I recently took part in a wonderful course run by Thomas Moore, an author and psychotherapist influenced by James Hillman and C.G. Jung. We dove into Archetypal Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Greek mythology, and the arts. The course stirred my imagination in mysterious ways whilst breathing new life into old, thorny questions.

One of those questions, which remains fundamental for me, is how to think about life’s many challenges. In my teen years, I believed the best answers could be found in pop psychology books and self-help materials. But my journey has since taken many twists and turns, and I have stopped to rest inside various theoretical lodges along the way. With each stop, I have been on the lookout for ideas that relieve suffering and support my fullest flourishing.

How we speak about these peculiarly human questions is significant – words shape and reshape our imagination, determining what we choose to do, how we interact with others, where we go for support, and so on. But words are not simply inert tools. They have a legacy and life of their own, and there is no shortage of concepts vying for supremacy.

Notice, for instance, how often the word ‘work’ crops up in the psychotherapeutic space: inner work, shadow work, parts work, soul work. Does this reflect our unconscious identification with the Herculean and the heroic? If so, we risk being claimed by the idea that salvation comes through tackling our problems, slogging it out with our demons, and enduring years of ‘work’ with a therapist.

Notice also the preponderance of terms that imply a peak destination or idealised goal state: wholeness, integration, individuation, adjustment, self-actualisation, self-realisation, enlightenment, awakening. These notions can easily be dogmatised and rendered lifeless through blind subservience.

Words, therefore, can be the difference between an imaginative approach to life on one hand, and the stasis of fundamentalism, literalism and egoic heroism on the other. When we are suffering, words can corrode the soul further or they can fertilise barren lands. What form of language, then – and what mode of consciousness – might we invoke?

In “Dark Nights of the Soul”, Thomas Moore recommends the language of poetry. Poetry takes us into a timeless, mythic realm – the place of image, symbol and metaphor. Here is an inspired passage from the book:

“Everyone around you expects you to describe your experience in purely personal or medical terms. In contemporary society we believe that psychological and medical language best conveys the experience we have of a dark night. You are depressed and phobic; you have an anxiety disorder or a bad gene. But perceptive thinkers of other periods and places say that good, artful, sensuous, and powerful words play a central role in the living out of your dark night. Consider this possibility: It would be better for you to find a good image or tell a good story or simply speak about your dark night with an eye toward the power and beauty of expression.

Poetic language is suited to the night sea journey, because the usual way of talking is heroic. We naturally speak of progress, growth, and success. Even “healing” may be too strong a word for what happens in the soul’s sea of change. The language of popular psychology tends to be both heroic and sentimental. You conquer your problems and aim at personal growth and wholeness. An alternative is to have a deeper imagination of who you are and what you are going through. That insight may not heal you or give you the sense of being whole, but it may give you some intelligence about life.”

The poetic approach to life does not shoehorn us into a convenient story or some arbitrary diagnostic category. Neither does it condition us to ‘work through’ our problems or trivialise experiences that touch us to the core. Rather, poetry keeps us open and alive. It helps us speak from the perspective of soul, including its multiplicity, its infinite complexity, its depth and naked suffering. It keeps our gaze on that “bandaged place” Rumi spoke of – the place where light enters.

Why, then, are we so determined to avert our gaze? Is it because poetic consciousness is powerful beyond measure and therefore feared? I can attest to this fear. When I am moved by a dream image, or a piece of music, or an actual line of poetry, something in me resists. What we call ‘Ego’ knows it is just a cork bobbing on an unfathomable ocean of primal mystery. Wariness ensues, and suddenly that well-meaning platitude or medical-psychological concept looks like an attractive way to defend against my fear of the potent, transformative image.

I am still learning to lower those defences. Most often, an opportunity will arise in conversation with loved ones. Before long, something will come up that challenges me to ‘be with’ rather than ‘react against’ the imagery they present to me. They might, for instance, express an emotion I find disturbing or tell me that something in their life didn’t go as planned. It is always tempting to make the images go away, dispelling the innate poetry available in that moment.

I might want to reach for the shot of morphine, numbing our shared pain by professing that every cloud has a silver lining, or that setbacks only make us stronger. Or, if I’m not careful, I might find myself playing diagnostician, analysing the situation with them until it is no longer perceived as threatening. “Tell me the facts again so we can get to the bottom of this.” But there may be no ‘bottom’ to the experience, no single ‘right’ thing to do, no prescription for success. John Keats spoke of the ‘Negative Capability’ – the ability to “be in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

As Moore says, the poetic approach to life may not heal or bestow wholeness, but it may help us get into relationship with more of ourselves and others. It may feed the imagination but not necessarily the Ego; soul enrichment and ‘working on my personality’ do not always walk hand in hand. Wisdom emerges when we engage with the poetic side of life and step into the mist and mystery of our soul in all its paradox.