New Spiritual Musing: "The Human Predicament"

SPIRITUAL MUSING

The Human Predicament

“These leaves, our bodily personalities, seem identical,

but the globe of soul-fruit we make,

each is elaborately unique.”

—Rumi

I never know when I am about to be smitten by an idea for a spiritual musing, and when it happens it often comes with the highest feelings of creative joy, not unlike John Updike’s feelings of “giddy delight” when his muse favored him with just the right word, phrase, or insight; and while working on my new book Supreme Meaning, my muse saw fit to favor me with an insight so enticing that it called for its own book of poems (The Lady in the Chapel), an insight which compels me to explore it in today’s spiritual musing.

This insight came with the phrase “tough love poetry,” which was inspired by a “tough love poem” I had just written, “The Saddest Spirit of All,” which was itself inspired by the glimmer of an insight that refused to make itself conscious but was forced into awareness when I brought to light the power that propriety has over people—

The Saddest Spirit of All

When or how it won her over, no

one can be sure, but she conceded

to the saddest spirt of all when she

crossed the line and became one

of the faceless good, and she went

about her way as though nothing had

happened; but she knew, and when

(it could be anything, a movie, poem,

or fleeting memory) her shame rose

to the nostrils of her conscience, her

betrayed heart bled once more her

precious life-blood as propriety,

the saddest spirit of all, strangled

her thoughtful, caring soul.

Poetry puzzles people. But once one gets the hang of poetry, to use a common expression, poetry can be quite revealing about the human predicament; and the more revealing it is, the more we understand why we are the way we are, and much more; because poetry opens doors to our soul that we cannot, or refuse to open.

What makes poetry so revealing is its unseen agency, because poetry is a creative process that engages the soul with the divine imperative of life’s purpose. Because we’re not born with an awareness of what life’s purpose is, poetry seeks to enlighten us with every poem that a poet writes, whether the poet is aware of it or not (usually they’re not). This is what makes poetry so intriguing, and so damn infuriating.

Poetry wrestles with the human predicament. Robert Frost said, “poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve taken life by the throat so many times that I’m afraid to look around the corner today for fear of what life has in store for me; but I know this is a false fear, because life, for all of its pain and sorrow, is as much a blessing as it is a curse. And this just happens to be the central theme of all poetry: the dual nature of human consciousness and the endless dynamic of the human predicament.

I’ve read Robert Frost and watched many online videos that discussed his poetry, as well as interviews with him in his later years; and as much as I respect the American bard for the iconic poet that he became, his poetry is hard, and quite dark.

But then, Robert Frost was a hard man with a dark side that he kept hidden from the public, a poet who came across as a gentle white-haired folksy philosopher but who had chiselled out for himself a very selfish personality that led his official biographer Lawrance Thompson to call him “a monster of egotism who left behind him a wake of destroyed human lives.” a deeply shadow-afflicted man whom Joyce Carol Oates captured in her story “Lovely, Dark, Deep” that I first read in the November 2013 issue of Harpers magazine.

Oates got flack from the Frost community for her story, because it opened a door to the iconic poet’s soul that they did not want opened; and if her story “Lovely, Dark, Deep” could be distilled into a poem, it would fall into the category of tough love poetry, because it dared to give us a glimpse into the dark side of the beloved poet’s folksy public persona, not unlike the dark side of another shadow-afflicted writer who was my high school hero and literary mentor that I explored in my literary memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway—“lion,” of course, symbolizing Hemingway’s dark shadow side.

Both Frost and Hemingway died unresolved; Hemingway at 62 by his own hand, depressed and paranoid, and Frost at 89 of medical complications who wanted to have the words “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world” engraved on his headstone. But it’s not necessary to compare the lives of these iconic writers (Frost won the Pulitzer four times, and Hemingway the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature) other than that they were both so shadow-afflicted they were driven to bouts of depression and suicidal despair; and by shadow-afflicted, I mean they were both subject to the capricious whims of the dark side of their personality which fueled their daemonic passion to write in the hope that the reconciling principle of the creative process would save them from themselves. And this brings me back to the central theme of this spiritual musing—the divine imperative of the creative process.

What is this divine imperative? Every writer knows there’s something “spooky” about writing, as Norman Mailer tells us in The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing; but what makes writing “spooky”? What is it about writing that puzzles writers and readers alike?

