A Way of Being

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From the Publisher: A Way of Being was written in the early 1980s, near the end of Carl Rogers's career, and serves as a coda to his classic On Becoming a Person. Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another. Although we may struggle to understand or accept the ways in which some people live, they are doing the best that they can with the situations they are facing.

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin: 9780593652886

A Way of Being, more personal and philosophical than his earlier writings, was written in the early 1980s, near the end of his distinguished career. Can I resonate to what he is saying so deeply that I sense the meanings he is afraid of, yet would like to communicate, as well as those he knows?I refer to self-forgiveness in a similar sense to the Buddhist idea of maitrī (sanskrit), commonly translated as loving-kindness or unconditional love, but with a specific focus on the self here. The Actualising Tendency does not only operate within the Organismic Self (who we “truly” are), but also in line with our Self-Concept. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.

A Way of Being by Carl R. Rogers | Goodreads

I think from now on I’m going to just be me—rich or poor, good or bad, rational or irrational, logical or illogical, famous or infamous. Your Way of Being needs to demonstrate respect, being prepared to listen, to clarify expetations and confront reality with genuine concern and straight talking. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Both our obsession with control and the illusion of it is clearly evident in society’s approach to accidents, illness and death. What makes Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being great (and it IS great) is not so much the content (though that is extraordinary for sure) as Rick’s own personality and his essence as a man and an artist.But to others, particularly creatives in need of a spur – or anyone in proximity to a client, or loved one, approaching a deadline – The Creative Act has just the right level of confident loftiness to provide succour and useful ways of recontextualising problems. Death therefore represents the ultimate challenge to our sense of control and is viewed as something to be feared and delayed, rather than accepted as a natural cadence in the ebb and flow of life.