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ОглавлениеWEEK 1: THE BIG PICTURE
Awareness of Connection
There was a time when I was between jobs and I would wake up at night and write down my connections. I would write about my friend Suzanne, my shelter; Margie, my fun and escape; Greg, my heart; Donna, the artist of my soul. I would remember Ohio and how I loved its fields.
Reminding myself that I was connected helped me fall back to sleep. The awareness of connection makes life stable and provides continuity in our changing lives.
Today we will begin the process of developing an awareness of a connection to our spiritual force and spiritual selves. In order to do that, we must see our lives in a context of all that exists. Connection makes the tiny dot on the map of ourselves expand to a feeling that we are more than ourselves; we are souls with one another and with the forces that made these people and this place. When we connect, we join in union, an alliance or relationship, and become part of something larger than ourselves. This is the “eagle eye” that Native Americans tell us about. Writing will help us develop this big picture. By putting thoughts and feelings on paper, we can begin to sort things out and find our soul’s calling.
Perhaps we remember, as a child, being aware that there was something more around the corner from our house. That’s when we learned to see beyond ourselves, when we became aware that beneath the concrete there was land and mother earth. We came to the realization that truth isn’t always evident and that it can be difficult to stay connected to what isn’t so easily seen. You may remember trying to tell your mom that the autumn light at dusk has fairies in it.
As we get older, we often lose this sense of connection, but we don’t need to wait to reestablish it. Connections can live in us whether we are in a primary intimate relationship or single, whether times are easy or hard. Look around and notice where connections are possible, right now, with the people in your life and spiritually. You may feel emotionally connected to the heart of another, such as when a friend tells you they understand and won’t leave you alone with a loss. Or your mind may lead the way to a heartfelt connection. I once worked with a client who told me that kindness made her want to live. For her, kindness was connection.
Writing gives us an opportunity to explore all the ways of connection. It gives us a chance to notice the mysterious ways of God—how connection to people, art, nature, and animals can make us feel more open to our spirit. By writing about our connections, we honor them. We ask our wise selves to become alive in us.
We may hold loneliness within us, but through our writing we can learn to open the window to our own spirit and call out our name. We can find a sympathy for ourselves. We can write to make sure to include our spirit in our lives.
Sometimes you may write and nothing comes. If this happens, it might help to think of yourself as a stream meandering to the ocean, sometimes speeding over rocks in its way, other times slowed by the turn of the land or the shallowness of winter’s rain. Be patient. Grace will come.
It’s an unsteady and uneven trip. This is why we start this journal with the awareness of connection.
Day 1: Wondering
My mother was raised in a fundamentalist church where they spoke in tongues. Her gift to her children was that she didn’t want the fear of God instilled in us like it had been in her. Yet she wanted us exposed to religion. My father believed in science. Occasionally, we went to a church my parents chose because it was considered intellectual rather than emotional. I enjoyed the church sanctuary, with its windows showing trees wearing their seasons, the white walls, the simple wooden cross, the vase of fresh lilies, but I put religion and God in a category for other people, not for me. The minister told stories that were too harsh. I remember thinking God was like the children on the playground who were punishing and mean.
“When so rich a harvest is before us, why do we not gather it? All is in our hands if we use it.”
—Elizabeth Ann Seton
Although I didn’t connect to a church, the experience initiated in me a sense of wonder. I wanted to feel more a part of things, or part of something that would help with the sense of separation I felt with my family. Going to church helped me become aware that connection to a god force was possible. It gave me the kernel of an idea that made me wonder how it could work for me. The deep sighing of my father in the middle of every sermon let me know that this gospel wasn’t written in stone. My father had lost patience with the harshness of the gospel. This sigh encouraged me to examine what was said.
Being exposed to church teachings and my father’s sighs gave me permission to wonder. It had never occurred to me that you could leave a question unanswered and that that could be all right. I was used to dealing with the linear ideal of a beginning, a middle, and an end. This openness to wonder pleased me greatly.
“God enters by a private door into every individual.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today we’ll begin to explore what makes us wonder, what brings us to the idea of possibility, of spirit.
