Author | Teacher | Closet Rollerblader | Speaker | Mentor | Summiteer (the online rather than Mount Everest variety) |
Catherine G Lucas
Catherine G Lucas is the author of four books on how to move successfully through crisis and harness the transformational power it holds. A former university lecturer, Catherine left her academic career behind to step into her soul’s deeper calling following a profound crisis of awakening.
Catherine set up the UK Spiritual Crisis Network, which is still going strong 15 years later, although she is no longer on the Board of Directors.
2021 saw the 10th anniversary of the publication of her seminal text In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening. Her media appearances include BBC Radio 4 and TimeWarner TV and she regularly speaks internationally. More recently, Catherine has initiated the publication of the open letter, The Rebirth of People & Planet in a Time of Global Emergency, along with an accompanying petition to the UN. She is also the Founder of Co-Creating Our Future which delivers group programs as well as the highly acclaimed Birth the New Earth summit in 2021. Her work has been described as visionary and pioneering.
www.Co-CreatingOurFuture.world
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
Other Lives, Other Selves
I went through a profound crisis of awakening, or spiritual emergency, in 2003 on a trip to Egypt. I ended up in a wheelchair for a few days. What I was going through was so intense that my legs gave way and I couldn’t walk. Roger’s work was hugely important to me in the aftermath of that, in helping me to work through and heal the shadow material that came to light. I was subsequently on retreat when snippets of scenes started to surface from the depths of my being. I recognised these as past-life related and sought out some reading material on the subject. As I was reading Roger’s book, when I came to the chapter on Eros, I could tell from the way my body responded that this material not only resonated but was actually triggering me. I immediately decided I needed to work with Roger and went on one of his introductory workshops very soon after. Of all the books on past-life regression this is the most substantial and comprehensive I’ve come across. The beauty of the Deep Memory Process® Roger developed is that it doesn’t involve hypnosis, as do other past-life regression modalities. I had the honour and privilege of working with him at various trainings over a number of years. It turned out I had some pretty horrific past-life wounding around sexual violation to heal. I credit him with resolving that and am now happily married. And it all started with that book. When Roger passed over I felt a depth of grief I couldn’t really comprehend. So this is a very precious book to me and one I won’t ever part with.
Spiritual Emergency
The Grofs’ work has also been life changing for me. Having ended up on an acute psychiatric ward at the age of 20, I had to wait another two decades before finding any answers as to what on earth I’d been through. It was such a relief when I read Spiritual Emergency. The Grofs coined the term ‘spiritual emergency’, with the intended play on ‘spiritual emergence’. It made so much sense to me. The book was on the reading list for a transpersonal psychotherapy training I was doing. It was life-changing in that it set me on a trajectory of devoting myself to the field of spiritual emergence(y). Reading about the Spiritual Emergence Network that Christina set up inspired my vision of creating a UK equivalent, the UK Spiritual Crisis Network. Spiritual Emergency also inspired me to write my own book on spiritual emergence(y). Aside from the Grofs huge contribution to our understanding of spiritual emergence(y), Stanislav was such a pioneer in the field of transpersonal, spiritual psychology and had such an impact in the 20th Century and on into this century. I would recommend his work to anyone interested in the growing field of transpersonal psychology—if they haven’t already come across him, that is.
The Red Book
I was so excited when I first got hold of Jung’s Red Book. It had only just been published in 2009, some 50 years after his death, because he had been too concerned about how it might be received to have it published in his lifetime. It is the record of this great man’s journey into the underworld of spiritual emergence(y) and back out, his Return with the Elixir, as Joseph Campbell called it. As Jung said, the whole of his subsequent life’s work came out of those few years. This is his intimate record of that, including exquisite, mesmerising, full colour mandalas, one of which took me into an altered state just looking at it. Because it is such dynamite and was so recently published it was thrilling to be researching Jung’s work for my first book, In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening. I would also recommend his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which I read around the same time.
The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle was another person I researched for In Case of Spiritual Emergency. He went through a massive crisis of awakening and sat on a park bench for three years processing and integrating it all. But I read The Power of Now, which came out in 1997, before I had come across the term spiritual emergency. By then, I had started to meditate and was exploring Buddhism so the whole idea of being present in the moment was very aligned with my personal journey. Since then, with authors and teachers like Tolle, what I’ve become far more interested in is the process of awakening and how they managed any period of profound crisis. How do we fully wake up? What does it take and what is involved? How do we integrate it and stay awake? I’ve appreciated both The Power of Now, and more recently Tolle’s A New Earth as offerings that move us in that direction.
