The Tree of Process Thought
Three Ways to be Part of the Movement
The process movement can be understood as a living tree, offering three distinct yet interconnected ways of engagement. Different people approach the movement in different ways—some are drawn to its practical applications, others to its key philosophical ideas, and others to the technical concepts in Whitehead’s philosophy. This tree metaphor highlights the movement’s openness and accessibility, without suggesting that any one entry point is more fundamental than the others.
The Roots: Whitehead’s Technical Concepts
The roots of the tree represent Alfred North Whitehead’s technical concepts in Process and Reality and related writings. These concepts—such as actual entities, prehensions, concrescence, and the extensive continuum—provide a deep philosophical grounding for process thought. Those who enjoy exploring rigorous metaphysical ideas may find their starting point here, delving into the complexities of process-relational ontology.
The Trunk: Twenty Key Ideas in Process Thought
The trunk represents core ideas that make process thought accessible and meaningful to a wider audience. These twenty key ideas capture the essence of process philosophy in a way that does not require engagement with Whitehead’s technical language. They offer a bridge between abstract metaphysics and real-world experience, helping people understand process thought as a vision of reality centered on relationality, creativity, and becoming.
The Branches: Applications in Society, Ecology, and Personal Life
The branches of the tree extend process thought into the world, manifesting in practical applications across diverse fields. These applications include ecological civilization, social justice, education, spirituality, mental health, leadership, art, and community building. Many people first encounter process thought through these branches—by seeing how it speaks to their personal lives, communities, and the broader world.
A Tree with Many Points of Entry
Some people prefer to begin with the roots, exploring Whitehead’s metaphysics. Others start with the trunk, engaging key ideas that make process thought intelligible. Many are drawn first to the branches, discovering process thought through its applications. No approach is more important than the others, and none derives entirely from another. Each part of the tree nourishes and supports the whole.
Process thought, like the tree itself, is alive, growing, and evolving. Wherever you start, you are invited to explore further—moving between roots, trunk, and branches in ways that make sense to you.
The Roots: Whitehead’s Technical Concepts
The roots of the tree represent Alfred North Whitehead’s technical concepts in Process and Reality and related writings. These concepts—such as actual entities, prehensions, concrescence, and the extensive continuum—provide a deep philosophical grounding for process thought. Those who enjoy exploring rigorous metaphysical ideas may find their starting point here, delving into the complexities of process-relational ontology.
The Trunk: Twenty Key Ideas in Process Thought
The trunk represents core ideas that make process thought accessible and meaningful to a wider audience. These twenty key ideas capture the essence of process philosophy in a way that does not require engagement with Whitehead’s technical language. They offer a bridge between abstract metaphysics and real-world experience, helping people understand process thought as a vision of reality centered on relationality, creativity, and becoming.
The Branches: Applications in Society, Ecology, and Personal Life
The branches of the tree extend process thought into the world, manifesting in practical applications across diverse fields. These applications include ecological civilization, social justice, education, spirituality, mental health, leadership, art, and community building. Many people first encounter process thought through these branches—by seeing how it speaks to their personal lives, communities, and the broader world.
A Tree with Many Points of Entry
Some people prefer to begin with the roots, exploring Whitehead’s metaphysics. Others start with the trunk, engaging key ideas that make process thought intelligible. Many are drawn first to the branches, discovering process thought through its applications. No approach is more important than the others, and none derives entirely from another. Each part of the tree nourishes and supports the whole.
Process thought, like the tree itself, is alive, growing, and evolving. Wherever you start, you are invited to explore further—moving between roots, trunk, and branches in ways that make sense to you.
Roots
Key Technical Terms in Process and Reality
Whitehead’s Eight Categories of Existence:
His response to the question "What kinds of things exist?)
The Internal Makeup of an Actual Entity (Actual Occasion)
Creativity and God: Different but complementary ultimates
General Principles
His response to the question "What kinds of things exist?)
- Actual Entities (Actual Occasions of Experience) – The fundamental units of reality in Whitehead’s metaphysics; a momentary, self-creative event of experience that integrates influences from the past into a new unity.
- Eternal Objects – Non-temporal pure potentialities or qualitative forms that can be realized in actual entities. Similar to Plato’s Forms, but without independent existence, eternal objects serve as the building blocks of possibility in the universe.
- Prehensions – The basic relational activity by which an actual entity integrates influences from other entities; acts of feeling the presence of other things, either including them (positive prehensions) or excluding them (negative prehensions).
- Subjective Forms – The qualitative aspects of prehensions, such as emotion, valuation, or intensity, that shape how an actual entity experiences and integrates influences from the past.
- Propositions – Potential forms of definiteness (concepts, ideas, or possibilities) that an actual entity can take up in the process of its concrescence; they serve as lures for feeling.
