Writing as a Spiritual Practice – Mark Matousek

Every life is a work of fiction. Behind our worldly mask is an essential self — a soul identity — whose powerful voice communicates our unique truth and deepest desires. Many of us suffer from mistaken identity. Until we access this soul awareness, we’re split off from our own true nature and distanced from our gifts, passion and purpose. This week, we’ll be exploring the gap in our lives between how we show up in our writing (and the world) and our true authenticity, and how to examine it through self-inquiry.

You’ll learn to:

• Gain access to your soul identity.
• Identify your authentic desires.
• Discern the ego’s voice from your soul voice.
• Listen to creative counsel from within.
• Consider your life myth from a soul perspective.

The first step toward authenticity is surveying your secret life. Without exception, each of us has one — that vicinity of self that is yours alone — filled with memories, totems, obsessions, longings, dreams and vulnerabilities. This inner refuge contains a wellspring of inspiration and self-discovery. The soul loves specificity, intimacy and subjective uniqueness. This week, we’ll be inquiring into our own secret lives, and how they provide us with wisdom and balance.

You’ll learn to:

• Build an inner refuge of wisdom.
• Examine the obstacles to this refuge.
• Transcend shame about your shadow.
• Connect with shadow wisdom (this is where the juice is).
• Identify your secret passions.

The tension between fear and desire determines our quality of life. To live passionately, we must learn to walk this edge between both. But how is this possible? Our impulse toward control often prevents us from venturing through fear toward our deepest longing. How can you surrender control and abandon yourself to desire (without hurting others in so doing)? When is it wise to listen to fear? Why are you afraid of things that you crave (and vice versa)? This week, we’ll be looking at this interface between fear and desire: How we walk this line — and sometimes tumble over it into passion — and the role of moral conditioning in this dance.

You’ll learn to:

• Identify where fear arises.
• Isolate where fear blocks desire in your life.
• Step outside the moral matrix that binds soul to ego.
• Practice the “art of abandon”.
• Understand a non-dual approach to desire.

From a soul perspective, what does your life really mean? Do you wonder whether you matter or not, and for what purpose you have been born? Our quest for meaning is hard-wired in us. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion, and from these stories, we derive meaning. Without meaning, life’s tribulations lose their power to transform us. As Viktor Frankl famously taught, suffering without meaning equals despair (S-M=D). This week, we’ll look at what our existence means (to ourselves and the world), where our sense of purpose comes from — and how to harness our energies to reach higher goals.

You’ll learn to:

• Locate your personal source of meaning.
• Overcome obstacles to meaning in your life.
• Strengthen your commitment to purpose.
• Connect your personal meaning to the greater good.
• Reconstruct your life myth to accommodate authentic meaning.

When Viktor Frankl was in Auschwitz, it was the hope of seeing his beloved wife again that gave his life meaning. The power of love enabled this great psychiatrist to survive. Love is the greatest mystery — our very reason for being. Why, then, can it be so enigmatic, unstable, unpredictable and challenging? The answer is that love is a practice. Like every practice, it is often difficult and requires discipline, commitment and tolerance of discomfort. This is how love yields its joy, “against the grain,” in the Buddhist saying. This week, we’ll be using our writing to plumb the mystery of love in its myriad varieties — passionate, platonic and familial.

You’ll learn to:

• Access your soul’s power to love.
• Heal from breaches of love in your life.
• Appreciate the variety of love relationships you have.
• Accept the shadow in love.
• Reaffirm love for your precious existence.

The soul is a power source. We plug into this source through intention. Intention shapes and guides us through life, holds our aim, keeps us on our path. The world is full of brilliant people whose lives would change dramatically if only their intentions were focused. Without that, there’s no creativity. Manifestation requires single-mindedness. This week, we’ll learn practices for focusing, and strengthening, personal intention in order to reach our goals.

You’ll learn to:

• Focus your intentions.
• Find the path of least resistance to what you desire.
• Stop procrastinating.
• Practice kind and consistent discipline.
• Commit to your own dreams.

Each of us is born with a unique gift. The Romans called this gift our “genius.” We come into this world with a “tutelary deity” that guides us toward our own fruition. The deity is our soul itself. When we free this soul, we liberate our inherent creativity and the inborn offering waiting to be born. If you do not offer your gift to the world, it will never truly exist. But what is your particular genius? What will the flowering of your soul be? In this module, we’ll learn about efflorescence (what Christian mystics called “viriditas”) — the “force that through the green fuse drives the flower” — and how we fuse with this power in daily life.

You’ll learn to:

• Identify your personal genius.
• Understand what its voice is telling you.
• Fuse with your creative genius.
• Manifest the gifts you were born with.
• Connect these gifts with the world around you.