Well said. This concept reminds me of The Benedict Option.. the coalition of Christians, artists, musicians and writers who survived the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia by banding together in small underground cells. Rod Dreyher wrote about that… apart from anything else… morale is important. Best wishes for your book.
Thank you for the well wishes. And that's a great call with the Benedict Option. In fact, in the final chapter of my book, I delve pretty deeply into the " monastic option" conceived and advocated by the intellectual historian Morris Berman in his 2000 book The Twilight of American Culture. He was talking about an approach to finding and living with meaning and purpose in a period of civilizational collapse. I take it in a new direction by connecting it to spiritual awakening and adopting the path of the creative muse in a world historical period of upheaval and breakdown. Berman and Dreher are aware of each other's viewpoints and models. I recall that Dreher mentioned it one time.
I wish I had a nice little monastic cell made of stone on an Irish hillside frequently… communicating with other like minds by Raven preferably but it’s 2025 and here we are … 😀
I just read this while having dinner and agree completely. The following is my answer to why art is ever more important in these times, and in another synchronicity which seem to be regularly occurring I posted my answer to this today, the same day you covered this topic. The daemon muse is real and coordinated across humans:
To quote Alice, curiouser and curiouser. To switch registers, Roger that about the reality and collective coordination of the daemon muse. Great post, by the way.
I don’t mean to barge in on your conversation with another reader, but I am fascinated by what you wrote about collective coordination of the daemon muse and I am wondering if you’ve ever written something about that idea. If not, I’d be grateful if you did expound on that specific idea in an essay.
I have not, in fact, ever written about the idea of a collective daemon whose presence and influence extends to multiple people. But it's something that has bubbled up in my thoughts from time to time over the years. Back when I was writing fiction, I even nursed plans for a while (several years) for a story that would involve it as a central point. The idea was, loosely, that a number of people came together in their early twenties, maybe in college, and experienced some profound collective creative-artistic and spiritual event, an eruption of something that was awesome and even fearsome in its potency. Then it never happened again, and they all drifted apart. But then, later in life, in middle age, it starts again and draws them together once more, ripping them out of the lives they have built over two or three decades. The story would have somehow uncovered, or at least suggested, that some collective muse, daimon, daemon is at work, so that each person's deepest character, desire, and destiny is interlinked with all the others in a way that transcends time and space and cares nothing for their personal preferences or comfort. It never came to fruition, though.
I suppose I might well write something more about this.
“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.” (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Love this. This calls to mind what happens to the artist colony of New Athens in Arthur C. Clarke’s CHILDHOOD’S END. Creativity withers away and ultimately ends because a utopian society under the alien Overlords removes all struggle and ambition. The end of conflict and hardship leads to the very state of cultural and artistic stagnation that the colony was established to reverse. The point is that we rely on adversity and suffering to inspire art and progress.
EDIT/ADDITION: Also reminds me of something I read in a Star Trek novel as an adolescent. Spock discovers he has a son who has been living on an ice planet, in a cave, under conditions that are almost not survivable. They bring him to the Enterprise. And there's an astute part in the novel's narrative text where it describes how his goal posts or criteria for paradise and luxury rapidly change. Previously, the idea of having reliable and plentiful sources of warmth, food, and water was paradisaical. But when these are suddenly given to him, he realizes how quickly his baseline for desire can change.
To your original words about suffering, I add this comforting thought (which I just a short while ago came across)…
"For most people, their spiritual teacher is their suffering.
Because eventually the suffering brings about awakening." (Eckhart Tolle)
Dude note: Did you happen to see my other comment? I’m just very curious about the “collective” part of what you said… wondering if it’s alluding to the idea that everyone has the same daemon muse or if we all have individuals daemons or both. (Sorry for the wording if I haven’t quite made my question clear. 🙃)
See my response to your other comment/question about a collective daemon. I've sometimes wondered/speculated about a kind of daemonic hierarchy like the old angelic and demonic schemas of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. People's individual daemons being invisibly grouped and sometimes collectively attached to multiple people, with further layers of daimonic/daemonic intelligence, influence, and motivation existing beyond or above them.
Regarding Eckhart Tolle on suffering: Yes. He has spoken and written quite cogently about this matter. One of my favorite single lines from him -- maybe my favorite of all -- comes not from one of his books, but from an interview he gave to (now former) spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen: "The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen."
Here it is in context:
"To be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness. Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost, one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost. The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering."
I'm glad it resonates with you, Richard. You can read more about the book at https://mattcardin.com/coming-in-2025. You can also subscribe to my blog there for additional updates on progress toward publication.
