{"id":1247,"date":"2013-11-02T16:35:33","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T20:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2013-11-02T16:40:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T20:40:52","slug":"art-for-me-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2013\/11\/art-for-me-part-i.html","title":{"rendered":"Art, for me: Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Art<\/p>\n

30,000′, Boston to Albuquerque<\/span><\/strong>
\nCopyright 2013 David J. Bookbinder<\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up, I was a kid scientist, apprehending my part of the cosmos through experiments first with magnets and electricity, soon thereafter with chemistry,\u00a0 and by high school with electronics and model rockets. I identified math and science as my strengths, and my family and I both assumed I would grow up to be some kind of engineer; I hoped to work for NASA.<\/p>\n

By the time I reached college, it became clear to me that I had grown up lopsided, my logical left brain dominating. The catalyst for realizing this was the poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell<\/em>, by William Blake, which I read in a freshman English class. “Those who restrain desire,” Blake wrote, “do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain’d it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.”<\/p>\n

I had, I understood, been living the shadow of desire. I set about to change all that, and to the extent I have balanced left brain and right, art and science, I credit Blake with getting me started.<\/p>\n

Has some kind of art — visual, performance, expressive — had a significant influence on you? Let us know!<\/p>\n

More anon,
\n– David
\nDavid J. Bookbinder, LMHC<\/p>\n

Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas essays:<\/strong> WattPad<\/a>
\nDiscussion:<\/strong> Facebook Flower Mandalas page<\/a>
\nSubscribe to the <\/strong>Flower Mandalas mailing list<\/a>
\nRequest the 15 Flower Mandalas screensaver:<\/strong> Fifteen Flower Mandalas<\/a><\/p>\n

Text and images \u00a9 2013, David J. Bookbinder. All rights reserved.
\nPermission required for publication. Images available for licensing<\/a>.
\nflowermandalas.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30,000′, Boston to Albuquerque Copyright 2013 David J. Bookbinder Growing up, I was a kid scientist, apprehending my part of the cosmos through experiments first with magnets and electricity, soon thereafter with chemistry,\u00a0 and by high school with electronics and model rockets. I identified math and science as my strengths, and my family and I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15,29,14,154,119,2,3,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-autobiography","category-copyright","category-creativity","category-essay","category-fifty-two-flower-mandalas","category-flower-mandalas","category-healing","category-mandalas","category-transformation"],"yoast_head":"\nArt, for me: Part I - Flower Mandalas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2013\/11\/art-for-me-part-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Art, for me: Part I - Flower Mandalas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"30,000′, Boston to Albuquerque Copyright 2013 David J. 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Bookbinder"},"description":"I am a psychotherapist, photographer, digital artist, and writer living near Boston, Massachusetts. As a therapist, I work primarily with artists, children and families, and people with addictive behaviors. Like Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, I believe art can be a pathway to the essential Self and foster personal and global transformation.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.flowermandalas.org"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/author\/dbookbinder"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1253,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}