Relational Embodiment: Aesthetic Integration of Immanent Being and Transcendent Self – My Way Into Dialogue and the Participatory Spirituality of Martin Buber
My thesis highlights my personal process of inner development grounded in transrational and transpersonal theory. I start with my love for language and meaning. I discuss my experience with transrational Peaces, integral theory, aesthetics, subtle and causal dimensions of dialogue. Finally, everything culminates in Martin Buber’s second person spirituality. Buber advocates for a deeper encounter than anything I found in transrational or integral theory and he integrates transcendence and immanence. My core motivation to choose the Jewish-German philosopher Martin Buber as a guiding star is because of the existential wounding between human beings. I believe that the art of relating in Buber’s work is the kind of medicine that is strong enough to fully heal the core-wounding of the human kind. Thus, this thesis gave me the opportunity to study a universal way of relating. It is the art of dialogue and relationship. It is the mystery of what and who appears in between us when we open up to what has always been. Sacred dialogue is an existential sense of relating and relation.
***
Writing this thesis was my dear and heartfelt project. It took me 5 years and about 3 restarts to finally get through to what satisfied me and my advisor. On the one hand, I frequently got lost in details. On the other hand, I was facing harsh critique from my patient advising professor who read and commented all my rewritings. That professional attention was intense to face and a huge gift to me and my personal process. I was at times frustrated and far away from my professor’s way of seeing and framing the transrational mind. It was no easy task for either of us. Yet, the friction turned out to be fruitful, hopefully for both of us.