Sacred moments as a source of life altering change: Insights from psychological theory and research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines recent work on an epiphanic construct that has begun to receive attention in the psychological literature—sacred moments. Sacred moments are brief periods of time in which people experience a sense of transcendence, boundlessness, ultimacy, deep interconnectedness, and spiritual emotions. The paper begins by considering the concept of sacred moments, noting how they overlap with and depart from related constructs, such as self-transcendence, mysticism, and peak experiences. Even though sacred moments are extraordinary experiences, they are relatively commonplace and can be found in many contexts. We review emerging empirical and interpretive research that links sacred moments to life-altering change, including character strength and moral growth. After discussing possible antecedents to sacred moments, the paper explores how sacred moments can be cultivated through mental and spiritual health practices in the contexts of healthcare and education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.048 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".