Essential Existence

• Metaphors of Training in Gestalt Therapy by Brian O'Neill, 5/18/97
  • (...)
    
    • Spirituality, Semantics, and Intersubjectivity by J. Richard White, 5/21/97
      
      

Richard,

Your blind experimenting bat metaphor and the SPIRIT of adventure you offer reminds me of a very good friend named Martin Egan. We were both from Ireland, grew up in Australia, lived and worked together, trained in Gestalt therapy together and were best men at each others weddings.

Martin once quoted to a group that he felt full of a sense of moving beyond limitations and he described it thus...."I want to run blind-fold through a forest, crashing into the trees until I LEARN TO MISS THEM...."

Sounds a bit like your blind bat.

Martin died of a heart attack eleven years ago while driving his car through a freak thunder storm on the highway and crossing over into the on-coming traffic.

A few nights later I was with him in a dream. I said "Go away from me, you're dead, you're cold.. don't touch me." "I'm not dead" he said "and I'm not cold...touch me".

I did and he was warm.

No of course there are many ways my experience can be explained. And there are many ways we can each define "reality" and "dreams" and "essence" and "existence"

I am fond of ways which COMBINE essence and existence and bring the "spiritual" into everyday life, such as the Jewish mystical movement, Hasidism, which influenced Buber.

"Man cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human; he can approach Him through becoming human" (Buber, 1958)

Brian

• Spirit and the Material World by Ed Riemann, 7/7/97