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Step 7 of 7~8 min read
Reflection: Your Life as Process
Reflect on what changes, practically and existentially, if you think of yourself as an event rather than a thing.
Prompts to consider
- Whitehead says you are not a persistent substance but an ongoing process, a series of ==actual occasion==s, each arising from the inheritance of its past and achieving a new synthesis. If your identity is genuinely processual rather than substantial, what does this mean for questions of self-improvement, guilt about the past, or fear of change? Does the person who did something terrible ten years ago persist in you as a substance, or do they persist as an influence you are still creatively synthesizing?
- Whitehead's prehension: every moment you come into being, you feel-into-yourself the whole of your past, selectively, with some influences stronger than others. What past occasions do you find yourself prehending most strongly right now? What is the quality of that inheritance, is it deadweight or creative resource?
- Process theology's God lures rather than compels, offering possibilities toward beauty and intensity but leaving each occasion genuinely free. If you were to pray to this God, what would you be praying for? What would it mean to orient yourself toward the lure rather than wait for intervention?
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