Human Ground, Spiritual Ground: Paradise Lost and Found; A Reflection on Centering Prayers Conceptual Background by Kess Frey

Inspired by Thomas Keating’s conceptual background for Centering Prayer, this book begins by using the biblical story of Adam and Eve to describe four basic parameters that frame the universal human condition. These parameters or “Fruits of the Fall” are: death/change, sex/desire, good/evil choices and our existential aloneness/incompleteness apart from God. Within the framework of these parameters we experience our basic instinctual needs and their distortions into emotional programs for happiness―which happens when needs are wounded, unmet, or perceived as unmet. Human Ground, Spiritual Ground identifies our basic inborn needs as security/survival/safety; sensation/pleasure; affection/esteem/approval; power/control; and intimacy/belonging. These needs pertain to both our human and spiritual growth. The book describes them in detail, giving examples of their healthy expressions as well as their pathological distortions into self-centered agendas for happiness that form the basis of the false-self system, the key to all of which is our inner motivation.