Mark Matousek – Writing As A Spiritual Practice

Mark Matousek – Writing As A Spiritual Practice

Check it out: Mark Matousek – Writing As A Spiritual Practice

Access your sacred depths with a powerful, transformative writing practice to cultivate an expansive mind, open heart, authentic relationships, liberated creativity – and a freer soul.
Have you ever felt a sense of freedom from pouring your heart’s deepest truths into the pages of a journal? Or in a personal piece of writing?

If you answered “yes” – you’re not alone. Those of us who are committed to spiritual growth often turn to the written page, where we can explore our true feelings, “taboo” thoughts and boldest visions. We may dialogue with our higher Self, or even examine our darkest shadows.

Often our raw, vulnerable and “out there” truths aren’t ready (or even appropriate) for public sharing, yet they still need to be expressed, felt and released in some way.

Exploring your unsanitized emotions, uncensored thoughts and wildest ideas in a safe way can be a profoundly liberating experience. You can learn to open to more of yourself, love parts you once found unlovable, heal past hurts – and even access the highest states of consciousness connected to spiritual awakening.

It’s a pathway into deeper relationships, enhanced creativity, and more powerful manifestation in the world.

In short, writing can be a potent practice that enhances your life in ways that are both personal and transpersonal, intimate and sublime. Your intimate writing can serve as your trusted confidante, Zen master and psychotherapist – all rolled into one.

On the other hand, if you don’t know how to foster a truly transformative approach to writing, you can get stuck in emotional ruts, feed negative thinking and cycle through old stories in ways that leave you frustrated.

The difference between this and writing as a path of liberation, lies in treating it as an actual spiritual practice – one that is every bit as potent as meditation, prayer or yoga. In fact, writing can help free areas of yourself that most conventional spiritual practices never touch.

When you start to see your writing as a place where you do some of your deepest inquiry into who you are, why you are here, and what’s holding you back – that’s when the true power is realized.

When you look back at history’s greatest pioneers – spanning the spectrum, from social change agents like Gandhi, to artists like Michelangelo, to scientists like Thomas Edison – you see that their personal writing journeys are often foundational to their leadership skills and creative breakthroughs.

Your journals and personal writing are portals into your greatest depths – which are the wellspring of true love, creativity and innovation.

Writing for Transformation
It’s not enough to simply write anything that pops into your head, as you might end up rehearsing and believing the old, limiting stories you tell yourself. Unstructured writing can reinforce that which binds you, rather than help you discover that which frees you.

So the liberating practice is to use writing as a way to probe your depths – going beneath the surface truths to the most vulnerable truths, exploring the hurt behind the anger, digging away at the ego to expose the spirit that is orchestrating experiences.

This takes truly skillful inquiry, as well as the kind of discipline we usually associate with other enlightenment practices. As you venture into areas that generate resistance, it can be easier to dismiss them and stick to familiar terrain.

The rewards of a deep and powerful writing practice are immense – providing you with a daily way to access, examine and release your innermost Self, your most profound truths and your most innovative insights.

You can use these practices to bring greater clarity to your lifepath, fuel your creativity and deepen your personal relationships. You can embrace your shadows and mine them for their gifts – while expanding the depths of love and compassion.

More than anything, you will be able to access more and more of your unique genius, and receive deep wisdom on how you can manifest it in the world (as well as transform the “blocks” we all experience).

When you learn to utilize the transformative power of writing, you do two things simultaneously:

You gain a powerful tool for your spiritual path – one that is always available and essentially free.
You access your depths in ways that greatly enhance all of your public writing and speaking – making you more compelling as a teacher, leader, activist or entrepreneur (or any profession that requires communication).
Why do you see real shifts in the public arena? Because people respond more powerfully to someone who is clear, integrated, and whole.

When you know yourself fully, you tend to be more heartfelt, insightful, truthful, funny, and creative. You’re not imprisoned by social roles, but are able to relate from your depths. And others find that compelling– as they also yearn for more freedom and authenticity in how they engage.

Think of how great actors are able to convey so much meaning with a single glance. They can do so because they are in contact with their rich inner lives, and have learned to be transparent with emotions – which makes them far more compelling.

The same is true of many entrepreneurs. Or therapists. Or teachers. When we sense someone is integrated and at peace with themselves, we trust them more, and are drawn to work with them.

So writing as a spiritual practice will take you into the brightest (and darkest) parts of yourself to experience a kind of liberated wholeness, which is the ultimate goal of spiritual practice. And it also enhances how you can show up in the world – more comfortable with who you are, more able to access your depths.

