danglenn

Come as You Will Be

Reflections on Reaching Midlife in the Eleventh Hour

Originally written and published in August 2020.

They came to our house wearing masks—dressed in costumes as rock stars, writers, a playboy bunny, and even an alien. “Come as you might have been” was the theme of the party, and as an eight-year-old, I watched (and recorded on our old school camcorder) with curious amusement as my father and his friends celebrated/lamented his fortieth birthday.

I made the decision that “for kids” (that would be, for me—my sister was too young to really participate), the party’s theme was “come as you will be.” I got decked out and made a costume switch halfway through the party because I couldn’t decide between jazz musician and detective. For half the party I paraded around with my saxophone and for the other half I wore some kind of trench coat and carried around a notebook.

They gave him joke gifts: a mug with “Over the Hill” written on it and another that said “Life Begins at Forty,” some disgusting looking fiber cereal that was surely discontinued before the end of the 1980s, a Grateful Dead t-shirt that was apparently “wild” by my dad’s mature professional standards. Despite the party being innocent, silly fun, the message I received watching all of this was clear: by the time you’re forty, all you can do is look back at your life from your secure, professional vantage point and joke about the former idealistic version of yourself you abandoned when you decided to get serious and become a real adult.

Next week, I will turn forty. My life is very different than my father’s was when he went through his rite of passage. I don’t have children or own a house, nor am I established in a stable professional life. I’m writing my dissertation for graduate school, am still in a transitory period geographically, and am still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

The world is, obviously, a very different place than it was in 1989, too. To count the ways is far beyond the scope of this essay and you, dear reader, are already well of how different the world is. And as if things weren’t already intense enough before, 2020 has proved merciless in its onslaught.

Of course, my birthday is insignificant amidst people dying of COVID-19, Black people being murdered by police, and the United States teetering on the edge of a full-on fascist dystopia. But hear me out; there is something buried within these fortieth birthday party memories and where I find myself in relationship to them that feels relevant to this decaying world, this apocalyptic eleventh-hour.

Leading up to this milestone birthday, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my life and grappling with a sense of inadequacy for not being more “established” in the ways my father and others in his generation were at this age. Though I feel a sense of pride at not quite having succumbed to conventional life, I also feel like maybe I should have at least written a few books by now. But I try to fiercely resist the internalized Protestant work ethic voice and all its “shoulds,” and of course, the earlier generations’ ideal that by forty, a person should have their 2.5 kids and picket fence, is a fallacy, a banal beast that only even existed in part due to redlining among other privileges afforded the white, middle class. It is, in a sense, the empty void flip side created by systemic oppression.

I have come to recognize that I’ve held an internalized belief that by forty, I was supposed to have it all figured out. Sure, conventional thinking might say that this normalcy and success certainly may be briefly interrupted by something called a “midlife crisis” that people go through when they turn forty or thereabouts. But this narrative would have it that after this quick blip in the radar, they can continue to look back and laugh at their youthful folly—their dreams of wanting to be a poet or musician—with a knowing smile, because real adults give up those foolish dreams.

Come as you might have been. My generation, somewhere on the cusp of Gen X and Millenials, was offered false dreams in our youth—dreams of a stable world, stable work, fifty-year happily-ever-after marriages, “progress,” prosperity, and an increasingly just world. Now very rare is anyone my age who has “achieved” the milestones our parents did when they were our age—not to say, of course, that these markers are necessarily at all desirable, just that as we grew up they were ingrained in our minds as the way things are. Those of us with various degrees (literally or figuratively) of privilege have largely come to recognize the illusions of our supposed carved paths to success, and as the world we knew continues to crumble and the veil of illusion dissolves with it, we are faced with a stark reality that has the looks of a sociopolitical, economic nightmare. To even attempt to come as I might have been is a sheer impossibility, because what I might have been was rooted in delusional visions handed down to me by ghosts of the past.

