Human Being and Becoming , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - PhD Benner David G.

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91 pages

English

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Becoming fully human is a lifelong journey. It can also be an incredible adventure. Here internationally respected depth psychologist, spiritual guide, and personal transformation coach David Benner explores the mysteries of human being and becoming. Drawing on insights from science, philosophy, and forty years of experience integrating psychology and spirituality, he presents concrete steps for living in ways that move us toward wholeness. He also draws on mysticism, the perennial wisdom tradition, interfaith dialogue, and the contemplative Christian tradition, developing a robust spirituality that reveals how we can align ourselves with God's presence in the world.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	12 janvier 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493403455
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0576€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Books by David G. Benner
Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life (2014)
Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (2012)
Soulful Spirituality: Becoming Fully Alive and Deeply Human (2011)
Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer (2010)
Desiring God’s Will: Aligning Our Hearts with the Heart of God (2005)
The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery (2004)
Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality (2003)
Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model, 2nd ed. (2003)
Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and Direction (2002)
Free at Last: Breaking the Bondage of Guilt and Emotional Wounds (1998)
Care of Souls: Revisioning Christian Nurture and Counsel (1998)
Money Madness and Financial Freedom: The Psychology of Money Meanings and Management (1996)
Choosing the Gift of Forgiveness: How to Overcome Hurts and Brokenness,
with Robert Harvey ( 1996)
Understanding and Facilitating Forgiveness, with Robert Harvey (1996)
Counseling as a Spiritual Process (1991)
Healing Emotional Wounds (1990 )
Psychotherapy and the Spiritual Quest (1988)
Therapeutic Love: An Incarnational Interpretation of Counseling (1985)
Books Edited by David G. Benner
Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls: A Guide to Christian Approaches and Practices, with Gary Moon ( 2004)
Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology and Counseling, 2nd ed., with Peter Hill (1999)
Christian Perspectives on Human Development, with LeRoy Aden and J. Harold Ellens (1992)
Counseling and the Human Predicament: A Study of Sin, Guilt, and Forgiveness, with LeRoy Aden (1989)
Psychology and Religion (1988)
Psychotherapy in Christian Perspective (1987)
Christian Counseling and Psychotherapy (1987)
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by David G. Benner
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0345-5
Dedication
To Mark Muldoon and Larry Young
Treasured companions on the journey who have taught me so much about walking the spiritual path in a deeply human way and the human path in a deeply spiritual way
Contents
Cover i
Books by David G. Benner ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Introduction: An Invitation to an Incredible Adventure ix
1. Being Human 1
2. Cosmic Interconnectedness 19
3. Meaning-Making 37
4. Mysteries of Personhood 53
5. Ego-Based Being 71
6. Heart-Based Becoming 85
7. Love at the Heart of Life 99
8. Living Wholeness 111
Epilogue: The Further Reaches of Wholeness 129
Notes 137
Index 145
Back Cover 149
Introduction
An Invitation to an Incredible Adventure
I have often joked that I must be a descendant of the great fifth-century Irish explorer and adventurer, St. Brendan the Navigator. My claim to this lineage is extremely tenuous—actually, totally fatuous. It rests on nothing more than the fact that both my parents came from Ireland (my mother emigrating from Northern Ireland with her family as a child and my father being a seventh-generation Irish-Canadian hailing from the Republic of Ireland) and that I have always had a serious case of wanderlust and an irresistible passion for exploration. I am an inveterate sailor who loves finding my way across new stretches of open sea or coastline, a seasoned hiker and nontechnical mountain climber who can’t resist a new peak or trail not yet taken, and a passionate explorer of cultures and countries that are off the well-traveled tourist routes. And what is true of me in a physical sense is even truer in an intellectual and spiritual sense.
Restlessness has been my lifelong companion. My eye is always toward the horizon. I am consistently drawn to larger possibilities, driven to explore alternate perspectives, questing for bigger vistas, and addicted to hearing other voices. Those who think like me, believe as I do, or see the world in a similar way are never as interesting to me as those who offer me possibilities of encounter with alternate vantage points that are associated with their uniqueness. The journey of becoming whole and fully human has been my constant quest for sixty years, and mapping the territories of spirit and soul that are traveled on that journey has been central to my calling for the last forty of those.
