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What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul

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In her previous books, Oriah Mountain Dreamer has challenged readers to live with passion and honesty, to embrace the true, fallible, human self. What We Ache For is a moving and eloquent call to delve deeply into our creative selves, to do our creative work, and offer it to the world.

The creative process is essential to human nature. It is as essential as spirituality and sexuality, and in fact all three are deeply intertwined. What We Ache For is a practical book allowing readers to embrace the urgency and necessity of their creativity, whatever their medium -- writing, painting, sculpture, dance, music, or film. As Oriah says, "Doing creative work allows us to follow the thread of what we ache for into a deeper life, offering us a way to cultivate a life of making love to the world."

Following Oriah through this journey in such chapters as "The Seduction of the Artist," "Learning to See," and "Risk and Sacrifice," What We Ache For challenges and inspires readers to fully embrace their artistic selves as a way of forging a path of spiritual unfolding.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

66 people are currently reading
920 people want to read

About the author

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

29 books459 followers
Oriah is first and foremost a story-teller, a lover of words and symbols and the stories that lift our spirits, open our hearts and offer us ways to see patterns and create meaning in our lives. The focus of her life and work has been an on-going inquiry into the Sacred Mystery. Her writing, teaching and personal journey all explore how we can each become the individual we are at the deepest level of being and how we can co-create meaning together in the world. Blending humor, insight and compassion for our human struggles Oriah encourages herself and others to be ruthlessly honest and infinitely kind toward our own strengths and our weaknesses.

Raised in a small community in Northern Ontario, Oriah’s family encouraged her to bring her questions and explorations to the Christian tradition they espoused. At home in the wilderness she was drawn to and at home in the ceremonies and earth-based teachings of the First People’s, eventually teaching and sharing what she learned. Her daily practice includes ceremonial prayer, yoga, meditation and writing. A graduate of Ryerson University’s social work program (Toronto) and a student of Philosophy at the University of Toronto she has facilitated groups, offered classes and counselled individuals for over thirty-five years. The mother of two grown sons, Oriah lives in Toronto, Canada.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Profile Image for Katrina Sark.
Author 12 books44 followers
May 2, 2018
1 – What We Ache For

p.1 – We ache to feel and express the fire of being fully alive. When we cultivate and refuse to separate those essential expressions of a human soul – our spirituality, sexuality, and creativity – we feed the fire of our being.

p.6 – Our sexuality includes all the ways we physically experience and are intimate with another, the world, and ourselves.

p.7 – Our creativity is the soul-deep impulse in all human beings to go beyond the perceptions of the senses to the conception of something new. We begin with what is and make something more of it.

p.13 – Viktor Frankl, survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, urged us in his book Man’s Search for Meaning not to ask what the events of our lives mean but to take responsibility for creating meaning from the events of our lives. There is no inherent explicit connection between the two people whose stories have come to me this week beyond my knowing them both.

p.14 – The Danish writer Isak Dinesen wrote, “All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.” Stories, songs, images help us be with what is. We create as a way to be with what is hard and beautiful and unexpected without closing our hearts or pretending something else is true, as a way of easing the suffering that comes when we fight with or try to hang on to what is. And as we create we make it all 0 the sorrow and the joy, the failed efforts and the places of ease – count. Our stories and images and sounds create, explicate, or point to a deeper meaning that helps us receive, celebrate, and be fed by beauty and bear what is hard.
This is the root of the creative work we do: the desire to intimately touch and share the truth of our lives and our world, to find and follow the sometimes-hidden thread stitching ourselves and our reality into wholeness. Creative work can both reveal and co-create this wholeness from the colors and shapers, textures and tastes of the life that swirls within and around us.

p.15 – Susan Vreeland in her novel The Forest Lover writers about the life of Canadian painter Emily Carr. She writes of the artist’s desire to go “beyond objectivity” to penetrate the heart and spirit of our lives and our world, to see and share what only the soul can see. We create – we write or paint or compose or choreograph, we produce scents and sounds and tastes, images and stories and poems – in order to see who we are, what we value, and why we go on.
It’s what makes us human, this capacity to co-create the truth that sustains us from the stuff of our dreams and our lives. Bruises and battered by the inevitable misfortunes of life, aware of our shortcomings and discouraged by our delusions, distracted by and dissatisfied with the quest to satisfy immediate and temporary needs, we seek redemption in the truth creative work offers us.

p.18 – Writing Exercises: Complete each of the following phrases repeatedly for a set period of time. Replace the word write with one appropriate to your medium of creative expression (paint, compose, dance, play music, etc.)
• When I write, I feel…
• I ache for…
Answer the question: Why do you write?
Write a story that begins with: The smartest/hardest/etc. thing I ever…

2 – Beginnings

p.30 – Just as there are times to acknowledge resistance and keep on walking through it, there are other times when it is more effective to sneak around the resistance, to go at the process sideways. The critical thing is that you begin to do the creative work.