- Contrasts – Complex patterns of relations between multiple eternal objects or prehensions that enrich experience by generating intensity, novelty, and aesthetic depth.
- Nexuses (Societies) – Groups of actual entities that share common characteristics or patterns of inheritance, forming structured environments such as physical objects, living organisms, or social groups.
- Multiplicities – Disjunctive collections of entities that exist together but lack the structured cohesion of a nexus or society.
The Internal Makeup of an Actual Entity (Actual Occasion)
- Concrescence – The process by which an actual entity comes into being by integrating past influences, potentialities, and its subjective aim into a unified experience.
- The Subject of a Concrescing Moment of Experience – The self-constituting subject that emerges in the process of concrescence, momentarily unifying its prehensions, subjective aim, and potentialities into an integrated experience before its immediacy perishes and it becomes an objective datum for future entities.
- Subjective Aim – The internal drive of an actual entity toward a particular realization of value, influenced by divine guidance (God’s initial aim) and the entity’s own past experiences.
- Initial Phase of the Subjective Aim – The starting point of an actual entity’s process of becoming, in which it receives an initial direction from God that suggests a possibility for achieving beauty and intensity.
- Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy – The way in which an entity feels the influence of past events and the world around it in a deep, pre-reflective manner, including bodily and environmental conditions.
- Experience in the Mode of Presentational Immediacy – The experience of the world as directly perceived in a clear, immediate, and sensory way, such as vision and other conscious perceptions.
- Decision (as the Essence of Actuality) – The act by which an actual entity selects among potential influences to determine its own becoming, shaping the future by limiting what is possible.
- Self-Creativity – The capacity of an actual entity to shape its own existence by integrating past influences with novel possibilities, leading to the emergence of new experiences.
- Self-Enjoyment – The intrinsic satisfaction or fulfillment of an actual entity in its moment of experience, an aesthetic appreciation of its own process of becoming.
- The Physical and Mental Poles of Experience – The physical pole of experience consists of physical prehensions of other actual entities (in the past world) and the mental pole consists of conceptual prehensions of potentialities
- The Perpetual Perishing of Subjective Immediacy – The idea that each actual entity, once it completes its process of becoming, ceases to be a subject and becomes an objective datum available for future actual entities.
Creativity and God: Different but complementary ultimates
- The Many Become One and Are Increased by One – Whitehead’s description of how an actual entity synthesizes multiple influences into a new unity, which then becomes a new datum for future entities.
- Creativity (as the Ultimate Reality) – The fundamental principle of existence in Whitehead’s philosophy, describing the ongoing emergence of novelty through the interplay of actual entities and potentialities. Can be understood as the seld-creativity of each actual entity and the perishing of immediacy, following be a transition to new actual entities: a creative advance into novelty..
- The Primordial Nature of God – God’s timeless aspect, which envisions all eternal objects and their potentialities, providing initial aims to actual entities to encourage beauty and harmony.
- The Consequent Nature of God – God’s responsive aspect, in which God takes in and integrates all actual experiences of the world, feeling and preserving them in a divine, evolving reality.
- The Nazarene Image of God – The vision of God shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, emphasizing divine love, relationality, persuasion rather than coercion, and a preference for the marginalized. In process thought, this image aligns with the idea of God as deeply involved in the world, suffering alongside creation, offering fresh possibilities, and embodying an ethic of compassion and justice.
- The Antinomies of God and the World – The paradoxes or tensions in Whitehead’s philosophy concerning the relationship between God and the world. These include:
- God is immanent within the world, and the world is immanent within God.
- God transcends the world, and the world transcends God.
- God is one, while the world is many.
- God is many, while the world is one.
General Principles
- The Reformed Subjectivist Principle – The idea that all reality is composed of experiences (subjective occasions) that are more fundamental than material substance, rejecting dualism and materialism.
- The Principle of Relativity – The idea that everything in the universe is related to everything else, and that an entity's reality consists in its relations with other entities.
- Process: refers to the self-creative concrescence of a single actual entity and transition from one entity to those that follow it.
Trunk
Key Ideas in Non-Technical Terms
1. Process: The universe is an ongoing process of development and change, never quite the same from moment to moment. Every entity in the universe is best understood as a process of becoming that emerges through its interactions with others. The beings of the world are becomings.
2. Interconnectedness: The universe as a whole is a seamless web of interconnected events, none of which can be completely separated from the others. Everything is connected to everything else and contained in everything else. As Buddhists put it, the universe is a network of inter-being.
3. Continuous Creativity: The universe exhibits a continuous creativity on the basis of which new events come into existence over time which did not exist beforehand. This continuous creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. Everywhere we look we see it. Even God is an expression of Creativity. Even as God creates, God is also continuously created.
4. Nature as Alive: The natural world has value in itself and all living beings are worthy of respect and care. Rocks and trees, hills and rivers are not simply facts in the world; they are also acts of self-realization. The whole of nature is alive with value. We humans dwell within, not apart from, the Ten Thousand Things. We, too, have value.