It is for this reason that as we attempt to salvage a world from the scraps of rubble and build something new—some kind of future of value—it is essential to turn to the voices of Indigenous people, Black people, people of color, queer and trans people, and disabled people. The neoliberal ideals that many of us were indoctrinated into and then witnessed crumble were never a part some people’s worldview. People who have dealt with marginalization and oppression their whole lives have always known that the promise of progress, of capitalism, of economic flourishing, or of a “Great America” never truly included them. They have been living in the shambles of stolen land, stolen bodies, and stolen dreams for centuries, and know a thing or two about surviving. Those of us looking around in disbelief at the current state of the world would do well to listen to the wisdom they have to share.

For a while, I thought turning forty wasn’t that big of a deal. Fifty is the new forty, I told myself. I feel younger than I am. But that’s part of the catch—part of the oh shit moment: to feel you are still so young and then to realize, oh shit, even if I’m fortunate enough to live a long life, I may well be more than halfway through it. Or, oh shit, wait, in twenty years I’ll be sixty? That’s…kind of fucked up, wasn’t I just in college? How many creative, productive, physically or mentally sound years do I have left? Obviously, the future is always uncertain and any of us could die tomorrow or suffer a life-altering change of circumstance. That said, there seems to be something about turning forty that awakens the haunting ghost of mortality.

Collectively we find ourselves faced with a similar cold, hard truth. No longer is it only alarmists or doomsday extremists wondering how much time we have left as a species. Talk of apocalypse is mainstream. Between climate change, the current plague and prospects of various future outbreaks, endless wars, technocratic overlords, and the bizarre, surreal sociopolitical reality that has overtaken the United States and other parts of the world, there is a collective “the end may be near” sentiment in the air—and even if it’s more poetic than literal, the oh shit moment has certainly arrived.

My fortieth birthday is not a come as you might have been affair. In keeping with the vision of my eight-year-old self, I am deeming this a come as you will be moment. For all of us. As the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the truths of impermanence and death to a Western/global culture that largely ignored that reality, decimated the economy for years to come, and instantaneously changed so much about how we work, how we spend time with loved ones, and how we move or don’t move through the world, we all have an opportunity right now to fully drop any expectations of who we thought we might be, or who we were told we “should” be. Whether we are reaching midlife (if one can ever be so presumptuous that any point in their life could be confidently deemed the “middle”) or at a different phase in our lives, we are universally experiencing an uncertain future. This is terrifying, and it is also liberating. If you cannot any longer come as you might have been, you have no choice but to come as you will be, or to, perhaps even better, simply come as you are.

Personal and collective transformation are inseparably connected. A focus on psychological or spiritual development will have different phases with different emphases, but it can only go so far without the intention to liberate others. And all the while, we cannot successfully fight fascism or change the world without deep inner work. While the Jungian perspective that midlife can be a catalyst for individuation, or fully becoming who you are, can provide a helpful map, seismic shifts in our worldview and our very being can and do happen at any time in our lives, given the right causes and conditions. If we are feeling shocked, undone, terrified, furious, or confused right now, regardless of our age, it is an opportunity to shed layers of our former selves that are begging to be shed.

So who are you? Who are we beneath the all the ideas about who we should be that have been sewn deeply inside of our psyches by our families, our culture, and the society in which we live? Who we will be is who we already are, but we have to dig deep and uncover it—or perhaps open up and unleash it, set it free. Who will you be in this new post-apocalyptic world? Apocalypse is only the beginning—the Greek root of the word means to unveil, reveal, uncover, disclose—rather than the end of everything. It is the end of the world as we know it, so let’s let it also be the end of our false dreams as we know them.

How do we do this? I wonder if eight-year-old me has left us a clue with the jazz musician and detective roles that he aspired to, as potential archetypes or models that we could draw from as we move forward into the unknown. The creativity of the jazz musician, more so than any other kind of musician, is expressed through improvisation. Using the structure provided by the composer and the rhythm section as a foundation, the jazz musician spontaneously creates as she goes. What is expressed must emerge from a place of openness—a fertile ground of aliveness that is ever-changing and never static, which we connect to by staying present with and open to what is happening. If the jazz musician can dwell in that fertile, raw, pulsating space of nowness, she can create beautiful, exciting, strange magic.