The Blooming of a Lotus
Continuing with the theme of presence and being in the now, Thich Nhat Hanh’s work has been so important to me. He may be best known for The Miracle of Mindfulness and I also found Love Letter to the Earth soul stirring, but The Blooming of a Lotus is probably less well known. It’s basically a book of meditation practices. Thai, as he is known, developed a unique style of guided meditation, in couplets based on breathing in and breathing out. So, for instance: ‘Breathing in, I smile; nothing is as important as my peace and my joy; I smile to everything, including my suffering, my difficulties; Breathing out, I release, I let go; this is a practice of freedom.’ I practice in the Plum Village tradition which Thai founded and his work has meant far more to me than simply the books. When I first set foot in Plum Village, I felt as if I was home. Whereas I qualified as a Mindfulness teacher and taught mindfulness in a secular context, the magic of Plum Village for me is that we practice mindfulness in the context of the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings.
The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism
There was a lot of hype around the much-anticipated December 2012, with various events and activities planned. I decided I wanted to spend the month in solitary retreat. I wouldn’t normally take any reading material on retreat, but because I was going for a whole month I allowed myself two books, a slim volume by Barbara Marx Hubbard and Andrew’s The Hope. I found myself in tears several times while reading. Not gentle tears. This was all-out sobbing. Being open and receptive from the retreat may well have contributed. Andrew’s book helped me realise and own the fact that I was already a sacred activist, without having found the language to articulate it previously. My work at the interface of spirituality and mental health was aimed at helping to change the mainstream mental health paradigm. Today, I’m taking a more global perspective, feeling called to make the greatest contribution I can to our collective awakening. I imagine many are aware of how Andrew has immersed himself in the teachings of the mystics and in mystical poetry. Indeed, he is a modern day mystic himself. So next, I’d like to choose a particular mystic whose books and work also had a big impact on me at a certain point on my journey.
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila
I also researched St. Teresa for my first book, always preferring to use primary sources where at all possible. The great thing about St. Teresa is that we have her spiritual journey of awakening, her spiritual emergence(y), documented in her own words. At the same time, I immersed myself in her Interior Castle. The combination of the two was powerful. I had the most extraordinary experience. I was away on one of my writing retreats. At the time, my spiritual practice, my mindfulness, was particularly strong because I had been teaching a lot. I started to open up to quite an altered state. What happened would have been terrifying had I not been reading about St. Teresa describing the very same thing. She experienced a form of paralysis when in mystical, ecstatic states. Somehow I was tuning into her and her energy. And I couldn’t move. I was lying on the bed and I couldn’t lift my arms or legs or head. This was taking my research a bit further than I had bargained for! I got a precise, experiential sense of what she meant, because, to be fair, it’s not easy to understand how one could be paralysed when there’s absolutely nothing physically wrong with you. I only experienced it on and off over a few days and fully one afternoon. She had years of it to contend with. An extraordinary woman and an inspiring spiritual autobiography.
Dipa Ma
Another amazing woman who experienced awakening is Dipa Ma. In some ways I find her even more inspiring because she was a lay person, not a monastic. She was a wife, a mother and grandmother. We can identify with her more readily. Dipa Ma also went through her awakening process at a relatively late stage in life. There is something so uplifting about this book, so heart-warming. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it! The format is just so satisfying and works really well. It’s a very simple, authentic, short book, with many people, like Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, sharing their anecdotes and fond memories of their times with Dipa Ma. There is so much love in this book! Love for Dipa Ma, who was obviously a pretty special woman, totally dedicated and committed to her spiritual practice.
Emergence
When I took Harvey’s The Hope on that retreat back in December 2012, the only other book I took was this one. With the title ‘Emergence’ how could I resist? Plus, I had been studying Barbara’s work and had recently read both her Conscious Evolution and Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity’s Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution. Emergence is basically a method, a process, that Barbara developed to embody and integrate our Higher, Divine Self, so that we can evolve towards what she called the Universal Human, making our choices and living our lives from that level rather than the egoic level. Rather than this single book, what is important to me is her body of work. I’ve been drawing on her ideas ever since, including crisis being the driver of evolution, which is so aligned with my personal experience. It was through Barbara’s work that I first came across the concept of co-creation with Source, an approach which I work consciously with on a daily basis and have incorporated into the name of my teaching platform, Co-Creating Our Future. I see her contribution as being akin to the likes of people like Ervin Laszlo.
Creative Visualization
I’m going to end with one of the first spiritual books I ever bought. It feels like I’ve had it on my bookshelf a lifetime, taking it with me whenever I move. It has sold over 7 million copies worldwide. Many, many years ago I started working consciously and actively with Shakti’s methodology and have had amazing results. As with all these authors, I feel hugely grateful for all that I gained, and continue to gain, from her book.