5. Ethics: Humans find their fulfillment in living in harmony with the earth and compassionately with each other. The ethical life lies in living with respect and care for other people and the larger community of life. Justice is fidelity to the bonds of relationship. A just society is also a free and peaceful society. It is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying - with no one left behind.
6. Novelty: Humans find their fulfillment in being open to new ideas, insights, and experiences that may have no parallel in the past. Even as we learn from the past, we must be open to the future. God is present in the world, among other ways, through novel possibilities. Human happiness is found, not only in wisdom and compassion, but also in creativity.
7. Thinking and Feeling: The human mind is not limited to reasoning but also includes feeling, intuiting, imagining; all of these activities can work together toward understanding. Even reasoning is a form of feeling: that is, feeling the presence of ideas and responding to them. There are many forms of wisdom: mathematical, spatial, verbal, kinesthetic, empathic, logical, and spiritual.
8. Relational Selfhood: Human beings are not skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin, but persons-in-community whose interactions with others are partly definitive of their own internal existence. We depend for our existence on friends, family, and mentors; on food and clothing and shelter; on cultural traditions and the natural world. The communitarians are right: there is no "self" apart from connections with others. The individualists are right, too. Each person is unique, deserving of respect and care. Other animals deserve respect and care, too.
9. Complementary Thinking: The process way leans toward both-and thinking, not either-or thinking. The rational life consists not only of identifying facts and appealing to evidence, but taking apparent conflicting ideas and showing how they can be woven into wholes, with each side contributing to the other. In Whitehead’s thought these wholes are called contrasts. To be "reasonable" is to be empirical but also imaginative: exploring new ideas and seeing how they might fit together, complementing one another.
10. Theory and Practice: Theory affects practice and practice affects theory; a dichotomy between the two is false. What people do affects how they think and how they think affects what they do. Learning can occur from body to mind: that is, by doing things; and not simply from mind to body.
11. The Primacy of Persuasion over Coercion: There are two kinds of power – coercive power and persuasive power – and the latter is to be preferred over the former. Coercive power is the power of force and violence; persuasive power is the power of invitation and moral example.
12. Relational Power: This is the power that is experienced when people dwell in mutually enhancing relations, such that both are “empowered” through their relations with one another. In international relations, this would be the kind of empowerment that occurs when governments enter into trade relations that are mutually beneficial and serve the wider society; in parenting, this would be the power that parents and children enjoy when, even amid a hierarchical relationship, there is respect on both sides and the relationship strengthens parents and children.
13. The Primacy of Particularity: There is a difference between abstract ideas that are abstracted from concrete events in the world, and the events themselves. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness lies in confusing the abstractions with the concrete events and focusing more on the abstract than the particular.
14. Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy: Human experience is not restricted to acting on things or actively interpreting a passive world. It begins by a conscious and unconscious receiving of events into life and being causally affected or influenced by what is received. This occurs through the mediation of the body but can also occur through a reception of the moods and feelings of other people (and animals).
15. Concern for the Vulnerable: Humans are gathered together in a web of felt connections, such that they share in one another’s sufferings and are responsible to one another. Humans can share feelings and be affected by one another’s feelings in a spirit of mutual sympathy. The measure of a society does not lie in questions of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, but in how it treats those whom Jesus called "the least of these" -- the neglected, the powerless, the marginalized, the otherwise forgotten.
16. Evil: “Evil” is a name for debilitating suffering from which humans and other living beings suffer, and also for the missed potential from which they suffer. Evil is powerful and real; it is not merely the absence of good. “Harm” is a name for activities, undertaken by human beings, which inflict such suffering on others and themselves, and which cut off their potential. Evil can be structural as well as personal. Systems -- not simply people -- can be conduits for harm.
17. Education as a Lifelong Process: Human life is itself a journey from birth (and perhaps before) to death (and perhaps after) and the journey is itself a process of character development over time. Formal education in the classroom is a context to facilitate the process, but the process continues throughout a lifetime. Education requires romance, precision, and generalization. Learning is best when people want to learn.
18. Religion and Science: Religion and Science are both human activities, evolving over time, which can be attuned to the depths of reality. Science focuses on forms of energy which are subject to replicable experiments and which can be rendered into mathematical terms; religion begins with awe at the beauty of the universe, awakens to the interconnections of things, and helps people discover the norms which are part of the very make-up of the universe itself.
