The Path Ahead

A soft return, a fresh beginning, and the new preface to 'Wellspring'

Rainstorm over the Sea [Seascape Study with Raincloud], by John Constable, ca. 1824–28. Public Domain.

Dear Living Dark reader,

Writing these words feels like stirring the dark waters at the bottom of the ocean. Has it really been since March when I last spoke to you in this space? Indeed, it has.

I won’t spend a lot of time on rehashing my reasons for putting The Living Dark on pause, since you can read or reread them for yourself. I’ll simply express my hope and wish that things have been good for you during the interim.

I’m returning from the silence now with a brief but significant update, to tell you that a way forward has asserted itself for publishing Writing at the Wellspring, and also to share my newly written preface to the book.

Actually, I already returned in another form a couple of months ago when I began posting some odds and ends on Substack notes, including thoughts on artificial intelligence and creativity; reflections on nonduality; critical observations on contemporary tech and hustle culture; quotations from current spiritual reading; and mini-essays on such things as religion, segmented sleep patterns, and the deep purpose of art. This new activity happened spontaneously, without my intending it, when I found one morning that I was unexpectedly motivated to write something, and then, even more unexpectedly, to share it. You can catch up with these things, if you’re so inclined, by clicking my profile picture.

Perhaps also worth noting is that some rumblings of ideas for a new direction for this publication, maybe involving a new name or focus—and maybe involving a departure from Substack—have been sounding in the depths. Time will tell if this results in anything.

For now, here’s the aforementioned preface, below, to be followed sometime in the not-forever future by news about when and how Wellspring will be published.

Warmly,

Preface to Writing at the Wellspring

In one way or another, every book reflects its author’s personal experience. This is certainly true of all the books I have written, including not only my collections of stories and essays exploring the intersection of spirituality and religion with metaphysical and ontological horror, but also the three encyclopedias that I have edited and curated (on mummies, the paranormal, and the history of horror literature). Whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction, and whether I’m working on my own writing or helping to birth a collective project through editorial shaping and visioning, it’s all connected to my core creative fascination. And I know the same is true of you and your creative work.

For me, the deeply personal nature of all this is especially pronounced when I write about creativity itself, especially as it relates to spiritual insight or awakening. This was the focus of my previous book on the subject, A Course in Demonic Creativity, and it is likewise the focus here. Writing at the Wellspring takes it in a fresh direction, not by choice, but because this is simply where my understanding and engagement with the topic have led. This is no different from what happens to all of us when we’re creating honestly, from the center of our authentic perception and motivation. But sometimes the quality of personal-ness is more explicitly visible on the surface of a given work. That’s definitely the case here.

And that’s why I think this book will speak most directly to readers who not only share my topical interests, but who share a sympathetic sensibility. I have never been able to reduce my native fascinations to a single focus, and virtually the entire gamut of what moves me, not only now but over the decades, is reflected, in one way or another, in the pages that follow. So, I thought I would take a moment in this preface to specify who the book is for, based on who I believe will feel most at home in it because they grok the same things that I do when considering the heady themes of inspiration, insight, and the writer’s path.

This book will most likely appeal to you if you find yourself reflected in any or all of the following:

• You feel that true creativity, more than just skill or self-expression, requires listening to something deeper.

• You long to create in a way that feels honest, awake, and aligned with your truest self.

• You struggle with resistance not just as a block to productivity, but as a spiritual and psychological threshold.

• You find yourself drawn to nonduality, inner stillness, or mystical insight, not as abstract philosophy but as vivid recognition.

• You’ve glimpsed the uncanny truth that inspiration may not be yours but something that comes through you.

• You resonate with the idea of the muse or daemon, an inner presence that guides, haunts, and transforms your work.

• You see the signs of cultural unraveling and feel called to respond not with more noise, but with depth.

• You sometimes feel becalmed, both creatively and existentially, and find this confusing or even distressing.

• You hunger for the kind of writing that fuses the spiritual and the strange, even verging into the shadow realm of the uncanny.

• You enjoy exploring the inner lives of other writers and seekers, and learning how they have grappled with the creative mystery.

• You sense, perhaps dimly, that your creative path is inseparable from your path of awakening, and that both are leading you somewhere beyond yourself.

For further orientation and grounding, here’s a quick road map:

In this book’s introduction, I explore the strange convergence of personal inspiration and collective cultural crisis, proposing that our creative blocks and breakthroughs are bound up with more profound questions of identity, meaning, and metaphysical truth.

Part One, Writing with the Daemon Muse, explores the mysterious nature of inspiration and the deeper forces—psychological, spiritual, and perhaps transpersonal—that shape the creative act. It examines the muse or daemon as inner companion, creative double, and emissary of something beyond the ego, and looks at how this figure was ejected from mainstream Western intellectual culture, with harrowing consequences that still shape us today..

Part Two, The Flashpoint of Silence, turns to the role of spiritual stillness in authentic creativity. It investigates how silence, surrender, and the collapse of self-as-doer are often preconditions for creative emergence. It also considers the uncomfortable tension that we can sometimes feel between our creative and spiritual motivations.

Part Three, The Axis of Creation, brings these threads together in an exploration of resistance, creative flow, and the act of writing as a spiritual path. It considers how creative practice, when aligned with one’s deeper nature, can become not just a source of personal insight but a sustaining way of being in a time of cultural upheaval. The final chapter reimagines creativity as a form of quiet devotion, a grounded, even monastic, orientation to life in a disoriented world.

Again, if any of this resonates or connects, this book is probably for you. We’re most likely kindred spirits, so maybe some of what I share here will resonate and help you along your creative path, until it becomes evident that there’s really no path at all, no journey or destination, but just a timeless presence, absolutely here and inescapably now, where creation is continuously unfolding in the very fact of your own being, which takes the appearance of a self and a world, and which sometimes takes the form of writing or creating other things within that dream. I’m glad we found each other in this world of shifting shadows.