Conversations on Calhoun, January 28, 2012.

The Center for Imaginative Action held its’ first one-day retreat on Saturday. Can you imagine my immense gratitude to all those people that cooperated to make this event a success? We all met in a room that overlooked Lake Calhoun. Our food was catered by the chef extraordinaire Carrie Watson, and by Lucia’s Restaurant. The quality of the food was exceptional. How Lucia’s consistently turns out high quality cuisine on a daily basis I will never know.

Our purpose was to explore the relevance of Freud, Jung and Steiner to our daily lives. We drew a map of the philosophic territory with compass and ruler and learned about The Great Chain of Being. Before the day was over, we had created our own personal Red Book using Dr. Jung’s masterpiece as our template. Everyone had begun to imagine what he or she really wanted in his or her lives, and we wrote about it, meditated on it, painted about it, and learned a method of making it happen. It was an extraordinary day. 

If this is of interest to you, give us a call to plan a retreat in your area. The next retreat in Minneapolis is scheduled for Saturday, March 24.

A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond

It seems that more and more scientists are realizing the benefits of continuous learning and “inner fitness”. This is a piece written by Times reporter Patricia Cohen who is the author of “In Our Prime:  The Invention of Middle Age.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/a-sharper-mind-middle-age-and-beyond.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=a%20sharper%20mind&st=cse

An Excellent Day in NYC

My wife Alecia and I are in New York City this week. The temperatures are above average for New York and well above average for Minneapolis. I have walked 12 miles so far through the sublime Central Park. It is a challenge to get ones’ head around the park. According to some sources it contains 843 acres and 26,000 trees. These 843 acres represent some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Yet, in a city know for its’ greed, the developers were banned and we have this jewel.

You witness there a constant stream of joggers, walkers, bikers and tourist bikers along the way. The park is very well cared for. Men and women trimming the trees, raking the flowerbeds, picking up the litter and garbage. As a person that grew up in the 1960’s I have to say it seems like an honor to walk around The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Have you ever seen those shots of her being caught by a photographer enjoying the park alone? New York City is a precious place. Those who know me understand that I prefer living in Santa Monica, the beach community within Los Angeles. That is true, I may be one of the last, but I love LA. Yet, New York City is very hard to beat.

Consider my day today. I am sure you know the type of days when you start out spilling and burning yourself making morning coffee? This day was the opposite of that. I left the apartment about 8:20 and immediately ran into one of my students from the Steiner School and her mother. Sheer coincidence (synchronicity?) led me to see, at the mere breaking of dawn, two of my favorite people in the world. Then I arrived at the home of my friends who invited me to see their daughter, and three other former students of mine, participate in an assembly at her new Waldorf School.

The Brooklyn Waldorf School really has something good going. Their new home is in a spectacular building. I have seen the full spectrum of Waldorf initiatives from the smallest to “the legendary” (in their minds at least), and the Brooklyn Waldorf School is an inspiration. We were honored to be in the 4^th grade room during snack and observed them during recess. My friend took me on a full tour to allow me to understand the opportunity that this beautiful space affords.

Afterwards we ran some errands and then went to Eataly for lunch. What an elegant experience we had at Manzo!  The food and the service were spectacular but did not compare to the conversation that my friend and I had. I explained the mission of the Center for Imaginative Action to him, and not only did he get it, he is living it. My friend is a life long creative type, who has had tremendous success in his pursuits and now has decided to learn to become a pilot. This forces him to develop the exact precision of a scientist, which Carl Jung would have seen as the opposite of his actor/artist personality. Now he gets to be an accomplished creative person with precise thinking skills, in Jung’s terms a more individuated person.

As if that was not enough, tonight Alecia and I attended a “Music on 4” house concert on the Upper West Side. Abbie Gardner of Red Molly, Pete Kennedy of The Kennedy’s, Abbie’s father Herb Gardner on the trombone, and Craig Akin with his base circa 1850. These artists produced an incredible acoustic performance. Here are a few of the photos Alecia took.

