Bringing Forth the Background: Living Transcendence as Abidance in the Experience of Being

This essay addresses a lacuna in humanistic psychology concerning stabilized spiritual consciousness. Building on Maslow’s “high plateau,” it introduces “Living Transcendence” as a phenomenological term for this stable trait. Drawing on research with spiritual exemplars, the trait is described as an experience with specific noetic, affective, embodied, and relational qualities, their constancy, and a special kind of volitionality. This phenomenological description is then connected to the concepts of “existential feelings” (all-enveloping “atmospheres” of experience) and “Experience of Being” (the context of all experience), proposing that Living Transcendence is the stabilized awareness of a background Experience of Being. It is claimed that this background experience is typically obscured by a habitual focus on the contents of consciousness. This claim is supported by the perennial insight of mystical traditions that enlightenment is a process of recognition, not acquisition. The mechanism underlying this shift is identified as a reorientation of attention from the foreground of cognitive-affective content to the ever-present context of experience itself. The essay concludes that Living Transcendence is an inherent potential within ordinary consciousness, accessible through a shift in attention that can be momentary (a peak experience) or become a permanent trait through sustained practice of meditation, self-reflection, and self-inquiry.