This article reports a qualitative research study of the experience of inspiration in ordinary persons. Results gleaned from analysis of 70 in-depth interviews suggest that this phenomenon is a significant and distinct epistemic event that many people experience. As such, this evidence may help to shift the center of gravity of knowing away from the exclusivity of a narrow form of rational empiricism. Although inspiration cannot be willed, it may be cultivated. Experiences described as the absence of inspiration seem to correspond to common mental health complaints.

What we know or should know is the common focus of education. However, how we know is just as fundamental to teaching and learning. Contemporary schools emphasize both rational and sensory knowing. The rational involves calculation, explanation, and analysis; the sensory lives off of observation and measurement. Together these form the rational-empirical approach that has set the standard for knowledge across most disciplines. However, another way of knowing-contemplation-has been recognized across time, culture, and disciplines as essential to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, yet it remains absent from today's curriculum and pedagogy. Contemplative knowing is a missing link, one that affects student performance, character, and depth of understanding. In what follows I will offer a brief orientation to contemplation, evidence of its value for contemporary education, and a range of exercises that can be applied in the classroom at any level.

No abstract

This article traces refinements in empathic knowing, highlighting the phenomenon of deep empathy. Nine different levels or facets of the activity of empathic knowing are described. Included is discussion of therapeutic resonance, deep reactivity, and alterations in self-other boundaries. In recognizing his or her own underlying epistemic process, the therapist may be better able to appreciate, cultivate and deepen his or her own unique ways of meeting and understanding the client.

No abstract