Philosophy?? And Carving???

Mark Yundt as some of you know has been very active on the WCI Forum over the last several years. He now has a blog in partnership with Doris Fiebig (in my Blog List) and I highly recommend it. In addition to being a wonderful artist and carver, he is also one of the most interesting and fearless folks I've ever talked to with respect to general philosophy, symbology, meaning, and life principles. Doris too has some excellent writings in their blog on "learning to see".

Mark has encouraged me to take up and run with my stated goals for this blog and has asked - where I will begin? Honestly - I don't know. That question has stumped me. I have stated my interests, I have given some insight into what resonates with me, and I have stated my interest in beginning to think and intuit more deeply about myself, art, carving, the world around me, etc. "Where do I start?" Hmm...I don't know how to answer that other than to pick a "start" and see where it leads.

So - I will partly abdicate that decision, by choosing to start with reading and thinking about some writings of someone whom Mark suggested I read. Paul Brunton was a philosopher who lived between 1898 - 1981 and wrote extensively about what he called "The Overself." You can read more about Paul Brunton in Wikipedia here, and his writing about "inspiration and the overself" here. The writings I am starting with come from "The Notebooks" (The Notebooks are copyright © 1984-1989, The Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation.) Hopefully - the main focus of this exercise will be on how these writings relate to creativity, artistic expression, and carving.
Mark of course approaches these topics from a solid base of thinking and intuiting (I assume) and as a serious FT Professional artist (woodcarver). I on the other hand approach this as a total amateur and novice woodcarver who has dabbled with artistic expression over the years (music performance, acting, writing, photography) and now as a long term (4 years) novice woodcarver. I am inviting Mark and anyone else who finds this interesting to jump in and participate via the comments and/or links back to your own blog (where you have the ability to post your own photos and can perhaps be more extensive in your posts).

Some ground rules. The challenge is how to explore these ideas with out getting lost and hyperverbose (which I tend to do) and losing your - the reader's / participant's - interest. I am writing this blog partly as a selfish exercise in "journaling" and to spark my own growth and creativity, but I do hope that other will find enough interest in these topics to both follow along and hopefully participate via the comments. I would like this to be an exercise in "dialogue" (in the sense as discussed by Peter Senge in "The Fifth Discipline" - where we hold up ideas for examination and commentary without the need to try to passionately prove to one another other the idea's validity or lack thereof) as opposed to "debate" where the spirit is more one of trying to convince everyone else that I am right and they are wrong. That said folks should feel free to ask pointed questions and challenge each others thinking without feeling like it will be taken as a personal attack.

So with that, my next post will be based on my beginning reading of Paul Brunton's writings as posted here. There is a LOT of material in this, so this could take some time and I (we?) WILL probably stray off into tangents at times. Or maybe we'll peter out on this topic and move on. That's cool. Plus, I may need to get more adept with the blog's tools in order to keep these posts organized, so be patient.

For now - that's all. I'll try to post my first post on this topic by next weekend.
Cheers!