In her book Soul at the White Heat: Inspiration, Obsession, and the Writing Life, Joyce Carol Oates tells us that “The poet is the seer, the poem is the act of appropriation,” which also applies to stories and novels, confirming her belief that writing’s imperative is to get to the truth of life, as she attempted to do with her book of short stories Wild Nights!

In Wild Nights! Oates tells the stories, imagined of course, of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway; but this bold collection of stories could well include, though written years later, her story on Robert Frost, “Lovely, Dark, Deep.” And I mention this only to make the point that all of these writers sought truth in their writing, and the truth of their own life in particular. This is what makes the creative process of writing so damn “spooky.”

In Soul at the White Heat, Oates tells us that she wrote Wild Nights! because she wanted to explore the secret life of these writers: “It was my intention in these stories to present classic American writers in their “secret” lives. Not as they are usually perceived, and might have wished themselves perceived, but as, essentially, they really were in the coils of their own deep fantasies, in the last weeks, days, hours and minutes of their lives.” In short, Joyce Carol Oates, a creative writer herself who has written more books than most people have read, wanted to get to the soul of the writer’s life, that part of their life they did not want revealed—which is to say, the repressed dark shadow side of their ego personality.

But just how does the divine imperative of the creative process work? How does the spooky art of writing get to the truth of life? And just how does the creative process resolve one’s life? All writers experience the redemptive dynamic of writing, but not one writer can explain it. But poetry comes close to apprehending this sacred mystery.

          In her book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, American Zen poet Jane Hirshfield writes: “…poetry itself, when allowed to, becomes within us a playable organ of perception, sounding out its own forms of knowledge and forms of discovery. Poems do not simply express. They make, they find, they sound (in both meanings of the word) things undiscoverable by other means.” And in an online interview for Marin Poets Live (April 23, 2014), Hirshfield reveals her grasp of the human predicament and the divine imperative of poetry to resolve it: “Poems don’t show their hand from the start. The meaning of a poem is never completely knowable. There’s always going to be a further destination lurking somewhere just beyond the point that you can actually name or comprehend or paraphrase, and if that mystery isn’t there, there’s no poem. If the music isn’t there, there’s no poem. And if feeling isn’t there, there’s no poem.”

So, what is this mystery that the elusive spirit of poetry keeps secret and only partially reveals? What is this further destination lurking just beyond the point of comprehension, if not some measure of resolution of the human predicament?

“The poet is the seer, the poem the act of appropriation,” said Joyce Carol Oates; but this is an appropriation of “something” apprehended, not a comprehension of what that elusive “something” is. And that’s the mystery that keeps poets writing another poem, and another, and another—like Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” that caught a glimpse of the divine imperative of our essential nature.

Emily Dickinson also caught a glimpse of poetry’s further destination when she wrote: “Adventure most unto itself /The Soul condemned to be— /Attended by a single Hound /Its own identity.” This is the divine imperative of the creative process that engages the poet’s soul with its own individuation process. This is the way to self-fulfillment, which is the divine imperative of the creative process.

Robert Frost caught a faint glimpse also. Jay Parini, author of Robert Frost: A Life, quoted the American bard: “Poetry is all about stumbling your way into these little moments of recognition, not great truths. Great truths are for religions and cults. Let Jesus, let the Buddha have the great truths. For the poets, we have these little momentary stays against confusion, these recognitions, these illuminations which we piece together to create a sense of self and to create a spiritual life.” But a faint glimpse wasn’t enough to resolve his predicament, and the great American bard died shadow-afflicted and unresolved.

Wild Nights! is a presumptuous book. Joyce Carol Oates could not possibly know the last days of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway; but what’s a writer without the presumption of their genius? This was the inspiration for my poem—

A Poet’s Presumption

What would a poet be without presumption,

forging ahead with more boldness than

caution, leveling giants we cannot

see to the size of a pea?

What would a poet be without presumption,

with no respect for knowledge or tradition

that keep the door closed to new ways

of seeing and thinking?

What would a poet be without presumption,

shining the light into the darkest corners

of our soul where our demons lay

in wait to sabotage our way?

What, if not a follower?

When asked about these remarkable stories, Joyce Carol Oates replied that they were stories about “wild nights, inchoate longings,” which speaks to the unfulfilled longing that the divine imperative of poetry points to—that mysterious path of our own becoming that C. G. Jung called “the way of what is to come.”

Sadly, poetry, for all of its power to enlighten (every poem shines some light on the human predicament), cannot get us to where we’re compelled to go by the divine imperative of our own individuation process; but this all depends upon the poet’s own journey to resolution and  self-fulfillment, because a poet can only point to where he or she has travelled in their own destined purpose to wholeness and completeness.

