Flower Mandalas Project

I did terrible things to insects as a child. Like many other boys growing up with nothing better to do, I tore the legs off Daddy Longlegs, incinerated pill bugs with magnifying glasses, and set fire to more than one ant hill. But I didn’t stop there. I was a kid scientist. Spurred on by the early space program and largely ignored by the adults around me, I dreamed of one day voyaging to the stars. Meanwhile, to prepare myself, I read Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury, and other SF masters of the day. At the same time, I plowed through one field of scientific inquiry after another, beginning with magnets and batteries – I built my first lead-acid battery when I was seven – and moving quickly through fossils, geology, chemistry and electronics. But entomology was my most enduring interest and bugs were my favorite experimental subjects. The insect kingdom was convenient for testing ideas that came up in both my scientific and science fictional pursuits. My interest was, I belie...

The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible. – Arthur C. Clarke During much of my childhood, I lived in the realm of possibility: machine intelligences, aliens, mutants, future worlds, alternate pasts. Infinite possibilities. My first science fiction book was Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot . I was 10 when I found a copy at a Temple Sinai rummage sale. It opened the universe to me. Soon, I was wandering over to the adult section of the library every week, taking out as many science fiction books as the librarian would permit. I also haunted the local pharmacy’s rack of science fiction and mystery novels, trying to figure out how best to allocate my 50-cent allowance. By my early teens, I had amassed a collection of several hundred science fiction books and had read many more. Around the time I discovered Asimov, I decided I wanted to be a “space scientist,” a dream that carried me all the way through my first year of engineering school. By th...

NOTE : I’ve been working with an illustrator on the characters in my forthcoming book on balance and thought you might be interested in what we’ve developed. Here’s the cast of characters and a brief introduction to them. Know thy self, know thy enemy. – Sun Tzu , The Art of War This is a book about balance: What disrupts it, what restores it, and how to keep it going. It is also a story, and like any story, it has a cast of characters. Some are friends and fellow travelers. Some are enemies. In the pages of this book you will come to know them well. But first, some introductions.   Al/Alice We are the heroes of this saga, an epic battle not only for balance but literally for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   UnBalancer The villain in our story is the nefarious UnBalancer . UnBalancer is a fearsome and sometimes deadly force. It strives single-mindedly to unseat us, and sometimes it wins the battle – but not, as we’ll see, the war.   Balancer...

There are two ways to live: You can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein I am a miracle worker by trade. Or more precisely, a facilitator of miracles. I state this with humility. My powers are as ordinary as those of the Wizard of Oz, whose only real magic was tricking Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion into beginning a journey out of their self-limiting beliefs. The best trick I’ve found to facilitate miracles is deceptively simple. (Like the Wizard, I, too, sometimes need to be a little deceptive). It’s called the Miracle Question and it goes like this: Imagine that after you finish this essay you do whatever you would normally do with the rest of today. But tonight, while you’re asleep, a strange thing happens: A miracle occurs. This miracle is just for you, and it’s that all your problems and concerns are solved. Wonderful, right? However, there’s a catch. Because the miracle happened while...

NOTE: This article first appeared on lifehack.org , where I am now a columnist. In  P art I  of this two-part series, we looked at what anxiety is and how to tell if you or someone close to you is suffering from an anxiety disorder. Now let’s explore the causes of anxiety disorders and the treatments for them. We’ll also delve into the best self-help strategies anxiety sufferers can practice themselves and how their friends and families can help. Types of people who are prone to anxiety disorders The causes of anxiety disorders are not completely understood, but most people I’ve worked with seem to have one or more of the following: a more sensitive temperament, to have suffered events that felt traumatic to them early in life, and to have endured a period of stressful situations. The combination of these factors brought them to a tipping point that created an anxiety disorder. Specific risk factors for anxiety disorders include: Childhood trauma, such as abuse, neglect...

NOTE: This post first appeared on lifehack.org , where I am now a columnist. “Anxious” is a word with two faces. Sometimes it means eager excitement. “I’m anxious to see you!” we say, as we get off the phone with a friend who’s coming to visit. The other side of “anxious” is a bit darker: “I’m anxious about that test,” we say, when we’re worried about the results. We call the second meaning “anxiety,” and most of us experience it from time to time. In common usage, both meanings of “anxious” describe our responses to fleeting, time-limited events. But  anxiety can also have a much more powerful grip on many of us. Without the right kind of attention, it can rule our lives. I’m a psychotherapist in private practice north of Boston, Massachusetts, and I’ve worked with many clients who have anxiety. In this, the first of two articles on a psychotherapist’s views on anxiety, I’ll describe what anxiety is and how you can tell whether you or someone close to you is suffering from it...

For many years, people have pointed out that my Flower Mandalas must have been influenced by the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe – which, of course, was not lost on me. But it was not until I traveled to Santa Fe and then north to Abiquiu and nearby Ghost Ranch that I understood how deep that influence was. I feel more at home and at peace (and at the same time, as the Brits say, gobsmacked ) in this painted landscape than anywhere I’ve been on the planet, and I can see why O’Keeffe kept coming back, year after year, until she was finally able to put down a permanent stake there. Here are a few more of the images I shot on a too-brief journey up Route 84 into Georgia O’Keeffe country after attending the Creativity and Madness conference in Santa Fe.         More anon, David P.S. If you find what you read here helpful, please forward it to others who might, too. Or click one of the buttons below. Books : Paths to Wholeness: Fifty-Two Flower Manda...