Dear Reader,
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Love,
Carolyn
Dear Reader,
Let’s explore what it means to be Throbbingly, Extra-Rationally Optimistic in a way that makes your life burn well. I’m going on the assumption that by now you’ve made a list of 25 things you desire and you’ve put the items on that list to the bliss test. Great! Good job! I also hope you’re beginning to practice our 4 Tools to Awesome Your Life.
Optimism is a tricky thing. It has a bad rap as being foolish, fluffy-headed, liable to get you hurt and in trouble. It can be and do all of these things when it’s executed in a misguided manner, directed toward the fulfillment of desires that are really conditioned attachments or addictions and not authentic preferences.
False Hope
For example, I used to be very optimistic that I could live a life of constant partying and shameless self-promotion and thereby become a indie art world icon, not unlike Nico of Nico and the Velvet Underground fame. This was misguided optimism because it had to do with my conditioned attachments to attention, glamor, and various unsavory behaviors. It was also an optimism that was based on a very limited and actually pessimistic assessment of my worth as a human being and also of the goodness of the world. In other words, I didn’t trust that I could be valued by others for my intellect, my sensitive intuition and my kind heart– in large part because I didn’t value those things in myself. For a long time I thought those major virtues were actually liabilities– they prevented me from being as tough and cool, nihilistic and frivolous as I thought I needed to be to be accepted.
It actually wasn’t until I was working at the Andy Warhol Museum (you see, I was NOT kidding about my Velvet Underground / Warhol / Nico fandom) as a curatorial assistant in the archives, and I there came a cross a long-out-of-print biography of Nico which focused on her highly ignominious death in a ditch after collapsing while desperately seeking heroin in the hot sun that I came to question my aspirations and lifestyle decisions. I thought to myself, “Hm, perhaps I do not wish to die alone in a ditch while desperately seeking heroin in the hot sun. Perhaps my current choices are leading me in that direction. Maybe I should try something else?”
The Need for Change
Those thoughts were just the beginning of me questioning my false optimism. It would actually take real tragedy and shock in my own life– the ugly dissolution of everything that I had planned and hoped for– until I became willing to work on cultivating a more genuine path for myself that had less to do with fulfilling glamorous images and gaining the approval of hip people and a lot more to do with living by spiritual principles and being of real service to the world.
Optimism put in the service of shallow hopes and aspirations that do not take into account a balanced, compassionate and accepting view of who you are CAN indeed be quite damaging. However, if you’ve been living a life that’s not burning well for quite some time (you’ve felt stuck, flat, afraid, paralyzed) it can be damn hard to achieve a balanced, compassionate and accepting view of yourself! What’s a person to do?
The Double-Bind
It’s a double-bind: In order to improve my life, I need to see myself much more kindly and much more clearly so I can cultivate a truly positive vision. But my life is messed up to begin with because I don’t see myself kindly or clearly, and everything in my messed-up life thus reflects back to me all the messed-up things I believe about the world, myself, and other people: it sucks, I suck, and they suck.
In other words, it’s awful hard to start improving my vision for my future and my perception of myself when to all appearances around me, such improvements are not justified.
For example– when I was at my lowest point after my party girl life came crashing down, it was very difficult for me to believe that I was a vibrantly worthwhile person who could have a major positive impact on others and thereby sustain herself financially and creatively.
Why was this so tough to believe? Because I had alienated all of my friends with the power of my crazy, was utterly broke, and magestically miserable. I used these undeniably yucky circumstances as prime evidence in support my view that I was hopelessly flawed and mostly worthless. This view of myself fueled the alienation, the crazy, the brokeness, and the misery by causing me to desperately seek quick-fix validation outside myself from dubious sources (shady and unstable guys– a long-time favorite!).
A very unhappy circle.
The Way Out of the Double-Bind
In order to alter my perception of myself and the world and thus come into an authentically optimistic vision that could improve – rather than degrade – my life, I needed the help of others. A lot of others.