The detective, meanwhile, investigates mysteries. Always aware, always receptive to clues, messages, and hints from the universe, the detective looks deeply into the nature of the situation and sees through the surface level, beyond the veil of illusion, to the deeper layers of reality within the situation. If you’ve seen Sherlock, you know how well Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the superpower of extraordinary intuition and attention to the hidden world.

Perhaps there are ways we can be jazz musicians and detectives as we come as we will be. Perhaps we can move through the world with spontaneous awareness and a sense of creativity in everything we do. Perhaps we can further cultivate our intuition so as to more deeply understand our situation, on both a personal and collective level. The ability to spontaneously create and adapt, combined with the intuitive insights mined from seeing beneath the surface will be invaluable as we move through the increasingly strange days ahead.

Unleash Your Gnostic Fury

I recently came across an online image/meme that said, “God gave me depression because if my ambitions went unchecked I would have bested him in hand to hand combat by age 16.” I don’t know the original source of this image or who created it. When I saw it, in addition to thinking, “Wow, this is so Gnostic,” I also immediately resonated with it because this topic is one that I have had on my mind lately: the feeling of depression resulting from suppressed or denied anger.

To begin, a bit of background: God, from a Gnostic perspective, is not one of the good guys. The Gnostics—originally 2^nd and 3^rd century Christian heretics though likely coming out of a stream that existed in pre-Christian traditions as well[1]—saw this world as a “prison planet” of sorts. They viewed it as a “false” world in which the spark of divinity lay deep within us as human beings but was actively suppressed by ruling “archons” who sought to maintain power for the Demiurge, or creator god who mistakenly thought he was the God despite actually simply being one of many[2]. Gnostic spirituality is centered around gnosis—direct experience of the primordial, the pleroma, as they called it. Gary Lachman describes this as “immediate, direct, non-discursive cognition of reality.”[3] Gnosis is the key to thwarting the powers of the archons and the Demiurge who keep us imprisoned. Whether we wish to take this as an origin story or a symbolic myth, it holds a lot of power as a contemplation or worldview, particularly as one considers how to “wake up” from the slumber of cultural programming and familial conditioning to a more conscious way of being. And although Gnosticism is commonly co-opted by the “red pill” right as a tool of white supremacy, this wonderful, weird esoteric tradition deserves not to be thrown out with the bathwater.

On some level, one would expect that waking up would be a process of becoming more and more at peace and at home in the world. However, opening one’s eyes to the reality of the atrocities that exist within this world as well as to our deep wounds and the repressed shadow aspects of ourselves can be incredibly painful. It is hard to do this, fully and wholeheartedly, without becoming depressed or infuriated or both.

Over the past several years, as I have become increasingly aware of the horrors this world of ours beholds—endless war, unfathomable inequality, very deliberately orchestrated oppression—I have at times felt profoundly heavy. Defeated. A sense of impossibility. As the times grow increasingly dystopic, it can be easy to slide into a sense of hopelessness, to feel the archons have already won. But I think this is what they want us to feel. They wish for our fury to remain inaccessible because it is our fury which is the true threat.

I have never felt comfortable with my own anger. It is fiery, it feels claustrophobic, it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. As a child it was discouraged in me—I learned from my parents and teachers that one should be nice and good and keep their anger under control. With this foundation already in place, my suppression was fortified further as I began my spiritual path in my late teens and took on the idea that being a “spiritual” person meant being peaceful, calm, at ease. Through some combination of the teachings I was exploring (primarily Buddhist) and my own interpretations of them, I developed an idea of what it looks like to be an “awake” person in the world. Anger was not part of the picture.