Now, after this great day in NYC, we are home in our apartment and feeling very grateful for the city, the people in the city, and the fact that we are here. With all the troubles in our country, and the history of mistakes that we have made, let's allow Central Park in New York City to be a symbol of America getting it right.

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The Joy of Quiet

The Joy of Quiet

On this morning of January 1, 2012, the day my new business “goes live on the web”, I woke up to our normal Sunday ritual. I made the coffee, the fire, gathered the Sunday New York Times and Alecia and I sat quietly together reading in front of the fireplace. 

Starting a new venture is either scary or exciting depending on how you look at it. I truly have no idea of what will happen. Yet I have my clear vision of the service that I want to provide and am certain that there is an unmet need in the marketplace.

As I moved through The Times one section at a time I came to the “Sunday Review”. I skipped the first page entirely and read several of the inside pieces. Then, when I was about ready to throw the whole thing in the “already read” pile, I noticed that on the front page there was a circle. Circles have been sacred symbols in many cultures and that fact alone seemed to grab me out of my habitual routine. At the bottom of the page was an opinion piece written by the author Pico Iyer called “The Joy of Quiet.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?src=me&ref=general

This article will be required reading for anyone attending the daylong or weeklong retreats that my new business offers.

Everybody knows that electronic screens, whether offered by TV or computers or smartphones have taken over our daily attention. Mr. Tyer hits the nail on the head with his observation that, “The only way we can do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen”.

On this first day of the year 2012, The Center for Imaginative Action, in the name of bringing peace and quiet back into our lives, begins to offer its’ services at www.imageact.org.

My New Favorite Quote

This is a statement made by one of Carl Jung's closest associates Marie Von Franz. It is a calling cry for the importance of inner fitness.

Jung often maintained that if one had in himself only 3% of all the evil one sees in the other fellow, or projects onto him, and the other fellow possessed in fact the other 97%, it would still be wiser to look one's own 3% in the eye, because as is well known, it is only in oneself that one can change anything, almost never in others."

Science and Inner Fitness

Trained scientists like Amherst Professor Dr. Arthur Zajonc, and many others are advocating the benefits of a contemplative practice to our daily lives. Here is an article from the LA Times that provides additional evidence of the reality of "inner fitness."


http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-meditation-mind-wandering-20111122,0,3160695.story

Death and TV

Death and TV

I wonder, if we could go into the future 100 years, we would discover that prolonged TV viewing had been proven to be bad for ones health and had become as taboo as smoking cigarettes? It appears that scientific evidence is emerging to support a resounding “yes”.

The story of cigarettes is well documented. The Surgeon General’s 1964 report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General shocked the nation with its dire statistics. The report held cigarette smoking responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality rate of smokers over non-smokers. The report estimated that average smokers had a nine- to ten-fold risk of developing lung cancer compared to non-smokers: heavy smokers had at least a twenty-fold risk. The risk rose with the duration of smoking and diminished with the cessation of smoking. The report also named smoking as the most important cause of chronic bronchitis and pointed to a correlation between smoking and emphysema, and smoking and coronary heart disease.

Now 47 years later, our society has assimilated those facts, and changed dramatically. Simply watch one episode of AMC’s Madmen to recall how in the 1960’s smoking had been integrated into the daily routine of most families. That is not the case today. Modern families have replaced the smoking habit with the bad habit making the TV the center of their lives. TV viewing has established itself in the daily life of most Americans and according to the research of Frank Hu and Anders Grontved of the Harvard School of Public Health the average American watches 5 hours of TV daily. Their study Television Viewing and the Risk of Type-2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease and All Cause Mortality, a Meta-Analysis, was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in the June 15, 2011 edition.

Study results indicate more than 2 hours of daily TV viewing increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. More than 3 hours increased risk of premature death. Each additional 2 hours of daily TV viewing raised type 2 diabetes risk by 20%, cardiovascular risk by 15% and premature death by 13%. “The message is simple. Cutting back on TV watching can significantly reduce risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and premature mortality,” said Hu. “We should not only promote increasing physical activity levels but also reduce sedentary behaviors, especially prolonged TV watching.”

Well said! Thank you Dr. Hu.