3 – The Seduction of the Artist

p.42 – No matter how far we roam, we always need to return to the places, people, and practices from which we draw inspiration and vitality so we can go out into the world again.

p.55 – For Contemplation: What if no creative work is ever wasted, even when we cannot see where it will lead, even if it is never publicly shared or acknowledged?

p.56 – Notice and begin to list your places of inspiration – the people, settings, and activities that stimulate your imagination and leave you feeling in the mood and energized to do creative work.

4 – Learning to See

p.71 – Being aware is being willing to stay with what is and follow it without expectation, holding an attitude of genuine curiosity and open inquiry.

5 – Doing the Work

p.91 – There is no writer, only writing, no painter, only painting; no composer, only composing. This idea frees us from the sometimes oppressive notion that we make the creative work happen.

7 – Creating Together

p.123 – Creative work is often solitary, but there can be a great sense of camaraderie and support when working in the company of others who share your commitment to the process. Shared silence is a gift too rarely found in our extroverted culture.

10 – The Artist’s Life

p.166 – There are two critical aspects to cultivating a life that supports and encourages the creative work you want to do: an honest assessment of your own human frailties – the ways you are most likely to be derailed in the creative process – and a plan for how to ease your way around them; and the creation of a community of support, relationships that continually midwife you in the creative process.

Creativity flourishes when we combine open, empty fertile times with regular periods of focused intent and disciplined work.

p.168 – A human life is made up essentially of meaningful work and intimate relationships. Whether you receive an income from your creative work or are financially supported to do it by another means, it is at least a part of the meaningful work you are here to do in this lifetime. Cultivating an artist’s life, a life that supports this meaningful work, is largely about creating relationships with yourself, others, and the world that support that work.

p.169 – All creative work requires some degree of solitude. We have to know ourselves and have access to our inner world if we are to have anything to bring to the work.

p.176 – Our creativity is not separable from that which feeds body and soul, from the needs and pleasures of living a physical life in a human form that requires relationship with others.

p.178 – The truth is that the more you engage in your creative work, the more you will find yourself surrounded by others who are similarly engaged.

p.181 – The artist’s life is simply an ordinary human life that is consciously choreographed to support ongoing creativity in both you and those around you. The more your choices are coloured and shaped by this commitment, the more you will find yourself in the places where you will meet others who share this commitment. And you will recognize each other, and see yourself in another, and create for yourself a community of the heart.
Profile Image for Laura Cunha.
543 reviews34 followers
February 17, 2020
https://leiturasdelaura.blogspot.com/...

SPOILER FREE

A autora canadense Oriah Montain Dreamer é uma antiga paixão minha. Ela é provavelmente a única autora do estilo auto ajuda que consigo ler sem revirar os olhos e que, preciso dizer, realmente gosto do trabalho.

Como boa fã, já li tudo, absolutamente tudo o que existe disponível no Brasil dela. Não sei porque demorei tanto tempo a procurar seus livros no kindle, mas é verdade que cometi essa falha. Em compensação, já tenho tudo disponível dela em e-book, inclusive todos os livros dela que já li e que, por diversos motivos já foram doados, trocados ou dados de presente para quem precisava. Minha casa e minha alergia também agradecem a troca pelos livros virtuais, claro.

Então, What we ache for é o único livro dessa leva que eu ainda não havia lido. A autora não é prolixa, não é daqueles autores que reciclam seu próprio material para fazer mil e um livros sem nenhuma novidade dentro. Mais um motivo para gostar dela, claro.

Dessa vez, Oriah trata do tema criatividade artística, o que me surpreendeu porque não lembro de nada parecido nos outros livros dela, que são bem mais voltados para a espiritualidade e o dia a dia. Por ela ser uma seguidora do xamanismo tradicional canadense, seus livros sobre o assunto são realmente interessantes e indico para quem quiser ler sobre isso, que realmente não tem tanto material disponível.

