In the past six chapters, you’ve undertaken a massive journey. You cultivated honesty, innocence, and optimism. You crossed the threshold into the dreamworld and began to inhabit your divinity.
Now comes the great task of unearthing your genius and sharing it with others. Your work is to bring others to the same expanded condition of awesomeness that you now enjoy.
Why should that be? Why can’t you just kick back, relax, and enjoy your awesome life? Why do you need to do the work of awesoming the lives of other people? For the simple reason that in the realm of spiritual bounty, we keep what we have only by giving it away. Joy, bliss, ecstasy, love, and creativity need to flow. They can’t be bottled up or else they go stagnant and rot.
Now that you’ve journeyed inward and worked a transmutation on yourself, you need to communicate your evolution to others so that they can also partake of it.
I invite you to share this book with people around you who comment favorably on the transformation that they see in you. Tell these friends about the adventure you’ve undergone, how it’s changed you, then encourage them to make the same experiments.
Everyone deserves to live their own personal legend, and now that you’ve started doing it yourself, you’re qualified to inspire others to take the trip.
But sharing this book in itself isn’t enough. You also need to tame and nurture your genius spirit and keep bringing manifestations of your own unique realization into the world.
Before you can tame your genius spirit, you have to find her. So where should you go digging for your genius? In the unassuming place she’s been calling to you from all along: your common-place book.
Read back through your common-place book and discover the wonder you’ve created there over the past weeks. Review your highlights and your shadows, your records of your experiments, your dreams, your reading and researches. As you read, be alert to the presence of an alien wisdom: flashes of beauty and insight that shock and delight you even though they came from your own pen.
These flashes are the manifestations of your genius. Circle them or otherwise mark them for later. Be aware that these are the raw material out of which you will distill your genius into fully embodied life.
Here it is crucial to acknowledge that imaginatively confronting your genius is a dangerous and tricky proposition. Daimon spirits (i.e., geniuses) are notoriously amoral. They have no particular concern for the well-being of your mortal form on this earth or for the bonds of love you’ve worked so hard to forge with others.
This is why we have to balance our search for our daimon with the practice of spiritual principles and the cultivation of our hearts. Your daimon is the potent essence of your unconscious. Symbolically speaking, she’s made of mercury. Mercury is both extremely beautiful and extremely toxic when handled incorrectly. Many brilliant creative people have been destroyed by their genius because they failed to fully feed her demands, appetites, and impulses with love.
A major source of confusion that leads to these destructions is the popular notion that it’s important to create art for art’s sake—to create for the sake of creating. This notion has a kind of common-sense currency in our culture and an aura of glamour, but it’s false because it ignores the fundamental spiritual fact that every act of creation also includes with it a necessary and equal act of destruction.
When creative work is consecrated to the great work of transmuting elusive genius mercury into the steady gold of self-realization, the creative act destroys the ego at the same time that it builds up the divine center.
When creative work is not consecrated to this purpose, the creative act destroys the human person at the same time that it builds up the ego. Art for art’s sake would be a great principle if it were possible to create without destroying at the same time. Since it is not, though, we must have art for the divine’s sake, or else we will consume the best part of ourselves and be left as hungering and empty shells.
The genius craves inspiration: she craves altered states and fresh perceptions. She will have them either through evolving closer to the divine or through devolving lower into the world. This is how some people with great genius come to die of drug and alcohol addiction: they seek inspiration in intoxication and are thereby ruined.
The only means of inspiration that satisfies the genius without wrecking the body and mind is divine inspiration. This can be sought through prayer, meditation, service, altruistic commitment, and the act of creation itself. What’s important in all these efforts are the quality of intention and desire for illumination held by the soulmaker.
At the same time that our genius is dangerous and amoral, we need her to help us realize our highest potential. She is our direct connection to the divine. Without her, we are doomed to secondhand mysticism and conventional experience. We are sentenced to lives of quiet desperation. She is the spark of all great art, sex, joy. We can’t afford either to ignore our genius or to give her free rein. What, then, to do? We must confront her directly and nurture her with everything we have.
This practice is based in Jungian shadow work and the Tibetan Buddhist and shamanic practice of chöd, in which one feeds one’s demons. Until she’s given proper love, your genius daimon is a demon. If you want to learn more about this practice, I highly recommend the book Feeding Your Demons, by Tsultrim Allione.
To fulfill the experiment, take these steps:
1. In your common-place book, write a vivid imaginary description of your genius demon based on what she’s revealed to you so far.