Joyce Carol Oates had the temerity to imagine the last days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway, because something about these writers got under her skin and she wanted to shine the light of her creative genius into their individual predicament to see these iconic writers as they really were before dying, just as she explored the secret dark side of Robert Frost’s shadow-afflicted personality in her story “Lovely, Dark, Deep.”

Oates got her title from the last verse of Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, /But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep.” But did Frost keep those promises? Did he go to his final sleep resolved of his shadow-affliction? His own predicament?

Some people, perhaps many, die with a feeling of fulfillment. They die feeling good about the life they lived, and they cross over with a feeling of being resolved; but the vast majority of people don’t die this way. Most people, as Henry David Thoreau perceived, live lives of quiet desperation, and they die unresolved and unfulfilled.

Which brings me back to the theme of this spiritual musing (the divine imperative of life’s purpose that poetry points to) that was inspired by the phrase “tough love poetry” that came to me when I wrote my poem “The Saddest Spirit of All,” and by “tough love poetry” I mean poetry that shines the light into the darkest corners of one’s soul, like the corner of one’s soul that the seductive spirit of propriety has compromised.

My muse forced my poem “The Saddest Spirit of All” upon me. I refused to see how propriety can cripple a person’s soul, and for five or six days I refused to do my muse’s bidding; but I had to give in. I had to shine the light into one of the darkest corners of the human predicament, because I cared too much for the person who inspired “The Saddest Spirit of All.” She deserved to know the truth about her predicament.

But what was this person’s predicament? Why did she, who spoke for all those good souls that have compromised themselves to the seductive spirit of propriety, touch me the way she did? Why was I compelled by my muse, my oracle and guiding principle to write a poem on one of the most complacent complexions of the human predicament?

“As each plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man must become what he is meant to be. He aught to get there, but most get stuck,” said the great psychologist C. G. Jung; and we get stuck because of our own individual predicament, which keeps us from our destined journey to resolution and self-fulfillment.

David Whyte, poet, author, and motivational speaker who says that all of his poetry and personal philosophy is based upon “the conversational nature of reality,” wrote a poem that caught a glimpse of our destined purpose—

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written

inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

Like Whyte’s geese, we are all on our destined journey; but to where, and from whence did we come?” Wordsworth tells us in his icon poem “Intimations of Immortality” that we come from God, “who is our home,” and it is back to God that we are destined to return; but this is a truth that only mystics and poets catch a glimpse of, because, as Emily Dickinson tells us, it is much too bright for our feeble eyes—

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

    Success in Circuit lies

    Too bright for our infirm Delight

    The Truth's superb surprise

     As Lightning to the Children eased

    With explanation kind

    The Truth must dazzle gradually

    Or every man be blind —

“There is nothing but the self and God,” said Jesus in Glenda Green’s book The Keys of Jeshua; but because we come into this world as embryonic soul seeds of the divine consciousness of God, we have to grow into our divine nature, which we do through the natural evolution of life that Jung called “the individuation process.” But nature will only evolve us so far on our destined journey to self-fulfillment, as the mystic philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff tells us; so, what’s one to do? This is THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT.

Driven by the teleological imperative of our divine nature to realise wholeness and completeness like the acorn seed that is encoded to become an oak tree, where can we turn to complete what nature cannot finish? “Literature is not enough,” cried short story writer Katherine Mansfield, who turned to Gurdjieff’s teaching of “work on oneself” for a way to realize her wholeness; but why was literature not enough?

“Art’s goal is not an end-stop of a mathematical formula solved, a chemical reaction exhausted. It is to leave us holding a box that can’t ever be entirely sealed or put away,” said Jane Hirshfield in Ten Windows, and by “art” she meant the creative dynamic of disciplines like literature, painting, and music; but what’s in the box that art seeks to find, if not a way to satisfy the deep longings of our soul? And what is our deepest longing, if not the desire to be what we are meant to be, our true self whole and complete? This is the HUMAN PREDICAMENT. This is the mystery “beyond the point where speech that’s hearable ends,” says Hirshfield. This is why there will never be an end to poetry.

“Poetry is a break for freedom, the attempt to say the unsayable, to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms,” says David Whyte.” And as long as we have life, poetry will be our eyes and ears forever alert to “the way of what is to come,” the secret way of life that guides every soul to its own Self.

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