I needed therapists, spiritually-oriented friends, mentors, and books and advice columns and horoscopes by loving authors who addressed me compassionately and deeply. I recommend that you seek out all of these resources. Hopefully, this blog and maybe even personal consultation with me can serve you in this way. All of these resources things can help you get a better idea of what’s possible.
So, Carolyn, What’s Possible?
Imagine that I’m back from the future. Really. I’ve been to 1 year from now, I’ve hung out there, and I’ve seen what’s up with you. I have a report of my findings to share. As I have a world-wide reputation as an utterly honest and infallible time traveller, you know you can trust my report absolutely. Here’s what I’ve found: all of your authentic preferences arrived. They just showed up one day. You were hanging out, doing your thing, and one-by-one, things just started falling into place, magically and synchronistically.
Man, I’m serious. I talked to your future self. I found out all about it. You didn’t strive, you didn’t work extra-hard– it all just happened. The gypsy caravan that’s so rad you can hardly stand it showed up full of gold coins and pug puppies, and it carried you to a house that looks just like a Lisa Frank sticker exploded all over it, wherein you proceeded to dress up in a very glittery manner ala David Bowie in the Ziggy Stardust era, record a hit freak folk album and soak in your clawfoot bathtub before your roaring fire place while writing a much-sought-after self-help book and didactic novel.
So– what’s your experience like after you learn about this great news?
Odds are, you’d feel a wonderful ecstatic lift– like, WOW! The world is a MUCH kinder place than I thought it was! Whoah! Who knew, baby? Things aren’t so bad after all! You’d feel exhilarated, giddy, glad and boggled. You’d stop beating yourself up for what happened in the past. You’d stop pressuring yourself to make something good happen because you’d know it was going to happen. You’d deeply relax.
You’d feel thrilled and blessed and you’d derive much pleasure out of anticipating the arrival of the gypsy caravan of gold coins and pug puppies. This anticipation would be so much fun that you’d probably start jotting down notes to yourself for song lyrics for your freak folk album, self-help book, and didactic novel. You might even want to begin really writing those things, so as to get a head start. You’d experience a surge in energy and a lot of great ideas for what you’re going to do with that caravan and what kind of uplifting parties you’re going to throw in that house. You might start reading about how to take care of pug puppies, ’cause sister, you gotta be ready. There’s going to be a gazillion of them, remember.
Probably you would want to focus on savoring the pleasures of being a relatively anonymous person of modest means for the duration of the remaining months before the magic kicks in full force. You might slow down, take it easy, revel. You’d cease trying so hard to impress anyone or get ahead. You’d be much more generous with your time and willing to help others out because you’d cease to be so worried about your own future. You’d let your freak flag fly and no apologies about it, honey.
In other words you would let-go. You’d have fun! You’d stop resenting what you lack now and regretting what you did in the past because– heck, what have you got to complain about? There’s a freakin’ awesome gypsy caravan comin’ round the bend! You’d be your true self and every atom of your being would start humming with joy, humor, and goodness. You would yourself become the sort of very magical creature that magical gypsy caravans are notoriously drawn to.
Sound good? Well, that’s the power of Throbbing, Extra-Rational Optimism. Stay tunes for more ideas about practicing it!
Dear Reader,
Are you busily working with our 4 Tools to Awesome Your Life? I hope so, because I, for one, am having a blast with my Truth and Beauty Pages, Throbbing Extra-Rational Optimism, hops, and 5 Minutes Towards Beauty.
Questioning Desire
My razor-sharp friend Tait McKenzie Johnson over at The Absent Narrative wrote an insightful reply to yesterday’s post on How to Desire, which can be found just under that post on this very blog and also here.
To briefly summarize, Johnson raises a fantastic question, “are desires necessarily a good thing to fulfill?” and then goes on to outline the ways in which desiring can be potentially deleterious to the soul. He also notes that most of the things I listed as things I “Really, Really Want” are material objects, and offers his skepticism that material objects can really do all that much to promote happiness, observing that “there’s a difference between having goals and wanting stuff.”