2. Settle into your deity meditation from the previous chapter. Affirm your altruistic commitment. Imagine yourself as the enlightened, radiant being you truly are.
3. When you feel that you’ve established an expanded sense of compassion and freedom in your heart, visualize your genius demon sitting across from you.
4. Ask her what she needs from you in order to thrive, and listen to her deeply. Notice the ways that what she asks for conflicts with your ego attachments and sense of self-protection. She might be mean and intimidating, but hear how hungry she is. Open your heart to her hunger and her suffering.
5. Decide that you are willing to feed your genius demon with everything that you hold dear: your body, your ego, your comfort, your pleasure, your security, everything. Decide that you will offer to feed her with yourself. Be aware that she will definitely take you up on this offer; she’s hungry. Also be aware that deciding to consciously and generously nourish her with an open heart is a magnificent choice. If you don’t do this, she’ll just feed on you anyway as she’s been doing your whole life up to this point.
6. Express your compassion for your genius demon’s hunger and offer to feed her with your very self.
7. Listen to her accept your offer.
8. Imaginatively see your genius demon devouring your enlightened deity form, which turns into nutritious and filling nectar. Imagine that your genius demon eats and eats this nectar of you until she’s satisfied.
9. Notice how your genius demon looks after she’s satisifed herself by devouring you. She probably now appears much less dangerous and intimidating. Pay close attention to her now—does she have any words of wisdom to offer you? Write down your notes in your common-place book.
10. Repeat this meditation daily until you feel that your genius demon is truly fed and has now become your ally on the journey of awakening.
When I was first writing this book and experimenting with confronting my genius, I didn’t yet know about Tibetan chöd practice. I had only Carl Jung’s Red Book to inspire me. In the Red Book, Jung bargains with his inner archetypes a lot, so that’s what I tried doing.
If you don’t yet have sufficient metta and bodhicitta to be willing to totally feed your genius demon with your whole being, then you may want to bargain with your genius. I can say that this bargaining produces results eventually, but it’s a very tough route.
As I was first working on this book, my genius demon revealed to me that her name is Elsinore Finch. She’s a woman in her midthirties, with very beautiful velvety brown hair. I saw her decked out in a silk slip, furs, and pearls, lounging in a tent on cushions by lantern light.
I bargained with her in the following dialogue:
Me: Hello, Miss Finch.
Her: (she’s smoking, looks up) Who are you?
M: I’m Carolyn. I’ve come to speak with you. I need to have a transformative relationship with you. I need your sexual energy and creativity to catalyze me. I need you to initiate me into shamanic arts, and I need you to lead me to the gold of my higher self.
M: Yes ma’am, yes, I do.
H: What will you give me in exchange for this initiation?
M: Give you?
H: What will you trade me?
M: Miss Finch—I don’t know. What do you value? What do you want?
H: I want your love, your soul, your body, your sex, offerings of incense, fine lingerie, pearls, fur, fine perfumes.
M: I don’t have the money for new furs and perfumes. I already have some in my bedroom. You can have those.
H: Good. I’ll take them. They are mine.
M: I won’t give you my soul—that’s too high a price. You can’t have my body, either, not forever. But I will do a theater piece and invite you in, just for the duration of the piece, in a contained way. I’ll offer you that brief embodiment.
H: That’s a paltry gift.
M: I can’t offer you more. I can’t offer you full possession. I have a heart and a life to protect. You’re not trustworthy. My body and soul are mine. You can’t have them. What else can I give you in exchange for initiation to deeper creative and sexual power and to my highest self?
H: Change your name.
M: What?
H: Change your name to mine. Honor me.
M: I can’t do that full time—but I’ll take your name as a stage name, as a performance name.
H: That will do.
M: What else can I give you, Miss Finch? I want you to feel satisfied. I want you to feel free to work with me, to take me to the furthest depths.
H: Cut off some of your hair and give it to me.
M: Anything else?
H: You must dress up more—wear silk camisoles and fur, wear sexy, slinky pants—wear jewelry. Be more feminine. Don’t be a mouse.
M: What else? Please ask everything so we can fully negotiate this—I truly need your help.
H: You must do this show of yours more than once. You need to do it multiple times, and different iterations of it. You can’t just give me a brief life. You have to keep doing it, keep going.
M: How many times?
H: Twenty-seven. Once for each year of your life. I will tell you who to do it for. I will tell you what goes in the show. I will make it happen. People will want to see this show. It will be spectacular. Don’t worry about people wanting to see it. I will also tell you what to write to finish it. You may be quite honest as you bill the show—tell everyone you are in a daimonic/shamanic initiation, in a pact with me. Let them know what’s going on. I must have this public embodiment twenty-seven times for your initiation to be complete. I know you are daunted by that, you can’t see how it will happen—but it will.
