Spiritual Development through the Chakra Progression

Abstract

This pilot study investigates spiritual development as progressing in accordance with chakra theory. Chakra theory posits that spirituality emerges in a developmental monotonic fashion with increasing degrees of connection and spiritual awareness. People further into the progression generally show greater mental health and stronger character virtues, while individuals in earlier stages of development show greater pathology and lower levels of character virtues. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used in a sample of 1633 adults from the United States to empirically derive five profiles of spiritual connection, which reflected the monotonic progression predicted by the chakra theory. Participants who were low on all five variables of spiritual connection (3% of participants) were labeled the "Disconnected" class, and participants who were high on all five variables were labeled the "Highly Connected" class (16% of participants). The Disconnected class showed the greatest psychopathology (depressive and anxious symptoms) and lowest levels of positive psychology traits (gratitude, grit, satisfaction with life, selfcompassion, and flourishing), while the Highly Connected class showed the lowest psychopathology and highest levels of positive psychology traits. The other three classes, which fell between the Disconnected class and the Highly Connected class, carried intermediate levels of psychopathology and character strengths. Findings support future investigation on a universal progression of spiritual development based upon chakra theory.

Multidimensional understanding of religiosity/spirituality: relationship to major depression and familial risk

“…We chose the three highest loading measures from each of the domains with the exceptions for conceptual clarity of contemplative practice, in which lifetime sitting and moving contemplation items were selected, and altruistic engagement, in which humanistic engagement and compassion were selected. The following instruments were used: (a) intrinsic religiosity and spirituality measured by the Intrinsic Religiosity subscale of the Duke University Religion Index (Koenig and Büssing, 2010); (b) salience of spiritual beliefs measured by the Belief Salience Scale (Blaine and Crocker, 1995); (c) compassion measured by the Compassion Scale as modified by Krause and Hayward (2015); (d) sitting and moving contemplation items assessed whether or not participants had regularly engaged in such practices; (e) nature spirituality measured by the Spirituality in Nature scale (Drapkin et al ., 2016); (f) experiences of ontological, psychological, and social love measured by respective subscales within the Sorokin Multidimensional Index of Love Experience (Levin, 2000); (g) eco-awareness measured by the Eco-awareness subscale of the Spirituality Scale (Delaney, 2005); (h) a sense of unity in life measured by the Universality subscale of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (Piedmont, 1999); and (i) helping behaviors were assessed by the Humanistic Engagement subscale of the SpREUK-P Questionnaire (Büssing et al ., 2005).…”

Altruism and “love of neighbor” offer neuroanatomical protection against depression

“…Factor scores were assigned based upon the weight of the item loadings along each of the five factors. Specifically, the following nine instruments were used: (a) the Intrinsic Religiosity subscale of the Duke University Religion Index ( Koenig and Büssing, 2010 ); (b) the Belief Salience Scale ( Blaine and Crocker, 1995 ); (c) Compassion Scale as modified by Krause and Hayward ( Krause and Hayward, 2015 ); (d) sitting and moving contemplation items assessed whether or not participants had regularly engaged in such practices ( McClintock et al, 2016 ); (e) the Spirituality in Nature scale ( Drapkin et al, 2016 ); (f) the ontological, psychological, and social subscales within the Sorokin Multidimensional Index of Love Experience ( Levin and Kaplan, 2010 ); (g) the Eco-awareness subscale of the Spirituality Scale ( Delaney, 2005 ); (h) the universality subscale of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale ( Piedmont, 1999 ); and (i) the humanistic engagement subscale of the SpREUK-P Questionnaire ( Büssing et al, 2005 ). As described by McClintock et al (2018) , a weighted least square means and variance adjusted (WLSRV) estimator was employed using oblique quartimin rotation for five factors.…”

Multidimensional Understanding of Religiosity/Spirituality: Relationship to Major Depression and Familial Risk

“…We chose the three highest loading measures from each of the domains with the exceptions for conceptual clarity of contemplative practice, in which lifetime sitting and moving contemplation items were selected, and altruistic engagement, in which humanistic engagement and compassion were selected. The following instruments were used: (a) intrinsic religiosity and spirituality measured by the Intrinsic Religiosity subscale of the Duke University Religion Index (Koenig & Büssing, 2010); (b) salience of spiritual beliefs measured by the Belief Salience Scale (Blaine & Crocker, 1995); (c) compassion measured by the Compassion Scale as modified by Krause & Hayward (2015); (d) sitting and moving contemplation items assessed whether or not participants had regularly engaged in such practices; (e) nature spirituality measured by the Spirituality in Nature scale (Drapkin et al, 2016); (f) experiences of ontological, psychological, and social love measured by respective subscales within the Sorokin Multidimensional Index of Love Experience (Levin, 2000); (g) eco-awareness measured by the Eco-awareness subscale of the Spirituality Scale (Delaney, 2005); (h) a sense of unity in life measured by the Universality subscale of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (Piedmont, 1999); and (i) helping behaviors were assessed by the Humanistic Engagement subscale of the SpREUK-P Questionnaire (Büssing et al, 2005).…”