Darsie Beck’s new book, “Your Essential Nature: A Practical Guide to Greater Creativity and Spiritual Harmony,” is as much about us, the readers, as it is about him. His part is written: discoveries of practical activities that free his sense of creative purpose. Our part is waiting, with space provided among the pages.
This book shows us how to reach out to the artists and teachers around us and inward to the unique potential within each of us. Through its guidance we find ways to remember who we are and where we want to go, to grow in directions that give us joy and fulfillment. It’s a book about making art, but on a deeper level it is a book about the creativity through which each one of us finds a unique path forward to follow our own journey of discovery and self-discovery.
Beck introduces us to the daily practice he has developed for himself, techniques he has used in teaching art classes for many years, including annual Centrum Workshops in Port Townsend. “The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron, inspired him to begin keeping a morning journal and to start his day with quotes and a walk to sketch.
Beyond that, he has found many other teachers, starting with his famously creative family. His mother, Alison Bard, was gifted as a cook, decorator, parent and hostess. His aunts Mary Bard Jensen and Betty MacDonald were gifted authors. His grandmother Sidney Bard painted. From Winston Churchill to Frederick Franck and Wayne Dyer, Beck has assembled a team whose gifts he admires and learns from. Beck suggests ways for us to think about our own teachers and provides space for us to write reflections as we begin to single out the gift each teacher has that we want to emulate.
Part motivational, part inspirational and part a practical workbook, “Your Essential Nature” is beautifully illustrated with Beck’s sketches and studded with quotations from his favorite writers and teachers. This book offers to partner with the reader and usher us into new beginnings as we follow Beck’s roadmap.
It is a helpful, beautiful, joyful book that meets us halfway through the thickets of overwhelm and shows us ways to heal, center and grow. It promises to help us remember and integrate all of the best beginnings we have experienced throughout our lives, so that we can move onward with awareness and a sense of purpose. In a time of social stress, economic decline and international warfare, this book offers wholeness and hope. It has already become part of my mornings, like an old friend.
— Rayna Holtz is a librarian at the Vashon Library.
