Recently, I wrote a review of a book entitled "Gates of Fire" from my new favorite author Steven Pressfield. My post must have caught the eye of his publicist because she emailed me back inquiring if I desired to ask the renowned author a couple of questions. Of course, I was flattered, and I agreed. To my suprise she even sent me a copy of his work entitled "The War of Art." My good friend and colleague Ben Komanapalli informed me there was a lot of buzz in leadership circles about this book. At this point, I was giddy with joy. Having received the book in the mail, I decided to wait and read it on may way to Haiti. By the way the mission trip to Haiti was awesome. The country is in need of one thing --Leadership training. Anyway, when I settled in on the plane leaving JKF I picked up the book and could not put it down. The book was so engaging. I read it from cover to cover in 2-hours. The book was awesome; and here are the questions I asked Steven after reading it:
In your book “The War of Art” you address the opposition we face in attempting to “completing our creative goals” could you explain why this monolithic internal opposition is so prevalent in humanity?
In The War of Art, I say that it's a clash between the Higher Self and the Lower Self, the small Ego. That's the closest I can come to something that satisfies me. It may be a little too "mystical" for others.
I think that we humans inhabit, as Shakespeare said, a realm somewhere between animal and angel. We're pulled in both directions. I believe that certain "laws" obtain on this earthbound dimension (death is real, individuals are separate from each other, time and space are real, the most powerful emotion is fear) that do not apply on the dimension above us. In that dimension (where the Greeks would have said the gods live), death is not real (the gods live forever), time and space are malleable (the gods travel "swift as thought") and the predominant emotion is not fear but love.
Though we are all here in this material, timebound dimension, I believe we somehow retain "memories" or "visions" of that higher dimension--and that a part of us, our best part, aspires to return there somehow. That's why, when someone in this earthbound dimension acts in accordance with the laws of the higher dimension (a soldier, say, who throws his body onto a hand grenade to save his buddies), we are moved profoundly by that act and we bestow our highest awards and honors on the person who performed it.
So, by this theory, our better parts aspire to rise to higher levels, to write the novel we know is inside us, compose the symphony, fight the good fight against evil ... but at the same time we are opposed by our baser, cynical, self-centered selves. Of course the lower will always resist the higher. If the higher wins, the lower is not only out of a job but is disgraced and rendered meaningless.
Do feel all fundamentals lack creativity? What about the great artist and thinkers who have come out of the fundamental camps – C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, J.R.R. Tolkien? Are they anomalies?
2) I would disagree with you that C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and J.R.R. Tolkien are fundamentalists. On the contrary, they are highly cultured, highly individuated artists who have thought deeply about the problems of the human condition and have arrived at their philosophical and spiritual positions through a long and rigorous process of investigation, meditation and rumination.
The fundamentalist (as I define him, anyway) does the opposite. He stops thinking. He surrenders his free will and his capacity for reflection and deliberation. Instead he swallows whole some externally-derived doctrine or belief system (Communism, fascism, free-market capitalism, etc. etc.) and becomes an unthinking robot in its service.
I admire the hell out of the three artists you've cited above.
Do you feel satisfied once you overcome hindrances to writing/our goals? Would you term this self-actualization/purpose or is this just a step on the right path?
3) Great question. I do feel satisfied. In fact I would say that no other act is truly satisfying other than that. And to me it's a step along the way. I'm not sure where the way is going, but it does seem to trend, I think, toward greater awareness of one's own self and the potential within oneself--but with the paradoxical element that what we learn about our individual selves brings us closer to other people, so that the more we become the unique individuals we were born to be and the more we produce the unique contributions that only we can contribute, the more we admire others on the same path and the more communion we feel with them.
