Belonging and the Hidden Norms of Spiritual Knowing: Neurodiversity, Meaning-Making, and the Development of Spiritual Insight
Publication information:
Abstract
Belonging shapes not only who participates in spiritual communities, but which forms of spiritual insight are recognized and supported over time. This presentation explores how contemporary spiritual cultures, such as, contemplative, healing, and personal growth communities structured around shared language and relational attunement, often privilege socially sanctioned modes of knowing, such as shared language, emotional mirroring, and normative intuition. Using neurodiversity, with autism as a key lens, it examines how non-normative meaning-making rooted in pattern, coherence, sensory attunement, or ethical clarity is frequently translated rather than recognized. This dynamic renders spiritual development performative rather than authentic and reframes exclusion not as individual limitation, but as a failure of communities to evolve inclusive models of belonging.
Presenter Biography
Heléna Kate, PhD, is a scholar and spiritual teacher with doctoral training in psychology whose work explores spiritual development, belonging, and consciousness across diverse cognitive styles. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, spiritual lineages, and contemplative practices, she focuses on how we can evolve to recognize and support multiple pathways of meaning-making, spiritual insight, and belonging.