Matt Cardin's Blog, page 5

To Thine Own Muse Be True

Dear Living Dark readers,

As a kind of parenthetical opener, be aware that today’s essay represents a chapter from the book that I’m presently writing and developing from essays originally published here, along with additional material. The title that has been shaping up in the past three months since I announced this project—as aided by your suggestions and input—is Beyond Words: A Writer’s Guide to Creativity and Life Purpose through Nonduality and the Daemon Muse. I’ll soon start sharing updat...

Reading Notes 3

Dear Living Dark reader,

This is the third entry in Reading Notes, the ongoing series of posts in which I track what I’m presently reading, researching, studying, and textually imbibing and enjoying—books, articles, essays, stories—by paraphrasing and labeling core points, quoting especially striking passages, and noting down my brief thoughts, reactions, and reflections. As before, and as always, I will repeat my original preamble to the first entry:

I have always taken notes on my reading. One o...

The Devil's Diagnosis of Disenchanted Modernity

Dear Living Dark reader,

There was a time in my twenties and thirties when grim visions of the human prospect like those found in dystopian novels were prominent in my thinking and feeling about life. I found them kind of exhilarating, even though there were also depressing. The paradoxical pleasure of prophetic doomsaying, I suppose.

But that was in the 1990s and early 2000s. As we all know, doomerism and dystopian dreaming went mainstream beginning in the late aughts, and with that having occurr...

Writing in a Haunted Universe

Dear Living Dark reader,

In a world increasingly dominated by digital technology, how do we navigate the delicate balance between online engagement and personal well-being without losing our authentic selves?

If our lives are an intricate dance between inevitability and free will, how much of our creativity and spiritual growth is truly our own, and how much is predetermined by forces beyond our control?

Can the act of exploring psychological and metaphysical darkness—through horror fiction, childh...

The Inner Alchemy of Quest Narratives

Dear Living Dark reader,

Have you ever felt the tug of a story that seemed to speak directly to your soul, to the unspoken longings and questions that reside deep within? What is it about tales of quests and journeys that resonates so profoundly with us across cultures and across time? Could it be that these stories are more than mere entertainment, that they hold up a mirror to our own lives and the universal human experience?

Earlier this year, I was invited by Flame Tree Publishing to write the...

Haunted by Ourselves: The Muse in the Cerebellum

Dear Living Dark reader,

Today’s post is too long for some email services to show its full text. If you’re reading it in email, you may need to click through to the web version for the whole essay.

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Though this essay can be read on its own, it starts in medias res, leading in directly from the first post in the series, so it may be more meaningful if you start with that one.

As I stated in the introduction to that post, the focal question here is: What are the physical aspects, and more specificall...

Haunted by Ourselves: The Daemon in the Brain

Dear Living Dark reader,

Today’s post is too long for some email services to show its full text. If you’re reading it in email, you may need to click through to the web version for the whole essay.

*

Though this essay can be read on its own, it starts in medias res, leading in directly from the first post in the series, so it may be more meaningful if you start with that one.

As I stated in the introduction to that post, the focal question here is: What are the physical aspects, and more specificall...

Haunted by Ourselves: The Daemon in the Cerebellum

Dear Living Dark reader,

Today’s post is too long for some email services to show its full text. If you’re reading it in email, you may need to click through to the web version for the whole essay.

*

Though this essay can be read on its own, it starts in medias res, leading in directly from the first post in the series, so it may be more meaningful if you start with that one.

As I stated in the introduction to that post, the focal question here is: What are the physical aspects, and more specificall...

Art as Trap and Transcendence

Dear Living Dark reader,

Today’s post is a bit too long for some email services to show its full text. If you’re reading it in email, you may need to click through to the web version for the whole essay.

*

What is the relationship between art and the rest of our lives? Does art enhance our experiences and relationships? Does it complement them? Enrich them? Illuminate themhee

Or it is just the opposite? Do art and life stand in conflict? Does each injure the other, steal from the other, sap the esse...

When Science Meets the Supernatural

Dear Living Dark reader,

Having suffered from traumatizing visionary sleep paralysis attacks for years in my twenties, and having delved deeply into the literature about this phenomenon, I’m nonplussed whenever I read things like the following, which comes from a recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled “If Not Demons, What Causes Sleep Paralysis?” (Note: It’s behind a paywall.)

We know the temporoparietal junction uses touch and feedback so that your brain can figure out where your body i...