More from Kirk Schneider

We're all strapped in, seated together on a gigantic ball whirling around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, nested in a galaxy hurtling through the depths of space and time at 1.3 million miles per hour.

KS

Kirk Schneider

San Francisco State University Commencement 2010, 2010

The Story Behind This Quote

Kirk Schneider, a renowned existential-humanistic psychologist and editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, opened his address to the Masters in Counseling graduates with this cosmic perspective. Rather than beginning with pleasantries or humor, he immediately reframed the ordinary scene — a May day in an SF State auditorium — as something extraordinary. This cosmic recontextualization was central to Schneider's philosophy of 'awe-based' psychology. He argued that truly effective counseling requires practitioners to stay open to what he called 'radical mystery' — the profound strangeness of existence that we routinely ignore. The astronomical facts weren't just rhetoric; they were an invitation to see reality more accurately. He connected this to an old Taoist tale about a Chinese farmer who responds to every twist of fortune — good or bad — with a simple 'Maybe.' The point was that staying radically open to the mystery and unpredictability of experience is both a philosophical stance and a practical skill for counselors working with people in crisis.

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