Streaming
When writing about the inner world, about spirit, I find it useful to use a technique that I call streaming. Here’s how it works: You just start writing across the page. Keep going. Write your name if you don’t know what else to write. Continue without much thinking. Don’t stop. Make doodles to fill in the lines if you have nothing to say. Pay no attention to the inner critic questioning where this is leading. This is a time to just wonder. This is a time to be curious and explore. After several minutes of being “present” with your writing, you’ll find you’re in change of consciousness. In this more dreamlike state, you’ve really let go and are just writing. Keep going. After you’ve written for ten minutes, go back and underline insights and anything you’d like to continue at another time. In the exercises that follow, we’ll try out this technique. You may choose between these exercises or try all three.
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
—Joan Didion
Exercises
1. Use streaming to explore the experiences that held the seed of wondering for you. Write about how you felt as you opened to that sense of wonder and what this search could help heal for you.
2. Use streaming to explore what you may be wondering about today. Could spirit touch you? How would this make changes in your life? Write about the good, the difficult, the unknown.
3. To whom do you feel connected? Write down their names. To what do you feel connected? Write that down, too. Where don’t you feel connected? Use the technique of streaming to wonder why these connections are felt or not felt.
Day 2: Hope Holds the Opportunity
Remember the old-fashioned tradition of putting together a hope chest for marriage? Why shouldn’t we use that custom and put together a hope chest of things that help develop our awareness of connection to spirit and others: a journal, a candle, bath scents, a walking hat, a book of inspirational poetry, a book of art that lifts your spirit. Whatever helps you remember you are not alone. Whatever gives you hope.
Sometimes we know a spirit is hovering around us, but we don’t take time to develop the connection. A hope chest could remind us to take the time. Hope gets us started and motivates us. Hope is a habit. The more you allow yourself time to ponder and be still, the more you become able to feel the spirit that holds hope.
Sometimes we have been hurt so badly we can’t believe good things will ever happen. I knew an unemployed woman who had a great job lead but kept putting off making the phone call. Why did she do this? Why do any of us sabotage ourselves like this? Because we feel we need to save hope. We can’t afford to lose it. We forget that when we’re in touch with the spirit there is a replenishing of hope. We forget the saying “This, too, shall pass.” If only we could see the good in the most painful times and know that there are happy days ahead.
When we’re feeling that sense of hopelessness we can develop hope by writing about the good things that have happened to us. We can list our gratitudes. We can remember how it was before and how it is now. We can remember lessons learned from hard times and realize hope is there, that someone is watching out for us.
“To keep the lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.”
—Mother Teresa
Listen! Shelter Surrounds You
You’ll find me in the wind, the seed,
in the elephant’s triumphant roar.
I am in the pearls of your elders,
the dirt on the far side of the moon,
the ice under the coats of Jupiter.
Naked person, listen to the hawk’s cry.
Didn’t you once see five hawks
careening against the dawn.
I have been humming and hammering
through the years you took to bed, in the moments
you let life fly from your hands
to live your life again, simple days
of cooking and dancing to the radio
What else is there really?
This is you. You can ride the pony
to enter your own life,
be buried in your own clothes.
Your flaws can be touched and loved.
Janell Moon
There are many ways to prepare yourself to write. One way is to be silent and let your attention focus on your body and your imagination. It’s a technique I call gazing into the waters.
Gazing into the Waters
1. Take several deep breaths into your “belly.” Pay attention to your breathing, in and out.
2. Focus on the top of your head and slowly shift your awareness down your body until you reach your toes.
3. Imagine yourself descending a stairway while counting from one to ten. Feel your body slowly stepping down. Imagine yourself arriving at an entryway and moving through it into a place you find calming, perhaps a quiet garden or sandy seashore. What surrounds you? Where do you sit? What do you see? Use your senses to sharpen this special place: sounds, fragrances, feelings, body sensations, something to touch, something that beckons. This is a place to use over and over until just the thought of it calms you. From this place you can explore anything.
“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.”
—Barbara Kingsolver
Exercises
1. Write about your hopes for yourself, your family, and the world.
2. Using the technique gazing into the waters, see what might bring you hope. Do you hear birds chirping? Do you see the buds just beginning to peek through on the trees? Is the snow covering the earth like white wool? What does your special place say to your spirit? Write down your experience using the technique of streaming.