However, as I entered into the practice and study of Vajrayana Buddhism, one of the most valuable teachings I encountered was that of the five wisdom energies or five “Buddha Families.” The notion is that there are five core energies within ourselves and within the phenomenal world, and that these energies are neutral in and of themselves. They can manifest in a neurotic, ego-centered way, or a conscious, open, awake way—like two sides of the same coin. The neurotic manifestation of vajra energy—one of the five wisdom energies—is anger, based in self-centeredness. The awakened manifestation is clear seeing, a diamond-like quality of mind. Irini Rockwell, who has written several books on the five Buddha Families, writes, “Vajra energy reflects its surrounding like a calm, clear pool of water, without distortion or bias. Thus Vajra wisdom is mirrorlike: it sees things as they are.”[4] There is tremendous wisdom and intelligence in this clarity, and the intensity of the energy can be a powerful motivating force to drive us forward.

If we are unable to stay present with that intensity, we tend to find ways to bury it, to suppress it. So part of my experience over the past few years has been noticing how I will often feel anger about our world, but then suppress it because I don’t know what to do with it. The result is a sense of hopelessness, heaviness, despair.

fivewisdoms — Visual representation of the five Buddha Families of Tibetan Buddhism

I will pause here for a necessary clarification of terms and perspective. I have never been formally diagnosed with clinical depression. I believe depression has a lot more social causes than we typically acknowledge today. Frankly, I don’t quite understand how someone could be alive today and not experience a frequent sense of depression. However, I am aware that there are biological causes for depression in many people, and that many people benefit from taking medication for it. I am not a psychologist and I am not claiming anything universal here, just trying to speak from my own experience. Furthermore, as you might anticipate where we’re heading here, I do not advocate violence nor do I believe that any form of violent expression of anger leads anyone to genuine liberation.

There is another important caveat here, which is to be clear about what to be angry about. There are a lot of angry white males out there today, desperately clinging to their dying worldview and evaporating privilege. I would implore these people to deeply examine the social and psychological causes of suffering and to recognize that while class oppression is something to be genuinely angry about, the erosion of white privilege is not. When you’ve been privileged your whole life—by being male, white, heterosexual, cisgender, neurotypical, able-bodied, in a financially stable situation, or any combination of these—equality can feel like oppression. But we need to learn and understand history better than this (not just the history we’re spoon-fed in school) understand socio-political power better than this (not just the picture portrayed by mainstream media), and work tirelessly for collective liberation—which is centered around supporting the empowerment of marginalized and oppressed peoples. This also means recognizing that identifying as a liberal in 2018 not only doesn’t go far enough, but also usually means you are part of the problem. So this is where our fury must be directed: at all the forces that create genuine oppression in this world. We must examine these systems, understand them, and then work to dismantle them.

In order to awaken our fury at the gnostic situation we somehow find ourselves in, in an effective way, we have to tap into the power of vajra energy—that icy cold, focused, sharp clear-seeing that can pierce through both the inner veil and the outer walls of society. It may mean allowing ourselves to feel the uncomfortableness of anger in order to lift ourselves out of hopelessness and despair. Then we can access the power and drive to begin to fight back against the archons and the Demiurge himself, in whatever unique, transgressive way our particular daimon calls upon us to.

Let us allow ourselves to feel what is a very appropriate response to the situation we have awoken to find ourselves in. The very mission of the archons of this world is to believe this situation is so impossible that we sink into our depression and give up hope. Sadness is okay to feel. In fact, sadness is very good to feel. Our hearts are tender because we know things could be otherwise, and sadness keeps us in touch with our longing for a better world. But instead of allowing that sadness to veer into despair, let us instead, with crystalline precision, unleash our gnostic fury and make it our life’s mission to dismantle the prison that keeps us enslaved. The Demiurge and his minions can be bested.

—

[1] Lachman, Gary (2015). Secret Teachers of the Western World. p. 105,

[2] Ibid, p. 109

[3] Ibid, p. 30

[4] Rockwell, Irini (2002). The Five Wisdom Energies. p. 33

Imagining Infinite Play

One of my favorite thinkers, Conner Habib, a writer, scholar-activist, occultist, and podcaster, writes and talks a lot about the importance of imagining and creating a new world. A self-described utopianist, Conner uses a really brilliant and helpful image to represent this bold vision of possibility: Bugs Bunny, chased into an alley until he reaches a brick wall, then pulling a marker out of his pocket and drawing a door which he can open and enter just before his pursuer reached him. This is also reminiscent of one of my favorite childhood books, Harold and the Purple Crayon, in which the protagonist literally creates his world as moves through it. There is a key for us embedded in these images. At this point, it appears there is only one way out; our backs are against the wall. And that doorway contains infinite possibility.

