Enrichment

It has been a while since I have posted, but last night I picked up the book "Silence, Song and Shadows" by Tom Bender and the page I read was so meaningful to me that I thought it would be good to include in my blog, for no other reason other that it will be a way for me to remember what I read. With the current economics it seemed like a good time for this reminder:

"All economics, and all cultures and communities derive from distinctive assertions of value. If the values chosen reflect consumption, greed, and violence, they create a far different world than if those values derive from the sacred. E.F. Schumacher, in his path-breaking "Buddhist Economics" remarked on the characteristic kind of economics which arise from the values of Buddhism - on the role and importance of enriching work, of obtaining the maximum well-being from minimum consumption, and of the importance of non-attachment to wealth. He has shown also its effectiveness in creating successful life, culture, and tools.

Reestablishing a value base to our communities involves discovery of the real meaning of a whole range of sustainable values tied to the sacred. Austerity, for example, is important. It does not, as we might think, exclude richness or enjoyment. What it does do is help us be aware of things which distract us from our real goals in life.

When we understand austerity, we see that affluence has a great hidden cost. Its endless possibilities demand impossible commitments of time and energy. It fails to discriminate between what is wise and useful and what is merely possible. We end up foregoing things necessary for a truly satisfying life to make time and space for trivia. As we relearn the value of austerity, along with stewardship, permanence, responsibility, enoughness, work, and interdependence, we create a new and enduring kind of community."

The shades of green and play of light on this leaf are so beautiful, but often there is too much going on for me to notice things like this when I am in the garden. I am grateful to have a camera that allows me to isolate these spots of beauty and to reflect on them. I think this is the austerity that is referred to by Tom Bender - austerity that focuses us on the wonder and beauty in the simple.

Sensual Journal project

I'm part of a sensual journal project organized by Deb Denton. Deb gave us the challenge that four of the five senses needed to be represented in the journal pages we did - even more difficult than it sounds. This month I worked in Sheila Scott's journal. Her great theme was "Get out there - it's a great big world". This is the cover of Sheila's box that houses our contributions.

Of course my journal entries are all about Africa - a place close to my heart. Here are some of my pages.

Celebrate What's Right with the World

This link was shared with me by my photographer buddy, Bill Elder, who has been so generous with his knowledge of photography with me over the years.



Dewitt Jones is a National Geographic photographer, and his enthusiasm for the beauty around us and the call to look deeper for the meaning in the world was just what I needed as I put together a presentation on my trip to visit organizations dealing with the Aids pandemic in South Africa.

Back from South Africa

I'm back from my three week trip to South Africa. It was an intense trip and I'm still trying to process everything I saw and experienced. Sometimes I find I need to withdraw from an experience for a while afterwards before I can see it in the right perspective. So I'll share more about my experiences at a later date.

I did stay at the Buddhist Retreat Center in Ixopo while I was spending time with Woza Moya, and it was the perfect place to be as it allowed me to regroup every day in a peaceful and meditative space.

This was the early morning view from my bedroom ... the mist rising from the valley ....

The last week of my trip was spent in an area I was unfamiliar with and it was an intense experience. My surroundings were quite different, and this is where I slept!

Interview with Eric Maisel

Eric Maisel will be visiting my blog on Saturday. Eric's website is http://www.ericmaisel.com/. Eric trains creativity coaches, leads workshops and has written more than twenty-five books. His book Fearless Creating is one of my favorites. His books are full of inspiration to get you creating on a regular basis. His book, The Van Gogh Blues, has recently come out in paperback and Eric kindly answered some questions on his book. If you have questions to ask Eric please post your questions and he will be happy to answer them.

Eric, can you tell us what The Van Gogh Blues is about?

For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.

To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.

Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, we are looking at existential depression? Or might that person be depressed in “some other way”?

When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play. But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life.

So you’re saying that a person who decides, for whatever reason, that she is going to be a “meaning maker,” is more likely to get depressed by virtue of that very decision. In addition to telling herself that she matters and that her creative work matters, what else should she do to “keep meaning afloat” in her life? What else helps?

I think it is a great help just to have a “vocabulary of meaning” and to have language to use so that you know what is going on in your life. If you can’t accurately name a thing, it is very hard to think about that thing. That’s why I present a whole vocabulary of meaning in The Van Gogh Blues and introduce ideas and phrases like “meaning effort,” “meaning drain,” “meaning container,” and many others. When we get a rejection letter, we want to be able to say, “Oh, this is a meaning threat to my life as a novelist” and instantly reinvest meaning in our decision to write novels, because if we don’t think that way and speak that way, it is terribly easy to let that rejection letter precipitate a meaning crisis and get us seriously blue. By reminding ourselves that is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us. Having a vocabulary of meaning available to talk about these matters is a crucial part of the process.

This is the paperback version of The Van Gogh Blues, How was the hardback version received?

The reviewer for the Midwest Book Review called The Van Gogh Blues “a mind-blowingly wonderful book.” The reviewer for Library Journal wrote, "Maisel persuasively argues that creative individuals measure their happiness and success by how much meaning they create in their work.” I’ve received countless emails from artists all over the world thanking me for identifying their “brand” of depression and for providing them with a clear and complete program for dealing with that depression. I hope that the paperback version will reach even more creative folks—and the people who care about them.

How does The Van Gogh Blues tie in with other books that you’ve written?

I’m interested in everything that makes a creative person creative and I’m also interested in every challenge that we creative people face. I believe that we have special anxiety issues and I spelled those out in Fearless Creating. I believe that we have a special relationship to addiction (and addictive tendencies) and with Dr. Susan Raeburn, an addiction professional, I’ve just finished a book called Creative Recovery, which spells out the first complete recovery program for creative people. That’ll appear from Shambhala late in 2008. I’m fascinated by our special relationship to obsessions and compulsions and am currently working on a book about that. Everything that we are and do interests me—that’s my “meaning agenda”!

What might a person interested in these issues do to keep abreast of your work?

They might subscribe to my two podcast shows, The Joy of Living Creatively and Your Purpose-Centered Life, both on the Personal Life Media Network. You can find a show list for The Joy of Living Creatively here and one for Your Purpose-Centered Life here. They might also follow this tour, since each host on the tour will be asking his or her own special questions. Here is the complete tour schedule. If they are writers, they might be interested in my new book, A Writer’s Space, which appears this spring and in which I look at many existential issues in the lives of writers. They might also want to subscribe to my free newsletter, in which I preview a lot of the material that ends up in my books (and also keep folks abreast of my workshops and trainings). But of the course the most important thing is that they get their hands on The Van Gogh Blues!—since it is really likely to help them.

Eric, thank you so much for taking time to drop in and answer these questions.

The Elements

I have finished binding the final book in the Elements series and now my box of Water, Earth, Fire and Air is complete.



According to the book "Earth, Water, Fire & Air: Essential Ways of Connecting to Spirit" by Cait Johnson, "The root of human spirituality is grounded in four elements - earth, water, fire and air .... When we explore and savor and interact with these elements, we are both remembering a primal connection and forging it anew." This book has been like that for me. I am grateful to all the photographers who have contributed their images to make these books and for the carefully chosen quotes which add wisdom to the beautiful images.

Visiting Oberlin College in Ohio

Amy and I spent this last weekend visiting Oberlin College in Ohio. Amy had a piano audition at the Oberlin Conservatory on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the weekend exploring the campus and staying overnight at one of the "co-ops". The ground was covered in snow when we arrived which thrilled us (being from the south where snow is something that makes everything close down for the day). Amy and I particularly loved the amazing library which had these space age pod chairs! Very 70s feel in the library.