Mark Matousek – Writing as a Spiritual Practice

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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

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

An Unprecedented Opportunity to Experience Writing as a Spiritual Practice

We feel honored that Mark Matousek has chosen to partner with The Shift Network on this exclusive online training. As you may know, this is a rare opportunity to learn directly from a bestselling author, teacher and expert in the art of personal awakening through writing.

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.

If you’re ready to take the next step in evolving yourself, click the register button below to reserve your space now.

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.