Hidden Creatures

Modern man values individuality and personal freedom so highly precisely because he knows, deep down, that civilization – that thing he holds so dear – has robbed him of his real power. Civilization has at its foundation the assumption that base primal energies can and should be sublimated to more constructive and refined ones, and that the loss of physical satisfaction that accompanies such sublimation is more than compensated for by the creative and material gain. I call these primal energies our hidden creatures. Hidden because they have been suppressed for so many years, and creatures because when released they transform us into something vibrantly alive and beyond our normal self. These creatures/energies can be tamed but only if they are first unlocked and then investigated. Learning to wield these energies is far more satisfying than pretending they don't exist or indulging them every now and then by taking drugs, losing our temper, fucking, etc. Unlocking them requires us to let go of our normal grip on the world – the grip that keeps things as they are – and let ourselves be possessed, as though by a strange animal. But then in the midst of this abandon we must be able to retain a centred stability – a spiritual core – otherwise we indulge the creatures rather than investigate them. This spiritual core is our true soft strength – our ability to stay centred in the mist of abandonment; whereas the power of our grip on our known world would be our hard manufactured strength.