Rediscovery of Awe: Splendor, Mystery and the Fluid Center of Life

At a time when two dominant worldviews--nihilistic relativism and dogmatic fundamentalism--threaten to tear our world asunder, Rediscovery of Awe offers a timely and restorative alternative. It weds faith to doubt, and the depth and pathos of religiousity to the openness and discernment of science.As Schneider says in his introduction: "The starting point of consciousness is awe. We humans first experience the world (cosmos) as overwhelming. From the moment we are aware, we are aware of our meagerness. From the moment we reflect on the world, we sense how hopeless, helpless, and vulnerable we are. And yet, close on the heels of this shuddering despair is a riveting sense of possibility."We are thrilled, enthralled, and exalted by our condition as much as it overpowers us. There are many problems with conventional maxims of balance. The conventional 'center' is a rather dull and static one and not at all what I have in mind with my notion of a 'fluid center'. What, then, do I have in mind, and how are we to cultivate it in this atrophied world? We will explore these questions over a broad range of psychological domains-from personality to psychotherapy and from society to religion and spirituality."

Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and leading spokesperson for contemporary humanistic psychology. He is an adjunct faculty member at Saybrook Graduate School and the California Institute of Integral Studies and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Schneider has published over 70 articles and chapters and has authored or edited four books, The Paradoxical Self: Toward an Understanding of Our Contradictory Nature, Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-teachings of the Monster Tale, The Psychology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical Perspective (with Rollo May), and The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology: Leading Edges in Theory, Research and Practice.