It is becoming increasingly clear that we are indeed on the edge of a collective precipice. What has led us to this point is a web of causes and conditions too vast to explore here, but important that they should be named. They include, but are not limited to, the interconnected web of: Neoliberalism, capitalism, our pillaging and raping of the planet, the culture of imperialism, settler colonialism and white supremacy, patriarchal culture, and rampant materialism that breeds greed and fosters an utter misunderstanding of the nature of what it is to be alive on the Earth. The problems we face globally are complex beyond measure.

In an article called “How to make enemies and influence people: anatomy of the anti-pluralist, totalitarian mindset” that grows ever-increasingly significant by the day, creativity researcher Alfonso Montuori discusses how the ability to handle complexity and ambiguity is one of the marks of creative people.[1] What we see from those who cannot handle complexity is a fixed, black-and-white line of thinking that seeks oversimplified answers for the sake of a false sense of certainty. This is what attracts people to authoritarian leaders and to scapegoating[2], both of which—obviously—are widely prevalent today. More than ever, we need people who are able to think creatively, rather than succumb to authoritarianism or conformity. Quite literally, any future we may have depends on it.

Of course, it is so much easier to just blame immigrants, or Muslims, or name-an-oppressed-peoples-or-ethnic-scapegoat-here than to actually be willing to look at a complex, interconnected web and attempt to think outside the box for creative solutions. In fact, that task seems quite impossible. I know that when I try to think about creative possibilities for society, I often become quickly overwhelmed and feel like it has just all gone too far—we’re cornered—and there is nothing to be done. And maybe there is nothing to be done.

Regardless of whether there is anything to be done at this point, this is a time for creativity, imagination, and infinite play.

We need to learn to use our imaginations. Really use them. In using the word “imagination,” I am talking about a faculty of knowing—a way of exploring unseen worlds and possibilities by using a very ordinary human superpower that has largely become dismissed as the stuff of child’s play. I go into more depth about this in this essay. I am talking about Bugs’s and Harold’s moves as real, as ontologically valid. His method worked, right? Is it not worth a try for us as well?

What does this look like? It is tapping into something beyond our conceptual mind. Something beyond rational thought. Something beyond “thinking” altogether. It is seeing, feeling, directly experiencing. This can take a variety of forms: shamanic journeying, art, writing, music, forms of meditation, Jungian active imagination, dreaming; occult and magickal practices. The key is that it arises from a source beyond conceptuality, beyond ego. Does that mean we will receive messages from another realm? Possibly; I don’t know. The whole point is that we don’t know. Somehow we have to be willing to go to this place of not-knowing and see what emerges

Going to this place of not-knowing and using the faculty of our imagination is drawing the door. Once we enter the doorway, we are in the realm of infinite play, a concept framed by James Carse in his brilliant must-read Finite and Infinite Games. There is vast openness. There is possibility.

Infinite play cannot occur, however, if our minds remain fixed. “Finite play,” for Carse is life led within socially constructed boundaries. Finite play is about control: trying to control what will happen in the future, trying to prevent what we do not want to happen from happening and trying to make what we do want to happen occur. Infinite play, however, is life lived in connection with primordial vastness and possibility. “Infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future” and because of this they “play in complete openness.”[3]

In order to be surprised by the future, I think we first need to be surprised by our past. We all need to be constantly challenging ourselves to see where our minds are stuck in seeing things the way we were taught to see them, to see where our perspective is based on unexamined assumptions, to see where we’re seeking comfort and security. Most of us have been indoctrinated into a variety of ways of thinking and seeing the world based on our familiar and cultural upbringing. This matrix can be very hard to penetrate, even for the most insightful people.

