Arrows Tipped with Flowers

About the Book

Aiming to comprehend the comprehension process itself, this book elucidates the vulnerabilities, passions, and ethical shifts within ‘learning at the threshold.’ Each of the book’s five parts investigates a dimension of the transformative learning journey. Part I introduces concepts related to creative chaos and spiritual architecture, to provide theological and ecological background on thresholds (portals into a new world view). Part II offers an overview of ancient and contemporary approaches to entering threshold consciousness. The transcultural framework offered emphasizes heart-mind qualities needed to advance systemic-level non-domination. Concerned with transforming ‘troublesomeness’ in learning, Part III introduces creative moral power’s two-fold structure and offers critiques that point to learners’ need to integrate ‘shadow’ content. Next, making the case for re-linking eros to its cosmogonic significances, Part IV articulates the importance in learning, of accessing the ‘valorized feminine’. It also defends the role of value pluralism in threshold transformations. Part V honors the spirit of friendship in ‘threshold confidence’. It emphasizes the importance of integrating various modes of comprehension and respecting minority perspective. Throughout, the book integrates wide-ranging sources from theater arts, Indigenous theory, myth, and music, to reveal the process realities through which ‘threshold people’ reconnect comprehension to transformative modes of engagement and action. The author upends Enlightenment notions of ‘goodness’ and ‘freedom’ to offer an approach to learning and knowledge formation grounded in the relational worldview.