The Thing That Refuses To Be Named

An Ordinary Disaster — chapter 29 — A Hard-Won Peace

This is the final chapter of my book-length memoir AN ORDINARY DISASTER, one man's proof that we can all learn to listen to ourselves, and to act upon the inner voice of our self, our sanity and our soul.

I’m glad you’re here! And—this is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a paying subscriber. As a full-time working writer, I appreciate every reader—and everyone who chooses to part with five bucks a month to support my writing. Almost all of my Substack remains free, but there are a few things that I make available only to paying subscribers, like my long-form handbook on intuition.

Sunrise at Cape Scott, Vancouver Island, BC

I needed to become another person.

I didn’t know what that might be like, or even how to find the path that could lead there—but I began to imagine that it was possible.

I had the feeling that I had to go towards something that should have felt like part of me, but just felt missing—the other half of my self: my unconscious. This is the part that knows without thinking, the part that speaks without hesitation, the part whose native language is pattern recognition, and the part from which springs what is most often known as “intuition.”

Since that seemed to be the key, I studied intuition and the unconscious, and practiced listening and taking action whenever I noticed them speaking up. With this practice over time, I began to hear the subtle, colorful, imaginative inner voice more and more—often in a way that reminded me of dreams—and of nature.

Simply put, I got better at intuition—but even as I did, another problem emerged. The problem with “intuition,” so to speak, is that despite my growing familiarity with what the word can refer to, I have the peculiar and persistent sense that it’s a word that doesn’t want to be used. The reason, I think, that the latent linguistic prejudice that intuition has carried still persists as something nebulous, mystical, or pseudo-scientific is because, even with a thousand ways to circle around it, intuition refuses to be named directly.

Intuition resists being pinned down precisely because it is a function of the unconscious. Just as the conscious is the realm of analysis, speech, and direct action, the unconscious is a world of whispers, symbols and hidden meanings. The unconscious does not have a voice of its own, and so when working with anything rooted there—the psychological shadow, dreams, intuition—we almost always have to move towards it indirectly.

The fact that we can’t just steer straight for this thing called intuition also serves to shelter it from the constant prodding of the alert, anxious, adult mind. We can only learn the language of intuition through the quiet craft of wayfinding in the inner—and outer—world. As our journeymaking reveals the paths as they emerge, and we find our way to fit ourselves into the seam of the wind, we absorb the raw material of the senses, and of sensing what makes sense.

Like intuition and dreams, full consciousness is a bodily function, and they all “express their contents in the language of nature.” What finally felt like freedom came from learning to listen to my unconscious, which is also the voice of the body, and of the natural world. They are all so closely connected as to be part of a greater whole.

I used to need a woman to hold me, and I used alcohol and whatever else I could lay my hands on, to provide relief from the feeling of not being held enough. I wrapped my soul in plastic, leaving me blind, breathless, and dumb.

It was only once I took up running—and sailing, and flying—that I began to feel change in a way that I hadn’t imagined was possible. That initial change led me to a series of major evolutions—changing my relationship with alcohol, making a concerted effort to develop deep relationships with other men, following my intuition at every possible turn, spending much more of time doing physical things in nature—and a daily writing practice.

There are any number of philosophies and spiritual systems that were helpful to me along the way: Jungian psychology, Stoicism, Daoism, Buddhism, psychedelic medicine, Taleb’s Antifragile, talk therapy, and adventure sports, just to name a few—and, the thing is, they all lead to the same place. Nature, connection, awareness, non-attachment, pattern recognition—and freedom.

The most fruitful of all of these for me has been Jung’s work, because of his focus on the “psychic depths” and the numinous connection between the individual, the unconscious, and the collective unconscious—which is also Self, Nature, and God. Jung’s work helped me make sense of the “impressive array of neuroses,” and “disorientation in everyday human situations” that I felt as a result of the “loss of instinct” which is “largely responsible for the pathological condition of contemporary culture.” It wasn’t just me—we are all suffering from a deep alienation and disconnection from nature and our unconscious selves.

As the effects of all of these changes combined and accumulated over time, at some point I began to feel transformed day by day, a newer man emerging each morning, not just free of a history that had once felt so bleak, but accelerating, my star drives burning hard away from an old, dark planet, on course for a new and brighter home.

Resurrection came crashing in, and in waves I was rocked and washed clean, bright and alive like never before. I’m back from the dead.

What had seemed to be the hard surface of the world has melted away to reveal a luminous web in which everything is connected, fed by a constant hum of intuitive input. Over time, these messages formed the foundation, and then the scaffolding, and then a complete philosophical architecture of my own—a guide for living well, at last—and it works, because I am!

This is nothing extraordinary—it’s how we’re all meant to live. It struck me recently that while it’s fairly well known at this point that “the opposite of addiction is connection,” I’ve never heard anyone describe the opposite of depression—perhaps because we tend to think it’s permanent.

We used to think that addiction was incurable too.

We should not accept addiction, depression, or even run-of-the-mill anxiety as any kind of normal human condition. Most often, these all-too-common soul afflictions are caused by curable errors in the way one is living. As opposed to things that we should accept and learn to manage, these are messages from the deeper psyche trying to tell us more and more urgently that “you shouldn’t have to live this way.”

“Because depression is often unrelated to external events, its opposite must be, too,” and its opposite is something like “...a life of curiosity, intrigue, and discovery…an ongoing process, driven by the desire to understand what makes life meaningful” So, not just meaning, but the continuing search for meaning. In a word: awareness—our birthright as conscious beings, the source of human creative genius—and also of the boundless pleasure in being fully alive.

I did escape death—of course not in the end, but in the beginning. Heroin death, motorcycle death, the death of drinking every day, pharmaceutical death, the death of loneliness, the death of not being known—and also, in a way, the younger, sad, small, anxious, fearful, addicted me did have to die, to make way for the flourishing of a much larger, more complete, and more vibrant self. Now, I feel the full flowering of creative freedom rising like tectonic heat, transforming my inner geology from silt and sandy sediment into granite lined with quartz, gold, and jade.

This is the opposite of depression: unbreakable, earthly, glittering treasure.

As I worked to complete the final section of this book, I dreamt of that same love of mine that asked “who holds you?” looking up at me as I stood on a dais, surrounded by dancers and drums. A scene straight from Tintin’s Prisoners of the Sun that I read to rags as a boy—she’s a priestess in a jaguar robe, an emerald at her throat, and she wears the ring we made together, two arms of pure, soft gold cradling a raw, uncut, pink diamond.

The ceremony that she leads is a blessing, of me.

This is the dream that has replaced the never-ending chase.

Still out on the road, a month after receiving her message with that question, I was camped again in my van in the high mountains of Colorado, alone, in silence, and entirely content. Salty with sweat and tears from a day of grieving as I ran along the trail for yet another relationship having ended, I put down my pencil, closed my notebook and rolled into my bunk. I lay there in the dark with the roof vent open to the sky, listening to the movement of the trees and the gentle hum of the little fridge as the wind settled, the stars shone brighter, and the coyotes sang their midnight moon song.

That was when I knew I’d gotten somewhere new. I had to learn how to get there, and it took me a long, long time, but now I don’t hesitate to say that I do know what it feels like to be myself.

It was a hard-won peace.

If I had one wish, it would be to have known earlier just how possible it is to change, and how quickly—and so, I wish the same for you. Accept no false assurances, trust your own self, listen for the gold that rises up from deep within, and use that to build a home for your soul. Let my story be evidence enough that it is possible to live free. All that’s required is to listen—and then, go!

⭐️⭐️ THANK YOU FOR READING ⭐️⭐️

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Collectors Edition

This is the final chapter of my book-length memoir AN ORDINARY DISASTER, one man's proof that we can all learn to listen to ourselves, and to act upon the inner voice of our self, our sanity and our soul.

Needless to say, this is a major milestone for me, and I’ll have a lot more to say about this book project and my next steps towards publication in the weeks to come. For now, please enjoy, and, as always, I’d love to hear your comments.

Especially if you’ve been following my work with interest, now is the time to become a paying subscriber. Paying subscribers will be able to order a FREE* copy of the first collector’s edition of the book (you pay only shipping), and, also, just as importantly, your commitment will show your appreciation for the work I’m doing here, and your support as I move into the next chapter of the book’s journey.

Further reading

The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung — C. G. Jung

Lost Connections, Johann Hari

What Is The Opposite Of Depression?, Ricky Derisz

I’ve got some questions for you

1. How would you describe the opposite of depression?

2. Have you ever felt changed enough to feel like a new person?

3. What is your relationship with your own intuition?

4. How do you move through the world—with a lot of deliberation and anxiety, freely and without hesitation, or somewhere in between?

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