Aleister Crowley's Energized Enthusiasm Review

Aleister Crowley's extended essay developing the idea of creativity -- and genius -- as a sexual phenomenon. Combines vital ideas from his own Thelemic philosophy with yoga and sex magick to create a remarkable synthesis.







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365 Ways to a Stronger You: Balance Your Human Life with Helping Others as a World Server Review

"Why did I write this book?" Here's the inside scoop from author Rose Rosetree: When I do healing sessions for clients, I've noticed that certain groups of people are especially drawn to my work: 1. Spiritually-oriented people who are finally ready to claim their own human lives -- the specific goal of this book! 2. Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) who have found hope that their human lives could be stable, fulfilling, and rewarding, not only sensitive. 3. Empaths, already studying specific techniques for Empath Empowerment . Yet they need a little more personal, common-sense help to grow fully into… their own human lives. 4. Ex-cult members, or others who realize they have been extremely influenced by authority figures, gurus, religious leaders or others. They want to keep the good. They also have a burning desire to… grow more deeply into their own human lives. 5. East-Meets-West people, first- or second-generation Asian-Americans – or clients who live in Japan, India, China, Philippines, etc. yet somehow have found me and my work. I salute you courageous souls who are leaders at making this important synthesis of consciousness. If you are an East-Meets-West person, you were raised to be aware of others, thoughtful, polite, etc., and now you are struggling to keep this great part of their heritage but also learn to think for yourself, speak up for yourself, in short… to grow more deeply into your own human life. Gee, why might I attract such people? Maybe it helps that I am: • A lifelong spiritual seeker • An HSP who was among the first to write a magazine review about Dr. Elaine Aron's pioneering work • A late bloomer (Does first pregnancy at 42 give a clue?) • Someone who was involved in a cult for 17 years, then successfully exited. (Ask any expert on deprogramming and you'll find that making a full break is not the same thing as physically moving away from having contact with a cult.) • A first-generation American on my father's side (both grandparents German) and second-generation American on my mother's side (Lithuanian grandpa, British grandma). • A Westerner who has, since childhood, loved spiritual practices from the East, I might perhaps even be considered East-Meets-West person. (As this Kindle edition goes to press, I am getting ready for trip #8 to Japan, teaching workshops and doing sessions. Last week I signed my fifth foreign-rights book contract for India.) Into this book I crammed the best of what I had learned by then. About all these specialties. About life. About the work I have done in the emerging field of Deeper Perception. It is the most personal book I have written. I hope it reaches you right where you live, along with my very best wishes. And now a word from the publisher... Start your 365 days of empowerment today! Some days, this book brings fresh ideas to enhance skills you already have, like prayer and affirmations. Other days, easy-to-learn techniques activate your hidden gifts for deeper perception. Don't expect any two days to be alike. What remains constant is the author's respect for you as a conscious co-creator: Your creativity, courage and wisdom, the unique gifts of your soul. Rose Rosetree helps you to find the kind of joy that can make any day a holiday. And this book is a perfect gift for any holiday – whether officially a special occasion or that day you celebrate "just because." LOOKING FOR A TRUE PIONEER IN THE MIND-BODY-SPIRIT FIELD? Rose Rosetree has published the following books – not only the first in their field but also definitive works, sometimes copied but never equaled: BECOMING A SKILLED EMPATH. Empowered by Empathy, the first how-to book in English – maybe any language – for helping empaths to become skilled. (Rosetree's system is also trademarked, Empath Empowerment™.) CUTTING CORDS OF ATTACHMENT. Cut Cords of Attachment: Heal Yourse







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The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness Review

The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness is for people specifically interested in creative processes—writers, artists, composers, teachers, thinkers . . . Discussed are psychological factors that both block and trigger creative production. Techniques are suggested for unleashing creative work as well as unblocking it.

Who we most deeply are is mirrored in our artistic work. Our need for mirroring simultaneously attracts us to and repels us from our creative callings and relationships. It is one of life's great dilemmas.

Artist's block and lover's block flow from the same pool. Often, we fear deeply the very thing needed to create original art, to experience intimate relationships and to live authentic lives: we are frightened by the impulse to be fully revealed to ourselves, and to others, as this most often entails exposing the unacceptable shadowy aspects of our humanity and risking rejection.

Mirrors in all their manifold guises permit us to safely see and experience ourselves in reflection and become better acquainted with the rejected, ostracized aspects of our personalities. Creative work is one of the few places where we can truly express and witness lost aspects of our authentic selves.

