On What ‘The Living Dark’ Has Quietly Become

A brief pause for orientation

Dear Living Dark readers,

From time to time it feels worth pausing, not to announce a change in direction, but to articulate what has quietly taken shape. Note the plural in the greeting above: not “reader” but “readers.” I usually use the singular when sending out a new post, not least because it really helps me to imagine that I’m writing to a single, deeply receptive reader who is interested and attuned to my wavelength. (Hey, if it was good enough for Bruno Schulz—who found his writing energy finally, fully unlocked by channeling it into letters to Debora Vogel—it’s good enough for me.) But right now I’m speaking to all of you.

Over the past few years, and largely through writing here in public, certain threads have made themselves unmistakable, as much to me as to many of you. What started as an open-ended experiment in 2022, originally titled Living into the Dark and intended to serve as the next chapter in my regular public writing after I had maintained my previous blog, The Teeming Brain, for sixteen years, has gradually clarified its own center of gravity—not because I set out to define it in advance, but because the work itself has kept asking the same questions and circling the same themes.

What has become clearest is this: The Living Dark is written from a particular perspective or place of seeing. It’s a perspective where creativity, nonduality, dread, and meaning intersect; where the sense of being a separate self in a stable, objective world is called into question; and where art and awakening turn out to be less separate than we’re usually taught to believe (and certainly less separate than I myself unconsciously held them to be for many years).

Again and again, the writing here has found its way back to that threshold. Sometimes it does this through reflections on creativity and the daemon muse, the felt sense that authentic work arises from attunement to something deeper than the everyday mind. Sometimes it does it through explorations of nonduality as a first-person investigation into the self and the world, as distinct from a belief system or a philosophy. And sometimes it does it through horror, the uncanny, and the darkly or weirdly numinous, serving as a legitimate doorway into questions of identity, reality, and waking up.

Over time it has also become clear to me that this space works best when it remains simple. That’s why I eliminated the paid subscription tier last August, after pausing it back in February when I put the whole newsletter on hiatus. That’s why I stopped using the chat features after dipping into them a few times. This leaves no pressure to perform “community,” which is simply not in my personal makeup to be able to sustain—though I’m delighted when real community just happens, as it often has, thanks to you. What wants to happen here is just essays, reflections, intermittent interviews, and occasional works-in-progress, published on their own obscurely self-determined schedule, as they’re ready. This way, the focus stays on the writing itself, and on the shared act of attention it invites.

As many of you know—those of you who have been on board for a while—much of what eventually became my new book Writing at the Wellspring first took shape here, in conversation with readers (you) and through sustained reflection over time. I expect the same to remain true of whatever comes next, if anything ever does. (I am indeed quietly grouping and mulling over uncollected posts and essays right now.) This has never felt like a platform for output so much as a record of inquiry unfolding in real time.

I have recently revised TLD’s short description and About page to reflect this more clearly. In brief, The Living Dark is now described as:

A journal of creativity, nonduality, and the daemon muse, exploring what emerges when the separate self loosens its grip on identity and meaning.

Nothing essential has changed. If anything, this is simply a clearer articulation of what has been happening all along.

If you’ve been reading for a while, thank you for staying with the inquiry. If you’re newer here, please know that you’re welcome to begin anywhere. This isn’t organized as a curriculum or a system, but as a long-form exploration of what it’s like to live and create in full contact with the mystery underneath ordinary life.

That said, sometime next month I’ll be publishing and pinning a “Start Here” post to serve as a brief guide to essential Living Dark essays.

Speaking of next month, as we head into the new year, wherever you find yourself reading from, I’m glad you’re here.

Warm regards,

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My new book:

“[An] intimate journey into the mystery of creativity and spirit… Cardin weaves practical methods, personal stories, literary references, and mystical insights into a lyrical meditation on what it means to create from the depths of the soul… both deeply personal and universally resonant.”
— BookLife review (Publishers Weekly)

“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning.
— Joanna Penn

“I can’t think of any [other books] that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality.”
— Victoria Nelson

“A meditation on the silence and darkness out of which all creative acts emerge....A guide for writers unlike any other.”
— J. F. Martel

“Important to any writer ready to see through the self illusion and realize the freedom this brings to any creative work.”
— Katrijn van Oudheusden

Available from all the major bookstores—Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, more—in paperback and electronic editions