contemplativeinquiry

The notion of being present, here-and-now, is very influential in current contemplative discourse.   I think it needs some clarification and extension. John Heron is a humanistic psychologist, facilitation theorist and teacher, and  co-founder both of Co-Counselling International (CCI) as a peer support system and Co-operative Inquiry as a democratic research methodology in the human sciences. Here he explains ‘abundant time’.

“Living in abundant time is more than living in present time.  It is possible to be very here and now in terms of immediate sensory awareness yet to be dissociated from past and future.  Living in abundant time means being aware of what is present, with an openness to and a sense of the re-evaluated past, and with an openness to and a sense of the emergent possibilities that are pouring into the present … The present lived out of the future through a restructuring insight into the past – some such aphorism as this comes close to the concept of living in abundant time.”

John Heron Catharsis in human development, London: British Postgraduate Medical Federation, 1977