when the paranormal happens

Navajo Yeibichai (1904; Edward Curtis, photographer)

Indigenous peoples have ceremonies and rituals to invoke supernatural support, such as the Navajo Nightway ceremony that calls upon the Yeibichai for healing support. Often, though, paranormal or supernatural experiences just happen. Most of us have had at least one. (What's yours?)

Jeffrey Kripal, PhD, one of my favorite authors on topics related to the supernatural and paranormal, says in a podcast interview:

I personally think that what a paranormal event is, is when a social system is not working properly and there's some kind of human suffering or some kind of social injustice that is embedded in the system. And it's that disjunction or that not-working that then manifests as the haunting or the paranormal experience. ... I personally think that focusing on the paranormal is itself a kind of social activism, is itself a kind of moral activism.

This helps explain why shattering experiences, events we call "traumatic," are often associated with paranormal or supernatural experiences. So what is the purpose of these experiences?

I wonder, do they recalibrate something? reset a system gone awry? clear the cache? Or perhaps that's putting the effect before the cause (and which comes first, anyway, we might wonder...more on that soon).