I fully agree. And while I don’t myself subscribe to the practice of releasing all desires, I do think it’s incredibly important to release all of what the pioneering human potential author Ken Keyes Jr. called “emotion-backed addictions”– otherwise known as attachments to having things a certain way which cause us to get upset when things don’t turn out as we wanted. These things have been called “desires” in certain contexts. Keyes advocated that we focus on “upleveling” all of our attachments / emotion-backed addictions to “preferences.” I highly recommend that everyone on earth read all about it in his 1970s classic, The Handbook to Higher Consciousness, which is invaluably wise and available in its entirety here online. To me, Keyes’ distinction between attachments / addictions and preferences is very important.
The Dance of Faith
I think in order to have a life that burns well, one needs to not only release one’s addictions to having things a certain way (i.e., surrender, let go) but also fully embrace, hope for and pursue the fulfillment of one’s preferences. As you might imagine, this is a bit of a difficult dance to do. Executed at its highest level, it’s what the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called “the dance of faith” and elaborated in the brilliant treatise Fear and Trembling. According to Kierkegaard, one who executes the dance of faith may be called a “knight of faith” and thereby distinguished from someone who succeeds in surrendering but not also hoping for finite fulfillment– whom he calls a “knight of infinite resignation.”
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling has such a scary title because it’s mostly about the adventures of one particular knight of faith, Abraham, who had a rough going of it, what with the Lord ordering him to sacrifice his only son Isaac and all. Kierkegaard uses the story of Abraham and Isaac to highlight that in order to be a knight of faith, one must first fully and completely surrender (i.e., drop one’s addiction to having things a certain way). Abraham had to completely surrender his very normal and natural attachment to not murdering his own son with his own hand. But according to Kierkegaard, Abraham didn’t stop there with his surrender– he also had an intense dose of Throbbing, Extra-Rational Optimism in which he trusted that even though he was killing his own son, things would still turn out okay. Of course we all know that Abraham’s faith was rewarded– an angel appeared and stopped him from killing Isaac at the last second. Whew!
So you see, there was a lot of fear and trembling in all of that.
But Kierkegaard also relates that there doesn’t necessarily need to be a giant Old Testament tribulation in place in order for one to become a knight of faith, and emphasizes that knights of faith are not apparent to the eye. They can be completely indistinguishable, in fact, from a sort of person that Kierkegaard quite loathed– materialistic philistines like me. Kierkegaard imagines a scenario in which he is introduced to an utterly ordinary-seeming person (“Good Lord! that person? Is it really he—why, he looks like a parish‑beadle!”) who likes to eat and drink and putter around and hope passionately that his wife has prepared his favorite dish for dinner and yet who is not at all disappointed when he finds she has not– in short, who is actually a knight of faith.
I may not have my head quite wrapped around the whole Abraham-as-a-knight-of-faith thing, but I think I do grasp the philistine-as-a-knight-of-faith idea. It makes sense to me after having read Keyes’ book and Byron Katie’s book A Thousand Names for Joy.
In short, the Philistine Knight of Faith is a person who has managed the amazing feat of fully surrendering attachment while also zestfully embracing and pursuing her preferences. This non-attached zestful pursuit has rather dazzling results. Witness Byron Katie, who is so non-attached to her continued earthly existence that she doesn’t bat an eyelash when a dude holds a loaded gun to her belly and says “I’m going to kill you” but who also surrounds herself with lovely stuff and has a wildly successful metaphysical self-help business with her partner, the brilliant translator Stephen Mitchell.
As Kierkegaard points out, knights of faith are rather rare. I myself am nowhere near that degree of profound surrender and simultaneous hope. I am, however, deeply involved in practicing its movements to the best of my ability.