3. Open a drawer and take out several objects at random. Using these, write about your willingness to hope. For instance, you may take out a stamp and scissors; using gazing into the waters and streaming, write about the stamp as a symbol of sending your spirit the message that it is safe to hope for a force that cares for you. Or, you may write about why it wouldn’t be safe to hope for this. The scissors may be a symbol that it is time to cut off with something, someone, or some thought. Explore what that might be.
Day 3: Faith Makes It Possible
My mom is a cloud watcher. She says clouds remind her that there is something spacious and grand beyond her understanding. She uses their comings and goings as a sign of faith: good days coming, some stormy times, some dull days. Sometimes, when she sees the clouds looking like kangaroos hopping across the sky, she knows a change is coming. She writes a prayer to her spirit each night before bed and keeps a prayer journal. She enhances her faith by just looking up to the sky.
Sometimes, after a long night’s sleep, I wake up with a bounce and an enhanced faith of the spirit in my life. Or, I may enjoy the way the mustard plant makes the grass on the side of the highway glow a neon green and use this as a reminder that the spirit is all around. Always, there is a poem waiting to be written.
Faith is what is believed even without evidence. It tells us that there is more than what we know and that good will come again. Often it is a difficult time that leads us to faith.
Other times, something so joyous and wonderful happens that it could only be a gift from heaven. However faith comes to you, it will enrich your life.
We don’t have to believe 100 percent that it is possible to live in faith; 51 percent is plenty. As Mary Jean Irions says in her book, Yes, World, “Faith is not being sure. It is not being sure, but betting with your last cent.” It is enough to move toward the belief that you are a part of the whole.
Today we’re going to write to explore our sense of faith. I find that it’s useful to find symbols to help you hold faith. Seeing a morning glory might remind you of childhood wonder. Write about that. Or, perhaps you find yourself imagining an attic in a wonderful old country house, with good smells all around. You might write about how a certain smell can make you feel more spiritually connected.
Arlene, who lives in the Sonoma wine country of California, told me at dinner one Saturday night that she loved living there in August, the time of the crushing of the wine grapes. It was a “memory smell” of her grandfather, to whom she turned for comfort as a child. She has a grape leaf journal and writes what the leaves, her symbol, have to tell her each month.
“Faith hasn’t got no eyes, but she’ long-legged.” —Zora Neale Hurston
What symbol might help a belief in your spirit as you allow it to bud and blossom? Listen to the wrens and write about faith.
Exercises
1. Look out your window and find the shape of faith. Write about it; explore the various shapes of meaning. For example, I see the Mexican sage plant’s purple blossoms, long and thin, seeming as if they are reaching for heaven. Or, in the round pot, I feel a whole, shaping completeness in the world.
2. Try gazing into the waters and determine what your strongest sense seems to be: smelling, seeing, hearing, touching, kinesthetic (body sense)? Use streaming and write about how your strongest sense helps you with faith. The simple smell of clean sheets may trigger the feeling of life’s continuity, the faith in everyday tasks. Touching a pussy willow may remind you of your little brother’s soft hair and bring you back to faith in innocence.
3. Write the phrase, “Faith enriches my life” thirty times. In Buddhism, a repeated phrase like this is called a mantra. Think of this mantra as a bookmark holding your developing faith while you read this book. Use streaming to explore how faith can enhance your life.
Day 4: Sense of Place
I know a poet who talks about the “gold-light fall feeling” he had as a child as the light fell slowly in the back room of the house where the family relaxed together. He’d tell his mother he had a “gold-light” feeling and his mother would give him pencil and paper. When you read his descriptions of light, moss-covered trees and the dangers of the swamps you can tell he loves the South. You can feel his connection to the heat and the southern ways. He has a strong sense of place in his poetry and his life that seem to bring him closer to his spirit.
A sense of place roots us, makes us aware of connection.
When I was a child in Ohio, I loved its rivers and gorges and roamed the land freely with my imagination. Living near the Cuyahoga River, I was sure I could hear the Iroquois Indians in my dreams. Later, when I learned the river caught fire, I pretended it was the Iroquois reclaiming the river. I often think the woods of Ohio helped me to breathe deeper, that their wildness allowed my imagination to flourish. I remember watching the trees and writing about the spirit rustling the leaves. I would look around me and ask myself where the spirit lived that day: in the acorn, the crook of the tree, the nest? Then I’d write stories where the little girl was saved by the spirit who lived in the acorn and how the oaks protect her.
