Inflation

One of the real dangers of spiritual manifestations is what Jungian psychologists call Inflation:  The encounter with the divine, instead of producing a healthy humility, puffs up the ego and produces a self-centered response to the divine instead of a God centered response.

Jean and Wallace Clift describe it in Jungian terms this way:

“In fact, a major danger at the times of encounters with the Self is that the ego may become inflated by identifying itself with the Self, instead of realizing the Other to be the ‘heavier body’ in the relationship.”
 

The opposite of inflation is described in much more powerful words by a believer, Thomas R. Kelley, an American Quaker-

“The sense of Presence is as if two beings were joined in one single configuration, and the center of gravity is not in us but in that Other.  As two bodies, closely attached together and whirling in the air, are predominantly determined by the heavier body, so does the sense of Presence carry within it a sense of our lives being in large part guided, dynamically moved from beyond our usual selves.  Instead of being the active, hurrying church worker and the anxious, careful planner of shrewd moves toward the good life, we become pliant creatures, less brittle, less obstinately rational.  The energizing, dynamic center is not in us but in the Divine Presence in which we share.”