# #130 - Isabel Clarke - Madness and Mystery - Psychosis and Spiritual Experience

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/therapeutic-astrology-podcast-6383524/130-isabel-clarke-madness-and-mystery-psychosis-and-spiritual-experience
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/therapeutic-astrology-podcast-6383524/130-isabel-clarke-madness-and-mystery-psychosis-and-spiritual-experience.md
Podcast: [Therapeutic Astrology Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/therapeutic-astrology-podcast-6383524)
Published: 2026-01-09T07:59:00+00:00
Episode link: https://512e5124-0d53-49a8-9bca-c32a2c148b24.libsyn.com/130-isabel-clarke-madness-and-mystery-psychosis-and-spiritual-experience
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/512e5124-0d53-49a8-9bca-c32a2c148b24/isabel.mp3?dest-id=4018260
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/therapeutic-astrology-podcast-6383524/episodes/130-isabel-clarke-madness-and-mystery-psychosis-and-spiritual-experience
Duration seconds: 3475

## Resource

"As human beings we have experience and we have story. We tend to shape the experience with story into a form that makes sense, is comfortable for ourselves, and presents us in the best light to others. In the case of psychosis, and other exceptional and anomalous experiences, the experience threatens to overwhelm story. In these circumstances, the obvious recourse is to go to the 'experts', perhaps the doctor, who has a ready story based on the medical model. You are ill. We can treat you." (quoted from Isabel Clarke, Conflicted Stories. A case of expanded reality.) But there is another way..... a way of understanding the mind as permeable, porous and the self being something we create. WELCOME to a rich episode with psychologist Isabel Clarke, who has many years of experience working at the intersection of spiritual emergency and psychosis - with expanded consciousness. Psychosis and spiritual experience both involve entry into another reality – a reality that is integral and vital to human life. As Isabel Clarke points out, this realm can be loving and expansive, but it can also smash the self. A key factor is the ability to move in and out of these states voluntarily. In this conversation, we explore schizotypy as a dimension of human experience, involving sensitivity and openness to anomalous experiences. We speak about two ways of knowing: the scientific mode of precision and division, and a more integrative way of knowing through emotion, imagination, and poetry. Tap in with us as we go into what it means that the mind is open and what Isabel calls "Myths of Power" - and also that we need to take serious the shared world, as we can only conduct our lives full time in the shared world. (Her Capricorn Moon is very present, yet constantly balanced by her Libra plac…

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