We want both creativity and mental health

Eric Maisel, PhD notes that using a mindfulness strategy to become more centered may be "fighting nature," but thinks "That isn’t to say that it isn’t a good thing to fight nature.

"For instance, you want productive obsessions but you don’t want the kind of unmediated manias that caused Virginia Woolf to crack on three separate occasions.

"You want the existential questioning of a Tolstoy or a Van Gogh but you don’t want the debilitating depressions.

"There is a way to be that is passionate, wild, and productive but that isn’t also self-destructive, painful, and despairing. Can that 'balance' actually be struck in real life?

"Whether it can or it can’t, it is the prize upon which each creative person ought to keep his eye: great creativity and mental health in the same package!"

Eric Maisel, PhD - from interview Ten Zen Seconds for Purpose, Power and Calm - about his new book.
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