Daí descobri que a mulher há anos conduz workshops de escrita criativa, e What we ache for é recheado de técnicas para isso, além de tratar a parte pessoal da criatividade. Oriah sendo maravilhosa como é, abre o livro explicando que as técnicas que ela vai sugerir são voltadas para a escrita, mas podem ser adaptadas a outros meios de criação artísticas, com alguns exemplos.

Talvez eu seja enviesada para falar do seu trabalho, mas Oriah sempre me agrada e esse livro não foi diferente. Aqui ela trata de técnicas para trabalhar a criatividade, mas ela não deixa de abordar os problemas e dificuldades, com lindos exemplos pessoais, como de costume. Aliás, esse é um dos pontos dos seus textos que eu mais gosto, porque a torna humana. Não há nada mais motivador que perceber que mesmo pessoas incríveis tem problemas e defeitos e tudo bem, continuam sendo incríveis. Não estou falando de coisas imperdoáveis, claro. Artistas pedófilos, racistas e misóginos não são pessoas incríveis.

Indico para qualquer um que faça arte, de forma profissional ou não, e se gostar, pode ler todo o resto dela disponível em português, infelizmente What we ache for ainda não foi traduzido.
Profile Image for Deanna Kawatski.
Author 7 books15 followers
May 19, 2009
I'm just sinking into this book. I like Oriah Mountain Dreamer's voice. She reminds me of the things I've already learned in my creative life, but her book has arrived when I need a nudge.
Profile Image for Holly Weiss.
Author 6 books124 followers
July 25, 2010
I salute Oriah Mountain Dreamer for getting to the root of the matter concerning self expression. Her book helped me greatly during the writing of my debut novel, CRESTMONT,published May 2010. She addresses many pitfalls and fears concerning any mode of creativity...and provides much needed encouragement.
Profile Image for Mary.
83 reviews3 followers
October 12, 2019
I cannot disagree with the reviewers who said that this is a fluffy sort of book. I will add that most of the advice in here is fairly standard, so if you have read much about establishing a writing practice (or other type of creative practice), you're not likely to learn anything new. However, the information in the book was kindly presented and framed in such a way that some (enough) of it reached me where I am right now.

I know this is a pretty useless review, because I don't know where anyone else is right now, and you don't know where I am. All I can say is that this book is the kind of thing you might like even if you don't usually like that kind of thing, but really, who knows?
Profile Image for R.K. Goff.
Author 12 books12 followers
June 28, 2012
I'm not sure I learned all that much about creativity, or how to be creative, but this was just a beautiful and pleasant book to read. It's like walking in to an auditorium thinking you'll be hearing a lecture and then relaxing to a beautiful music concert. I enjoyed it.
Profile Image for Yaaresse.
2,151 reviews16 followers
August 18, 2017
Am I the only person who will admit to finding this a bunch of insufferable, fluffy-fluffy, saccharine wanabe-woowoo? It's like being force-fed a mountain of cotton candy, the bright pink kind with the neon colors-not-found-in-nature rainbow sparkles that makes your teeth ache.
Profile Image for Tracie Momie.
Author 17 books23 followers
April 17, 2020
The book contains a lot of gems and a-ha moments but on some levels, I couldn’t relate with the soul searching aspect of tapping into creativity because for me it has always been like second nature. Creating and breathing for me are synonymous and I am usually able to find my creative rhythm rather quickly and when I can’t.....I just step away until I’m inspired again. I’ve never gone on a deep quest for inspiration, I just let the muse find me when she’s ready.

One of my favorite passages regarding giving up: “Don’t even allow the thought of throwing it away. Isn’t life already too short, over too soon for all that waits to unfold within us? Fight for it. Reach for it, if not for yourself then those who come after us for all of our children. Don’t.” Yes to all of this!! 🙌🏾

The author also shares ideas for sparking creativity like developing creative practice, sitting in silence, working together, etc. And I should mention this book isn’t just for writers....painters, composers, designers etc. can glean some inspiration from it.

For me, the most impactful pieces of the book were where the author talked about observing life more closely to strengthen her writing. I want to get better at sensory writing and got some pretty good insight on how to make that happen.

