Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing

by John O. Stevens

First published in 1971, this text is a practical gestalt work. It shows how to explore, expand and deepen awareness, and consists of experiments that help discover more mabout the self, either alone or with others, in pairs or in groups.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

Reviews

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bulk of this book are experiments on awareness. The beginning is written for the individual experimenter. The rest of the book is written for those who would lead others in such experiments, primarily in pairs or groups. There are a lot of different possibilities covered, such as imagine you are a rose. You are then led to describe your awareness in the first person, present tense. Later the author gives some samples of what various people described. Doing the experiment and then hearing the variety of other people's experience was quite enlightening. I did not try any of the pair or group experiments.

The last paragraph in the book sums up how the author thinks about awareness. I give his premise a "5 star." His experimental ideas are also "5 star." I'll give the book a 4, because it's not all that exciting to read, but I did like it. I read a few pages a day in the morning. I probably could not have stayed with reading it straight through.

Here is the last paragraph for you:

"There are immense destructive powers loose in the world. These powers are mostly created, maintained, and guided by fantasies: fears, ideologies, ideals, images, beliefs, assumptions, thinking, planning, tradition, custom, etc. Many of those who cling to these fantasies—and quite a few innocent bystanders too—are being destroyed by these powers. A growing number of us are waking up from our dreams and nightmares and getting in touch with the reality of our own experiencing. As we do this, we become personally free of these fantasies and we withdraw our participation in the destructive power that these fantasies generate. This is the revolution of awareness over fantasy, and of the living over the dead. Most revolutions ask you to give up your life for a cause. The revolution of awareness is happening because more and more of us are insisting on living our own lives, and refusing to give up our lives for fantasies. You can only join us by living your own life fully, with awareness. By being ourselves, rather than images, we can respond to each other directly and come together in honest response-ability. "

[Anafi]

Interesante. Tenía curiosidad por entender lo que es la psicología gestalt y me había leído ya un par de libros sin mucho éxito. Con este una persona como yo, sin conocimiento de psicología, lo puede entender muy bien porque es muy práctico. Al mismo tiempo por eso es poco legible a veces.

[María Prieto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro chulo con dinámicas gestalt para coger ideas para talleres 🤸

[Fernando Cabrejos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Me lo recomendó mi terapeuta y me aburrió bastante.

[Hector Bajalan]

great!

[Success321 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading about this is fine, but it's doing it that really got me.