19. God: The universe unfolds within a larger life – a love supreme – who is continuously present within each actuality as a lure toward wholeness relevant to the situation at hand. In human life we experience this reality as an inner calling toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity. Whenever we see these three realities in human life we see the presence of this love, thus named or not. This love is the Soul of the universe and we are small but included in its life not unlike the way in which embryos dwell within a womb, or fish swim within an ocean, or stars travel throught the sky. This Soul can be addressed in many ways, and one of the most important words for addressing the Soul is "God." The stars and galaxies are the body of God and any forms of life which exist on other planets are enfolded in the life of God, as is life on earth. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. As God beckons human beings toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity, God does not know the outcome of the beckoning in advance, because the future does not exist to be known. But God is steadfast in love; a friend to the friendless; and a source of inner peace. God can be conceived as "father" or "mother" or "lover" or "friend." God is love.
20. Faith: Faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One.
Practical Applications
1. Relevance to Society and Ecology
2. Relevance to Personal and Community Life
- Ecological Civilization: Process thought promotes an interconnected vision of reality, encouraging sustainable and harmonious relationships with the more than human world. It offers the social ideal of an Ecological Civilization in which people understand themselves as part of, not apart from, the larger web of life on earth; in which they recognize that all living beings, not humans alone, have intrinsic value worthy of respect and care.
- Just and loving communities; The fundamental units of such a civilization are local communities in urban and rural settings that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind.
- Social Justice and Economic Reform: Process philosophy supports relational and cooperative economic models over extractive capitalism.
- Education and Learning: Emphasizing creativity, interconnectedness, and lifelong learning in educational systems.
- Politics and Governance: Advocates for participatory democracy, decentralization, and policies based on relational well-being.
- Science and Technology Ethics: Encourages responsible innovation that prioritizes ecological sustainability and human dignity.
- Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue: Process thought fosters understanding among religious and cultural traditions through a shared appreciation of relationality.
2. Relevance to Personal and Community Life
- Spirituality and Religious Practice: A dynamic, evolving faith perspective that embraces change, mystery, and relational experience. A process approach to spirituality can be found here.
- Mental Health and Well-Being: Encourages mindfulness, resilience, and openness to transformation in response to suffering.
- Workplace and Leadership: Process thought values collaborative leadership, adaptability, and a focus on holistic well-being.
- Family and Relationships: Emphasizes the importance of mutuality, active listening, and non-coercive love in relationships.
- Art, Music, and Creativity: Views artistic expression as a form of relational meaning-making and communal engagement.
- Community Building and Activism: Encourages local engagement and cooperative efforts to cultivate just and compassionate communities.
Addenda on Process and Spirituality
and Practicing Process in Daily Life
Process and Spirituality Presentation by Jared Morningstar
It almost goes without saying that spirituality is a process. It is not a destination at which we arrive but rather a journey we undertake.
We undertake our human journey along with other creatures who are likewise journeying: hills and rivers, plants and animals, trees and stars. Spirituality is a communal process. The universe is not a mere assemblage of matter in motion, it is spiritual adventure. All creatures have an inside as well as an outside, an inner life as well as an outer life, a subjective side as well as an objective side. Dead matter is an illusion. Everything has its own kind of inner aliveness.
The slideshow above presents one version of a "process spirituality" with aliveness at its center. The slideshow is not meant to be definitive; but it is meant to be suggestive, inspiring, and relevant to people from many walks of life, religious and non-religious. And also to people of many ages: the very young, the very old, and all in-between.
Our version of process spirituality is inspired by the spiritual alphabet of Spirituality and Practice, which is one of the world's leading interfaith organizations; and by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's idea that the aim of each and every moment of experience is satisfying intensity imbued with harmony. The thirty-seven letters of the spiritual alphabet can be understood as thirty-seven forms of satisfying and harmonious intensity.
Throughout the slideshow you will find links to each of the thirty-seven forms on the Spirituality and Practice website. We hope you will follow the links. You will find that each "letter" in the alphabet can be understood and practiced in many different ways.
From the vantage point of process philosophy, the letters are qualities of heart and mind which give value to life. Borrowing a phrase from John Cobb and Charles Birch in their book The Liberation of Life, we speak of them as forms of richness of experience. As John Cobb explains in Whitehead's Theory of Value, richness of experience is at the heart of Whitehead's understanding of value. In Whitehead, value is richness of experience.
The thirty-seven letters, then, are forms of life and forms of value. They are part of our evolutionary and cultural potential and, in this sense, as natural as gravity and emotions. Indeed, they are forms of emotional and cognitive wisdom, although we are not necessarily born with them. They can be cultivated, mentored, and learned by imitation. They can be encouraged in education in the home, in the faith community, at school, and in the public arena. Workplaces and the halls of congress, small groups and large organizations, can have a spiritual side: compassion, justice, imagination, and joy, for example. Additionally, the many kinds of spirituality can be studied scientifically, as in the pioneering work of positive psychology and neuroscience. Spirituality is not the province of theologians and artists alone. It is a natural occurrence.
