We see something quite similar to the prospect of Dr. Freud opening the Appreciative Triangle for Daniel, in the perspective offered by Peter Vaill, the guide to white-water environments (Vaill, 1989). Vaill (1996, p. 43) offers us the concept of “learning as a way of being”:
“In the phrase learning as a way of being, being refers to the whole person—to something that goes on all the time and that extends into all aspects of a person’s life; it means all our levels of awareness and, indeed, must include our unconscious minds. If learning as a way of being is a mode for everyone, being then must include interpersonal being as well as personal socially expressive being—my learning as a way of being will somehow exist in relation to your learning as a way of being. In short, there are no boundaries to being.”
Clearly, as Peter Vaill (1996, p. 43) admits, “learning as a way of being is a very capacious idea.” This enterprise is not for the faint of heart. And it requires a sustained appreciation for learning in all of its many forms. We are invited to view the world and our state of being from quite a range of perspectives—and even perspectives that seem contradictory. Dr. Freud did a good job of varying the perspectives and modes of learning he introduces to Daniel. He took his client on a trip down a turbulent world of multiple ideas, diverse sources of information, and a cluster of sometimes contradictory intentions. It is while traveling through this white-water environment that Daniel potentially gains a clear, insightful sense of his own being. As Peter Vaill suggests, this might be the most important learning outcomes that we can achieve.
Joy’s Sea: Following up on the profound perspective regarding learning offered by Peter Vaill, I wish to introduce an extraordinary spiritual leader, Brugh Joy, who has conducted many workshops on consciousness and transcendence and written about his own spiritual journey. Joy can speak to the ingredients of an Appreciative Triangle and to Vaill’s journey through a white-water environment.
Brugh Joy (Joy, 1979, p. 7) promotes the expansion of (and intense appreciation for) the reality that we can choose to create and embrace outside us and inside us:
“Transformation enlarges the context of reality. The awareness is lifted up into states of consciousness where the multidimensional nature of existence is perceived, not just conceived; where it is experienced, not just imagined; where each dogma and each absolute truth is seen as but a single facet of a superconscious whole called Beingness. In the totality of Beingness there is no absolute anything—no rights or wrongs, no higher or lower aspects—only the infinite interaction of forces, subtle and gross, that have meaning only in relationship to one another. Absolutes are concoctions of our rational minds. Reality must never be confused with concoctions. The Transformational Process, the release from fixed beliefs, allows the fragmented awareness to meld into universality.”
