Thank you Sean Talbeaux, Joel Gunz, Dr Genevieve, Muna H Bilgrami, Tara Kinship, and more than 180 others who tuned in to the live discussion I held with Matt Cardin of the The Living Dark on Friday — I’m still feeling the high-voltage energy of the call working in my system.
We explored Matt’s new book Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of your Inner Genius — which has had an electrifying effect on my own relationship to creativity and the spiritual search since I read it in December.
I suspect I’m not alone in sensing I’m caught in a more intense slipstream of synchronicities these days than at any time in the past: There was something about the book that spoke to my own concerns and life situation so precisely that I had the eerie feeling that it had been written specifically for me.
To quote Matt writing at the start of Chapter 11, “Nonduality and the Daemon”:
“Two of the most deeply felt fascinations that have gripped me over the years — and they’re honestly not just fascinations but full-blown obsessions, the chief orienting points of my life — are the matters of spiritual awakening and life purpose or calling. You could also call them, as indeed we have been calling them in this book, nonduality and the daemon. The former has involved finding out who I really am and what the world really is, in the knowledge of what we are not. The second has involved coming to understand the specific energy that moves me, my reason for being, what I am supposed to be doing with the life experience I have been handed. Obviously, these two are not unrelated. In fact, as I have cultivated a deeper engagement with them over time, it has become apparent that they are not two but one. They are different aspects of the same thing.”
Matt cites both horror writer Stephen King and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle in the book — two very different writers, both heroes of mine, who each represent a certain form of creative and spiritual apotheosis. I like to imagine Writing at the Wellspring as the kind of magical text this formidable pair would have delivered had they been snowed in together in a cabin for the duration of a Brothers Grimm-style timeless Fairy Tale winter. There’s a special kind of transmission moving through these pages that defies easy categorisation.
And that also made Matt both a delight and a paradox as a guest. Was I in dialogue with a master of the creative process who was also on a deep spiritual quest? Or was I talking to a spiritual teacher who had harnessed formidable powers of creativity to bring forward a redemptive message through his art?
I’ll leave you to decide.
This conversation was a highlight for me and I hope it will be a source of inspiration and sustance to others seeking orientation in these destabilising times — particularly via our discussion towards the end of creativity and the metacrisis, and Matt’s integration of Morris Berman’s “monastic option” and Tolle’s “frequency-holders” at the end of the book.
As always, I love to hear any resonance in the comments.
About Matt Cardin
Matt Cardin is an author known for delving into the realms of horror and the metaphysical. His widely acclaimed books, including To Rouse Leviathan and What the Daemon Said, explore the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity.
His work has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, long-listed for the Bram Stoker Award, recommended for the British Fantasy Award, translated into Spanish and German, and praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Rue Morgue, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and by writers and thinkers including Thomas Ligotti, John Shirley, Brian Keene, Laird Barron, Adam Nevill, John Langan, and Nathan Ballingrud.
He has appeared as a reader and panelist at the World Fantasy Convention, the World Horror Convention, and Baylor University’s Faith and Film symposium, and has been a guest on podcasts and radio programs including Weird Studies, Expanding Mind, and This Is Horror.
He holds a Ph.D. in leadership and an M.A. in religious studies. He is also a lifelong pianist, a college vice president, and a former English professor, high school teacher, university media producer, and videographer for country and pop music legend Glen Campbell. A native of the Missouri Ozarks who lived for many years in Texas, he now resides in North Arkansas with his wife.
If you found this post valuable, I’d be very grateful if you would consider becoming a paid subscriber, which confers membership of the Resonance Council of core supporters, and helps Resonant World to thrive. Thank you!
