed, consumed, and lose oneself in the hell realms and by the overwhelming suffering. Others, the Lightworkers, hold the vision of what’s possible, bringing through the Templates for the New Paradigm. We are creating the energetic infrastructure for what’s to come, and the scaffolding for the New Template to land in the physical. We are the Manifestors, the Visioneers. Our responsibility is to maintain the purity of Sight and unwavering Faith. Travelers into the Void of Potential, making order out of chaos, seeded and guided by the Star Nations to create with intention a world of integrity, abundance, and freedom. We are the carriers of the New Story, stepping fully into the present moment as portals to the Infinite, and into the fullness of possibility. Our Spiritual Emergence awakened these gifts, and through our healing and integration, we become the healers we are meant to be. Our greatest gifts come from our deepest wounds.

The patterns of our lives, epigenetically derived through the fluctuations of our physiological responses to our environment, the underlying modes of unconscious repetition of personal and collective trauma, our souls’ ever-unfurling karma, as well as the other myriad forms of influence both subtle and gross, that affect our moment-to-moment activities, choices, and responsiveness to the situations we are confronted with, all which bonds us in a multidimensional system of interconnectedness to parts within ourselves, to others, the planet, and beyond. For me there is a great comfort in that, knowing that we are all so complex, and our issues so unique and irreducible, that it prevents me from having the hubris to think I could really grok the wholeness of the context, and therefore, I attempt every moment to come from a place of both discernment as well as non-judgment, compassion, and trusting the process of the unfolding of psyche.

Holistic Healing

In effort to be an advocate, educator, healer, and to alleviate suffering on any of the levels gross to subtle, both/and, if there is a sense of distress, the intention would of course be to attempt to diminish it. Many methods can support that process and are often synergistic when in combination. In studying Integral Counseling Psychology, we learned about honoring multiple ways of knowing, and I believe working together as therapists with complimentary or traditional healing modalities is key. Western allopathy also has much to offer to decrease unnecessary suffering and provide triage care. Incorporating all of these is truly integral. My experience with both the subtle ecologies that affect health on all levels, as well as the physiological cause/effect, has shown to me the importance of dealing with these realms with respect and care, as we would the physical beings. It is important to have discernment as well as compassion, but primarily focusing on energetic hygiene as a vital component of self-care, and to