From renowned writer and poet Oriah Mountain Dreamer, author of the bestselling The Invitation, The Dance and The Call, comes a practical and inspiring book that explores creativity as a way of accessing and cultivating a spiritually rich life. 'The creative process,' Oriah Mountain Dreamer says, '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 (taken from the second line of the poem, The Invitation) is a practical book allowing readers to embrace the urgency and necessity of their creativity whether their medium is painting, sculpture, dance, or music. Oriah's passion is writing, and it is that talent which informs the book and its exercises but the exercises provide readers with a new way to approach their own passions. Following Oriah through this journey, readers learn how to fully embrace their artistic selves as well as forging a new spiritual path. What We Ache For is the practical thread that ties together all of Oriah's previous work and allows the reader to fully participate in an inspiring and revelatory way.

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What We Ache For
Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul

Chapter One

What We Ache For

We ache to touch intimately what is real, to find the marriageof meaning and matter in our lives and in the world. 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, we find that place where thesoul and the sensuous meet, we unfold. Willing to do our creativework and refusing to separate it from our sexuality or our spirituality,we add a life-sustaining breath to the world.

Yesterday I received news about two people seeking death. One, the elderly mother of a dear friend, declares repeatedly to those at her bedside that she is ready to go, finished with life in a body that seems to be failing by painfully slow incremental steps. Her son, my friend, writes to me of her struggle to leave. Sometimes she verbally rambles, sometimes she lucidly recalls old songs and stories. Mostly she is quiet, waiting. She lies in bed refusing to eat, willing herself to go, spasms running through her limbs from the effort of trying to leave her body, only to find one breath following another and another, continuing against her will.

The other is an old friend who was briefly a lover many yearsago, a gifted architect in his late sixties who, despite being wellloved by his wife and children as well as many friends, has struggledwith depression for years. He disappeared four days ago, andthose closest to him fear that he has lost his fight with some innerdarkness and has jumped unnoticed from the ferry near hishome, has been swallowed by the watery darkness of a Januarynight.

Both bits of news arrived yesterday but only reached me today.Sometimes it takes time for unwelcome information to find a wayaround the defenses of daily living. This morning I said prayersfor the man and the woman and for those who love them andwent about my business. But this afternoon, as I drove homefrom picking up eggs and milk in the village nearby, I noticed theway the crimson light of the setting sun seemed to set the icecoveredtrees at the side of the road on fire. Something in this impossiblemarriage of fire and ice made the muscles of my chesttighten. And these stories of death finally penetrated my body. Myskin flashed hot and I was drenched in sweat, and then a bonedeepchill swept through me as I thought of the sought-afterdeaths: one, the feverish exertion of trying to leave the body; theother, a cold end in black water. The words of the Robert Frostpoem "Fire and Ice" ran through my mind.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I felt how often we are headed in the wrong direction, fightingthe wrong fight, battling with reality and losing. I thought of theaspects of myself that are like this woman and this man: how Istrive over and over again to determine something with my willdespite all the evidence that it is simply not up to me; how Isometimes mistake surrender for giving up and giving over tothat which would rob me of life. To the woman, to the willful aspectof myself, I want to say, "Let go. Let it be as it is. Even thisyou cannot make happen as you think it should, and if you keeptrying, the ease you long for will continue to elude you, and youand those who love you will suffer. It is not your life but simplyLife, and it will take its own time, follow its own rhythm." To theman, to the part of me that at times, if only for a moment, has feltthe icy chill of despair that comes when I realize I am once againnot handling well what life has given me, I want to say, "Don't.Don't even allow the thought of throwing it away. Isn't life alreadytoo short, over too soon for all that waits to unfold within us?Fight for it. Reach for it, if not for yourself, then for those whocome after us, for all of our children. Don't."

I wonder and am somewhat dismayed at how often we hang onwhere we need to let go and give up where we need to persevere.

I am surprised by how deeply I am touched by these two stories.Connection make us vulnerable to grief and loss even as itoffers us the intimacy that heals and sustains us. As I read my friend's letter I think of my own sons and know how much itmust mean to this woman to have her son with her as she dies.And I think of my mother and remember that whatever else istrue of our relationships with our mothers, they have been thevery ground of our physical existence, and so their passing mustsend a tremor through the emotional earth upon which we stand,must leave us bereft in some fundamental way even when we cananticipate and accept the inevitability of the loss.

Waiting to hear if they have found the body of the man Ionce knew, I am surprised at how past intimacy makes this lossseem immediate despite the fact that we have had only minimalcontact in recent years. I have had other friends die but neverone with whom I made love. I don't know why this makes adifference, but it does ...

What We Ache For
Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul. Copyright © by Lawrence Oriah. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Excerpted from What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul by Oriah Mountain Dreamer Staff
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