In order to open up to actual infinite play, we first need to go through a process of deconstructing how we see the world and questioning our beliefs at a core level. What have we normalized as part of our worldview? Some of these unexamined assumptions and normalizations are personal, others cultural—ultimately, that’s a difficult distinction to make anyway. They can include beliefs such as, “I am fundamentally flawed,” “War is inevitable,” “We are moving slowly but surely in the direction of ‘progress,’” “My favorite source of media is the most accurate,” or “Science is real, magic is not.”

In order to be able to think outside the box, we first need to be able to fully see the extent of the box we’re in. We need to dig deep and think critically. We need to tease apart what thoughts and beliefs we have that came from other people. Let us understand what led us to this cliff, and not try to claw our way back to the death trap. Let us let go of what we think to know, and open to something we couldn’t have even thought of. Then we can leap into the unknown, using both our imaginal capacity and our ability to think beyond the confines of the known, into the vast space of openness and possibility.

Our backs are against the wall. The only choice is to draw the door. Let’s invoke our inner Bugs and Harold and see what we can do.

–

[1] Montuori, A. (2005). How to make enemies and influence people: anatomy of the anti-pluralist, totalitarian mindset. Futures, 37(1), 18-38.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Carse, J. (2011). Finite and infinite games.

The Imaginal World

In this complex and bizarre world, getting in touch with a trustworthy inner compass is both increasingly challenging and essential. One way that we can access that compass, our personal daimon—our inner creative urge, or guiding spirit that drives us toward purpose and who we really are (introduced in more depth here)—is through the imaginal world. This article will provide an introductory overview of the concept, which has relevance and applicability in not only connecting with our daimon, but for many other esoteric and even secular pursuits as well.

While imagination is commonly regarded in today’s rational materialist world as mere “child’s play,” for practitioners in many different esoteric traditions the imagination is a faculty that can be used to explore actual existing realms. Scholar of esotericism Henri Corbin called this the “mundus imaginalis,” or the “imaginal world.”[1] Corbin, whose work elucidates the visionary experiences of Suhrawardi, the twelfth century Iranian esotericist, stresses as he describes this visionary realm that this is “no utopia, but a real country and a real space…which has neither location nor climate in the world perceived by the outer senses.”[2]

Ct-HMdvXgAE-rQ3 — From The Secret Tradition of the Soul by Patrick Harpur

In discussing a recurrent theme in the work of Mullah Sadra Shirazi, Corbin highlights another key point: “that the Imagination is a spiritual faculty which does not perish along with the physical organism, because it is independent of it.”[3] This sheds particular light for us on the importance of the imaginal world for the Gnostics, whose ontological perspective regarded this material world as a “false” world; if this faculty exists independently of the physical world of matter, it would follow that it would be a key to transcending the world of matter.

William Blake was another explorer of the imaginal world and advocate for the necessity of doing so in order to awaken. Kathleen Raine, a poet and scholar of Blake, helps elucidate why, for Blake, Corbin, and many others, a “world” which is invisible to the naked eye can nevertheless be more “real” than our ordinary world of matter: “We must remember at all times that a ‘world’ for Blake is situated not in Cartesian space but in consciousness; therefore every change of consciousness changes the world.”[4] She deals a further blow to the viewpoint that only the world of matter and the senses is worth experiencing when she writes, “By banishing the phenomena from the Imagination— the ‘faculty which experiences’ — they are emptied of all significance, retaining only a quantitative existence.”[5]

These two statements denote the way in which the Imagination opens the door to an entire world that is ontologically significant. First, we see how a “world” can be considered to exist outside of the realm of physical space: worlds exist within consciousness. Raine then drives home the significance of this statement by pointing out that every change of consciousness changes a world we experience. This highlights the importance of cultivating clarity of consciousness and developing the inner faculties to be able to experience the imaginal world—but also reminds us that we are not simply passive players within our “everyday” lives, but rather that we create that world and how we experience it depends on the state of our consciousness. This makes sense, given how vastly varied different people’s experiences of “the world” are.

