Mark Matousek – The Transformative Path of Writing

You’ll emerge with:

• Deeper access to your spiritual identity
• Insight into the history of your personal narrative
• The ability to access witness consciousness
• An enhanced capacity to discern the ego’s voice from the voice of your soul
• A wider-angle lens on your “life myth”
• An inner refuge you can turn to for wisdom and advice
• Freedom from limiting beliefs and shame
• Greater understanding of your shadow — and the gifts and wisdom it holds
• A deeper connection to your secret passions and fears
• Increased awareness of where fear is blocking you from achieving your desires
• A nondual approach to desire
• A more profound understanding of your personal source of meaning and purpose
• The ability to focus your intentions, to stop procrastinating, and to practice discipline with kindness
• Tools for healing from deep wounding from past traumas
• Expanded access to your personal and creative genius
• A deepened ability to express your innate gifts in the world

Module 1: Who Are You, Really? (June 7, 14 & 21)

We’ll look at the primary narratives that define your identity and direct your life. When you tell the truth, your story changes. When your story changes, your life is transformed.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Tell the difference between self and story
• Debunk old myths that do not define you
• Open to new possibilities by questioning the status quo
• Cultivate the witness perspective
• Use writing as a liberating, spiritual practice

Module 2: Exploring the Shadow (July 5, 12 & 19)

You’ll begin to explore the shadow aspects of your story — the off-limits part of the psyche that you deny, neglect and suppress through fear, guilt, regret or shame. You’ll discover that your shadow contains your so-called negative aspects as well as positive, self-affirming gifts and the potential that had always remained just beyond your vision.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Identify the contents of your shadow
• Overcome shame by exposing your secrets (to yourself)
• Retrieve your disowned gifts and abandoned aptitudes
• Understand the role of darkness in spiritual awakening
• Integrate the shadow into daily life

Module 3: The Landscape of Desire (August 2, 9 & 16)

You’ll come to see that desire is the lifeblood of humanity — however often we hide it in the shadows. Desire is the source of creativity, healing and growth. Yet desire is often misunderstood as a culprit in spiritual life rather than a much-needed ally. How can we straighten out this confusion and access the source of our vitality?

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Name your true desires without self-judgment
• Identify the fear stories associated with these desires
• Use desire as fuel for self-inquiry and liberation
• Reclaim the poetry of your life — “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
• Celebrate your earthly nature, knowing that you are a part of God

Module 4: Facing Resistance (September 6, 13 & 20)

You’ll examine the paradox of why illumination (of desires, strengths and paths to freedom) often calls up internal darkness that will test you on the path of awakening. Every spiritual journey includes opponents and confrontations, doubts, temptations and naysaying voices that try to block self-fulfillment and progress.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Confront your adversaries as difficult friends, not strangers
• Tap into the inverted power of anger
• Weaken fear through open awareness
• Use resistance to strengthen your resolve
• Practice courage as a form of self-care

Get immediately download Mark Matousek – The Transformative Path of Writing

Module 5: Original Blessing (October 4, 11 & 18)

You’ll recognize that you cannot transform what you have not first blessed — including (especially) your personal demons. Until you accept yourself “in the round” by including every imperfection, contradiction and confusion, you cannot recognize your original blessing: the essence of your human goodness, the genius you were born with.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Accept yourself without condition
• Find inspiration and humor in your limitations
• Abandon the notion of original sin
• Be humble enough to be fully human
• Recognize your original genius

Module 6: Pain & Resilience (November 1, 8 & 15)

You’ll explore the relationship of pain, resilience and self-acceptance. You’ll come to see that true strength goes hand in hand with vulnerability, and that the challenges of life truly do make us stronger, provided we’re willing to learn from pain and to change our stories about what constitutes “good” and “bad” luck.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Reframe experience by changing the story
• Cultivate courage in the face of life challenges
• Practice being “broken open” in order to be healed
• Dive when you’re falling, to reach greater depths
• Overcome self-pity with curiosity

