Concept
Spiritual transformation
Overview
Spiritual transformation involves a fundamental change in a person's sacred or spiritual life.
Psychologists examine spiritual transformation within the context of an individual's meaning system, especially in relation to concepts of the sacred or of ultimate concern. Two of the fuller treatments of the concept in psychology come from Kenneth Pargament and from Raymond Paloutzian.
Pargament holds that "at its heart, spiritual transformation refers to a fundamental change in the place of the sacred or the character of the sacred in the life of the individual. Spiritual transformation can be understood in terms of new configurations of strivings" (p. 18).
Paloutzian suggests that "spiritual transformation constitutes a change in the meaning system that a person holds as a basis for self-definition, the interpretation of life, and overarching purposes and ultimate concerns" (p. 334).
One school of thought emphasises the importance of "rigorous self-discipline" in spiritual transformation.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The higher life which belongs to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his essential substance, while it remains no…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
States what Spiritual transformation is.
The transition from tenseness, self‐responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self‐responsibility…
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
States what Spiritual transformation is.
Now this same belief is at the basis of the rites which have just been observed. Of course, it is understood differently at the different moments of history when it is studied. For the Christian, it acts especially upon the soul: it purges it, ennobles it, spiritualizes it. For the Australian, it is the body over which it is efficient: it increases its vital energies; it makes its beard and hair grow; it toughens…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Spiritual transformation is.
Philosophers who discussed Spiritual transformation
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of New Age.