35
Time’s Winged Chariot
Age
happens to everyone. No one is exempt. We all get older by the day, and one day
we’re shocked to learn that we aren’t what we thought we were; and the mind
begins to play funny games with us. Little worries become big worries, and we
fall into despair. That’s what happened to me recently, which not surprisingly
brought to mind the foreboding lines from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy
Mistress”—
“But at
my back I always hear
Time’s
winged chariot drawing near;
And
yonder all before us lies
Deserts
of vast eternity.”
Life
forced it upon me, and I stared into the face of my inevitable demise; but
thank goodness it wasn’t imminent. At least not that I was aware of, because
one must allow for providence which can snatch us anytime. Nonetheless, I
despaired at the loss of the vitality of my life before heart surgery, because
that was the deep well of my inspiration; and I had to reconnect with myself to
dispel the lassitude of enervating anxiety, but how? That’s the subject of
today’s spiritual musing…
Writing
has always been my inspiration; but the irony of the creative process is that
you have to engage it for it to engage you, and I hit a snag while working on
the chapter “The Secret Way of Life” of the new book that I’m writing, and
despite my best efforts I could not break through my creative blockage; that’s
why I fell into despair.
Whenever
this happened prior to my heart condition, I always engaged my creative
energies by physical activity (how many
rotten days I salvaged with a long distance run, I cannot remember!), but
now it’s not possible because whenever I exert myself physically I tax my heart
and get instantly winded; and my inactivity only fueled my despair. And every
morning I tried to engage my inspiration by writing through my creative
blockage, but to no avail; and my little worries became big worries because
much gathers more.
But I am
resourceful, as I’ve had to be in my quest for life’s meaning that finally
yielded itself to me and which I wrote about in The Summoning of Noman, and I employed another means to engage my
inspiration by practicing what Jung called “active imagination,” a bold but
effective method of resolving the conflict between my conscious and unconscious
self that became the premise of my book The
Man of God Walks Alone, and my creative unconscious reminded me of my
literary accomplishments which broke up the static energies of my creative
blockage and I brought “The Secret Way of Life” to closure.
“God, it feels good to be back!” I
exclaimed, when I re-connected with my inspiration; and the creative energies
began to flow freely again, and all my demon fears began to disappear. And
then, as the merciful law of synchronicity would have it, I was nudged to go
online to watch Iain McNay’s interview with Jenny Boyd on Conscious TV, and something that Jenny Boyd said about the
guitarist Eric Clapton confirmed my experience of re-connecting with the source
of my creative energy when I engaged my transcendent function.
Jenny
Boyd had interviewed Eric Clapton for her book (co-authored with Holly
George-Warren) It’s Not Only Rock’n’
Roll: Iconic Musicians Reveal the Source of Their Creativity, and something
that Eric Clapton said about his gift for music, which frightened him so much
that it drove him to drink, brought my realization of the impenetrable secret
of our creative energies full circle, right back to the source from where it
comes—God.
Jenny
Boyd knew Eric Clapton well, because he was married to her sister; and she knew
him before and after his heavy drinking days, and she always thought that he
was a special man because of his incredible gift for music; but Eric didn’t
think he was special at all, because he credited his gift to the source of our
creative energies which he said terrified him whenever he got swept away in the
flow of his inspiration. “It’s like staring into the Face of God,”
he said to Jenny Boyd, which humbled the iconic musician. But why was Eric
Clapton frightened by his gift? And not only him, but every gifted person in
the world that is driven by their daimon to create?
Jenny
Boyd quoted the psychologist Rollo May, who wrote The Courage to Create, in her effort to understand Eric Clapton and
all the gifted musicians that she interviewed. “If you don’t use your creativity, you betray yourself,” she said,
quoting Rollo May; which was the theme that I explored in my memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway,
because my high school hero and literary mentor was tortured by the moral
demands that his gift for writing placed upon him; and, sad to say, in one way
or another he sacrificed all of his relationships both personal and
professional upon the alter of his creative genius which garnered him the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1954 and created the insufferable conflict with his
unconscious shadow and ego personality that drove him to drink to ease the
guilt of all his betrayals and self-betrayals, and depression finally drove him
to take his own life as so many gifted artists do who cannot come to terms with
the genius of their talent.
And I
agreed with Jenny Body in her understanding of the awesome power of the
creative process, which can make or destroy a gifted artist; but in my quest
for life’s meaning, I came to see that the choices we make shape who we are,
and if we make choices that feed the shadow side of our personality we will
have hell to pay, like my mentor Ernest Hemingway whose ravenous ego destroyed
his life. “He’s a pathological liar, and the cruelest man I know” said his third
wife Martha Gellhorn, the only wife to leave the great man to pursue her own
career in journalism and creative writing.
That’s
why Jungian analyst Liz Greene said, “The shadow is both the awful thing that
needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it,” and when I
brought “The Secret Way of Life” to closure, my Muse—the voice of my
inspiration—provided me with the title of my next chapter, “Waking Up to the Shadow”
whose theme is about how we can redeem ourselves from our own shadow, which ever artist has to do to be true to
their talent; but that’s another musing for another day, depending upon my
Muse. We may never be ready for Time’s Winged Chariot, then; but we can try to meet
it half way…
───
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