Heroes Not Zombies

Thomas Berry, in “The Great Work” describes a creative tension which exists in the universe. He uses the terms “wildness” and “discipline”

Wildness we might consider as the root of authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence come the instinctive activities which enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young; to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist, and the power of the shaman. Something in the wild depths of the human soul finds its fulfilment in the experience of nature’s violent moments.

Throughout the entire world there exists a discipline that holds the energies of the universe in the creative pattern of their activities, although this discipline may not be immediately evident to human perception.

..[the] mutual attraction and mutual limitation of gravitation is, perhaps, the first expression of the primordial model of artistic discipline.

We might consider then, that the wild and the disciplined are the two constituent forces of the universe, the expansive force and the containing force bound into a single universe and expressed in every being in the universe.

This is a beautiful description. Creativity requires both the freedom of play and the discipline of practice (the routine of “showing up every day”). He goes on to relate these ideas to our own solar system.

When first the solar system gathered itself together with the sun as the center surrounded by the nine fragments of matter shaped into planets, the planets that we observe in the sky each night, these were all composed of the same matter; yet Mars turned into rock so firm that nothing fluid can exist there, and Jupiter remained a fiery mass of gases so fluid that nothing firm can exist there. Only the Earth became a living planet filled with those innumerable forms of geological structure and biological expression that we observe throughout the natural world……….The excess of discipline suppressed the wildness of Mars. The excess of wildness overcame the discipline of Jupiter. Their creativity was lost by an excess of one over the other.

Wow! Beautiful story, fabulous imagery, and really a great insight. One thought which comes to mind when reading it is how the brain functions best in what is termed a “near chaos zone”. When thoughts and brain function become completely chaotic we are lost. When the brain function becomes absolutely rigid and fixed we can have seizures. Another thought is about the healthy heart. The intervals between every beat are not exact. The heart is not like a metronome or a machine-like pump. If it does become so rigid in its rhythm then begins to fail. However, if it becomes completely chaotic, it fails too. What we really need is a state of coherence, where the heart rate variability is high but rhythmically so.