This morning’s Thought Leader Gathering stimulated several creative threads for me, as usual.

Conversation starter James O’Dea of IONS (The Institute of Noetic Sciences) mesmerized us with his Irish lilt telling mythological tales of decay & redemption. The one that made the strongest impression on me was of Orpheus & his ability to counter the call of the deadly sirens (which O’Dea compared with the necrophiliac lure of cultural ‘norms’ like war and greed) with the enchantment of his own poetic imagination, with love of life or biophilia.

The meaning I made of this story is that I can find solid ground in my innate love of life & my relationship with nature, that I must call on the power of my creativity to address the challenges of my life & times… and that new answers won’t be found in old forms.

One of the new forms I’m exploring here in this blog is an attempt to incorporate many different parts of my life into a comprehensive whole. This makes the Beauty Dialogues hard to categorize, I know, and I am deeply cognizant that the ‘lack of professionalism’ in doing things this way may devalue me and my work in some contexts. On the other hand this mash-up – of metaphysical inquiry, ‘private’ thought, ideas about my work and field, my art & things that inspire me, social interactions, dreams, tools, resources & references, the promotion of my own work and that of my friends – represents a new paradigm, and I think it gives a truer sense of what we are all really like than the compartmentalization of earlier, more traditional, forms did.

I can only imagine we will be seeing this integration of life and work more and more, and I’m looking forward to the new forms we’ll create together.