The Ontological Turn in Transformative Learning: Rethinking Inner Transformation Through Meister Eckhart

While Mezirow’s foundational model frames transformative learning as a primarily epistemic process of shifting meaning perspectives through critical reflection, subsequent critiques have highlighted the need to expand this theory. This paper explores how Meister Eckhart’s works can serve as a dialogical resource for a more ontological understanding of transformation. Drawing on a selective reading of four Eckhartian concepts, the paper interprets transformative learning as a process of relational becoming marked by non-possessiveness, release, surrender, receptivity, and openness. It challenges instrumentalist and performative tendencies that seek to control, produce or measure inner changes. By reframing inner transformation as an emergent, ontological process, this paper proposes a pedagogy of release. Engaging Eckhart in dialogue enables transformative learning theory to foreground depth, hiddenness, and unpredictability, shifting the focus from perspective change to transformation of being in relation.