Facets of a Diamond – Blog

“Revelation,” Emerson wrote, “is the disclosure of the soul.”*

To go to the soul – of the composer, of the poet, of the painter, of the sufferer, of every thing and every one – this alone will lead to Revelation. To find the soul and reveal it to the world. Especially the soul of the mother,

Think back to a time just a few thousand years ago. Talking, writing (such as it was) and music-making was with friends. Now it is usually with strangers.

Who am I writing this to? I don’t know you. And who am I? You don’t know me.

How differently, more openly and lovingly, we sing to friends than

I start each day with two forms of meditation. One is quiet. The other is active: say, painting, writing or singing.

Mother is a Verb.

“Mother is a verb, while Daughter can be nothing but a noun.” ‹1›

Here am I on my birthday, thinking of, invoking, my mother. Oh, how she verbed me!

I need a son verb. More—I need to be it! To love her as I Know she loved me. Until then,

Imagine Henry Moore walking along Seven Sisters beach as he did so often. Thousands and thousands little rocks everywhere. He is drawn to one, attracted by it.

This morning, just after waking, I recalled this incident at a seminar on “medical intuition:” A doctor who admitted he used intuition in his psychiatric practice was asked by the speaker whether he had told his colleagues.

It was the beginning of a seminar I was conducting in London. I looked at the audience. To nearly all of them I was a stranger as they were to me. I could feel their tension and uncertainty as they sat there clutching their pads and pencils, ready to write down every word I

The humane person, the true philanthropist, is the person of virtue. And what is virtue? Socrates declared that virtue is knowledge. (Conversely, wrongdoing is only due to ignorance – “no one [knowingly] wishes evil,” he declared in Plato’s Dialogues).

Knowledge of what? “Of his own and his fellows’ nature.”[1] The knowledge of our own

William Blake’s “mind-forg’d manacles”* instantly cause me to think of obstetric forceps which when applied incorrectly (a common problem, at least in my experience) distort the baby’s head and thus its brain. And then I think of the need for them: the tight and twisted passage into our world. Unlike the other primates, a big

The great poet and artist William Blake believed that “we all live surrounded by hosts of spirits, that there is no real division between this world and the next.”[1] Hence, his wife, Catherine, remarked, “I have little of Mr. Blake’s company; he is always in Paradise.” (As I believe she was, too.)

With