Something that I didn’t get around to fully discussing when I wrote about Throbbing, Extra-rational Optimism in my 4 Tools to Awesome Your Life post wherein I described the amazing story of how I manifested my dream lover, Dey, is that while I worked on practicing total optimism that my true love would show up (and fast!) I also worked on surrendering my attachment to having that relationship at all. In other words, I practiced the dance of faith. Paradoxically, though– I’d been trying to surrender my attachment to having a relationship for years without any success (I remained riddled with attachment! Just riddled!). It was only when I began to practice Throbbing, Extra-Rational Optimism that I would get the wonderful relationship that I longed for that I became capable of surrendering my attachment to it, my frantic seeking of it. Doesn’t that just sound immensely complicated and weird? Just describing it — I’m like, whoah, how the heck did I do that? It sounds impossible– but that’s my experience.
I want to break down and explain for you exactly how I did that, because I think it’s an immensely valuable and awesome thing to do.
And, frankly, it is a little complicated and tough to explain and easy to misunderstand. It’s also what I think is actually the way the whole law of attraction thing works. So keep tuning in right here, folks, as I endeavor in the future to lead us through the dance of faith! In the mean-time…
What to Do With that List of Desires
Well, that was an interesting jaunt through existential theology, wasn’t it? Now, you will ask, “What should I do with this damn list of 25 things I want?”
1. Notice Your Attachments / Addictions
Go through the list and make notes about what things on it you’re especially attached or addicted to. In other words, what things on that list are you totally bummed and resentful that you don’t currently have? For example, I am amazingly resentful that my poetry hasn’t been published yet by any of the magazines or book contests I’ve sent it to. It also continually bugs me that I do not have absolutely gazillions of gold coins to swim in, and that no one has yet seen fit to award my unpublished manuscripts of poetry The Nobel Prize in Literature. Of course, since I if I had gazillions of gold coins to swim in, I would also have a house that looks like a Lisa Frank sticker sheet exploded all over it, in a really good way and a gypsy caravan that is so rad I can hardly stand it, not to mention a pug puppy– it stands to reason that I am fairly resentful about my lack of these things as well.
And that resentment and attachment, friends, is not just something that pollutes my current life, it’s also something which stands in the way of me actually attaining those desires or dreams in the future. Why? Because resentment and attachment create an inertia that affixes me to a negative and lacking self-image, drain me of energy, excite paralyzing fear, and cause me to grasp desperately at things that seem to offer what I truly desire, but actually do not. It’s bad ju-ju. In other words, my resentment and attachment make me vulnerable to being self-deluded and deluded by all the dazzling lies of our consumer culture. Which, as perhaps you’ve noticed, sucks.
2. Ask Yourself a Very Deep Question
The question is this: what among these things would I still like or much prefer to have, even if I felt a constant inner state of fulfillment, peace, and bliss?
This question can be helpful in discerning your authentic preferences from ones that are largely false and fear-driven attachments. After we’ve done this work of discernment, we can get down to the nitty gritty of practicing surrender around the things that truly matter to us.
For example, if I were blissed out, I wouldn’t really give a fig anymore about winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Those Swedish snobs could kiss my enlightened ass. Noticing this clues me in that my desire for a Nobel Prize is a conditioned or false desire– not part of an intrinsic shape or Urpflanz model that my soul longs to blossom into, but a side accessory to bolster my oft-faltering writerly ego.
However, if I was totally blissed out, I would still like a house that looks like a Lisa Frank sticker sheet exploded all over it, in a really good way and a gypsy caravan that is so rad I can hardly stand it. Of course, I wouldn’t need these things– I’d be blissed out! But I would like and prefer to have them– whereas all that Nobel Prize riggamarole would just be an annoyance.
3. Take the Weeds of Resentment out of the Garden of Desire
Yes, even blissed-out me would still like the caravan and the crazy color house. Also the pug puppy and the gazillions of gold coins to swim in.
But! One might say. Carolyn! You should let go of those desires! You just said you feel all kinds of nasty attachment and resentment surrounding them. How can they be good things for your soul when you feel all that mucky yucky stuff surrounding them?