M: Through this, through me doing this show twenty-seven times, you agree to deepen, expand, enrich my creativity and sexuality, and integrate me with my highest self, for the good of all? You agree not to destroy my life, take me over, or hurt the ones I love?
H: I agree, but the ones you love will be hurt if they can’t accept you or keep up with your growth.
M: But you won’t take me over and cause me to do something against my morals?
H: I will not. Listen, I will give you exactly what you ask for.
M: Okay—so please tell me exactly what this initiation will entail. Please tell me what I’ll be able to do after I undergo it.
H: You will have the power to heal people—to activate psychic powers in them. You will have psychic abilities yourself. You’ll speak from wholeness and not your little ego. You’ll be free of fear. You’ll live in the ecstasy. You’ll have boundless compassion and receptivity. You will be totally connected to your intuition and empathy. You will essentially be healing people from that ecstatic state. That is you—your ecstasy is you fully connected with your highest self. That is what your transformation will do for you. That is what my initiation will do for you.
M: That sounds too good to be true.
H: You have to stop thinking that. If you’re going to work with me, you have to trust me.
M: But I always thought only God could bring me to that state.
H: I am a part of God. I am a catalyst to take you from one state to another.
M: Okay. I believe you. So that’s the end result of the initiation. What will happen along the way?
H: Well, you’ll start to become much more ecstatic and psychic as we travel. You’ll be able to give readings. You’ll become wealthier. You’ll see artistic success. You’ll see synchronistic happenings to facilitate the twenty-seven performances—along the way you’ll meet many more guides—you’ll be on a great adventure—you’ll go around the world. You’ll change very much. You’ll lose your hang-ups. This will start immediately. You can feel it starting now. I’ll show you how to write your book and teach your class—both books and both classes. They’ll be more successful than anything you’ve done before—
M: Wow—you’re offering me a lot. Are you really going to do all that?
H: Yes.
M: Why?
H: It’s what you’ve bargained for—and besides, it’s fun for me. I’m getting excited now. I see you can do a lot in the world for magic and alchemy, you’re really willing.
I never was able to complete the twenty-seven performances that she asked of me: they were too threatening to my ego. Demons always ask for a lot. Perhaps since I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain, Elsinore was unsatisfied. She started causing me to act in grasping and thoughtless ways, and soon I entered an intense leg of my journey of awakening that damn near killed me. It would take a whole other book to describe that trip, but suffice it now to say—she possessed me, and it was very unpleasant.
Ultimately, I deepened my bodhicitta through the extravagant pain of that trip, and I finally became willing to nourish her and all others with everything I have. Now she’s made good on almost all that she offered me in our initial dialogue. I’m now far more psychic and ecstatic than I used to be.
I have full confidence that as I continue to strengthen my altruistic commitment and action she’ll continue to supply me with her gifts and energy.
Write your responses to these questions in your common-place book.
1. What’s your plan for sharing your genius in the world? Where will you start? If you feel overwhelmed—heck, even if you don’t—make a list of five simple little hops you can do that will carry you forward. Make sure that all of these hops are tiny and completely doable within one day. So doable that when you think about doing it, you’re like, “Oh? That? That’s half of nothing!” Now go do that. Half of nothing is actually half of everything.
2. What does it feel like to nourish your genius with your whole self? If you’re feeding your heart each day with metta cultivation, and acting on that cultivation with heart listening toward others, what can you do each day to actively nurture your genius? Write a short poem, draw a sketch, cook something delicious in her honor?
3. What hesitations or fears do you have about sharing your creativity with the world? Are you concerned that you’ll be dismissed, laughed at, or ignored? In my experience the most potent antidote to fears of this nature is to practice metta cultivation toward your past detractors. See those folks blossoming in ecstatic joy, and you’ll realize that if they had been happy they would have never put you down in the first place. This realization can give you the perspective to see that anyone who’s cruel to you is suffering—and seeing this allows you to feel compassion, rather than fear, toward anyone who might be inclined to insult you or your work.
4. What has your experience of this book been like? How would you describe the change that’s happened in you? Ask your friends if they notice anything different about you and take note of what they say. Don’t hesitate to share this book with them if they tell you they’re interested in learning more about how to make what happened to you happen to them. Remember, genius is nurtured by love, and love is in the energy of the gift.
Good luck out there, dear gorgeous genius!