Matt Cardin's Blog, page 4

Creative Purpose in the Age of Apocalypse

Dear Living Dark reader,

“As the world grows weirder and more disturbed, leading toward a potential collective cataclysm, the discipline of the daemon muse may enable us to heal the fateful rupture that has led us to deny and exclude the visionary aspect of our being from our mainstream map of reality....Authentic life purpose that is aligned with reality and embodied in one’s authentic great work can serve as what we may call a monastic option. ”

Those words are from the conclusion to Writing at ...

Beyond the Matrix of Language

Dear Living Dark reader,

Those of us who write about writing and spirituality, language and waking up, have such an energetic paradox on our hands. It comes to the fore in things like Kenneth S. Leong’s insightful observations in The Zen Teachings of Jesus about the intrinsic relationship between Zen, art, and creativity, and about Zen’s concomitant “right-brain orientation.” Art, says Leong, is ultimately nonverbal and right-brained because it is ultimately not about the abstractness of thoughts...

Join the new Living Dark subscriber chat

Today I’m announcing a new addition to this newsletter: The Living Dark subscriber chat, which I mentioned in yesterday’s email with the updated About page.

This is a forum and conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions, thoughts, and other prompts, and you can jump into the discussion. Paid subscribers are also able to start new threads of their own.

I’m envisioning the Living Dark chat as a place where we can delve deeper into t...

The Hidden River of Your Writing

Dear Living Dark reader,

“Creativity is a hidden river running through your life. It created you, the dream character living out this narrative of a self in a world. It also uniquely gifted you for creating things within the dream.”

Those are lines from Chapter One of my next book. Two weeks ago I shared the book’s introduction with you. Today I present the first chapter. As with the introduction, and as with most (but not all) of the other chapters that I’ll be publishing here for paid subscriber...

The Zen of Words

Dear Living Dark reader,

Some years ago I started telling the students in my literature and writing classes that language has an alchemical power. I usually did this when we were studying poetry, although I applied the idea to prose as well.

This always necessitated a pause to offer a brief explanation of the word “alchemy.” Then, once that was out of the way, I went on to explain that there is a positively magical power in language, particularly in the poetic use of it, since language enables eac...

On Living and Writing into the Dark

Dear Living Dark readers,

“I invite you to turn with me to the matter of writing, creativity, waking up, and the question of what they all have to do with each other, and of how finding out the unique answer in your own life can tell you who you really are and what you’re really here to do.”

Those words are from the final paragraph of the introduction to the book I’m now writing. With this post, I begin serializing that book for paid subscribers, starting with the complete text of the introduction...

Writing at the Wellspring: Progress Report #2

Dear Living Dark reader,

This is my second update on the progress I’m making on writing my next book and the associated book proposal to go with it. The usual order of business for writing a nonfiction book is to write the proposal first, then use it to gain either an agent or a publisher, and only then to write the actual book. But right now I’m doing both at the same time. And in fact, both are more than ninety percent finished.

In this update, I reveal the book’s table of contents, followed by ...

Your Afterlife as a Fictional Character

Dear Living Dark reader,

What follows are words overheard in some spaceless space at no particular time. They are apparently part of some lecture or teaching that could be categorized as “spiritual.” We can infer from their content that the transcript picks up in the middle of an extended metaphor in which the speaker is using the idea of novels and movies, and the fictional worlds they posit and portray, and particularly the thought of the subjective experiences of the characters in these narrat...

Writing at the Wellspring: Progress Report #1

Dear Living Dark readers,

Back in April, I announced that I was developing my next book from posts that I have been publishing here since launching TLD in 2022. I shared that I had been brainstorming ideas for a title, and I asked for your advice and input. You provided loads of helpful thoughts and reactions, for which I’m still grateful. Now I return to share this, the first of what will be an ongoing series of progress reports on the book’s creation journey. Some of these posts will be free to...

Beyond Words: Progress Report #1

Dear Living Dark readers,

Back in April, I announced that I was developing my next book from posts that I have been publishing here since launching TLD in 2022. I shared that I had been brainstorming ideas for a title, and I asked for your advice and input. You provided loads of helpful thoughts and reactions, for which I’m still grateful. Now I return to share this, the first of what will be an ongoing series of progress reports on the book’s creation journey. Some of these posts will be free to...