Well, let me tell you about that. I used to use the same argument on myself in regards to my desire for a truly wonderful relationship. I’d recognize that wanting it so much hurt (because I seemed to be constantly frustrated in my attempts to fulfill that want) so I’d try to talk myself out of wanting it. This never worked because my desire for a wonderful relationship was an authentic preference– it passed the “bliss” test. I could honestly say yes, if I was completely blissed out I would still prefer to have a fantastically awesome romantic partner in my life, just like Byron Katie has her “dear Stephen.” Once I recognized that my longing for true love was an authentic preference, an intrinsic part of the design my soul wanted to blossom into in my life, I was able to give myself permission to fully, innocently, soaringly hope for it with a totally open heart, as I had never hoped for anything before.
As I previously noted, by some mind-boggling paradox, the very act of this Throbbing, Extra-Rational Optimism helped me to surrender my attachment and resentment surrounding the lack of an awesome relationship in my life.
And then, zooooooom! It worked!
So, concerned reader, I understand I still need to do a lot of work surrendering my attachment to gazillions of gold coins and the gazillions of pug puppies such gold coins could pay for– or, as dear Mr. Keyes would say “upleveling” my emotion-backed addictions to them to preferences. But since I have now identified those as authentic preferences, I am prepared to begin practicing the magic of my Throbbing, Extra-Rational Optimism on them. More on that tomorrow!
Let’s work on getting in touch with what we want. It’s our first step in the March Adventure. Write “Stuff I Really, Really Want” and list 25 items, everything from grand abstract achievements to the most paltry of household goods. Got it? Good, now if you have a mind whose automatic setting is anything like mine, you will now be thinking “I won’t do that, it’s pointless.”
The Depths of Disbelieving
My mind tells me it’s pointless to bring to the forefront of my mind all the things that I long for because, as it reports, “I won’t get them anyway.” This automatic setting of pessimism is a strategy I learned in childhood to protect myself from the wrenching disappointment of missing out on things I really, really wanted. This was a great strategy when I was five and my acknowledgment of my impotence was actually spot on— back then I couldn’t read or write, I was 3 feet tall with limited motor skills, and I didn’t even have the right to vote! Yes, I was an illiterate, disenfranchised little person. Things were bleak back then. But look how far I’ve come!
I’m now (like you, if you’re reading this) in full possession of literacy, motor skills, and voting rights. You’re no longer limited by your parents’ arbitrary and tyrannical decisions regarding bedtime and dessert.
The Power of Innocent Longing
Frankly, you’re empowered and it’s time to start recognizing that. The “I won’t get them anyway” belief that your mind espouses is outdated. Since you’re big and literate now your odds of attaining most of your desires are pretty darn good.
Even if your life does indeed turn out to be one long dreary European film, if you go through it holding the belief all the while that you “won’t get them anyway” (your desires) your life will be a completely unwatchable long dreary European film. Why? Because heroes and heroines desire stuff. They go out and pursue their desires through various means. They learn stuff along the way. Even if they completely fail to get what they set out to attain at the outset, the very act of valiantly, innocently, even somewhat stupidly, reaching to fulfill their desire puts forces in motion that show them valuable things and connect them to fascinating people.
Yes, that’s right. I’m getting all Joseph Campbell on your ass. This March Adventure is a hero / heroine’s journey. I know, it’s terribly unoriginal of me. But that’s because it’s also just plain true. I think Joseph Campbell may have missed some of the finer points regarding the heroine’s journey (I’ll be happy to discuss this at some point) but all in all, he was really right about the underlying mythic structures that span across time and culture, and which have things to tell us (Poetic Truths!) about the magic ways that life works.
The Call to Adventure
The first leg of the hero / heroine’s journey is the Call to Adventure. Maybe you have not lately had a recurring prophetic dream calling you to travel to a strange land in search of hidden treasure. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a Call to Adventure! Our longings and desires are our Call to Adventure. They’re the stirrings that prompt us to undertake a course of action that will change us and our understanding of the world for the better. Some of them more so than others. And of course, it matters how we go about pursuing those desires. And also, there are certainly dragons to slay along the way. But we’ll worry about sorting all that out later. For now, get started with your list!
