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Journal
Essays & reflections.
Notes from an ongoing inquiry — on spiritual experience examined closely, and the research and dialogues behind the Call of Being inquiry.
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Assessing Direct Awareness of Being
EXPERIENCE OF BEING I’m facing an interesting challenge in my phenomenological research on the Experience of Being. In my interviews, I explore people’s awareness of the Experience of Being – a code-term for aspects of experience that they describe as constant, stable, and ever-present. In other words, what they perceive as a background of being… Read →
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Experiential Triangulation
RESEARCH A subtle challenge in phenomenological interviewing is helping someone move toward their immediate, pre-conceptual experience without making their initial description seem inadequate. I encountered an interesting example in an Experience of Being interview today. When I asked the interviewee if there were any constant, stable, and ever-present aspects of her experience, she described what… Read →
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Living Transcendence and Spiritual Exemplarity
LIVING TRANSCENDENCE My doctoral thesis, Living Transcendence and Spiritual Exemplarity: A Phenomenological Inquiry from Diverse Perspectives, was submitted to the University of Haifa in 2024. Below is its Abstract and attached is a PDF of the thesis. Spiritual development is considered a core aspect of human development. While there are many definitions of spiritual development,… Read →
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The Wisdom Between Us
SPIRITUAL TRANSMISSION Last night I spent an evening with about forty people at a friends’ home, presenting my research on the Experience of Being. For an hour and a half we watched clips from my interviews and explored our own experience together. Many participants had little or no contemplative background, yet as the evening progressed,… Read →
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Abraham Maslow on Living at a High Level of Illumination
LIVING TRANSCENDENCE Interestingly, the most comprehensive statement that Abraham Maslow made about the characteristics of the spiritual “high plateau” was in reference to his own experience. He said it at the Second Council Grove Conference in April 1970, just a couple of months before he died. Speaking with the small group of colleagues about his… Read →
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Introduction to the 2nd Edition of Spiritual Transmission
SPIRITUAL TRANSMISSION The Hebrew version of Spiritual Transmission is called Ma’arbolot Ru’ach (“Spiritual Whirlwinds”). A second edition of it was published in 2024 and I added to it a preface. This is its translation: In the five years that passed between the publication of the two editions, I continued to explore the topic of teacher-student… Read →
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Spiritual Transmission Afterword by Ken Wilber
SPIRITUAL TRANSMISSION The Afterword of Spiritual Transmission was written by American philosopher, author, and the creator of Integral Theory Ken Wilber. Below are the first two paragraphs: The theme of this important volume is “spiritual transmission”—the transmission of a special spiritual awareness from a teacher to a student—which is actually an issue that affects most… Read →
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Introduction to Spiritual Transmission
SPIRITUAL TRANSMISSION My (Amir Freimann’s) introduction to the book Spiritual Transmission: Paradoxes and Dilemmas on the Spiritual Path is provided here in PDF format. Below is the Epilogue: When I started seeking spiritually, at the age of 16, spiritual-existential questions were the source and core of my seeking. Who am I? What is all this?… Read →
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The Peak that Shapes the Path
THE CALL OF BEING I’m thinking about an interesting image, originally suggested by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget: a pyramid “suspended from its peak” (Structuralism, p. 34). American psychologist and philosopher Carol Gilligan interpreted the image this way: while developmental theory is commonly imagined as a pyramid built upward, it rather “hangs from its vertex of… Read →