Embracing Ambiguity: Transpersonal Development and the Phenomenological Tradition

This article offers a perspective on transpersonal development that has been inspired by the phenomenological tradition. This philosophical movement as exemplified by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty may provide a non-dualistic vision in which human beings participate in both development and no development. Some implications of this paradox are taken forward to indicate a basic open and non-deterministic dimension of our depths which enters ‘nature’ and ‘time’ in unknown ways. In this view, the tension between the ‘personal’ and the ‘transpersonal’ functions in any moment and forms a deep motivation and creative tension in the human heart. How is this tension resolved?