This does not mean that spirituality cannot be understood religiously. As the slide show makes clear, spirituality can be understood as a way of being responsive to God as a lure toward richness of experience and also as a way of participating in God's aliveness. Process theology offers many ways of thinking about God (see six approaches to God) even as it can be appropriated by non-theists.
In short, a process understanding of spirituality is available to theists and non-theists alike. This includes non-theists who are religious. Zen Buddhism is not theistic, for example, but it is religious; and Zen Buddhists are especially good at one of the thirty-seven forms of spirituality, "being present" in the present moment.
One value of combining process thought and the spiritual alphabet is that it helps expand our horizons of appreciation: we can appreciate the spiritual gifts of people from different religious traditions and of spiritual independents. We need not reduce "spirituality" to one quality of heart and mind. We can recognize and appreciate many forms of aliveness. We can be grateful that some people are spiritual in ways that we may lack. "G" is for gratitude.
Another value of combining process thought and the spiritual alphabet is that it lends itself to a recognition spirituality begins, not with human life alone, but with the broader world: other animals, plants, hills and rivers, trees and stars. Spirituality has an ecological side. We live in an enspirited universe. We find playfulness and imagination in animals, not in human beings alone, and the unfolding universe itself seems to be, in its way, an imaginative exercise. "P" is for play and "I" is for imagination.
Still another is that spirituality, thus understood, can be joined with the four hopes of the world today: whole persons, whole communities, whole planet, and holistic thinking. The wholeness we seek for ourselves and others, and indeed for the planet, has a spiritual side. Not only individuals, but also communities, can be spiritual. "H" is for hope.
We hope this slide show offers you some hope.
Jay McDaniel composed the text, and Jared Morningstar developed the graphics.
We undertake our human journey along with other creatures who are likewise journeying: hills and rivers, plants and animals, trees and stars. Spirituality is a communal process. The universe is not a mere assemblage of matter in motion, it is spiritual adventure. All creatures have an inside as well as an outside, an inner life as well as an outer life, a subjective side as well as an objective side. Dead matter is an illusion. Everything has its own kind of inner aliveness.
The slideshow above presents one version of a "process spirituality" with aliveness at its center. The slideshow is not meant to be definitive; but it is meant to be suggestive, inspiring, and relevant to people from many walks of life, religious and non-religious. And also to people of many ages: the very young, the very old, and all in-between.
Our version of process spirituality is inspired by the spiritual alphabet of Spirituality and Practice, which is one of the world's leading interfaith organizations; and by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's idea that the aim of each and every moment of experience is satisfying intensity imbued with harmony. The thirty-seven letters of the spiritual alphabet can be understood as thirty-seven forms of satisfying and harmonious intensity.
Throughout the slideshow you will find links to each of the thirty-seven forms on the Spirituality and Practice website. We hope you will follow the links. You will find that each "letter" in the alphabet can be understood and practiced in many different ways.
From the vantage point of process philosophy, the letters are qualities of heart and mind which give value to life. Borrowing a phrase from John Cobb and Charles Birch in their book The Liberation of Life, we speak of them as forms of richness of experience. As John Cobb explains in Whitehead's Theory of Value, richness of experience is at the heart of Whitehead's understanding of value. In Whitehead, value is richness of experience.
The thirty-seven letters, then, are forms of life and forms of value. They are part of our evolutionary and cultural potential and, in this sense, as natural as gravity and emotions. Indeed, they are forms of emotional and cognitive wisdom, although we are not necessarily born with them. They can be cultivated, mentored, and learned by imitation. They can be encouraged in education in the home, in the faith community, at school, and in the public arena. Workplaces and the halls of congress, small groups and large organizations, can have a spiritual side: compassion, justice, imagination, and joy, for example. Additionally, the many kinds of spirituality can be studied scientifically, as in the pioneering work of positive psychology and neuroscience. Spirituality is not the province of theologians and artists alone. It is a natural occurrence.
This does not mean that spirituality cannot be understood religiously. As the slide show makes clear, spirituality can be understood as a way of being responsive to God as a lure toward richness of experience and also as a way of participating in God's aliveness. Process theology offers many ways of thinking about God (see six approaches to God) even as it can be appropriated by non-theists.
In short, a process understanding of spirituality is available to theists and non-theists alike. This includes non-theists who are religious. Zen Buddhism is not theistic, for example, but it is religious; and Zen Buddhists are especially good at one of the thirty-seven forms of spirituality, "being present" in the present moment.
One value of combining process thought and the spiritual alphabet is that it helps expand our horizons of appreciation: we can appreciate the spiritual gifts of people from different religious traditions and of spiritual independents. We need not reduce "spirituality" to one quality of heart and mind. We can recognize and appreciate many forms of aliveness. We can be grateful that some people are spiritual in ways that we may lack. "G" is for gratitude.
