ABSTRACT
Many ancient religious, mythological, literary, and philosophical sources, both in the east and in the west, view the self-actualization journey in the finitude world as the actual reason for life. This journey is a unique path designed for each individual to reach their best self and is supposed to end with grace when the ultimate mission is completed. Nevertheless, these sources do not include a major component of life recipe, i.e., knowledge of what is to come next and how to walk this stony road. While acknowledging that life is painful and unfair, ancient archives reflect transcendental human experience very similar to posttraumatic growth (PTG) viewing pain resulting from traumatic events as leading to life experiences that make people mature, wise, humble, and decent. Thus, the self-actualization journey in life can be assumed to be significantly related to how traumatic events are experienced. Ideas of two prominent historical figures are presented to illustrate the aforementioned idea about how traumatic events change people's cognitive sets, emotional regulations, and behaviors and transform individuals ontologically or metaphysically. This chapter highlights similarities between the idea of the Miskin self in the poems of Yunus Emre and in Heidegger's philosophical ideas, both of which can provide a basis for understanding PTG, and discusses ontological impacts of traumatic experiences on “self” in terms of the Yunus Emre's Islamic Sufism tradition and Heideggerian phenomenological approach.
