In the physical sciences, we think the only world we know is what can be measured. But the creative lives in another realm. This realm, this ‘Other world’ slips into our day-to-day world in various ways—striking images, moments of exquisite beauty, intense dreams. It slips into our language through metaphor.
Blog
Poison oak blisters and teaching
I learned early in my career that I can teach and be in front of a group when I’m not feeling well or I’m sick. The example that’s forever etched into my memory is when I was hired to teach a day-long seminar at UC Berkeley. And I just happened to have gnarly poison oak [ Read more … ]
Head Knowing versus Heart Knowing
Every week, I get lots of suggestions from well-meaning folks for books they think I might be interested in, videos to watch, articles, and so forth that seem related to the work that I do. Since I work with imagery and metaphor, I get a plethora of suggestions for books and articles about imagery, metaphor, [ Read more … ]
Metaphoric Wisdom is a Magic Potion
Information overload and burnout are common problems for most of us. But when we spend time dwelling in the language of metaphor, we’re not stuffing data into our heads. We’re simply relying on the wisdom of metaphor to show us the way…by tapping into a deep source of innate ancient wisdom. Metaphoric images take us [ Read more … ]
Fundamental Change Depends on our Capacity to Engage with Metaphor
Metaphor is at the core of nearly every scientific breakthrough throughout history, and celebrated scientists like Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein relied on metaphor to help them make new discoveries. At all levels of society—personal, cultural, scientific, social, political—fundamental change depends upon our ability to engage with metaphor. Aristotle claimed that his soul [ Read more … ]