Another value of combining process thought and the spiritual alphabet is that it lends itself to a recognition spirituality begins, not with human life alone, but with the broader world: other animals, plants, hills and rivers, trees and stars. Spirituality has an ecological side. We live in an enspirited universe. We find playfulness and imagination in animals, not in human beings alone, and the unfolding universe itself seems to be, in its way, an imaginative exercise. "P" is for play and "I" is for imagination.
Still another is that spirituality, thus understood, can be joined with the four hopes of the world today: whole persons, whole communities, whole planet, and holistic thinking. The wholeness we seek for ourselves and others, and indeed for the planet, has a spiritual side. Not only individuals, but also communities, can be spiritual. "H" is for hope.
We hope this slide show offers you some hope.
Jay McDaniel composed the text, and Jared Morningstar developed the graphics.
Practicing Process Thought in Daily Life
Some Guidelines
Think big, but think small, too. Always listen. Let God be in "there" as well as "here." Avoid clichés and jargon. Remember the cosmic but honor the particular. Seek unity but be a champion of differences. Avoid self-absorbed mysticism. Learn from science and beauty. Love your enemies. Love the earth. Don't hide from the brokenness. Make merry when you can. Be kind.
Be there, be here
Be there with the whole of it as best you can. With people in other parts of the world, with the hills and rivers, trees and stars. Grieve with them and hope with them. Have planetary feeling. Know that the universe is a communion of subjects and not simply a collection of objects. See something like subjectivity, vital energy, everywhere. Fall in love with the all.
And also be here with your local community, with friends and family, neighbors and strangers close at hand. Don't pretend that you are, or need to be, everywhere. Help your local community become creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind. Help people in your community know, and be compassionately linked with, people in other communities. Help them understand that we are small but included in the larger web of life. Help them love the local and love the planetary. Call it ecological civilization.
Always listen
Especially if you are in a position of privilege, make sure you listen to other people and also to the more than human world. Let the voices of others enter your ear, let the experiences of others be part of your life. Feel their feelings as best you can, without pretending that they are your own. Don't just listen to what you like; listen to what irritates you, or shocks you, or changes you.
Also listen to your body, to your own feelings, and, as you can, listen for a still small voice inside you which is God's calling. Know that even God begins with listening: with feeling the feelings of all things and responding with fresh possibilities. Listen for the fresh possibilities.
Think small as well as big
We're all familiar with the axiom "think globally, act locally." It's a good one. But it's important to think locally, too. Think small as well as big. Don't pretend that global consciousness is superior to local consciousness, or the other way around. Let the two forms of consciousness be on a par, on the same level. See beauty in those who think locally and encourage them to think globally. And see beauty in those who think globally and encourage them to think locally.
Critique all notions of global thinking that somehow neglect the fact that other creatures matter, too, that the "globe" is not a human globe. And critique all notions of global thinking that neglect just how differentiated and fragmented the world is, ecologically and humanly. Avoid saying "we're all in this together" if there's even a hint that "we" are - or should be - one big, happy, middle class, western family. Be honest about the fragmentation, the brokenness, the injustice.
Seek harmony and unity but be a champion of differences
It's good to want people and other living beings to dwell in mutually enhancing harmonies. It's good to talk about peace and unity, but also be a champion of differences: different religions, different cultures, different personalities, different animals, different seasons, different landscapes, different moods. Don't fall into the trap of sameness, of presuming that there is one "right" way to be human or to be alive or to exist. Don't let your convictions and views and values become an umbrella that suffocates others. Be glad that there are people who disagree with you. Be glad that not everyone is a process theologian.
Avoid self-absorbed mysticism
It's good to have a mystical side: a sense of the numinous, a feeling of oneness, a love of beauty, a capacity for silence, a heart for the ecstatic. But don't fall into the trap of saying it's all here. Accept the fact that your here is different from the here of someone in another country, a distant city, another zip code, another social class, another race, another religion. Even next door. Give other people space to have their own here: to have feelings and wisdom and beauty that are not your own. Don't pretend that you are disembodied; that your here is everywhere. Let there be many here's, some of which are there for you. Know that being there means honoring the distance and uniqueness of what is here for others.
Remember the cosmic but honor the particular
Remember the cosmic. Don't think that human beings on planet earth are the center of creation. We are small but included in an evolving galactic whole. But also remember that the whole of the universe is contained in each particular, in each grain of sand, and that the individual grains are where the action is.
Know that "everything is interconnected" but also that connections are always unique and specific. Your connections with your parents are different from your connections with best friends, which are different from your connections with small children, which are different from your connections with trees and soil and sunshine. Have affection for the particular, for the small, for the unique, for the specific. Avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Avoid clichés and jargon
In explaining process thought to others, or to yourself, avoid clichés to the best of your ability, such as "everything is interconnected" and "the future is open." They grow tiresome and empty. Seek out poets and find fresh ways to say things. Use specific and poetic language when possible, and don't be afraid to appeal to intuition. Remember that, for Whitehead, ideas can be expressed in many different ways and are not reducible to words. They can be expressed through illustrations as well as abstractions. Have a little Zen in you; in explaining how everything is interconnected, offer someone a cup of tea.
