Chapter 1: The Hostage
“Many creative artist see this struggle – the call to live in the tension betweeen good and evil and to bear witness to the good – as the challenge of human existence, and the meaning art bears is to reveal this universal struggle.”
“To distinguish between these two possibilities – the creative and the destructive – Rollo May refers to teh way a person related to the daimon. The person who inegrated the daimon, thereby becoming more whole, has as tate of being that Rollo May calls the eudaimonic. This is the way of the creative person: an ever-deepening and broadening process whwereby one becomes more whole and centred in one’s being. In contrast, in the dysdaimonic state of being, the person becomes possessed, monomaniacal, and fanatical to the point where all life is reduced to that person’s ever narrowing ego power drive.”
“Using the above distinction, addiction leads to dysdaimonic possession because it reduced the person’s wholeness to a monomaniacal obsession. But the same energy that serves addiction can be transformed into creative fire. The addict, in his very experience of the daimonic and the way it can destroy, can learn the supreme necessity of transforming that energy in the service of something higher“. (italics my own)
Having come through my own ‘night sea journey’ of the Romantic idea of complete merger with a magical other, the necessity of transforming meant to continue to exist. The result of being able to harness this creative force in another direction – away from projection onto external others – led to my painting and writing poetry, two things before which I did not practice. These activities have given such light and such inner shielding, I believe it would be impossible to slip back into the dysdaimonic entirely. Occasionally the pull is there, and the pull is strong. The glow of creating is stronger and I would not give that up for anything. I feel so greatful for this gift, and the gift of this insight. I feel I have a choice – I could go back any time but I know the pain and isolation in the pit, I know the years of work it took to get to where I am now, and I know the GLOW of writing poetry and creating artwork.
Chaper 4: The Romantic
“… the restlessness and longing of the Romanitic, if genuinely understood, is like the mystic’s quest to be aflame with the fire of divine love. If the Romantic can ensure this fire and bring the mystical vision back to earth by embodying it in creative life, then the addictive quality of the romance can be transformed into a creative gift.”
