Publisher's Description:
For centuries, spirituality has told us that the answer to life’s problems lies within us, if only we would realize that we are more than what we imagine. Now, scientific understanding is showing us the way. For humans, anxiety is the background “fever” that never breaks but can often get much worse. Whether the causes are individual, relational, cultural, or pandemic problems, when they occur, they affect our ability to live a joyful and creative life. This often means getting mired in uncontrolled mind loops and incessant circular thinking, making us feel helpless and stuck. In this book, Jaime Pineda shows how the dynamics of anxiety and incessant rumination reflect uncontrolled creativity, and how using simple, time-tested techniques we can learn to control the chaos and recover our creative nature.
The key to the solution is to understand that the intellect only helps to some extent, but by itself cannot solve its own problem. What we need is a mind that can, in a nonjudgmental way, distance itself from the thought patterns that trap us. We are born with an incredible, original mind that quickly becomes obscured by the fever of fear and anxiety. But we can recover this mind quickly. Pineda teaches us how to recognize the basic problem and find the solution through a series of steps and techniques that help bring us out of the loops and recover a cleaner mindset that enables us to move beyond the static of anxiety.
Related poem by the author:
"Creativity"
Synchrony
Of conscious and
Non conscious awareness,
Like the Big Bang,
Produces a magical moment.
It is a spark of creativity.
A moment when the world feels right,
Beautiful,
Purposeful,
Intelligent.
It brings profound joy
As part of daily life,
Alongside the 10,000 things
That absorb the mind
In creative living.
Related blog posts:
Some references in the book:
The Brain’s Autopilot Mechanism Steers Consciousness
Freud’s notion of a dark, libidinous unconscious is obsolete. A new theory holds that the brain produces a continuous stream of unconscious predictions
www.scientificamerican.com
The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung
Interview with the author:
