A child with disability as a value - motherhood in a noetic perspective

The paper attempts to embed the experience of being a mother to a child with intellectual disabilities in a noetic (spiritual) perspective of human functioning. According to the noo-psychotheoretical assumptions (Popielski, 2018) constructed on the basis of Viktor Frankl’s concept of logotherapy (2009), finding and fulfilling the meaning of life is the highest human need and a kind of metamotivation. The suffering resulting from motherhood is seen as a borderline experience, in which the existential situation so far is revalued and the meaning appears to be the acceptance of an attitude of moral heroism towards the inevitable fate.

COVID-19 feminist framework and biopsychosocial-spiritual perspective for social workers and mental health practitioners to manage violence, abuse, and trauma against children, women, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ during and post-COVID-19

This article explains the integrated implementation of a COVID-19 Feminist Framework (CFF) and biopsychosocial-spiritual perspective (BPSS-P) on the inclusive equitability of social service providers, practitioners, and policy-developers on global platforms. Mechanisms of CFF and BPSS-P entail the process to address/mitigate institutional inequities, mental health issues, violation of human rights, race/sex/gender-based violence, abuse, and trauma amid COVID-19. This discourse is about raising consciousness, collective liberation, wellbeing, and equality for women, children, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and gender-diverse people. This article further discusses social workers and mental health practitioners’ uniqueness for short-term and long-term support for emotional, cognitive-behavioral, and psychosocial repercussions on the individual and community levels.

“Who Am I Really?”

This study seeks to deepen the conversation between Jungian individuation and yogic awakening to explore the question ‘Who am I?’ from a psycho-spiritual perspective. Through focusing on yogic experience, the study explores how Jungian therapeutic benefits might be gained through modern yoga practice. Four long-time yoga practitioners took part in the study that involves ten hours’ worth of ethnographic interviews. The transcripts were analysed using Jungian techniques to identify key themes, symbols, and meanings from the archetypal story patterns of the participants’ yoga histories. The resulting themes represent a potential hermeneutic model for recognising Jung’s analytic psychology within the experiences of the four practitioners. Based on these findings, future research is recommended that is conducted over a longer interview period with practitioners of Non-dual Shaiva Tantra. The ethnographic interview process could include physical yoga practices and an explicit dissection of Jungian concepts to widen the conversation between Jung and yoga.

Sabbath, Nyepi, and Pandemic: The Relevance of Religious Traditions of Self-Restraint for Living with the ‘New Normal’

This article focuses on the relevance of religious traditions of self-restraint, particularly Sabbath and Nyepi, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. From an economic perspective, the pandemic interrupts a lifestyle marked by an unceasing process of production and consumption that affects almost all aspects of life. Such a lifestyle, known as ‘productivism’, has been confronted with ‘anti-productivism’ promoted by groups of Marxism-inspired intellectuals and activists. Employing the method of public theology, this study reveals that religious traditions of self-restraint prepare humanity to anticipate interruptions of regularity, such as a pandemic, in a way that is critical of productivism yet distinct from anti-productivism. From a spiritual perspective, the pandemic and religious traditions of self-restraint should be perceived as synergistic appeals to a balanced lifestyle that is socially, economically, and ecologically harmonious.

Mind, Body, and Soul: A Spiritual Perspective on the Entrepreneurial Imagination

We develop a spiritual perspective on the entrepreneurial imagination, addressing imagined futures in this “conversations and controversies” section on entrepreneurial futures. Specifically, we blend heterodox ideas from various yoga traditions, experiential sources of religion, and the work of poet-mystic William Blake. These diverse sources echo related ideas in a coherent way—uniquely embracing both transcendence and immanence, both mind and body. We structure our argument around the latter binary, making connections to spirituality and entrepreneurial imagination in each domain. We begin with the mind, acknowledging imagination as a mental act. Specifically, we explore the conscious, unconscious, and spiritual mind. We then turn to the body, recognizing imagination’s bodily basis. In particular, we investigate the corporeal, sensory, and spiritual body. Before offering some concluding thoughts, we discuss implications for entrepreneurial imagination with a focus on walking meditation (and contemplative practices of walking more generally) as one potentially fruitful way to engage mind-body-spirit and the forward-looking entrepreneurial imagination.

The Spiritual Perspective Scale-Family Version (SPS-FV): A Tool for Assessing Perceptions of Spirituality Within Families

The role of spirituality in families is an important factor in family resilience. Currently, however, no quantitative instruments exist that adequately assess this phenomenon. This study introduced the adapted Spiritual Perspective Scale-Family Version (SPS-FV) and explored its psychometric qualities among 574 majority ethnic minority individuals living in public housing. Structural equation modeling analyses supported a two-dimensional structure (shared spiritual beliefs, shared spiritual behaviors), and the results supported the SPS-FV as a useful tool in assessing perceptions of family spirituality. Family and consumer sciences (FCS) professionals can enhance their work in low-income, ethnic minority communities by using the SPS-FV as a means to support individuals and families in identifying family spirituality as a significant resource in individual and family resilience.

DEATH IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Nowadays, death, illness, and suffering are experienced as danger: a threat to one’s own physical, psychological and social identity. And what accompanies all these, particularly paralizing from a spiritual perspective, is fear; the dread that all is lost, that things cannot be controlled by means of medicine, only to reach the greatest angst: the fear of death. And, in this respect, we can say that pain, suffering and the fear of death make up the anthropological foundation of the most profound religious concept of life, in the sense that these realities show man his limitations, his finite build, that of a creature, and, consequently, determine him look beyond his limitations. The fear of death brought about angst, anxiety, passion, hatred, and despair in man’s life. His need to escape death made him look for even more material elements to render him oblivious to it. The solution against despair is God: faith vanquishes despair because, by faith, man acknowledges his dependence on God, but turning within himself, at the same time.