Author, poet, and potter, Colin Drake muses on the nature of creativity as it relates to awareness. Like the simple act of walking across a room, creativity bubbles up from stillness, moves in relation to stillness, and, in the end, returns again to stillness. “Awareness,” Drake reminds us, “is endlessly creative.” The universe is the […]
Intro to the 5 Essentials of Designing and Building Sacred Space
Dear Friends, For those of you who don’t know me very well, I co-host a monthly conversation on the intersection between the built landscape and consciousness with a contractor friend of mine from Bulgaria, an amazing, heartfelt contractor named Hristiyan Atanasov. We call our events, Conscious Design Build: A Holistic Path to Better Living. Every […]
The Relationship Between Art, Creativity, and Meditation
“Creativity isn’t necessarily an obstacle to meditation but, rather, its fruit.” –Amanda Palmer quoting an unnamed friend. Let me begin by thanking my friend, Adam Gyokazan Coutts–a brilliant and irreverent man, Zen practitioner, dedicated meditator, and one who teaches others the view and techniques of meditation–for sending me the following illuminating article. You can find […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Part V: How Creativity Expands Our Sense of Self
We began this series by looking at Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, noting how Maslow has creativity positioned at the uppermost level, at the level of Self-Actualization. We also noted that while the first four levels were characterized by a sense of “deficiency” or lack, this uppermost level of Self-Actualization was marked by a sense […]
The Death of Terence Mckenna and the Importance of Heart Integration in Creativity
Terence McKenna, a visionary thinker and author of Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (now how’s that for a title?!), died in 2000, two days after April Fool’s Day. While hanging around a bit at one of Terence […]
Create to Honor Impermanence
Some time ago, I was designing a gabled roof to cover a client’s porch. I was stumped trying to solve a detail involving the intersection of a vertical post, a horizontal beam, and a frame for a bug screen. I remembered a solution I liked from a project I’d worked on a few years earlier […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, part IV: Creativity and Culture
Last time we explored personal traumas and their effects, both positive and negative, on our ability to create. Now let’s take a wider view, this time exploring the reigning attitude of a culture and how it can either thwart or enhance the creative process. Remember, since the finite ego perceives itself as separate from the […]
Padmasambhava, The Lotus, and Creativity
“The youthful infant, Padmasambhava, manifesting on a lotus, is exactly the nature of our mind. Our mind may be born in the muddy lake of samsara, and the lotus may be born in this muddy lake of samsara, but the lotus itself is completely free from any dust. It remains beautiful, full of color and […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Part III: Trauma and Creativity
When a trauma occurs in our life, it can either be a catalyst for growth or a glue for psycho-emotional bondage. In my last post we explored the difference between the finite ego and the absolute Self and how they relate to creativity and the creative process. To review, since the finite ego perceives itself […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Part II: The Finite Ego and The Absolute Self
Since the ego perceives itself as separate from the world, it always feels a sense of lack or deficiency. By contrast, the absolute Self, which is the spark of divinity in each and every one of us, experiences the luminous interdependence that makes everything possible. The finite ego and the absolute Self In my last […]