Lifescape

The best self-help involves building a wellbeing practice that is integrated and which recognises that all areas of our life, experience and knowledge need to be included. I’ve spent much of the last few years investigating and working with these themes through my reading, therapeutic work and practice. My wish has been to develop – and to communicate -  a straightforward and clean integration of what it means to experience ‘wellbeing’ and what it takes to get there.

And yet there are so many ideas and frameworks out there – psychological, spiritual and cultural – that it is hard to make sense of them. The self-help industry churns out books, DVDs and courses that promise to combine spiritual enlightenment with material success and riches. Authors promise the secret of wellbeing through spirit guides, angels, alternative therapies, questionable speculations on quantum physics, a conscious universe and ancient wisdoms and insights. Belief and individual experience are given the status of ‘truths’ and regarded as the equivalent of science, which is regarded as just another ‘way of seeing’ the world. Continue Reading »

Make a shadow

Want a shadow?
Take five breaths and make a shadow.
Conjure it, speak of it, make of it a dedication:
I knew my soul would live like this! -
A realisation, a revelation!

Give something of yourself to yourself,
Then give yourself to someone else, and
In the space that will emerge, talk of love,
And touch another, gently too;
Remember these are shadows you are talking of.

Long shades fall as a bright day ends,
Yet if we are at peace, they seem
Like ancient, dark, remembered friends.
Want a shadow?
Take this life and make a shadow (ref)

 This is not, writes Alice Walker, “a time to live without a practice. It is a time when all of us will need the most faithful self-generated enthusiasm (enthusiasm: to be filled with god) in order to survive in human fashion”.(ref)

My practices are poetry, conversation and a sense of meditative presence. My ‘enthusiasm’ is based on a rational, materialist knowledge (not belief) in what we now know through science (as opposed to what was known and believed in centuries past). The ‘god’ I am filled with is a flow of spirit into the words I write. In future decades and centuries, more will be known (and therefore science will evolve) but the poetic voice that emerges from the human soul will still be seeking ways of practising.

 For me, it is practice that is important, rather than any belief – in fact belief often gets in the way of a sense of fulfilment in our lives. Knowledge is good – albeit a necessarily incomplete portion of our human experience – and comes from evidence that is accumulated and adjusted over time. Continue Reading »

In this post: reflections on happiness, but first, news of the launch of the new creative thorp website where you can browse and buy stunning art and poetry gifts. If you’ve been to the website before, then you’ll find it cleaner, quicker and easier to use. I hope you’ll enjoy browsing and consider subscribing to creative thorp via. the new subscription page.

A GROWN UP KIND OF HAPPINESS?

“Happiness”, writes Matthieu Ricard, “is the result of inner maturity. It depends on us alone and requires patient work carried out from day to day” (ref).

It has struck me lately how true this is for many of us; that achieving happiness is a grown-up, lifelong process rather than a permanent state; a way through to something intrinsic in us, rather than just a positive response to favourable or unfavourable circumstances.

Of course childhood is – for the fortunate child – a glorious place to be, and it is her very immaturity that leads to happiness: the ways in which she follows her needs and desires so closely, and finds delight in the simplest, stupidest things. Happiness, for the child, can be there because there is no requirement (for the fortunate child) for her to be anything else but immature. But then when immaturity lingers, it confuses the adolescent and begins to make looming adulthood seem a journey into the unknown. Continue Reading »

It’s a while since the last Lifescape letter, but I’ve been involved in some interesting and exciting projects, including one that is turning out to be a deep, multifaceted programme of staff development at Cranfield University. After an initial phase of training on stress and wellbeing for all managers in the University during 2007, a survey was undertaken in May of this year – and the organisation is now is the process of planning the next stage – which has the potential to be really transformational in terms of how people experience their working life. Watch this space – or if you’re interested in talking further about this work, and how a similar programme could be supported in your own organisation, please do get in touch.

Please also check out my other website and projects: creativethorp.com and editionspoetry.wordpress.com for news of other activities – including the publication on my editions series of poetry pamphlets. You can also download two pdf. flyer brochures on talks, workshops and consultancy support I can offer – wellbeing with a difference and development with a difference.

SABOTAGE!