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Raine then goes on to say that the Imagination is the “faculty which experiences,” and that our Cartesian materialist/dualist worldview has actually rejected Imagination altogether. What this means is that we are actually stripped of our ability to experience. Raine and Blake would question whether a materialist who believes only in this visible world actually sees or experiences anything at all. These two ideas together reveal the hollowness of the materialist experience worldview, painting an image of a flat, two-dimensional skeletal world, contrasted with the vivid, colorful, 3D realm of the Imagination.

C.G. Jung and many depth psychologists teach a method of engaging with inner figures called “active imagination” which enables the practitioner to travel inward and explore the realm of the Imagination. Active imagination can be explored by choosing a figure such as a dream figure, or an inner voice or aspect of ourselves, and dialoguing with it through imagery and writing. We can specifically choose to enter into a dialogue with our personal daimon or other imaginal allies; Jungian analyst Jeffrey Raff offers great practical exercises on this in his book Ally Work. Likewise, the practice of shamanic journeying, as well as certain visualization practices across a variety of esoteric traditions, can be way of using the faculty of the Imagination to enter into realms unseen.

These methods offer the possibility of accessing worlds beyond the one made of matter that is most immediately accessible through the human sense faculties. Though not limited to personal daimon work, many of these techniques can be valuable for accessing our inner guides. The possibility of being able to access a world beyond the one we know through our senses also has significant societal implications. Particularly at a time when our world is in dire need of some serious re-imagining, being able to not only think outside the box but also literally conjure up something new using the power of our imaginal faculties may be our only hope in turning the proverbial ship around. Perhaps we can think of that as a bit of a “to be continued…”
____

[1] Corbin, H. (1998). The Voyage and the Messenger. (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books). p. 125.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. p. 132.

[4] Raine, K. (1991). Golgonooza: City of Imagination. (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne 1991). p. 18.

[5] Ibid. p. 19

The Pull of the Daimon

Do you ever feel driven by a force that you sense is outside of your conscious will? Perhaps this energy is directed in a productive way toward a creative passion or vocation, or perhaps has darker or destructive manifestations that veer into the realm of obsession or addiction? You may be in the grip of a powerful personal force that is trying to communicate with you. In fact, many traditions around the globe would say that we all are, whether we know it or not.

The personal daimon is said to be an inner guide or guardian spirit that protects, challenges, and drives an individual forward throughout life, according to a variety of cultures throughout the world.[1] One of the primary roles of the personal daimon is to help direct its human partner toward purpose, or even destiny.

James Hillman, a Jungian analyst who developed his own approach to understanding the human journey, which he called archetypal psychology, wrote a book devoted entirely to the topic of the daimon and heeding its call, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. Hillman credits Plato’s “Myth of Er” as his own source of understanding this notion of the daimon, though he acknowledges that the idea is ancient and is present in many different cultures around the world.[2] He includes some other terms for the same idea that shed light on the way the notion of the daimon may be more popularly present in segments of Western culture, while not quite acknowledged as such: the term genius, as used by the Romans, as well as the Christian notion of a guardian angel.[3] Hillman’s description of the daimon is as follows: “The soul and each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here.”[4]

Writer and psychotherapist Thomas Moore describes the daimon as an “inner personality” that guides a person throughout life.[5] He notes that a distinguishing quality of the daimon is that it is often experienced as other. A person may experience this inner guidance as an actual separate entity that seems to live within, or close by.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting: the direction in which the daimon urges one to move may not in fact be the direction in which the conscious ego or “personality” wants to go.[6] In that sense, the daimon challenges its partner and is and potentially problematic. It can create inner conflict and there can be a sense of wrestling or struggling with this pull. At times it can feel much easier to ignore this force than to attempt to follow it, as following it may go against one’s beliefs about who they are. Life may be simpler if the daimon is not acknowledged. At the same time, the rewards can be exquisite: it is the daimon that helps us become the person we were born to be.