My List
To encourage you in coming up with your List of 25 Things you Desire, I figured I’d show you mine in all its random, jumbled glory:
1. A fireplace
2. A claw foot bath tub.
3. To publish an awesome self-help book.
4. To record a freak folk album.
5. To perform a stand-up act.
6. To be rich, having absolutely gazillions of gold coins to swim in.
7. To be struck enlightened like Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, and Jan Frazier.
8. To be very very glittery, like David Bowie circa the Ziggy Stardust era.
9. To finish my PhD.
10. To learn to play the guitar and write songs.
11. A super-flashy glam rock wedding.
12. New clothes for spring and summer.
13. Speaking engagements around town.
14. To make some videos for youtube, like my friend Kevin, who is super-cool.
15. The Nobel Prize in Literature
16. A lot of rainbow colored silk scarves.
17. An awesome house in the woods somewhere with giant fireplaces and clawfoot tubs.
18. A pug puppy.
19. My poetry books published.
20. A mind-blowing flower garden.
21. A gypsy caravan that is so rad I can hardly stand it.
22. To make and sell incredibly awesome tote bags.
23. To write a didactic novel like The Alchemist.
24. To make meditation cds / podcasts.
25. A house that looks like a Lisa Frank sticker sheet exploded all over it, in a really good way.
Emerson had this to say in “The American Scholar” (one of my all-time favorite essays along with… all of Emerson’s other essays):
The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him, truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts. It came to him, business; it went from him, poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.
Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth.
Dear Reader,
What follows is an exciting preview– the first two pages of my in-progress dissertation!
Love,
Carolyn
Poetic Inquiry
Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the polestar for a thousand years? – Emerson, “The American Scholar”
The long way leading to the poetry is itself one that inquires poetically. – Heidegger commenting on Rilke, “What Are Poets For?”
By Way of Introduction
Very simply, poetic inquiry is a process of contemplative truth-seeking followed by creative expression of the truth discovered. This dissertation explores poetic inquiry as a potential avenue of literary education.
Like philosophic and scientific inquiry, poetic inquiry seeks to discover and communicate truth. But while both philosophic and scientific inquiry deploy systematic and rational approaches to their projects and largely emphasize objectivity, poetic inquiry is nonsystematic and intuitive in its approach and emphasizes subjectivity rather than objectivity. In other words, poetic inquiry attends primarily to the existential and subjective dimension of truth.[1]
Expression in poetic inquiry is “creative” in that through the use of poetic strategies it creates for the reader or audience an extra-rational experience of the author-inquirer’s discovered truth (i.e., it does not communicate the discovered truth via rational argument or proof. Somewhat perplexingly and confusingly, there is also a sense in which the actual act of expressing truth via poetic strategies creates such truth or brings it into being – as in the case of an intuition which is at first only dimly realized by the author-inquirer but becomes clear as she articulates it. In this sense we might say that poetic inquiry can not only discover but can also “make” truths. “Making” is of course the original meaning of the Greek word “poiesis” from which our English word “poetry” derives. In the context of poetic inquiry we would say that what poetry “makes” is the experience of extra-rational truth.
Because poetic inquiry is an essentially intuitive and extra-rational process, it resists being articulated in any systematic way. There are very many fantastic examples of the fruit of poetic inquiry. There are far fewer fantastic explanations of the process. I have attempted to articulate and champion the process of poetic inquiry in this prosaic dissertation form because I have desired to teach it to myself and to others, and because many people (including myself) resist doing something when they cannot understand just why and how it should be done. Thus the following work attempts to reasonably explain the detailed application and essential value of an endeavor which exceeds reason. I have sought to do this rather difficult task because I believe poetic inquiry to be very important work indeed, work which we have perhaps been neglecting for the very reason that it is difficult to rationally or systematically explain and justify.
[1] There are figures who are hailed as philosophers—Nietzsche, Emerson, and Kierkegaard come prominently to mind—whose work may be said to rely more heavily on poetic strategy (gesture, fiction, drama, trope—see the discussion of these later in this dissertation) than on rational argument and who value existential and subjective truth. I would count these figures as poetic inquirers rather than philosophers.
Just letting myself be verified by technorati: BYG6ES8TQ9G9
