Promptly Written Spiritual Prompt for the Week of March 6th through March 12th
Let’s see what you create from an inspirational quote from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”
As I noted in my prompt last week (by the way these prompts don’t expire — you can use any prompt at any time):
One of the most life-altering spiritual books one can read is not written by a self-help, nor a self-improvement, nor a spiritual or another sort of guru of any type. I speak of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
I had intended to follow that up this week with a quote from Hesse’s Steppenwolf, but synchronicity lead me elsewhere, so that quote will wait.
As much as I love Hesse and how deeply his words and philosophy resonate with me, the book that has had the most profound impact on my life is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a psychiatrist imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. The first half of the book recounts the horrors that he experienced and presents a very painful read. The second half of the book discusses the therapeutic approach that he developed from his experiences and utilized after the war to treat patients contemplating suicide.
Just after I wrote last week’s prompt, I received a clap on a comment that I had made in October to a great piece by jules.
I highlighted jules’s line “But really, what is freedom?” and left a comment with this quote from the book:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Write a poem, essay, or fiction that comes to your mind from reading that quote.
When I read that quote now, the first things that come to mind are emotional intelligence and the serenity prayer. In November I wrote in an essay
Many interpret this prayer to mean that we do not have any control over events and serenity ensues from letting go and letting God. That interpretation is not wrong, but it misses the mark. The prayer truly stands for that no one can change another person — and the stoic philosophy that all that we can control and change are our own attitudes and reactions, which is also the essence of the discipline of emotional intelligence, and thus I will leave you with a few stanzas of a poem I wrote on that subject:
Emotions evolutionary prize other animals may indeed have souls Feelings allow spirits to realize Goal of elevating on totem poles Humans to achieve our intended roles Feelings spiritually guide egos Persuade others with ethos and pathos Here’s an oxymoron to consider EQ incorporates lots of logos This concludes dizain portion of dinner
Time for an imayo course, of intense EQ Do not pursue happiness — it and sadness both fleet Contentment is where you’ll find, serene state of mind Allow emotions to flow, return there lest blow
Please understand the stoics, don’t push feelings down The word does not reflect roots, Marcus A. rolls eyes Do not get carried away, yet please deeply feel If you lava dome feelings, end up like Pompei
An Additional Prompt:
Today, March 6th, would have been my friend Jason’s 55th birthday. Jason passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in June 2013. In my first ever and possibly still my best piece of self-expository writing in December 2013 (published on Medium 7 years later) I wrote, among many other topics, of Jason’s passing:
Where is the sense in his death? Where is the meaning? So much pain. Everything happens for a reason? What is the reason here? There is only so much we humans can understand. I guess I just have to think that the ripples his death have caused across the fabric of the universe serve an overall positive result. Besides, his soul lives and I will speak with him some day.
Write a poem, essay, or fiction that comes to your mind from reading this.
Reminder: You can use these prompts here on PW or anywhere else on Medium. Regardless of where you publish, please tag me, Marcus aka Gregory Maidman and Ravyne Hawke and use “promptly written” as one of your reader interest tags, and include a link to this prompt. Also, if you use the prompt in another publication, please come back here and drop a link to your story in the comments as the tag notification system is notoriously unreliable.
In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,