PURPOSE Spirituality encompasses a wide range of meanings between holistic wellbeing and mysticism. We explored advanced cancer patients' spiritual experiences of transcendence. METHODS A total of 251 patients with advanced cancer were included and observed (participant observation) over 12 months by a psycho-oncologist/music-therapist. She recorded and documented patients' spontaneously expr...

People who have near-death experiences (NDEs) often report a subsequently increased sense of spirituality and a connection with their inner self and the world around them. In this study, we examined daily spiritual experiences, using Underwood and Teresi’s (2002) Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, among 229 persons who had come close to death. Frequency of daily spiritual experiences before the ...

What are the differences between experiences that people consider spiritual and experiences that they consider enjoyable? Participants were asked to provide autobiographical narratives of either spiritual or enjoyable experiences, and the two types of narratives were compared. In Study 1 (n= 142), the differences between the narratives was established via judge-based thematic content analysis. ...

background: confrontation with the consequences of diabetes causes a crisis in physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions. sometimes the spiritual crisis can be tremendous. since spiritual health coordinates different aspects of human life, this study aimed to identify the spiritual health of patients with defects caused by diabetes. materials and methods: this was a qualitative-phenomenologica...

The neuroscience literature supports the idea that spiritual transformation is a powerful behavioral and cognitive change process involving fundamental alterations in the sense of self. Brain regions that are known to mediate the sense of self are activated during religious experiences that in turn underwrite spiritual transformation. Because religious experiences are fundamental to spiritual t...

Traumatic events may lead to dramatic changes in spirituality. The objective of this study was to explore whether posttraumatic spiritual transformation results not just from the traumatic event, but from spiritual experience during the crisis. The hypothesis tested was that survivors of a brush with death who had spiritual “near-death experiences” have greater spiritual growth and lesser spiri...

This study assessed lifetime histories of discrete spiritual experiences recalled by 144 octogenarian men studied since adolescence and 80 spouses. Women were more likely to report discrete spiritual experiences, as were those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and those judged more open to experience as young adults. Factor analysis revealed four types of experiences related to beauty/natur...

Spirituality/religiosity is recognized as a resource to cope with burdening life events and chronic illness. However, less is known about the consequences of the lack of positive spiritual feelings. Spiritual dryness in clergy has been described as spiritual lethargy, a lack of vibrant spiritual encounter with God, and an absence of spiritual resources, such as spiritual renewal practices. To o...

Certain highly emotional experiences have the potential to produce long-lasting and meaningful changes in personality. Two such experiences are spiritual transformations and experiences of profound beauty. However, little is known about the cognitive appraisals or narrative elements involved in such experiences, how they are similar, and how they differ. In a study of emotion-related narratives...

INTRODUCTION Death anxiety is a concept with greater importance among the elderly as they approach inevitability of death. Identifying the correlates of death anxiety among old people is important in order to reduce the burden of this problem. Therefore, the present study was performed with the aim to examine the association between spiritual experiences and life satisfaction with death anxiety...