Avoid process jargon to the best of your ability. Use only when necessary. It's all right to say "actual entities" every once in a while, but also just say moments of experience. It's all right to say "eternal objects" occasionally, but also just say the pure potentials. It's all right to say "the consequent nature of God," but also just say God's tenderness or the deep Listening. It's all right to speak of "creative transformation," but also say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, the freshness deep down. Don't fall into what Whitehead calls the fallacy of the perfect dictionary. Create your own dictionary.
Learn from science and beauty
Remember that for Whitehead the objects in our world are facts, as are our subjective responses to those objects. Science does an excellent job of helping us understand the objects of our world, especially if science is liberated from mechanistic paradigms that forget the qualitative and organic sides of the world. Be willing to critique the mechanism but also learn from the insights. Appreciate the fact that science is evidence-based and try to be evidence based yourself, albeit with an expanded understanding of evidence that includes beauty.
Beauty is the richness of experience found in human life and the more than human world: the harmonies and intensities, sometimes pleasurable and sometimes painful, that are life as lived from the inside. The arts (music, literature, poetry, dance, sculpture, drama) are masters of presenting beauty. And so, in a different but complementary way, are the hills and rivers, trees and lakes, planets and stars. The awe we feel in the presence of a mountain or ocean tell us something about the world no less than a scientific accounts of those immensities. The truths we discern from a really good movie about life on a battlefield are no less valuable than the facts and figures about that battle. A song or dance well performed, that tells us about the cruelties of injustice is as informative, if not more informative, than a more prosaic account of those cruelties. Know that facts include the subjective as well as the objective: in Whitehead's words, the private matters of fact and the public matters of face. Stick to the facts and learn from them all.
Let God be on earth and in heaven.
If you believe in a personal God who has properties such as love and wisdom, and who prefers peace over violence, justice over hatred, let God be there, too. There in your nearby neighbors, there in people in other parts of the world, there in plants and animals. Acknowledge that their ways of knowing God may be very different from your own, and beautiful, too. Be responsible to the face of the other (Levinas). Love their there-ness.
Also, don't talk about divine immanence all the time. Let God have a here of God's own, which is other to your own here. Just as other people transcend you in their uniqueness, and other animals and plants do the same, so let God transcend you. Speak of God as the Deep There. Address God as You who transcends and loves you and you and you.
Celebrate local connections and enjoy life.
Know that life is more than ethics, more than "being good." It's also about gladness and playfulness, wonder and a sense of mystery. About friends and family, music and storytelling. About food and water, bicycles and trees. About laughter and struggle, silence and beauty. Let your here include zest for life. Let it include all the "letters" in the spiritual alphabet: Use your time, energy, and money to help others do the same.
Be there with the whole of it as best you can. With people in other parts of the world, with the hills and rivers, trees and stars. Grieve with them and hope with them. Have planetary feeling. Know that the universe is a communion of subjects and not simply a collection of objects. See something like subjectivity, vital energy, everywhere. Fall in love with the all.
And also be here with your local community, with friends and family, neighbors and strangers close at hand. Don't pretend that you are, or need to be, everywhere. Help your local community become creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind. Help people in your community know, and be compassionately linked with, people in other communities. Help them understand that we are small but included in the larger web of life. Help them love the local and love the planetary. Call it ecological civilization.
Always listen
Especially if you are in a position of privilege, make sure you listen to other people and also to the more than human world. Let the voices of others enter your ear, let the experiences of others be part of your life. Feel their feelings as best you can, without pretending that they are your own. Don't just listen to what you like; listen to what irritates you, or shocks you, or changes you.
Also listen to your body, to your own feelings, and, as you can, listen for a still small voice inside you which is God's calling. Know that even God begins with listening: with feeling the feelings of all things and responding with fresh possibilities. Listen for the fresh possibilities.
Think small as well as big
We're all familiar with the axiom "think globally, act locally." It's a good one. But it's important to think locally, too. Think small as well as big. Don't pretend that global consciousness is superior to local consciousness, or the other way around. Let the two forms of consciousness be on a par, on the same level. See beauty in those who think locally and encourage them to think globally. And see beauty in those who think globally and encourage them to think locally.
Critique all notions of global thinking that somehow neglect the fact that other creatures matter, too, that the "globe" is not a human globe. And critique all notions of global thinking that neglect just how differentiated and fragmented the world is, ecologically and humanly. Avoid saying "we're all in this together" if there's even a hint that "we" are - or should be - one big, happy, middle class, western family. Be honest about the fragmentation, the brokenness, the injustice.