“I was convinced you can’t go home again. Now I know better. Nothing is more untrue. I know you can go back over and over again, seeking the self you left behind.”
—Helen Bevington
Some of us have little connection to where we grew up but still find a sense of place in nature. Perhaps you have a field near where you live that you could enjoy tramping through. A vacation may bring memories of the rain forest of Hawaii or the splendor of Yellowstone National Park. A client of mine, a man from a large urban family, often talks about the solace he found on the roof of his house. It doesn’t matter where you find it; a sense of place often brings you closest to that feeling of “something more.”
Today, our writing explores place.
“I am the earth, I am the root.”
—Judith Wright
Exercises
1. Draw a picture of the house you grew up in and of your room. Don’t worry about technique. Just get the basic shapes on paper. Was there a secret place where you hid your treasures or a place you liked to play on rainy days? What about these memories makes you feel connected to your young, innocent self? Where did you sit and read? Dream? Find at least one good place if you can. Does a sense of place help you remember that you are connected to the spirit? Use gazing into the waters and streaming to explore this.
2. Use the technique of gazing into the waters as a warm-up, then write about a local place that you like to go to when you need to feel calm. If you don’t have a place, imagine how you would like it to be. How does your body feel when you are in this place? Use streaming to remember all of your special places and what these places did for your spirit.
Day 5: Patience
Henry Ward Beecher once said, “Anyone can bring down the fruit in season, but to labor in and out of season, under every discouragement, that requires a heroism which is transcendent.”
Often, we look for quick answers, a quick fix. We don’t want to do what it takes to make something happen either in the material world or in our spiritual life. Patience is what most of us have in short supply. We really do want what we want when we want it. I had one client who became terribly frustrated and impatient when he wrote about his growing awareness of spiritual connection and then about how little he lived that in his everyday life. “Never mind,” I’d tell him. “The disparity is what brings us to a spiritual search.” Impatience is just a symptom of our unexamined lives.
The wonderful thing is that patience is something we can learn. We can learn that the deep breath and stillness are an important part of the spiritual process, just as the spaces between jazz notes are central to music. I know of no better way of developing patience than through writing.
“Patience, and the mulberry leaf, becomes a silk gown.”
—Chinese Proverb
In my own writing, I’ve had to learn to slow down and be patient. There are days when I don’t have the energy. I write anyway. Write even when you have no new ideas. Ask questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I tired? What can the stars tell me? How can birth and craving be quieted for a while? Our spiritual awareness often comes in baby steps. Be patient and the answers will come. Be patient with your growing sense of connection to a higher power. The serenity you’ll find from your efforts will be worthwhile. Some clients say they have to pace or go for a walk or cry when they want to charge forward. They work to develop the patience to trust that a connection to a god force will come and guidance will be given.
When we are barging forward, we leave no room to hear the spirit. There is too much noise to hear the still, quiet voice. Let the quiet of patience allow you to feel your awareness of the goddess. Let hesitation show you that there is connection for you in the quiet rooms of your daydreaming.
“All fruits do not ripen in one season.”
—Laure Junot
A technique called dialoguing will help you explore questions about your life and your spirit.
Dialoguing
1. Write down the names of ten teachers in your life. These may be actual classroom teachers, neighbors, parents, or influential adults from whom you have learned valuable lessons. A teacher may also be a quality such as time or patience. Be sure to have one of your ten teachers be your own wise speaking voice, the self you are developing spiritually through your writing.
2. Now, write down a concern about your own patience. Maybe you’re wondering if you should stay in a relationship even though you have greatly changed through the years and would not have chosen this person today. It could be a concern about not liking to be alone and wondering how you could learn not to feel so empty.
3. Look over your list of teachers and see which one could help you with this particular concern. Imagine a conversation with this teacher. The dialogue might go something like this:
Me: Why am I impatient?
Wise Person: You may be afraid.
Me: But, afraid of what?
Wise Person: Maybe it’s that you’ll get behind.
Me: I don’t feel competitive. Do you think that’s it?
Wise Person: Maybe it’s more about fear of survival and always being busy.
Me: I want to make sure I’ll do what needs to be done. Its more than that though; maybe it’s a fear of ...
