2026 invited Speaker: Erik Craig, EdD

Presenting: Listening to the Mystery of Being: A Road Less Traveled By

So caught up are we in the pettiness, noise, struggles, and distractions of our everyday lives that we tend to forget what is most essential, what undergirds and holds us all in its palm, the simple fact that we exist, and the deeper question of what it means for us to be at all. One might rightly wonder whether such a question can be answered or is even worth asking. As serious a philosopher as Wittgenstein thought not, and many today would agree, insisting that meeting the challenges and savoring the joys of ordinary life is task enough.

Yet for those who continue to wonder – philosophically, theologically, or personally – there still lies Heidegger’s hauntingly mind-opening ontological question, “Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?” Many thinkers consider this question of being – the Seinsfrage – the single most fundamental question of philosophy and life itself. Mystery swirls silently around us. Shall we, dare we, listen?

This session invites us to pause and consider the possibilities and perils of attending to such questions. Beginning with a moment of self-reflection, we will open ourselves to mystery, unknowing, and uncertainty – not to fall into what Abe Maslow called “high IQ whimpering on a cosmic scale” – but to discover the gifts of courageous but gentle existential contemplation. How might listening to the mystery of being deepen our understanding, enrich our lives, and revitalize our therapeutic practice – bringing a soft and steady light to the hours we share with those who seek our help.

Dr. Erik Craig is an existential psychologist, independent scholar, and international speaker living and practicing in Santa Fe, NM. With over 55 years in the field, in 2015, he received APA’s Rollo May Heritage Award for his “outstanding, independent contribution” to humanistic psychology. His most enduring interests include the nature of human presence and relatedness, the evocative world of human dreaming, and developing a systematic phenomenological understanding of human nature and selfhood, and their “place” in all that is. In 2021, the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology acknowledged his “steady stream of invaluable research” as a significant independent contribution to the emergence of phenomenological psychology in America. However, having decided to be a psychologist when he was just thirteen years old, he remains deeply grateful and indebted to the extraordinary thinkers, mentors, and practitioners – from both the East and the West – who so enabled and enriched his journey. Erik has also served as president of state, national, and international psychological Associations. Now long retired from a 35-year career in academia, he still savors contemplating and writing about the enigmas of being human and the challenges of Existential therapeutic practice. He savors his personal life and the high mountain deserts of New Mexico, where he enjoys solitude, contemplation, music, poetry, reading, dialogue, hiking, the natural world, and hosting wild birds and raccoons on his back patio.