Abstract :

This study aims to explore the factors that influence family dynamics, growth, and transformation during spiritual conversion. By recounting participants’ lived experiences during and after spiritual conversion, these experiences contribute to shifts not only in one’s inner perspective but also in family relationships and the overall quality of family life.
A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to investigate the meanings individuals attribute to their lived experiences of spiritual conversion while acknowledging the complexity of their relational contexts. This enabled the articulation of the essential structures underlying the experiences of individuals who underwent spiritual conversion and the subsequent changes that unfolded within their families.
Seven (7) participants, along with a family member serving as a corroborator, shared their narratives of spiritual conversion. Their family members were subsequently invited to validate the narratives and describe how the individual’s spiritual conversion was consistently lived in their family relationships. The emerging framework highlighted the unfolding process of spiritual conversion in the individual and its influence on every participant’s Filipino family, regardless of the Christian denominations they came from.
Findings indicate that a spiritual encounter with the sacred initiates a process of inner reorganization within the individual, which gradually extends to influence and improve the family’s relational system. Spiritual conversion, as an inward journey, reveals systemic relational change. This research offers a phenomenological understanding of a known but less-studied phenomenon: spiritual conversion, and how the unique spiritual experience may contribute to family adaptation and the transformation of the Filipino family within the Philippine cultural context.

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Keywords :

spiritual conversion, family dynamics, homeostasis, family transformation, family adaptation

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