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 […]
The Heart of Creative Design: On Natural Light
Nourishing, life-giving, ever-changing light, rising and setting, arching across the sky, silvering the waxen edges of the leaves of the oak tree, flashing up the spine of a single blade of grass, its resplendent presence on the sill of a window, its ability to penetrate a room like a sharp object or to diffuse through […]
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 […]
Creativity and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Part I: The Leap from Lack to Creative Fulfillment
In 1943, psychologist, philosopher, and leader of the Human Potential movement, Abraham Maslow wrote a paper entitled, A Theory of Human Motivation, in which he produced one of the most useful diagrams for understanding the human condition, the now famous Hierarchy of Needs. It also serves as an excellent model for understanding the nature of […]
Consciousness and Creativity, Part IX: The Importance of Sharing and Community
As a follow up to my last two posts exploring both basic and more advanced practices for exploring consciousness as individuals, I’d like to shift our attention to our nature as intensely social creatures. With both consciousness and creativity, it’s important that we invite others to support, reflect, and help us in our explorations of […]
Consciousness and Creativity, Part VIII: More Advanced Practices for Engaging Consciousness
Last time we looked at some basic practices for engaging consciousness. Let’s up the ante a bit, exploring some more advanced practices for engaging consciousness, lighting a more ardent fire in the hearth of creativity, delving headlong into some of the deeper pools of awareness. Engage in fasts of various sorts, removing certain objects or […]