Modern realism offers us only a half-life existence

Writer, translator, teacher Clark Hansen blogs about narrative styles in his post "Understanding Archetypes: Thomas Moore" that refers to the work of James Hillman and Thomas Moore regarding the significance of imagination. Hansen’s quote about imagination and modernism from Moore’s Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality begins:

"It is difficult for a modern person, influenced by the myth of fact so embedded in our thoughts and values, to realize the importance of imagination. We are educated to prove our intuitions with empirical experiments and studies. Anything not verifiable by investigation of the senses we consider suspicious at best.

This materialistic view of things gives us a half-life, a partial view of experience. The images of memory, dream, and fantasy then become useless, if not interfering. We distrust intuition and imagination as superstitious, a charge that quickly wounds our modern notion of intelligence. These other powers make us feel inferior, and we can't wait until our suppositions are proven by some sort of hardware or research design."

Hansen also refers to Hillman’s obituary in The New York Times that includes:

"Some people in desperation have turned to witchcraft, magic and occultism, to drugs and madness, anything to rekindle imagination and find a world ensouled," Mr. Hillman wrote in 1976. “But these reactions are not enough. What is needed is a revisioning, a fundamental shift of perspective out of that soulless predicament we call modern consciousness."

The soul's seasons are rhythmic and musical

The blog entry "Universally Human" shares quotes from Thomas Moore's book, Original Self, ending with this passage from the book:

"Modern psychology tries to tell us that we are constantly developing creatures, but I prefer to think of us as seasonal beings. We have our summers of sunny pleasure and our winters of discontent, our springtimes of renewal and our autumns of necessary decay. We are essentially rhythmic, musical. As the ancients used to say, our emotions are in orbit, like the planets. Patterns that define us return again and again, and in these returns we find our substance and our continuity, our original nature and our identity."
— Thomas Moore

This focus on rhythm is repeated in the blog entry "What Feeds Us?" by Kathleen Jacoby on her site Seasons of the Soul:

"There are multiple expressions of our uniqueness. Like snowflakes, we all have a special imprint, and the task is to find opportunities that allow those affinities to be released in a way that blesses the world and fulfills us. Then we have made a difference. Then the longing is no more.

There have been a few times in my life when that longing was fulfilled. Each time had to do with writing projects that completely harnessed my focus and imagination. For me, expressing observations is a major part of my tonal affinity. It is through communication – especially the written word – that I find myself deeply in love. All of me is engaged. Thomas Moore once wrote that if our work is not our lover, it is not our work."

Jacoby also observes, "I have found that there are cycles in a creative life. We cannot always be in process of externalizing the muse. There are down times that require digesting and renewal. It can be frustrating when we deeply yearn for that sense of being 'in the zone'. The zone also has to accommodate the moments of nothing when seemingly everything has stopped."

Consider a description of Hildegard von Bingen's Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Revelations for the rhythms of your own seasons and for your own musical signature.

Sheila Packa feels poetry as spiritual practice

In her blog post, "Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Work in Progress", Sheila Packa writes, "Poems are spirit/objects. They are made of sound and breath and truly good poems seem to have life — they bring us an experience, a body experience, and spirit or light." She follows this discussion of poetry as subject/object, with its characteristics of flow/resistence, ambiguity/certainty, and in her final section about vision/revision, she quotes Thomas Moore's Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality (2000):

"The soul has its own set of rules, which are not the same as those of life ... the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Emotions and the sense of meaning are paramount. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach the very foundations of our existence."

Packa follows this quote with Ranier Maria Rilke:

"I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it."

She concludes, "The four spiritual dynamics, spirit/object, resistance/flow, ambiguity/certainty, and vision/revision, can bring healing. Using these dynamics with your material — that which is given to you — helps you engage in an interaction or exchange. The last dynamic, vision/revision, provides an opportunity to reframe experience, to identify a cultural, historical and even mythic pattern."

Packa ends this post with a bibliography, a thoughtful guide for readers' further explorations.