“Spirituality to me is finding meaning in life or finding beauty in the everyday.” (Male, 17, United States) 1
Hello parents. Thank you for being concerned for your child’s well-being, and for considering the importance of your teen’s or young adult’s investigation of identity and meaning. You may be wondering whether a purposeful engagement with spiritual issues is truly valuable to your child’s development. I would like to reference a few national and international studies of spirituality in youth to address this question.
According to a study by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, 80% of college freshman have at least some interest in spirituality,2 and “nearly half report that they consider it ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ to seek opportunities to help them grow spiritually.”3 Unfortunately, despite the self-reported importance of spirituality for youths, another study indicates that for one in five young people in the United States no one helps them with their spiritual life.1 Furthermore, “fewer than half [of college freshman] indicate that they feel ‘secure’ in their views.”2
This is not a wholly unrecognized problem. However, youth workers and educators, especially those working in public education, have little idea at this point about how to constructively engage the spiritual development of young people.
On the one hand, most youth workers and educators recognize that spiritual development is part of life for young people. Most research syntheses on youth development acknowledge (often briefly) that holistic development includes spiritual development. But they are not quite sure what to do with it or whether it really matters or is part of their responsibility. It’s a private matter, a family matter, or a religious matter. It’s not something that many youth workers and educators are comfortable with or prepared to address.1
As we’ve seen, one problem is that many youth do not have have guidance about how to inquire into these important issues. During organized focus group conversations, researchers found that “young people often do not have language and frames to explore this dimension of life. However... most wished they had more opportunities to engage in similar dialogues.”4 Engaging in a mentorship relationship can provide young people the opportunity to perform open-ended self-inquiry into their own sense of identity, meaning, and purpose. The individualized, ‘loose’ style of my mentorship is meant to have a very specific consequence for mentees: since no spiritual dogma is given to them from on high whatsoever, they are expected and encouraged to develop their own critical and independent understanding. This approach is also supported by researchers in the field4,5:
Addressing spiritual issues in youth development settings must be done with care. Youth workers must be equipped to help youth negotiate the questions in healthy, empowering, and respectful ways. If not, they [youth workers] may revert to their own (sometimes narrow) religious perspective as the only frame they know. If they become intentional and competent regarding spiritual development within a pluralistic society, they can be adept at helping young people explore core questions in fresh, engaging ways.4
In any mentorship relationship, my responsibility is mostly to provide a healthy context, mirror, and support for constructive and effective spiritual inquiry. I can also provide conceptual and material resources to mentees based on my own spiritual development, but only if such resources are supportive of the mentees’ own development. I do not expect that mentees will travel the same route, or that they will necessarily come to the same conclusions, as I have. I would consider it a great success in working with a mentee, if he or she could honestly and confidently disagree with me regarding spiritual issues, based on their own experiences and investigation.
Another reason that youth workers may consider themselves unprepared to guide young people in their spiritual development is that they are not adequately cognizant of the possible difficulties that may emerge for someone engaging in any kind of spiritual investigation or practice:
Although the preponderance of research points to the potential positive impact of spiritual development, there is also evidence of a side to spirituality filled with doubts, struggles, and the existential dark night of the soul, as well as, in some cases, destruction or harm to self or others. This may be manifested in attitudes of intolerance toward others, delusions of grandeur, manipulation and authoritarianism, or acts of violence... Although these manifestations are rare, they generate considerable attention in the media when they occur— and too few youth workers are equipped to respond constructively.4
This is a nuanced topic, with many elements to consider. It is important to remember that actual acts of violence toward self or other as a direct result of spiritual practice are indeed extremely rare. However, milder forms of confusion or existential anxiety are more common, and, in fact, often stimulate teens or young adults to investigate spiritual topics in the first place. Most simply however, I want you to know that I take the potentially darker side of spiritual inquiry quite serious. From personal experience, I know to some degree how deep confusion and despair can go. Further, I have lived with close friends while they were dealing with extended and more intense, but also much, much rarer episodes of spiritual depression or alienation. I am aware of some of the causes that may make such episodes more likely, and have been a contributor to the groundwork of a very new and very important academic research project at Brown University investigating these issues.6
In general, it is important for any spiritual mentor to be aware of these issues and prepared to either deal with them personally, or direct mentees to people or resources that may be of greater help. I am not a psychologist or clinician and do not propose to be able to provide interventions for psychological issues that require professional level therapy. However, I have both experienced and studied these events, and am adequately prepared to deal with the milder and more common confusions and anxieties that occasionally arise in any sincere spiritual search. Sometimes spiritual investigation does not cause, but rather uncovers confusion at a deep level that was already present in an individual, but hidden under more superficial concerns, and it is common for people to express that the periods of life in which they learned the most were actually the most difficult or unexpected at the time. To the extent that periods of spiritual darkness are met with openness, safety, and informed feedback, they can be truly be opportunities for exceptional healing and growth.
Spiritual inquiry is a valuable and sometimes vulnerable activity. To ask the most basic questions of life, is to ask for a fulfilling existence, and this can be vulnerable because it requires us to be honest about all that we know and, especially, do not know about who we are. If you have any questions at at all, please contact me.
Other resources on spiritual development in young people include:
1 Roehlkepartain, Eugene C. et. al. “With Their Own Voices: A Global Exploration of How Today’s Young People Experience and Think About Spiritual Development.” Minneapolis, USA: Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 2008.
2 Higher Education Research Institute. “The Spiritual Life of College Students: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose.” HERI, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.
3 Astin, A. W., et. al. “The spiritual life of college students: A national study of college students’ search for meaning and purpose.” Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, 2005.
4 Benson, Peter L. and Eugene C. Roehlkepartain. “Spiritual development: A missing priority in youth development.” New Directions for Youth Development, Summer 2008, Issue 118.
5 Rhodes, Jean E. and Christian S. Chan. “Youth mentoring and spiritual development.” New Directions for Youth Development, Summer 2008, Issue 118.
6 http://cheetahhouse.wordpress.com/the-dark-night-project/
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