Module 7: The Power of Choice (December 6, 13 & 20)

You’ll examine your relationship to choice, and why conscious choosing is inseparable from personal power and resilience. Learning to choose well engenders meaning in your life. Meaning, in turn, bestows purpose and intention, which lead to wellbeing and enduring freedom.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Recognize ambivalence as a breach of power
• Overcome guilt, shame and inauthenticity as obstacles to conscious choice
• Identify and focus personal intention
• Tell the truth about what really matters (and what no longer does)
• Be mindful of the link between personal choice and identity

Module 8: Where Is the Love? (January 3, 10 & 17)

You’ll see that the choice to love is the portal to an awakened life. Your earliest understanding of love, attachment, security and trust (in relation to your caregivers as a child) lays the groundwork for all future intimacies, whether romantic, platonic or familial. Once you understand how love has formed you, you enter into a whole new life.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Identify your attachment patterns in love
• Recognize the dark sides of love, including jealousy, possessiveness and betrayal
• Leave space for yourself and the other in intimacy
• Relax the needs for control and dominance
• Be vulnerable without shame

Module 9: The Sacred Journey (January 24, 31 & February 7)

You’ll harvest the wisdom — the eternal truth — that love and sacredness are inextricably connected. The purpose of life is to know the sacred, and to recognize existence as a sacred journey — from darkness to light, from amnesia to awe, from being story-bound to knowing yourself as the storyteller. This endows you with wisdom and possibility, and frees you from whatever myths have held you back.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Frame your life as a pilgrimage to truth
• Practice beginner’s mind
• Celebrate the sacred in everyday life
• Recognize awe as nature’s alarm clock
• Embrace your birthright as an awakening being

The Power of Poetry to Awaken & Heal Us
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Kim Rosen

In this special audio dialogue, Kim Rosen shares with Mark how you can journey beyond the meanings of the words and fall into the vastness of a poem for a rhythmic immersion that takes you beyond the limits of the mind. Learn and experience how poetry changes the biochemistry of your brain, your body and your breath, taking you beyond your habitual patterns of thought to rediscover your true nature. Poems by many well-known modern and classic poets are shared throughout the session.

Kim Rosen has awakened listeners around the world to the power of poetry to heal and transform individuals and communities. She is the author of Saved By A Poem: The Transformative Power of Words. Combining her devotion to poetry with her background in psychotherapy and spirituality, she offers workshops, retreats and poetry concerts at retreat centers, conferences, universities and corporate settings. Kim earned her BA from Yale University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Journal Keeping as an Ancient Form of Self-counsel
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Kathleen Adams

Mark and Kathleen talk about the healing aspects of putting words to paper. Writing down your words allows you to make the abstract concrete and organize your thinking into language. This session looks at diary writing as a way to seek meaning from your stories by pouring forth the words from your heart.

Kathleen Adams is a bestselling author, speaker, psychotherapist and visionary. Her first book, Journal to the Self, is a classic that has helped define the field of journal therapy. She has also written The Write Way to Wellness: A Workbook for Healing and Change, The Way of the Journal, Mightier Than the Sword, and Scribing the Soul. Kay is a beloved teacher whose innovative work has helped hundreds of thousands of people heal, change and grow. A tireless advocate for the healing power of writing, Kay was listed (with Anaïs Nin and Anne Frank) as one of the three most significant influences on contemporary journal keeping in an About.com poll. She is founder of the Center for Journey Therapy in Denver, Colorado, and a recent online venture called Journalverse.

Writing, Spirit & Telling the Truth
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Eve Ensler

In this intimate dialogue, Mark talks with his friend and renowned playwright, Eve Ensler, about the challenges and joys of writing about your life, their different approaches to spiritual practice, 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 more than 45 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, Utne Reader, International Herald Tribune, Glamour Magazine, andMarie 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.”