For those who've just arrived.
On Becoming is a publication about how human life motions forward and how we participate in that motion. It draws on two decades of work with leaders and organizations navigating significant transitions, and on a lineage of contemplative and philosophical thinkers who have attended carefully to the dynamics of becoming.
The writing moves in two streams.
The Discourse
A Metaphysics of Human Evolution, released in chapters.
This is the longer-form work. It articulates a particular way of understanding how human life actually moves — one that listens for what is called from ahead rather than unfolded from behind, that finds essence emerging with existence rather than preceding it, that takes our deepest participation to be kenotic: self-emptying, receptive, quietly creative.
It's written in conversation with a lineage that includes Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Bernadette Roberts, Meister Eckhart, Ilia Delio, Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Keating, Alfred North Whitehead, and Iain McGilchrist, among others. The Discourse doesn't announce a new paradigm — it names one already present, articulated afresh for our moment.
Chapters are released as they're ready.
The Essays
Shorter pieces that test the ideas in practice.
Where the Discourse traces the undercurrent, the Essays are what we experience more apparently. They explore how the dynamics of becoming show up in leadership, coaching, change, and contemplative practice.
You can read the Essays on their own. You can read the Discourse on its own. Read together, they're in conversation — one articulating the deep grammar of becoming, the other showing what that grammar looks like when lived.
Poems
Occasional. Where the prose gets too conceptual or the experience too specific, sometimes a poem is the right form.
If you're inclined, you might start with the first chapter of the Discourse — or with any of the recent Essays.
About Me
Adam Klein is a coach, teacher, and writer working at the edges of what it means to become. Trained as a mechanical engineer (M.S.) before turning to the study of human development, he brings an engineer's attention to pattern and structure to work that is fundamentally contemplative.
He is Managing Director and Senior Faculty at New Ventures West, the integral coaching school founded in San Francisco in 1987, where along with his partners he stewards the school's ever-evolving methodology. He also co-founded an integrative contemplative community. He hosts the Stepping In podcast, looking at what becoming means practically for each of us. Through his own practice he coaches leaders and organizations navigating significant transitions.
He's a long-distance runner.
Subscribing is free. New writing arrives as it's released.