Well said. This concept reminds me of The Benedict Option.. the coalition of Christians, artists, musicians and writers who survived the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia by banding together in small underground cells. Rod Dreyher wrote about that… apart from anything else… morale is important. Best wishes for your book.
Thank you for the well wishes. And that's a great call with the Benedict Option. In fact, in the final chapter of my book, I delve pretty deeply into the " monastic option" conceived and advocated by the intellectual historian Morris Berman in his 2000 book The Twilight of American Culture. He was talking about an approach to finding and living with meaning and purpose in a period of civilizational collapse. I take it in a new direction by connecting it to spiritual awakening and adopting the path of the creative muse in a world historical period of upheaval and breakdown. Berman and Dreher are aware of each other's viewpoints and models. I recall that Dreher mentioned it one time.
I wish I had a nice little monastic cell made of stone on an Irish hillside frequently… communicating with other like minds by Raven preferably but it’s 2025 and here we are … 😀
I just read this while having dinner and agree completely. The following is my answer to why art is ever more important in these times, and in another synchronicity which seem to be regularly occurring I posted my answer to this today, the same day you covered this topic. The daemon muse is real and coordinated across humans:
https://clintavo.substack.com/p/how-our-art-supports-the-reason-we
To quote Alice, curiouser and curiouser. To switch registers, Roger that about the reality and collective coordination of the daemon muse. Great post, by the way.
I don’t mean to barge in on your conversation with another reader, but I am fascinated by what you wrote about collective coordination of the daemon muse and I am wondering if you’ve ever written something about that idea. If not, I’d be grateful if you did expound on that specific idea in an essay.
I have not, in fact, ever written about the idea of a collective daemon whose presence and influence extends to multiple people. But it's something that has bubbled up in my thoughts from time to time over the years. Back when I was writing fiction, I even nursed plans for a while (several years) for a story that would involve it as a central point. The idea was, loosely, that a number of people came together in their early twenties, maybe in college, and experienced some profound collective creative-artistic and spiritual event, an eruption of something that was awesome and even fearsome in its potency. Then it never happened again, and they all drifted apart. But then, later in life, in middle age, it starts again and draws them together once more, ripping them out of the lives they have built over two or three decades. The story would have somehow uncovered, or at least suggested, that some collective muse, daimon, daemon is at work, so that each person's deepest character, desire, and destiny is interlinked with all the others in a way that transcends time and space and cares nothing for their personal preferences or comfort. It never came to fruition, though.
I suppose I might well write something more about this.
“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.” (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Love this. This calls to mind what happens to the artist colony of New Athens in Arthur C. Clarke’s CHILDHOOD’S END. Creativity withers away and ultimately ends because a utopian society under the alien Overlords removes all struggle and ambition. The end of conflict and hardship leads to the very state of cultural and artistic stagnation that the colony was established to reverse. The point is that we rely on adversity and suffering to inspire art and progress.
EDIT/ADDITION: Also reminds me of something I read in a Star Trek novel as an adolescent. Spock discovers he has a son who has been living on an ice planet, in a cave, under conditions that are almost not survivable. They bring him to the Enterprise. And there's an astute part in the novel's narrative text where it describes how his goal posts or criteria for paradise and luxury rapidly change. Previously, the idea of having reliable and plentiful sources of warmth, food, and water was paradisaical. But when these are suddenly given to him, he realizes how quickly his baseline for desire can change.
Love this as well.
To your original words about suffering, I add this comforting thought (which I just a short while ago came across)…
"For most people, their spiritual teacher is their suffering.
Because eventually the suffering brings about awakening." (Eckhart Tolle)
Dude note: Did you happen to see my other comment? I’m just very curious about the “collective” part of what you said… wondering if it’s alluding to the idea that everyone has the same daemon muse or if we all have individuals daemons or both. (Sorry for the wording if I haven’t quite made my question clear. 🙃)
See my response to your other comment/question about a collective daemon. I've sometimes wondered/speculated about a kind of daemonic hierarchy like the old angelic and demonic schemas of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. People's individual daemons being invisibly grouped and sometimes collectively attached to multiple people, with further layers of daimonic/daemonic intelligence, influence, and motivation existing beyond or above them.
Regarding Eckhart Tolle on suffering: Yes. He has spoken and written quite cogently about this matter. One of my favorite single lines from him -- maybe my favorite of all -- comes not from one of his books, but from an interview he gave to (now former) spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen: "The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen."
Here it is in context:
"To be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness. Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost, one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost. The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering."
Thank you for your additional thoughts. 🙏🏻
This looks to be a must-read for me ! This juncture in time feels like a crucible.
I'm glad it resonates with you, Richard. You can read more about the book at https://mattcardin.com/coming-in-2025. You can also subscribe to my blog there for additional updates on progress toward publication.