Emergency Preparedness: An Opportunity for Quality Reading

This week Peninsula College faculty and staff, in coordination with local police and fire officials, have had fruitful discussions about personal responsibility and preparation for events (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) which might lead to the Olympic Peninsula becoming isolated.

In the event of being stuck with time on our hands -- with no electricity, telephone, internet, or television -- we will have an excellent opportunity for reading by natural light.

In our emergency preparedness discussions we have cited Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from physiological and safety needs up to self-actualization. Besides self-actualization Maslow also spoke of self-transcendence, and its general availability (see Maslow quote below). The canonic and classical spiritual literature can assist us in preparation for self-transcendence.

In addition to food, water, flashlights, medical supplies, etc., I would suggest we carefully choose some literature, from both the Eastern and Western spiritual classics. In our emergency preparedness efforts each of us may select different book titles: those we consider of most importance (actual or potential) for our own spiritual well-being.

Here are a few titles from my list:

EASTERN CLASSICS
The Conference of the Birds / Farid ud-Din Attar (1177)
The Analects / Confucius (c. 400 BCE)
The Dao De Jing / Lao Tzu (c. 400 BCE)
The Lotus Sutra (290)
The Mahabharata (400? BCE)
The Book of Mencius / Mencius (c. 330 BCE)
The Masnavi / Jalaluddin Rumi (c. 1250)
The Upanishads (1600? BCE)
etc.

WESTERN CLASSICS
The Little Flowers / St. Francis of Assisi
Interior Castle / St. Teresa of Avila
Dark Night of the Soul / St. John of the Cross
Imitation of Christ / Thomas a Kempis
The Practice of the Presence of God / Brother Lawrence
Revelations of Divine Love / Julian
The Journal of John Woolman / John Woolman
etc.


MASLOW ON SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
“I have recently found it more and more useful to differentiate between two kinds of self-actualizing people, those who were clearly healthy, but with little or no experiences of transcendence, and those in whom transcendent experiencing was important and even central… It is unfortunate that I can no longer be theoretically neat at this level. I find not only self-actualizing persons who transcend, but also non-healthy people, non-self-actualizers who have important transcendent experiences. It seems to me that I have found some degree of transcendence in many people other than self-actualizing ones as I have defined this term…” --- MASLOW, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York, Viking Press.