Within us a treasure beckons. This is what we spend our lives pursuing. What slows and distracts us is not the object we long for, but where we search. To find this precious gem, we must eventually return to our own creative spirits.

Topics explored in THE CREATIVE SOUL include:

* OPPOSITES AND CREATIVITY
* THE CREATIVE INSTINCT
* OUR UNIQUE IDENTITY
* SOME ELEMENTS OF CREATIVITY
* SOME PREREQUISITES OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
* LA PETITE MORT
* GIVING VOICE TO THE MANY LIVES WITHIN
* DREAMS AND ACTIVE IMAGINATION AS TRIGGERS TO CREATIVITY
* CREATIVITY AS AN INNER PARENT
* CREATIVITY WITHIN BOUNDS
* THE CREATIVE GAP
* THE POWER OF SMALL
* CREATIVITY AND INDEPENDENCE
* ART AND THE QUEST FOR WHOLENESS
* THERAPY AS ART
* FEAR OF SELF-REVELATION BLOCKS CREATIVITY
* INTIMACY AND CREATIVITY
* THE IMPORTANCE OF MIRRORING
* CREATIVITY, GUILT, AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT
* CREATIVITY AND LONELINESS
* LIFE AND THE TENSION OF OPPOSITES

Lawrence Staples has a Ph.D. in psychology; his special areas of interest are the problems of midlife, guilt, and creativity. Dr. Staples is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, Switzerland, and also holds AB and MBA degrees from Harvard. In addition to The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness, Lawrence is author of the popular book Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way.







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LIFE IN THE FAST BRAIN: Keeping Up With Gifted Minds Review

Life in the Fast Brain-Keeping Up with Gifted Minds is the second Karen Isaacson book about life in a gifted family. Her first book, Raisin' Brains, introduced us to her highly intelligent brood. The author's dry, signature style continues to amuse and entertain readers in the sequel. She refers to all friends and family members with quirky monikers such as Rupert, Magnolia, Petunia, and Gabby. A handy family tree at the beginning of the book helps us to keep track of all the quirky characters.

Isaacson writes, "Intense people don't just enjoy things, they become enamored. They take their relationships with ideas, with objects, or with hobbies to the next level." She illustrates this well with stories about things such as her teenage son's passion for duct tape clothing and jewelry. Worn shoes were sealed with duct tape and eventually metamorphosed into duct tape boots. Another child, at eight years old, had a scheme for making money. He got creative and made sock puppets and took the door to door to sell. Of course this doesn't sound so unusual, until you read that he swiped virtually every sock in the house, and left his entire family with cold toes!

Life in the Fast Brain also includes the story of young Eugene, who helped his preschool director out by catching up the office filing, and six year old Imogene, who was concerned about the dangers of hydrogenated oils in fast food. I particularly liked the tale of the boy who designed a Rube Goldberg type machine to wake himself in the morning- it was supposed to drop a marble on his head! There's something sure to make you smile, wince in sympathy, or nod in agreement on virtually every page.

Gifted kids can be very challenging to raise, and Karen Isaacson encourages us to stop taking everything too seriously. Laughter is great medicine, and her humor is a great way to ease the burden of coping with gifted kids who make nearly every experience extraordinary.



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Experiments Never Fail: A Guide for the Bored, Unappreciated and Underpaid Review

Lovable Max Elmore is back with time-tested wisdom: "True achievement is something better than it has to be." His simple message is: Right here, right now, you can stop living an ordinary life. In today's rapidly changing world, ambition and goal-setting are not enough. (Everyone else is rolling those dice already.) Far more essential is an understanding of the randomness of achievement. In Experiments Never Fail, to help you win the "achievement lottery," Dale Dauten has completely rewritten the book, The Max Strategy, updating it and adding a new creativity tool called "Instant Brains." By the end of the book you will be a lightning rod for new ideas, going beyond problems to the anti-problem and beyond failures to the anti-failure.







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How to Think Like Einstein: Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius Review

Just like other reviewers, I started to like the book very much. Toward the middle of the book Scott Thorpe goes off on very impractical solutions. I couldnt finish reading the book, but I didnt learn alot about thinking "outside the box." I would not recommend this book, however, it may just be wrong in my opinion.

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Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity and Human Nature Review

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, William Shakespeare.

_Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature_ by anthropologist Daniel Nettle is a fascinating account of the intertwining relationship between madness (mental illness), creativity, and human nature all linked together through the notion of "strong imagination". As the author points out, "strong imagination" was recognized by William Shakespeare who noted three things about it: that it is an inherent aspect of human nature, that it is highly developed in madness and creativity, and that it may be associated with love or sexual attraction. The author also states later in the book that what he means by madness is really "psychosis", "the state where the sufferer passes beyond the bounds of reality, intelligibility, and rationality as defined by the bulk of society". Psychosis is mostly seen in the more extreme forms of depression, manic depression, and schizophrenia (formerly known as "dementia praecox"). The author also brings up a fourth category: the "schizoaffective" (shading between depression and/or mania and schizophrenia), although the usefulness of these categories remains a matter of some debate. Of course the very notion of mental illness and psychosis remains extremely controversial, and the author must spend a great deal of the earlier parts of this book defining exactly what he means, answering possible objections, and ultimately defending his viewpoint that mental illness is a brain disorder and results from either a chemical imbalance in the brain, an "organic" disturbance, or an atrophy in certain parts of the brain. The author also contends that medication that works on neurotransmitters in the brain (in particular antidepressants such as Prozac for minor and major depression, lithium for manic depression, and anti-psychotics for schizophrenia) dampens the effects of mood swings and may be useful for alleviating thought disorder, psychosis, or the so-called positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Furthermore, the author contends that tendencies towards psychosis (or affective disorder) are hereditary. All of this of course remains extremely controversial.

The author begins by showing what he means by "strong imagination" and its interaction with madness, especially in his comparisons of Shakespeare's plays and the bizarre delusions of an apparently schizophrenic man, Mr. Matthews, in Eighteenth century London who believed that a "gang of seven" was plotting against him and devised all sorts of explanations for their nefarious schemes. The author next explains what he means by psychosis. Important distinctions arise at this point, first between the outdated categories of neurosis (minor mental complaint) and psychosis, and secondly between two forms of psychosis (organic and functional). The distinction between organic and functional psychosis highlights two different methods of understanding mental illness (one rooted in dualism between mind and body and the other rooted in biological materialism). The author highlights some of the earlier means of treating mental illness that were rooted in this dualistic understanding, including psychotherapy and mentioning in particular Freud. The alternative approach was to treat mental illness as a form of brain disorder (and this is the dominant approach today), and thus a search for appropriate medications began. Other more radical thinkers such as Thomas Szasz have argued that mental illness does not exist at all, and that the mentally ill merely have different or unpopular beliefs, comparing schizophrenics to conscientious objectors and separatists. While there is some truth in Szasz's arguments, they ultimately rest on a misunderstanding of the concept of disease and the resulting social implications that we should not attempt to treat schizophrenics or the severely depressed are horrendous and cruel. A second distinction arises between "nature and nurture". The nature position having its roots in Galton for example, contended that mental illness was a hereditary disease and biological in nature. The nurture position which was defended by Freud, but also in a particularly extreme form by R. D. Laing, contended that mental illness arose as a result of family difficulties (or was the only rational response to the inherent contradictions of modern capitalist society) and particularly blamed the mother for them. The author will contend that the nature position has largely been vindicated and provides much evidence to show this. The author next turns his attention to manic depression and schizophrenia, attempting to show how these disorders arise and the biological basis for them. The author contends that it is useful to think of manic depression and schizophrenia as two separate entities (though the separation is fuzzy and this remains a controversial point). The author also contends that manic depressive moods (in particular the high moods of hypomania) are particularly inducive to creative work. The author also contends that schizophrenic thinking (the thought disorder of psychosis) is also inducive to creative thinking. The author proposes two distinct personality dimensions (thymotypy and schizotypy) to indicate individuals who are prone to psychosis but who may also be particularly creative. The author shows how many creative geniuses of eminence (particularly in the creative arts, though I suspect also in mathematics and philosophy) had these traits. The author also shows how these traits might have been selected for evolutionarily. Here he discusses not only their role in modern societies, but also their role in "primitive" cultures, emphasizing for example the role of shaman and bard. The author contends that the creative process may have been selected for in a similar manner to the way the peacock's beautiful tail was selected for, as part of sexual selection. The author also considers the possibility that mental illness is increasing in modern civilization. Finally, the author explains the need for creative individuals to "keep sane" and not seek out psychosis, because though thymotypy and schizotypy may be indicative of creative tendencies, outright psychosis largely interferes with creative work.

This book offers a fascinating study of the relationship between madness and creative thinking as part of "strong imagination". The author's theories are certainly interesting and backed up with much evidence to support them. As someone who has experienced both mental illness (manic depression including some psychosis) and highly creative states, I found this book to be particularly insightful.


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