A Moth To The Flame: Rumi, The Shadow, and Connie Zweig

I am excited to announce that the first interview for my blog will be with shadow-work expert and highly accomplished author and editor Connie Zweig. I have a two-part interview in the works: part one will deal with her new book on the life of Rumi, A Moth To The Flame, while part two will explore the importance and vitality of shadow work by discussing her impressive body of writing and clinical practice.

Connie Zweig is an iconoclastic, thoughtful and much-needed voice in the spirituality/pop psychology world. Her work in the oft-neglected area of what Carl Jung called the shadow has been consistently both revelatory and accessible. She began in the 90's by editing two extraordinary compilations, To Be A Woman and Meeting the Shadow. These volumes included work by heavyweights Marion Woodman, Marie-Louise von Franz, Joseph Campbell, Riane Esler, Ken WIlber, Harville Hendrix, James Hillman, and Carl Jung himself. While the emphasis is markedly different in each, both books deal with the importance of confronting, making conscious and integrating the disowned (and therefore largely unconscious) personal, familial and collective shadow qualities that split the psyche into dualistic conflict. Shadow work is an important piece of contemporary women's liberation as well as a frequently overlooked aspect  of psycho-spiritual integration for all people.

Zweig followed up this intensive exploration of the writing of others with a widely-acclaimed original collaboration with Steve Wolf called Romancing the Shadow. This book not only lays out a comprehensive theory on the subject of the shadow but is woven through with reader-friendly exercises in shadow awareness work.

Next came The Holy Longing, a courageous and unflinching look at the way our universal longing for spiritual connection and sustenance can go awry and become distorted into addiction, unhealthy relationships, cultish group dynamics and even fundamentalist martyrdom. Springing from her ongoing clinical work with psychotherapy clients, The Holy Longing points to a powerful underlying yearning that is often at the heart of our difficulties.

Now Connie Zweig has published her first novel, a telling of the story of beloved Sufi poet Rumi's life. It's called A Moth To The Flame and the book concerns itself primarily with the spiritual love story of Rumi and his controversial sheik Shams of Tebriz. Zweig spins the story with masterful flair, evoking a rich landscape of Middle Eastern culture and history, while locating the story within the community around Rumi. She infuses the story with the tensions between Islamic orthodoxy and mystic Sufism, Sufism and the even wilder ways of the wandering dervish Shams, old-world religious conventions and sexuality and gender roles. She also manages to bring a rare multi-perspective well-roundedness to our understanding of how the story's events impact, shape and are shaped by all the players involved.

The story of course takes place in the shadow of our (and Rumi's) knowledge of the inevitability of what is in store for Shams, as well as the floodgate of poetic genius that will be opened in the center of the distraught master's chest. The author manages to create a kind of prequel to the poems so many have grown to know and love so dearly, and even sprinkles verses from Rumi throughout the book as milestones in both the story's unfolding and the inner life of this nascent giant of mystic poetry.

As in her other work, Zweig concerns herself with the hidden, the mysterious, the unacknowledged aspects of our being, she has female characters who long to feel the cool air on their skins, spiritual initiates who can't resist a little guilty self-pleasuring while in meditative solitude, a teacher of otherworldly transcendence overcome with carnal desire, forbidden  poetry, dancing and ecstatic spiritual communion, and an envious murder in the name of religious orthodoxy.

Rumi is not a conventional hero in this story, but a man struggling with his responsibilities, desires and grief, and sometimes hurting those around him in his uncompromising commitment to the absorption in grace he discovers through Shams.

Combining historical research, her own experience of Sufi practice, psychological acumen and well-wrought imagery, Connie Zweig has given us an engaging portrait of the spiritual awakening, love, and tragedy that are expressed in the most well-known mystic poetry in the world.

I am very much looking forward to sharing our conversations with you!

Here is my interview: Connie Zweig: A Moth to Rumi's Flame