Overall worth the time but just be aware that the author connects our creativity to our spirituality and sexuality so there are many mixed messages throughout along with “assignments” at the end of each chapter.
Profile Image for Adèle Robbertze (Green).
Author 17 books86 followers
September 3, 2018
This for writers! The end left me empty and aching❤️ because my soul was fed. In my head remains Oriah’s voice which during dark dry spells will inspire and guide my creativity. I am grateful for the subtle beauty that lingers like a flavour of consciousness as if listening to Mozart. My respect for this author has deepened as she awoke an ancient dormant archetype within. If you love words this is a must read.
Profile Image for Alicia .
231 reviews2 followers
April 5, 2022
I found this helpful for life as well as engaging in creative practice. Although the author wisely doesn’t read reviews, I’m thankful to her for the honesty. The concept of stillness and incorporating rest were reinforced throughout. Something challenging for balancing the impulse to work on projects in less than meaningful ways. Each chapter has handy jumping off points for writers as well.
Profile Image for Tree Langdon.
Author 3 books12 followers
August 3, 2017
a guide to deepening your spirituality that touched my soul.
Profile Image for Cindy.
543 reviews1 follower
October 1, 2019
This book would be perfect for the person looking for tips and poignant stories in order to get the creative juices flowing again. It's well-written and thoughtful in my opinion.

Profile Image for Wendy Lu.
813 reviews26 followers
June 14, 2022
definitely brought up a few things for me to chew on, but by far the most helpful thing about this book for me is that it's existence (a whole book on the act of creation!) is very validating
Profile Image for Alicia.
47 reviews30 followers
May 20, 2013
The author has geared her writing towards the artist more specifically the writer but the principles would hold true to any of the art forms. The tone is extremely gentle. There's no cheer-leading here just advise, tools and ideas. Pg. 142: "Assume that in the after life you will be allowed to keep one memory from this life and to live forever within it. Which memory would you choose?" Pg. 159: "Remember, there is one word you are here to say with your whole being.When it finds you, give your life to it. Don’t be tight-lipped and stingy. Spend yourself completely on the saying." ----- Not a read you'll want to rush through give yourself time here and linger at the end of each chapter.
Profile Image for Kara Emily.
6 reviews26 followers
May 17, 2016
Excellent book which blends the emotional saliency and drive to be a writer with the logical, imperative steps to actually get there and do the work. I have always struggled with setting personal writing goals and actually setting out to achieve them. If I had read this book a decade ago, it would have been 'pretty' but it wouldn't have changed much about my life. Much like anything, you get out what you put into it, and this book has absolutely altered my perceptions (positively and usefully) about being a writer and the artist's life.
Profile Image for Jennifer Holik.
Author 57 books10 followers
April 21, 2019
This is a book I read - start and stop - as my soul needs a lift or push to move in a new creative direction. The book can be read at one time or in spurts. It always has something new to give the reader.

Added 21 April 2019... .I read this book again today. It lifted me up and reminded me what I'm here to do. I feel more grounded in my creative work after reading again.
Profile Image for Ratforce.
2,646 reviews
Read
August 29, 2012
Oriah Mountain Dreamer is another author that anyone interested in spirituality and creativity, and how they affect each other, should know. A good place to start is What We Ache For , her most recent title.
Profile Image for Meg.
53 reviews
October 29, 2007
i think you need to be in a certain headspace to really digest What We Ache For, but i think the angle and the execution of the piece is breathtaking.
Profile Image for Paulette.
Author 1 book9 followers
September 8, 2010
Beautiful book about creativity! Practical advice for creative people.
Profile Image for Carly Svamvour.
502 reviews15 followers
February 22, 2011
As always, a great read with a lot of great philosophy and writing advice.

I didn't finish it though - there was nothing there I hadn't read before. I like her other books better.

Profile Image for MountainAshleah.
921 reviews48 followers
July 23, 2012
To date, the absolute best book I've read on the creative process.
5 reviews
January 20, 2013
Tremendous resource for reflection and exercising your creative muscle!
Profile Image for Sherry ShaRose.
17 reviews10 followers
October 17, 2013
All Oriah's books reach in deep to the soul. She is a gifted, insightful and poetic writer. I've read many of her books.
9 reviews2 followers
January 25, 2015
A must read for anyone pursuing a life of creativity or authentic expression.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews

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