But while life may feel like an adventure for me, I am quite aware that for many people it feels more like a crapshoot, a battle, or a prison sentence. Major health concerns, financial problems, or other life circumstances make mere being enough of a challenge that the very notion of a larger horizon of becoming is unimaginable. They are unable to feel the gentle tug of the evolutionary flow of life. Their preoccupation is simply to make it across the treacherous waters of an unrelenting river that sweeps them off their feet and tosses them around each time they attempt to cross it. What they long for is survival, not fullness of being.
However, many of us who are blessed to have our lower-level physiological and psychological needs reasonably met are keenly aware of the disquiet of ferment and the all-embracing ache of longing. We find it hard to settle for where we are. We feel called forward, even though it is often unclear whether we are actually moving forward or backward, up or down. Nonetheless, we are propelled by a hope that is strangely mixed with gnawing nostalgia. We feel an insatiable hunger for something we feel sure we will recognize when we taste it and a longing that resists satisfaction when we misunderstand it and seek gratification in penultimate places. We feel an instinctual draw to the horizons of further becoming; we find ourselves gazing beyond where we are as we sense the possibilities of being more than we are.
Sometimes we are seduced toward dangerous shores by the siren call of perfectionism. As we shall see, this is not only impossible to achieve but deeply soul-damaging. At other times we are tempted to give up entirely on being human and instead seek to become gods or some kind of superhumans. This is a quest that is often aided by pathological forms of spirituality that deny or minimize our bodies. But many of us want to actualize our humanity, not escape it—to be more deeply human, not more than human.
Being, Becoming, and Doing
It is these mysteries of human being and becoming that I want to explore in this book. As we shall see, becoming is a fundamental property of being. The dynamic character of being implies the tendency of everything to transcend itself. To be is to exist within an evolutionary stream that gently draws everything toward greater consciousness, expressing itself in ever-new and more complex forms.
Being human involves continuous becoming. Though infants are certainly considered human at birth, everything we know about human development demands the acknowledgment that becoming fully human is a lifelong process. It is also clear that the fullness of being human does not arise automatically with the simple passage of time. Becoming fully human is far from an automatic or inevitable outcome.
Sadly, some people treat being human as a poor excuse for their failure to live up to a higher ideal. In late 2013, the mayor of Toronto ended months of denial that he used cocaine and frequented crack houses. While remaining adamant that he had never used drugs of any sort, he conceded that if he had done drugs, it might have been while he was in a drunken stupor. This, he said, was something everyone should be able to understand since, like the rest of us, he was only human.
Being human is so much more than this. Second only to life itself, nothing could be a greater gift. As the pinnacle of evolutionary development, humans are entrusted with the highest levels of consciousness, complexity, intelligence, and creativity known in the universe. But with this comes an awesome responsibility. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin described humans as the arrow of evolution and the direction of its future. Not only do we have the opportunity to consciously participate in our personal and communal unfolding, but, as unbelievable as this may seem, the way in which we do so will have consequences for the continuing unfolding of the cosmos.
Everything that exists floats on a stream that flows toward transcendence. The human distinctive is not that we are part of this flow but that we possess the possibility of consciously participating in, ignoring, or even resisting it. And yet, while life is a river of change, everything that exists is being drawn toward self-transcendence and tends to conserve its own form. Paradoxically, conservation is necessary for self-transcendence. Becoming is a dance of union in which both conservation and change have a role to play, a dance in which both rest and movement are integral steps.
In humans, this dance between being and becoming involves a third dynamic: doing. Humans have a hiddenness that can be manifest only when they act in the world. Although this activity can also be a way to avoid both our being and further becoming, doing plays an indispensable role in our discovery of the hidden realms of our being and in the outworking of our becoming.
Spiritual writers sometimes suggest that doing is inferior to being. People not interested in spirituality immediately realize that this is nonsense. They often live with an elegant simplicity in which their being is their doing and their doing is thei