Mirror for the Soul: Measuring Awakening

 

 

I aim to make this episode of the blog quite brief as I am mainly pointing to the work of Dr Steve Taylor and his colleagues. I’ve mentioned their work in a couple of previous blogs as most of it is in the field of spiritual awakening - its triggers, features, effects and more.

Their recent work includes the development of a scale, the WAKE-19 (because it has 19 self-reflective questions) to measure the state of wakefulness that results from the kind of awakening experiences described in this blog.

I can do no better than to quote from the paper of Kilrea, Taylor, Bilodeau, Wittmann, Gutiérrez and Kübel (2023), on the development of this scale, as an indication of the importance of this work:

Many of the world’s spiritual traditions describe an expansive state of being in which the individual’s awareness becomes more intense and refined: one gains a clearer or deeper awareness of reality and seems to transcend the delusory and dysfunctional elements of a more ordinary and seemingly limited state of being (James, 1902/1985; Schuon, 1984; Spencer, 1963). This expansive state can occur outside spiritual traditions, particularly after intense psychological turmoil (Martin, 2020; Miller & C’de Baca, 2001; Taylor, 2021).

We term this expansive state “wakefulness,” defining it as an expansive, self-transcendent, ongoing state of being in which a person’s perception of and relationship to the world are transformed. A gradual or sudden process of “awakening” may lead to wakefulness, apparently bringing a sense of well- being, clarity and connection, and a more intense awareness. This state maps on a continuum, from the so-called ordinary state of being to varying degrees of wakefulness. Some individuals may be more “wakeful” than others (Taylor, 2017a).   

Other scales have been developed that attempt to measure awakening but this is the first that I am aware of that tries to pull together all the features of awakening into a single scale. There is nothing quite like it with this kind of scope.

This is one of the reasons that I think it’s useful to simply reflect on the questions in the scale in relation to one’s own life. It’s even more useful for those with an interest in growing as a person, whether they follow a particular religious or spiritual tradition, or none at all!

It is also interesting to reflect on the score you would give to each question and why. It uses what is called a Likert scale in which you respond to each question with one of five responses, from ‘strongly disagree’, through ‘neutral or not sure’ to ‘strongly agree.’ To give a small flavour of what it is like, here are the first four questions of the 19-question version of the scale:

4 questions
 

Many of the spiritual traditions make a distinction between short-term experiences and long-term, more substantial changes. As the authors of the study cited above point out, you could complete this scale over time to get an idea of where you are with ideas of growth or development.

At the moment the scale is at an early stage of development. If you want to get your own copy, with the scoring key included, you have to write to Steve Taylor and request a copy. I did this via his contact page at:
https://www.stevenmtaylor.com/contact/

The scale is free to use.

I give the citation below to the more technical paper, which includes the information that someone with an interest in the details would appreciate. I also cite a more accessible article about the scale and the concepts used (Taylor, 2024).

Bibliography and Videography

Kilrea, K. A., Taylor, S., Bilodeau, C., Wittmann, M., Gutiérrez, D. L. and Kübel, S. L. (2023). Measuring an ongoing state of wakefulness: The development and validation of the inventory of secular/ spiritual wakefulness (WAKE). Journal of Humanistic Psychology, (0)0, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678231185891

Taylor, S. (2024) What Does It Mean to Be Spiritually Awakened? The possibility of describing and measuring enlightenment. Accessed on 31st January 2024: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/out-of-the-darkness/202401/what-does-it-mean-to-be-spiritually-awakened


Key words
awakened, awakening, enlightened, enlightenment, spiritual, WAKE-19, wakefulness,


Link

https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2024/02/mirror-for-soul-measuring-awakening.html

Location: Great Malvern, Malvern WR14, UK

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