General Terms

• SIGNIFICANT LIFE EXPERIENCES

  • A life experience is significant if it acts as a catalyst for change in religious beliefs and has an immediate or lasting positive or negative effect on the person’s religious beliefs.
  • A life experience is significant if it leads to the questioning of religious beliefs and to weakening of faith (that is, trust or confidence or commitment) or even to rejection of religious beliefs already held.
  • A life experience is significant if it leads to the questioning of religious beliefs, resulting in confirmation or strengthening of religious beliefs already held.
• • A life experience is significant if it leads to a new understanding of or insights into existing religious beliefs or to a new way of expressing those religious beliefs. 
  • A life experience is significant if a person gains commitment to, adherence to and faith in (that is trust and acceptance) their religious beliefs.
• There is a dynamic interplay between religious beliefs and significant life experiences, whereby beliefs can act as the framework for how one interprets the cataclysmic event.


  As such, experiences that provoke profound levels of love and joy, such as the birth of a child, can act in positively reaffirming the truth narratives elucidated by an Ultimate Reality about one’s purpose within life. This is procured through the epistemic that ‘one believes what one has experienced’ (Bernard Longernation), 
• However, the relationship between religious beliefs and significant life experiences may run contrary to one’s expectations. It is assumed that intense bouts of physical, mental, emotional or spiritual anguish may render someone unable to engage with their beliefs, or trust their truth.


  Albeit, in this paradoxical relationship, it may be the case that death and suffering may draw an individual closer to their understanding of the ephemerality of life on earth, thus finding comfort in a community composed around an Ultimate Reality
• Beliefs impacting SLE

  • An individual's beliefs may guide them in the journey through life's events.
  • They can help a person to deal with, find significance in, accept and find strength and courage in a significant life experience.
  • However, beliefs can also have a negative impact on a significant life experience, such as causing confusion.
  • Beliefs may lead to an altered perception of the significant life experience as a new level of meaning is applied