I had a gym teacher in Ohio, Miss Jane Mahaffey, who knew more than anyone else I can imagine about having a healthy body. She is one of my wise teachers, a friend who knows about gentleness and taking action. I can see her with her head tilted toward me so I can hear her better. Fire is also one of my teachers. It helps me find my correct emotional involvement. Today in your journal you’ll be exploring what your wise teachers have to teach you.
“Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of growth within us any more than without us, there have been many circumstances of sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.”
—George Eliot
Exercises
1. Use the technique of gazing into the waters and streaming to write down what you feel about patient people in your life. How could you honor the patient person in yourself? How is patience useful as you better develop your spiritual nature?
2. Pictures hold clues for what the culture wants for us and what we want for ourselves. Take several magazines and find pictures that encourage patience or discourage patience. Use streaming and see what you find out about the culture, yourself, and perhaps what you want for your future.
3. Set up a dialogue about patience between two of your teachers. Write it out and see what you can learn from it.
Day 6: Grace
I remember when I first heard the choir at the Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco sing “Amazing Grace.” What struck me was the word wretch. If someone so lowly as a wretch could be saved, maybe the wretch in me could be helped, too. I didn’t need to be good or feel good, I just had to notice “how precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” There was something magical for me in this church, listening to the music as I sat in the pink-cushioned pews, many of the men knitting. The song continued, “tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”
—Simone Weil
One Sunday evening Dorothy Allison offered the sermon at MCC. She spoke about her experiences writing Bastard Out of Carolina. She recalled her “poor white trash” origins and the grace with which the women of her family raised their children the best they could without much money, education, or class status. I could feel that the connection between the generations of women in her family helped heal her spirit.
I also noted how the minister, Jim Mitowski, encourages creative people to talk from the pulpit honoring what they had learned about their spirit through their creativity. To me, it showed that Jim is full of grace. He bows to the source of spirit. He is pleased at what greatness is brought to God’s sight. He can stand aside. He doesn’t need to be the voice through which God speaks. When I’m there, grace enters my body and sings with me.
Grace is my favorite word in the English language. To me, it denotes a flowing feeling of living deeply in my body. It tells me that my inside is connected to the outer world and I am traveling lightly on this planet.
With your growing awareness of connection to your spiritual self, you will notice that you are in grace from time to time and it may surprise you. It will please you, too. It feels like all is right with the world and you have stepped inside that peaceful feeling. Think of grace as a robe with which you cover yourself. It is grace’s robe that flows out behind you in the breeze, a breeze that connects you to the wind and the wind to the sea and the currents and air pressure. You are connected to everything around you by wearing that robe. Grace gives us ease to find our way back to loving the world.
“I see the wise woman. She carries a blanket of compassion. She wears a robe of wisdom. Around her throat flutters a veil of shifting shapes.”
—Susun Weed
Exercises
1. Try asking the printed page where grace is. Look in a book of poetry for phrases to explore. Jot down those phrases to which you respond: all creatures sleep, kiss the rose of your skin, birth and craving quieted for a while. Then write what grace has to do with these random phrases.
2. Image yourself visualizing grace around someone difficult in your life. How would that help you to deal with this person? Write down a prayer for her. Write down a prayer for yourself.
3. Try to recall when you have been more generous than would be expected from your past experiences. Perhaps you did a kindness for someone who isn’t always kind to you. Perhaps you were kind when you were not feeling joyful yourself. Write and explore that feeling of grace.
Day 7: Rewarding Yourself—Gift in Public Places
We’ve covered a lot of ground in just one week. You may feel changes bubbling up within yourself. Sometimes just deciding to keep a journal causes a shift. Giving daily time to yourself is a great gift. Maybe you’ve noticed that you can sit quietly and feel a little more content. For your reward this week, take your journal to a sculpture in town and write what this sculpture has to do with your awareness of your connection to a spiritual force. (This sculpture could be a statue, a coin, a gravestone, the relief on a water or sewer cover.) How does the subject of the sculpture, what it’s made of, and where it’s placed reflect your spiritual development? If the sculpture in the park is an angel with a cracked base, what does the cracked base mean to you? Or, if it’s a cast squirrel on someone’s front lawn, how does the busyness of the squirrel reflect your spiritual development? What does your wise voice say? What can you learn from your writing today?
“To create ones own world in any of the arts takes courage.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe
