The Pull of the Daimon: When You Have to Go Along or Get Dragged
When creativity takes over and what you must make is ready to be made.
Inspired by the Zen Proverb, “Let go or be dragged.”
Is being creative about having more choices than most people?
Or does being driven by a creative idea reduce your choices?
Most people assume that creativity is all about inspiration and the primary struggle is to take action on those ideas.
Ideas are indeed only as good as their execution.
But there is another challenge that all people, whether they see themselves as creative, or not, experience that absolutely no one warns them about, and so they hardly recognize it when it’s happening.
Often noticing it only after it’s altered the course of their lives.
And that is…
The Pull of Wiser Parts
It starts as a subtle tugging gravity that nudges you in a direction.
A choice that stands out among the rest—even if it isn’t logical.
The pull continues day in and day out as a quiet, steady reminder that something is ready to be made and that you are ready to make it.
And it will keep pulling, and keep growing, and become a siren until you answer that call.
For me, I notice the pull because it feels like someone has moved my well, and what used to satisfy me and be enough, simply isn’t anymore.
My curiosity is elsewhere and now it’s pulling me.
When I ignore that curiosity and doggedly slog it out on a prior cost I’m unwilling to sink, then The Pull starts to shift into something more like agitation and a growing sense that something is wrong.
It’s as if a better, wiser, smarter, part of me, with a better view knows that something is indeed wrong and yet me, my conscious mind, little old me… simply does not read the memos.
This is tricky because I could even be doing work that many people would be grateful to be doing—which is often the reason I am doing it—but meanwhile, I can’t shake this sound.
Now, I recognize it as the sound that preludes a growing period of agitation, and eventually anger that leads to change. Another thing that most people don’t tell you—those emotions are good, so long as they help you take action on what is important.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Now I know you can skip that part of the process, once you recognize that’s what is happening.
Instead, you can simply stop, and start to drift with the current.
And in that silence, you can catch up on the conversation, or even argument over what is important for you that is going on in your mind, at all moments, even this moment—between the voice of you, your conscious mind, and the wiser albeit more commanding voice of your Daimon.
Dancing with the Daimon
The idea of the Daimon originates from Ancient Greece and later Rome, which means ‘good spirit.’ Philosophers such as Socrates referred to their Daimon as their ‘inner-attendant’ or ‘wise counsel.’ Daimon is the root of Eudaimonia, which Aristotle was known to write about being the state of ‘living in good spirit.’
Later, the term was adopted by the founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung (as he was one to recycle myths and legends into psychotherapy models) to refer to this creative aspect of the psyche and Self that can provide wide counsel and seemingly knows what is best for you.
Jung does not write about the Daimon as if it were a guardian angel, but instead as something universal and automatically enforced in all peoples and cultures. As a force that each person, whether they see themselves as creative, or not, will have to contend with to fulfill their potential and choose the correct destiny for them in life.
Jung warns…
“A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his Daimon.”
Certainly, ominous. And it doesn’t help that the word was later taken to mean demon by association of similar spelling alone. (Daemon)
But what Jung is talking about is not that the creative person has fewer choices, per se. The paradox is they have more choices than the average person, yet they know they cannot make the most of them.
Because each choice that is not the one you are driven to is the incorrect choice.
There is only one right answer, for you. Only one closed door has what you’re looking for behind it. The stakes are lost time, and what happens if you work hard to open a door and it’s empty (for you)?
The risks are high, and Jung adds that the pull, the force of the Daimon is…
“A force as real as hunger and the fear of death.”
It turns out humans are not born without a compass.
But the problem is, most of us learn not to trust ours.
And so we are not guaranteed to find the gold that is uniquely ours, at least not without a little navigating.
But hunger and death are serious dangers, and ignoring your inner wisdom can also be equally dangerous because it leads to a hunger of the heart and an emptiness not because there’s something wrong with you, but instead because what you are called to create you just have not.
And by delaying the process you are delaying your Self.
Which affects more than just you…
So, the ‘guard rails’ kick in and that subtle signal turns up the volume and a pull becomes a tug. Curiosity becomes obsession. Choice becomes no-choice at all.
The Grip of the Daimon
“The Daimon of creativity has ruthlessly had its way with me.”
Jung, His Myth in Our Time
This is the part of the creative process that most creatives know well.
The ‘everything is going wrong, and I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing, but I have to keep doing it’ stage.
The struggle before flow.
Which can go on for as long as you remain in the wrong lane. Which, from its higher vantage point beyond your consciousness, your Daimon can spot, and guide you back into line.
But instead of using a mother’s love, bright colors, and sweet smells to guide you…
The Daimon tightens its grip, as guard rails creep in and focus narrows.
It’s helpful to know that Jung doesn’t talk about the Daimon as a guardian angel as many do, or as having many personal characteristics. If so, it could be easy to see it as a demon that wants to ruin your life and remove your choices. Only rewarding you with joy and fulfillment if you act within a narrow band called your ‘vocation.’
Instead, Jung describes the Daimon as “an autonomous psychic content.”
So nothing to take personally. But what is automatic to it, is nothing short of life-altering, and humbling for you and me.
The Daimon will first guide you with inspiration. And then, by starving you of joy and fulfillment as you step outside your vocation—the path your whole self believes will lead to your highest growth.
And then eventually, pain, the longer you ignore the signals.
A bit of carrot and stick.
This is the Grip of the Daimon.
The important distinction here is that the Daimon only retaliates when you aren’t listening and acting on that wisdom.
But to us, that wisdom doesn’t show up in a nice envelope with clear instructions.
To be honest, I’m not 100% sure how it initially shows up. Quite possibly in a small white envelope that I have a growing stack of. Easy to miss.
But I can tell you how it shows up after you’ve missed a few letters.
Delays.
Self-sabotage and surprises.
As unexpected, unplanned, humbling circumstances.
Author of The Soul’s Code, James Hillman writes,
“The Daimon surprises. It crosses my intentions with its interventions, sometimes with a little twinge of hesitation, sometimes with a quick crush on someone or something. These surprises feel small and irrational; you can brush them aside; yet they also convey a sense of importance, which can make you say afterward: “Fate.”
Denying Fate
Fate, and destiny, are big worlds for a little creator just trying to make something they like.
Why does the creative process have to be so dramatic?
Why must life or death seemingly hang in the balance, a mixed probability of two separate outcomes one a life well lived and one a life without color?
I believe it’s because for the person experiencing the Pull of the Daimon, that pull becomes undeniable once it starts re-arranging your life from the inside out.
You’ve probably heard how destruction is the other side of creation.
Well when your Daimon decides enough is enough, and now is the time, that is the side of creation that is likely to get your attention. Until you align with what you feel most called to do—which has to do with what will help you grow the most.
The funny thing is, The Grip softens when you listen.
Automatically and instantaneously.
So quickly, it hardly seems a danger, until you veer off-course again.
But most don’t know how quick it can be, because they tough it out. They assume that’s just how life is and accept a choice that wasn’t meant for them. And justify how they ended up where they did down the line.
Jung warns of this too, and how the modern person can develop neurosis as a defense to mask the pain of a missed vocation.
“…neurosis is…a defense…or an attempt, somewhat dearly paid for, to escape from the inner voice and hence from the vocation…Behind the neurotic perversion is concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of personality, the full realization of the life-will that is born with the individual. It is the man without amor fati [love of fate] who is the neurotic; he, truly, has missed his vocation.”
Carl Jung, The Development of Personality
It’s true that we make decisions emotionally, and can rationalize any decision after the fact. But those are all just stories and we’re living our lives now.
Jung warns that neurosis itself is a defense and a justification for the emotional decisions we did not make. (About 30% of modern people are Neurotic.)
But also in accepting that, if we were to dissolve our neurosis, and drop our defenses to the Daimon in place of those walls we would find a love of fate.
And a love for the destiny that is uniquely yours.
Interested in Shadow Work?
I share more about the Daimon, and the history of Shadow Work in my workshop, Unearth, if you want to take the next step.
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