Seek harmony and unity but be a champion of differences
It's good to want people and other living beings to dwell in mutually enhancing harmonies. It's good to talk about peace and unity, but also be a champion of differences: different religions, different cultures, different personalities, different animals, different seasons, different landscapes, different moods. Don't fall into the trap of sameness, of presuming that there is one "right" way to be human or to be alive or to exist. Don't let your convictions and views and values become an umbrella that suffocates others. Be glad that there are people who disagree with you. Be glad that not everyone is a process theologian.
Avoid self-absorbed mysticism
It's good to have a mystical side: a sense of the numinous, a feeling of oneness, a love of beauty, a capacity for silence, a heart for the ecstatic. But don't fall into the trap of saying it's all here. Accept the fact that your here is different from the here of someone in another country, a distant city, another zip code, another social class, another race, another religion. Even next door. Give other people space to have their own here: to have feelings and wisdom and beauty that are not your own. Don't pretend that you are disembodied; that your here is everywhere. Let there be many here's, some of which are there for you. Know that being there means honoring the distance and uniqueness of what is here for others.
Remember the cosmic but honor the particular
Remember the cosmic. Don't think that human beings on planet earth are the center of creation. We are small but included in an evolving galactic whole. But also remember that the whole of the universe is contained in each particular, in each grain of sand, and that the individual grains are where the action is.
Know that "everything is interconnected" but also that connections are always unique and specific. Your connections with your parents are different from your connections with best friends, which are different from your connections with small children, which are different from your connections with trees and soil and sunshine. Have affection for the particular, for the small, for the unique, for the specific. Avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Avoid clichés and jargon
In explaining process thought to others, or to yourself, avoid clichés to the best of your ability, such as "everything is interconnected" and "the future is open." They grow tiresome and empty. Seek out poets and find fresh ways to say things. Use specific and poetic language when possible, and don't be afraid to appeal to intuition. Remember that, for Whitehead, ideas can be expressed in many different ways and are not reducible to words. They can be expressed through illustrations as well as abstractions. Have a little Zen in you; in explaining how everything is interconnected, offer someone a cup of tea.
Avoid process jargon to the best of your ability. Use only when necessary. It's all right to say "actual entities" every once in a while, but also just say moments of experience. It's all right to say "eternal objects" occasionally, but also just say the pure potentials. It's all right to say "the consequent nature of God," but also just say God's tenderness or the deep Listening. It's all right to speak of "creative transformation," but also say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, the freshness deep down. Don't fall into what Whitehead calls the fallacy of the perfect dictionary. Create your own dictionary.
Learn from science and beauty
Remember that for Whitehead the objects in our world are facts, as are our subjective responses to those objects. Science does an excellent job of helping us understand the objects of our world, especially if science is liberated from mechanistic paradigms that forget the qualitative and organic sides of the world. Be willing to critique the mechanism but also learn from the insights. Appreciate the fact that science is evidence-based and try to be evidence based yourself, albeit with an expanded understanding of evidence that includes beauty.
Beauty is the richness of experience found in human life and the more than human world: the harmonies and intensities, sometimes pleasurable and sometimes painful, that are life as lived from the inside. The arts (music, literature, poetry, dance, sculpture, drama) are masters of presenting beauty. And so, in a different but complementary way, are the hills and rivers, trees and lakes, planets and stars. The awe we feel in the presence of a mountain or ocean tell us something about the world no less than a scientific accounts of those immensities. The truths we discern from a really good movie about life on a battlefield are no less valuable than the facts and figures about that battle. A song or dance well performed, that tells us about the cruelties of injustice is as informative, if not more informative, than a more prosaic account of those cruelties. Know that facts include the subjective as well as the objective: in Whitehead's words, the private matters of fact and the public matters of face. Stick to the facts and learn from them all.
Let God be on earth and in heaven.
If you believe in a personal God who has properties such as love and wisdom, and who prefers peace over violence, justice over hatred, let God be there, too. There in your nearby neighbors, there in people in other parts of the world, there in plants and animals. Acknowledge that their ways of knowing God may be very different from your own, and beautiful, too. Be responsible to the face of the other (Levinas). Love their there-ness.
Also, don't talk about divine immanence all the time. Let God have a here of God's own, which is other to your own here. Just as other people transcend you in their uniqueness, and other animals and plants do the same, so let God transcend you. Speak of God as the Deep There. Address God as You who transcends and loves you and you and you.
Celebrate local connections and enjoy life.
Know that life is more than ethics, more than "being good." It's also about gladness and playfulness, wonder and a sense of mystery. About friends and family, music and storytelling. About food and water, bicycles and trees. About laughter and struggle, silence and beauty. Let your here include zest for life. Let it include all the "letters" in the spiritual alphabet: Use your time, energy, and money to help others do the same.