The idea of a daimon as external entity may present a challenge to Western minds, as the scientific materialist paradigm that permeates Western culture today does not typically include unseen entities, spirits, or angels. For the purposes of this short piece, I would like to propose that whether the daimon is considered an actual external entity or an aspect of a person’s mind, heart, or psyche does not matter. The separate entity versus part of oneself debate is a rich one that certain warrants its own exploration. My view is that these two seemingly opposite perspectives may be one and the same. When this question is examined in depth, it is actually quite difficult to tease out the difference between an “entity” that is “outside” oneself and an inner figure or aspect of one’s own mind. The daimon need not be understood as an “entity” in order to be worked with. It can be seen as an inner urge or creative force.

The daimon communicates with its partner in a variety of ways including psychological and physical “symptoms.”[7] Therefore, paying close attention to various symptoms we experience and trying to sense what these symptoms may be attempting to express is essential to understanding the daimon’s pull. If one wishes to go even further and intentionally cultivate a relationship with the daimon, one way to do so is through accessing it by way of the imaginal realm. As this is an immensely rich and provocative topic in and of itself, I will explore the subject of the imaginal realm and how one can begin to cultivate a relationship with the daimon in a future post. For now, if the idea holds intrigue for you, I invite you to contemplate how your daimon may be attempting to make itself known in your own life. What a thrilling and terrifying possibility!

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[1] Harpur, Patrick (2011). The Secret Tradition of the Soul. Berkeley, CA: Evolver Editions. pp. 94-97.

[2] Hillman, James (1996). The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. New York: Random House. pp. 7-10.

[3] Ibid, p. 8.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Moore, Thomas (1993). “On Creativity.” Sounds True.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Hillman, James (1996). The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. New York: Random House. p. 10.

Soul and Spirit

For a long time, the word soul didn’t mean much to me. The usage in the generic context (e.g. “this movie warms the soul”) was too watered down and unclear, too new-agey. When used in the context of describing our “true self” housed within the body didn’t work for me either, particularly after beginning to study and practice Buddhism, which does not use the term or the concept. Even in the context of reincarnation, the Buddhist perspective is more that consciousness continues in some form, but it is not a “soul” that travels from body to body.

For the past few years, my life has been dedicated to exploring the realm of soul. At first I didn’t identify my process as such; then after beginning to enrich my personal experience with study of the works of other soul explorers, I was able to put a name to it.

As I began to read the work of archetypal psychologist James Hillman, whose work draws from Jungian psychology and Neoplatonism, a new understanding of soul began to reveal itself. In fact, I became aware of an entire Secret Tradition of the Soul—the title of Patrick Harpur’s book on the subject.[1] This tradition, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, offers a very clear distinction between soul and spirit—two different, complimentary aspects of our experience and life’s journey.

Spirit has to do with ascent, purity, and light; soul is connected with depth, imagination, and darkness. Exploring the realm of the soul has a quality of descent. There is a grittiness within the soul—a salt-like nature, as James Hillman describes. According to Hillman, the soul is

…a world of imagination, passion, fantasy, reflection, that is neither physical and material on the one hand, nor spiritual and abstract on the other, yet bound to them both….[the soul has] a connection with the night world, the realm of the dead, and the moon. We still catch our soul’s most essential nature in death experiences, in dreams of the night, and in the images of lunacy.[2]

I began to recognize that most of my personal path thus far had been devoted to cultivating spirit, which Hillman describes as “fast” with “its images blazing with light…fire, wind….It is masculine, the active principle, making forms, order, and clear distinctions.”[3] This soul-oriented period of my journey seemed to emerge, independent of any conscious effort on my part, as a balancing process.

This blog section of my new website will be a space where I continue to reflect on aspects of soul and the personal journey we all make to integrate the various aspects of ourselves. Our culture is not particularly supportive of soul—so for me, the people I have encountered who encourage soul work as an essential aspect of becoming wholeheartedly who we are, have been tremendously helpful. In the same way, I hope that my studies and personal experience can be of benefit to others.

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[1] Harpur, Patrick (2011). The Secret Tradition of the Soul. Berkeley, CA: Evolver Editions.

[2] Hillman, James (1989). A Blue Fire. New York: HarperPerennial. p. 122

[3] Ibid, p. 121