A vibrant “chat room” exits on-line for the community that gathers around the department where Brian Swimme teaches in San Francisco (Philosophy, Cosmology, & Consciousness in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies (shorthand = PCC at CIIS)).
I was intrigued by this post today, a synopsis of this TED talk, www.youtube.com/watch.
Hey everyone,
I finally just watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s (Eat, Pray, Love) TED talk and
loved it. I was completely blown away. I thought of the PCC community
because she really nails it talking about creativity and the creative
process, but also how such creative artists in our modern culture are
usually pulled down into psycho-pathological instability, drug and alcohol
issues, depression, etc.. and she explores how this comes to be.
She discusses this in light of our modern inability to see creativity as OUTSIDE
ourselves, as spirits, as powers, as gifts, mysterious but real. She talks
about how in ancient Greece they understood the creative process through
Daimons, real beings who connected humans to the creative source, and later
in Roman times they called them Geniuses. She points out how its only our
own culture that has now internalized the Genius, so that we believe humans
ourselves are the genius, we are the channel, and have no need for anything
outside of us, larger than human. We have been cut off from the Mystery, and
try and claim the Source as ourselves.
She pulls a real James HIllman move of trying to shift the dialogue outside
of the human being, and restore (this is how I see it) the inherently
polytheistic, multivalent nature of Psyche. Her point is that artists are
often starving and suffering because our culture has forgotten to honor the
Gods and Goddesses, archetypes, fairies, daimons, and Geniuses. We have
forgotten anything non-human, and therefore, as Hillman says, we are trying
to carry the Gods. And this is impossible because we are humans and can’t
possibly carry those archetypal energies. In fact its blasphemous.
Anyway, I won’t spoil it any further. She brings in very PCC – related ideas
and ties them in with her own personal creative journey, and I was
completely surprised at her honesty, clarity of thinking, and depth of
perception. If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend it.
Cheers
J.