152 Spirituality Studies tic living, i.e., having congruence between one’s values, beliefs, and actions, is positively associated with meaning and well-being (Lutz et al. 2023). These theoretical considerations suggest that spiritually integrated counseling may be worthy of investigation as a means of supporting adolescent meaning-making, though this proposition requires testing in future controlled designs. The integration of spiritual and existential facets into psychological interventions has been pointed out by Palitsky et al. (2023, 743) stating that the effectiveness of mental health treatments is maximized when they correspond to the client’s cultural and spiritual conception. While this argument is mainly concerned with psychedelic-assisted therapies, the broader assertion that mental health interventions must also address existential and spiritual concerns is not limited to this particular field. The present findings propose the integration of rational-emotive practices with some religious and spiritual components as a culturally viable approach to adolescent counseling, especially in circumstances where faith is a significant part of the individual’s self-concept. 4.2 Gender Differences in Other-Oriented Meaning: Descriptive Patterns from a Pilot Pre-Experimental Observation The meaning of life in relation to others contains empathy, service, and social responsibility. These are more pronounced in adolescence as moral reasoning and social identity form. The findings show differences between male and female participants across phases of the intervention in relation to the differences of the focus of the meaning of the participants. These differences indicate that gender is a meaningful variable in the context of meaning in life among Muslim adolescents, a pattern warranting further investigation in future controlled studies. Theoretically, combining REBT with music and relaxation components may create conditions that support adolescents’ reflection on relational meaning and moral responsibility, though this proposition remains untested given the present study’s pre-experimental design. In collectivist and religious societies, religious music has been theoretically and empirically associated with the reinforcement of communal values. Whether such mechanisms operated in the present intervention cannot be determined from the current data, and this relationship warrants direct empirical investigation (Garmaz and Divjak Baučić 2023). Religious music and its emotional and moral symbolism express a feeling of closeness and ethical involvement, which may strengthen the adolescents’ perception and feeling of being a more social and meaningful member of their community. Offered strictly as a complementary cultural-theological commentary, and not as an explanation for the statistical findings, Islamic concepts of ukhuwah (Ar. “brotherhood/ community solidarity”) and amanah (Ar. “moral responsibility toward others”) suggest that other-oriented meaning is fundamentally relational and communal in nature (Nuriman et al. 2024). The higher OOM scores among male participants may be contextually understood through the more visible communal obligations assigned to males in Indonesian Islamic socialization. The relationship between these socialization processes and gender differences in other-oriented meaning should be examined empirically in future research using culturally validated instruments and qualitative methodologies.
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