The Importance of a Master Guide
As with any genuine spiritual inquiry, it is vital to have a master guide – one who knows the territory and the actual sequence of practice – far better than you do. A master guide can keep you on track, and help you avoid the many pitfalls that emerge on any journey.

Fortunately, you have such a guide available to you for the 7-module course, Writing as a Spiritual Practice. Over the last three decades, Mark Matousek has become one of the world’s foremost chroniclers of the spiritual path – as an author (of the bestselling Sex Death Enlightenment), journalist (for publications, such as The New Yorker and O), collaborator (on seminal books like the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying) and editor.

Mark is a master of language and, more importantly, a genius at marrying the depth of spiritual practice with the practice of writing. He is a dynamic, funny, self-revealing, and profound teacher who will be sharing the practices and disciplines that make for a liberating, life-long practice of writing.

He’s also been teaching students worldwide about the discipline of writing as a spiritual practice – in a way that is profoundly liberating and very enjoyable.

In Writing as a Spiritual Practice, he will take you on a structured journey through seven key areas in which writing can help free you from old limitations related to your identity, your relationships, and your genius. In this special course, you will enter a very safe and supportive container for your honest inquiry, within a global community.

You’re in good hands to take a deep dive into your liberation through writing, and learn skills you can utilize for a lifetime.

What You Will Discover in Your Journey with Mark Matousek

Each module will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding for how to engage Writing as a Spiritual Practice with clarity, depth and transformative power.

You’ll emerge with:

• Deeper access to your spiritual identity
• Greater understanding of your authentic desires
• Enhanced ability to discern the ego’s voice from your soul voice
• A wider angle lens on your “life myth”
• An inner refuge that you can turn to for wisdom and advice
• Greater freedom from shame about your shadow (and understanding of its wisdom)
• Comfort with your secret passions and fears
• Increased discernment about where fear is blocking desire in your life
• Facility with a non-dual approach to desire
• A more profound understanding of your personal source of meaning and purpose
• The ability to focus your intentions, stop procrastinating and practice discipline with kindness
• Healing from deep wounding in your life
• Expanded access to your personal and creative genius
• Deepened ability to express your innate gifts in the world

Accessing Your Soul (Recorded on January 29, 2014)

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. In this module, we will be exploring the authenticity gap in our lives, and how to examine it through self-inquiry.

You will 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
Module Two: The Secret Life
Finding Your Inner Refuge (Recorded on February 5, 2014)

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. In this module, we will be inquiring into our own secret lives, and how they provide us with wisdom and balance.

You will 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
Module Three: Fear and Desire
Liberating Your True Passions (Recordedon February 12, 2014)

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 (when no one else is hurt in so doing)? When is it wise to listen to fear? Why are you afraid of things that you crave (and vice versa)? In this module, we will 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 will 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
Module Four: The Quest for Meaning
Finding What Truly Matters to You (Recorded on February 19, 2014)

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). In this module, 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 will learn to:

Locate your personal source of meaning
Overcome obstacles to meaning in your life
Strengthen your commitment to purpose
Link your personal meaning to the greater good
Reconstruct your life myth to accommodate authentic meaning
Module Five: The Mystery of Love
Deepening Your Intimate Relationships (Recorded on February 26, 2014)

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. In this module, we will be using our writing to plumb the mystery of love in its myriad varieties – passionate, platonic and familial.

You will 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
Module Six: Intention and Power
Creating from Your Inner Source (March 5)

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. Inb this module, we will be learning practices for focusing, and strengthening, personal intention in order to reach our goals.

You will learn to:

Focus your intentions
Find the path of least resistance to what you desire
Stop procrastinating
Practice kindly discipline
Commit to your own dreams
Module Seven: Awakening Genius
Discovering Your Unique Gift (Recorded on March 12, 2014)

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? TIn this module, we’ll be learning 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 will learn to:

Identify you 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
The Writing As A Spiritual Practice Bonus Collection
Writing, Spirit and Telling the Truth
Audio Dialogue with Eve Ensler

In this intimate dialogue Mark will be talking with his friend and renowned playwright Eve Ensler about the challenges and joys of memoir writing, their different approaches to spiritual practice, Eve’s recent book In the Body of the World, and the transformative power of telling the truth.

Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries. Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Utne Reader, International Herald Tribune, Glamour Magazine and Marie Claire as well as a regular column in O Magazine. In November 2009, Ensler was named one of US News & World Report’s ”Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2010 she was named one of “125 Women Who Changed Our World” by Good Housekeeping Magazine. In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

The True Secret of Writing
Audio Dialogue with Natalie Goldberg

In this session, Mark speaks with renowned writer Natalie Goldberg about some of the many secrets she has picked up during her mega-successful writing career. Learn how a good writing practice is like a good business practice – you want to have integrity, know who you are and know what you want. Natalie also shares how getting beneath the surface of our everyday thoughts through writing reveals what we truly think, who we really are and what we want. She also emphasises the importance of writing with others to help maintain your commitment to your writing practice and shares many ways to access your writer within.

Natalie Goldberg is the author of Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within, which broke open the world of creativity and started a revolution in the way we practice writing in this country. The book has sold over one million copies and been translated into fourteen languages. Since then she has written nine other books, including the novel Banana Rose. Her New Book, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life With Language, is a brilliant distillation of the True Secret workshops that Natalie has been giving for years near her home in Taos, New Mexico and around the globe.

The Mystery of Love
9-Session E-Course

This 9-session written course will explore the ways we think about love as well as issues of jealousy, attachment, and passion. What stories do we tell ourselves about love? How do we view ourselves in relationship? What is the relationship between love and desire? This class is for anyone who has ever been confounded by the intricacies of the human heart.

Things you will learn in The Mystery of Love

How to distinguish between love and desire
How to transcend our fears of loving
What Shakespeare meant by “the proofs of love” in contrast to the romantic myth
Why love is the most challenging and rewarding spiritual practice
How to love and lose without bitterness
How to reinvent ourselves through the power of a focused heart
Why love is not different from genius
Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story
Audio Book Read by Mark Matousek

Mark reads his 1996 breakout memoir about leaving a fast-track publishing life (working for pop artist Andy Warhol at Interview Magazine) and hitting the dharma trail in search of a meaningful life and spiritual wisdom. Hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “brave, beautiful, and brilliantly observed,” Sex Death Enlightenment became an international bestseller (published in 10 countries). Like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love and Paul Monette in Borrowed Time, Matousek takes the reader on an insightful, rollicking search for answers to life’s deepest questions in this landmark memoir.

Here’s What You’ll Receive

Seven Recorded 90-Minute Class Sessions with Mark Matousek

Experience a rare opportunity to be mentored and learn from renowned author and writing teacher Mark Matousek – from the comfort of your own home. Each class session helps you create the specific skills and abilities to awaken your spiritual potential.

Seven PDF Transcripts of Each Class Session

In addition to the high quality MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. This way you can review, print and highlight the most important insights and practices that you’ll learn.

Writing Exercises for Each Lesson

After each lesson, you will then have the option to do related writing exercises in order to accelerate your learning, and integrate each session.

The Writing as a Spiritual Practice Bonus Collection

Writing, Spirit and Telling the Truth:
Dialogue with Eve Ensler
The True Secret of Writing:
Audio Dialogue with Natalie Goldberg
The Mystery of Love:
9-Session E-Course
Sex Death Enlightenment:
A True Story, Audiobook Read by Mark Matousek
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Experience Writing as a Spiritual Practice
Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations and meals – which would cost thousands of dollars). You’ll also be able to benefit from Mark and his guest’s incredible teachings and exercises, from the comfort of your home – at your own pace!

If you’re serious about learning how to use writing as a spiritual practice and as a means for personal transformation, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones – and our world – to take this one-of-a-kind training.

About Mark Matousek

Mark is a bestselling author, teacher, and speaker whose work focuses on personal awakening and creative excellence through self-inquiry and life writing. He is an award-winning author of five books and worked with Sogyal Rimpoche on The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and collaborated with Andrew Harvey on Dialogues with a Modern Mystic. His first book published in 1996, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story became an international bestseller published in 10 countries and was nominated for two Books for a Better Life Awards.

A featured blogger for Psychology Today, Purple Clover, Huffington Post, he has contributed to numerous anthologies and publications including The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine (contributing editor), The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Yoga Journal, Details, The Saturday Evening Post, AARP, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and many others.

Mark is on the faculty of the The Omega Institute and The New York Open Center, teaches transformational writing workshops around the U.S. and in Europe, and is the Creative Director of V-Men (with Eve Ensler), an organization devoted to ending violence against women and girls.

He brings three decades of experience as a memoirist, editor, interviewer, survivor, activist, and spiritual seeker to his penetrating and thought provoking work with students. His workshops, classes, and mentoring have inspired thousands of people around the world to reach their artistic and personal goals and transform their lives.