Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

December, 2013

For the Heaven of It

Play is fun, and creativity as play is fun, is heaven. It’s not done “for the hell of it.” That was from a time when the Protestant Ethic ruled, and if it was fun, there must be something wrong with it. Duty and work were unpleasant in the old days, at least in the minds […]

Posted in Foolin Around, History, Play and Spontaneity, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

Psychotherapy (?)

Let’s ignore this caricature of psychoanalysis. (Really, only a very tiny fraction of psychotherapists work this way.) I included this comic strip to illustrate the idea that many people seeking “help” really want a simple answer that liberates them from any self-doubt. Their capacity to call themselves into question—their inclination to do so—is minimal. This […]

Posted in Psychological Literacy, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, Social-Depth Psychology (Sociometry) | No Comments »

Play as the Basis for Innovation

As work shifts from mechanical repetition to innovation, what it takes to promote innovation becomes clear: Play. Some essential elements in playfulness involve exploration, experimentation, and doing so with optimal freedom from fear of failure. This state of mind in turn opens to inspiration. (Inspiration tends to happen far less often when there is any […]

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Keep Believing, Keep Pretending

There is a little verse is at the end of the 1980s Muppet Movie in which the melody of the Rainbow Connection is once again sung as a reprise: “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we set out to do, Just like the lovers, the […]

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How Life Goes

I find the diagram known as the Shree Yantra to be a profound one that I use to exercise my imagination. In the following freehand drawing, I note within each triangle its own sort-of maze. What this symbolizes for me is this. The eight central triangles and the one that weaves them together is the […]

Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »

A Component “Next Step”

What is illustrated below is Task 4b: This shows how multi-contextual paradigms are affected by shifting aesthetic criteria. It was not really possible to reveal this task to any member of humanity until now, as the species as a whole was rather immature, and many of the concepts thus named in this task were really […]

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Making Meaning

I’ve participated in the Network for Personal Meaning, and a recent email from Dr. Wong, who heads up that group reminded me of some thoughts I’ve had about this topic. Personal meaning emerges largely as a feeling, like feeling secure in one’s home. It can also be stifled by a childhood of great insecurity. But […]

Posted in Mind-Spectrums, Psychological Literacy, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »

Two-Thirds Human!

Yes, imagine that I am indeed 2/3 human! More, I’ve established credentials, so that makes me okay. All this is to compensate for the part that most folks don’t understand: I’m 1/3 elf. Now let’s just say that I have imagined myself in this fictional but meaningful story. I would daresay that whatever we imagine […]

Posted in Autobiographical, Foolin Around, Psychology, World of Almost-Real | No Comments »

Elf-Origins

In a story told by Cyrano de Bergerac titled “Voyage to the Moon”,” illustrated by P. Craig Russell in 1991—I found it in a new age comic book among a number of rather painfully dark other stories—Cyrano relates his visit to the moon and adventures there. One element was a meeting with a being from […]

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Trans-Dimensional Christmas Ornament

Dear Christmas Pal, I’m sending you a trans-dimension C’mas tree ornament, which you may choose to color with sparkle pens. It might be useful to appreciate the provenance of this drawing. It is a two-dimensional projection of a five-dimensional object that expresses the promise of the “star” over the tree. The tree is an arrow […]

Posted in Art (Mandalas, Doodles, Scripts), Foolin Around, World of Almost-Real | 4 Comments »

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