A few weeks ago, during a quiet and rainy weekend in Pembrokeshire, I came up with the central idea for some writing I’ve wanted to do for some time. This was exciting and inspirational for me – and reminded me of what a wise colleague once said to me a few years back when I was struggling with a faltering writing project. He said “I think this book is your spiritual challenge” – or words to that effect – and I think he was right, though maybe not about that particular project. What was true, and what I think he intuitively meant, was that writing MY book (whenever and whatever it may be) is part of my own calling. In a sense, this is the task we all have throughout our life – to unveil or reveal the calling that has always been inside us. In a sense – we all have to write our own ‘book’. Continue Reading »

A lot of time, this spring and summer, has been taken up with endings and new beginnings. Finishing my MSc in Psychotherapy was one (long overdue) ending. The publication of my new editions poetry series and the growth of my new venture, creative thorp, with my wife Mary, both felt very much like beginnings. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about experience and about the tension between rational and enlightened experience. Here’s the beginnings of a summer reflection….

THE MOMENT IS NOW

In his wonderful ‘Lectures on Physics’, latter-day renaissance man Richard Feynmann wrote – “We must, incidentally, make it clear from the beginning that if a thing is not a science, it is not necessarily bad. For example, love is not a science. So if something is said not to be a science, it does not mean that there is something wrong with it; it just means that is not science”. He was aware that science is a human activity and that science – or sciences – can divide the universe into parts, rather than experiencing it as a whole.

For many people over the centuries there has been a divide between materialistic science and spiritual experience (historically aka religion), and the debate rages even now as the materialists (Dawkins, Hitchens et al) are attacked both traditional theologists (perhaps understandably) but also by a new breed of ‘enlightened’ and ‘awakened’ thinkers and practitioners. I’ve written about what I see as the muddled thinking of those in the new-age community who want to use the language of science to explain their own versions of reality which are, often, experiential and speculatory. Now there’s nothing wrong with experience – I think, in fact that its a good thing, but like Feynmann might have said “there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not science”.

Continue Reading »

Dear friends,

I’ve been working over the last few weeks on a number of new consultancy and training offerings. The first is designed to address the new Health Work Wellbeing initiative and the HSE’s stress management standards – and to go far beyond. The Lifescape Wellbeing with a difference flyer can be downloaded HERE.

Secondly I’m launching a series of talks and workshops with the title Development with a difference. This series can be delivered as keynote talks and speeches – as well as longer workshops. Titles include the secrets of happiness, the wellbeing puzzle, the poet inside and the creative self. These eclectic and engaging presentations are peppered with poetry, wisdom and insights from psychology, science, organisational development and the arts. Download the flyer HERE.

Finally, through creative thorp I’m publishing editions - a themed series of poetry pamphlets available for purchase separately or by subscription. Find out more about the series and how to get hold of these beautifully presented booklets at the creative thorp weblog, and you can download the editions 2008 flyer and order form for the series.

  (click on the thumbnails to view the cover images)

It’s been a busy few weeks, but in the new year the Lifescape blog will be refreshed again. New articles on determinism in psychology and some reflections on the helping relationship are in the pipeline. In the meantime I hope you enjoy these latest creative thorp images that appeared on this year’s Xmas cards.

Christmas trees, by Mary Thorp.

Building a snowman by Sarah Thorp

August’s articles are now posted below, including ‘If self is a location, so is love’, inspired by the classic books written 50 years ago by Viktor Frankl and Eric Fromm . The title is a line taken from Seamus Heaney’s wonderful poem, the ‘Aerodrome’ from his latest collection District and Circle.

Poetry, creativity and development – My new series of talks and workshops is being launched on September 23rd at a ‘Sunday conversation’ event at the wonderful Nant y Coy arts centre in Pembrokeshire. The series consists of a list of themes that can be delivered as talks, workshops or seminars. The first will be a ‘conversation’ entitled ‘the poet in the landscape’. Please contact me if you’re interested in having one of this new series of talks and workshops at an event or training day.

In search of the secular soul: the last two editions of Resurgence magazine have carried major attacks on Richard Dawkins in an editorial by Satish Kumar and a two-part keynote by Deepak Chopra. I touch on the issues that this debate raises in the article below.

In Dawkins’ new series on Channel 4 – Enemies of Reason – he takes a rather bemused and despairing look at astrology, spiritualism, water diviners, healing. alternative health and the whole gamut of new-age self-help ‘nonsense’ that offers everything from angels to auras – with seances and tarot readings in between. He also interviews Satish Kumar editor of Resurgence magazine on his spiritualist views, and challenges ’self help guru’ Deepak Chopra’s “one-man alternative health industry” (see Michael Harrison’s review in the Daily Telegraph). Presuming that the programme had been made, and interviews conducted last year, maybe that’s why the Resurgence attacks took place!

Happy reading, and please post a comment!