All the True Vows, David Whyte
Posted: January 28, 2010 Filed under: David Whyte, healing words, Plug In! The Intersection for Writers, poetry, The Intersection | Tags: All the true vows, David Whyte, janet conner, Plug In, The Intersection, Writing Down Your Soul 3 Comments
I am writing the LearnBook for the Plug In! course. (I’ve decided not to use the term workbook anymore because learning isn’t work, it’s joy. So from here on all my support materials are going to be called LearnBooks. Don’t you think that sounds much more fun than the heavy workbook?)
Plug In! is about how to step into The Intersection to access the kind of creativity, guidance and support that will take your writing or other creative endeavor to a whole new level.
One of the steps in The Intersection is to write your creative blessing and then speak it aloud every day. To support that idea, I am reading David Whyte’s “True Vows” to the class. Re-reading it today, I fell in love again with the profound ideas, and the elegant way David expresses them. Like a tumble of water, the words flow into your mind and heart and you cannot help but feel them in your bones. Speak this poem aloud slowly and ideally standing. Let these words flow through you. You will be changed.
All the True Vows
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
David Whyte
The House of Belonging
Brownies, St Michael, and the scholarship
Posted: January 26, 2010 Filed under: Plug In! The Intersection for Writers, The Intersection | Tags: janet conner, Plug In, St Michael's Shrine, The Intersection, Writing Down Your Soul 2 Comments
On Saturday I announced through my newsletter that I was giving one scholarship for my telecourse, Plug In! The Intersection for Writers. Today, I made the selection. As usual with me, giving away a scholarship was a more profound experience than I expected. Here is the email I sent to the three dozen applicants. I am sharing it on my blog because it’s such a sweet story and because it illustrates the power of working in The Intersection.
Friends,
I cannot tell you what the last three days have meant to me. When I sent the email offering a scholarship for Plug In, I don’t know what I expected, but I was not prepared for what I got: email and after email after email with your soul-stirring, life-affirming, and often eye-popping stories.
I met many of you in person this past year, but other names were new to me. I heard from people who live ten minutes away to people who live across the country and even across the pond. I heard from every kind of writer from published authors, to writers with a manuscript, to writers with no words on the page but who feel their book pushing to be born. I heard from people who write poetry, children’s literature, memoirs, self help, spiritual discovery, and novels. I heard from visual artists too. The visual artists spoke eloquently about their personal relationship with both the brush and the word.
I thought you’d like to know my process because it’s a fun illustration of how things work in The Intersection. I read every email. I wrote each name on a slip of paper. I blessed each name. I emptied out my blessing bowl (which holds an ongoing collection of evidence of Spirit in my life) and filled it with your names. Then, I drove to St Michael’s with water, my journal, and the bowl of names.
It always smells delicious at St Michael’s. I don’t know why, but it always does. But today was something else altogether. Today the air was infused with chocolate. I took huge sniffs. Brownies, I thought. Brownies freshly out of the oven. Was someone baking in the neighborhood? Maybe, but when I left an hour later, the scent of brownies was as strong as when I arrived.
I was alone in St Michael’s the entire time. Not even the caretaker was there. I sat down and picked up my journal. As always, I wrote the date first. 1-25-2010. Go ahead, add it up. It’s an 11. If you’ve followed me at all, or read my book, you know today was destined to be an 11! Next, I had chats with Michael on the page about this whole scholarship thing being his idea. I was reminded that last year in an angel reading, he said in answer to all my questions: “You don’t understand how important this book is.” You’re so right, I wrote today, I had no idea what an impact this book would have on people’s lives. Thank you for letting me read all these glorious emails reminding me that my work changes people’s lives. Michael’s recent quote showed up, too. Three weeks ago in a post-Christmas angel reading, when I asked about what will happen to Writing Down Your Soul when I put all my energy into writing new books, Michael said, “It’s in my hands now.” Well, Michael, I wrote, the winner of the scholarship is in your hands, too.
And with that, I chose a name.
Lori Schaffert
Lori is a visual artist in Clearwater, FL. She heard me for the first time years ago when I spoke at Unity Church of Clearwater about Spiritual Geography. I think it was 2001. That evening she gave me a pencil drawing of myself and I tucked it in my bible where it has stayed for years. A few months ago, Lori came to a writing down your soul workshop at Unity Church of Palm Harbor. When she introduced herself I blurted out, I remember you, you drew my picture!
I’d like you to meet Lori through her own words in her scholarship application:
“I am an artist and it is my greatest desire to bring God’s creative energy into manifestation through my hands and heart. The difficulty lies in staying out of the way and un-learning the self-imposed limitations and crippling doubts that have become my deeply ingrained pattern of thought. I have named 2010 ‘The Year I Find My Voice’ and know this course would direct me on that path.”
Please join me in congratulating Lori on her scholarship to Plug In. And on her year. How divine. The year she finds her voice. What a perfect name for all our years. We are all plugging into the divine to find our voices and speak with those voices in clear joyful tones. And when we all do that, when we all do the work we are here to do, the world truly is a better place.
Thank you for taking the time to let me know what Writing Down Your Soul has done, and continues to do, for you. I am so blessed in you.
Janet
Do you want to subscribe to the Writing Down Your Soul newsletter? Click on the tab at the top of this blog. You can also review the course outline for Plug In! The Intersection for Writers. Early registration with a hundred dollar discount continues through Tuesday Jan 26.
What Teach for America can teach writers
Posted: January 24, 2010 Filed under: Creating a magical year, Plug In! The Intersection for Writers, The Intersection, Writing | Tags: janet conner, Plug In, Teach for America, The Intersection, the writing life, Writing, Writing Down Your Soul 1 CommentFollowing my usual Sunday ritual, I spent a couple hours this morning curled up in my favorite reading chair devouring french press coffee and the Sunday paper. I always find something that makes me think. Really think. The stimulus today was an article titled “What makes a great teacher” in the St Pete Times.
I felt drawn to read it for several reasons.
A. I was a teacher. Maybe not always a great one, but I did strive to make a difference. The year my profoundly gifted and profoundly deaf 9 year olds tested out reading at the high school level…,well, that was a proud moment indeed.
B. I’ve been frustrated to the n’th degree by the range of quality of teaching my son experienced in his education from pre-school to college from superb to god-awful.
C. I have a gut feeling my son will be a teacher of some kind some day.
And D. I still teach. I just teach deep soul writing and working in The Intersection instead of third grade.
So I read the article. As I read, I stumbled upon a paragraph that popped off the page. It spoke directly to me and to all writers, that is, all writers who are commited to being great. The paragraph distills Teach for America’s findings on what made teachers great. See what you think:
“…great teachers tended to set big goals…. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve…. Great teachers constantly re-evalaute what they are doing.
Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: They avidely recruited students and their families into the process, they maintained focus…, they planned exhaustively and purposefully–for the next day or the year ahead–by working backward from the desired outcome; and they refused to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, beaurocracy and budgetary shortfalls.”
What does that have to do with writers trying to write well and get published? Everything. When we work in The Intersection we are accessing the creative power of the universe, but that doesn’t mean that it flows to us without some effort and action on our part. The upcoming telecourse Plug In! The Intersection for Writers is about what actions to take to ensure endless access to that glorious creative flow.
In the last few blogs I talked about my real job for 2010. My job is to create the conditions that allow that flow to happen. And creating those conditions does take focus–relentless repeated focus. Every day we writers rise and renew our commitment to write and write well.
We do the same things Teach America, we
set big goals (getting published in todays world is a HUGE goal)
perpetually look for ways to improve
constantly reevaluate what we’re doing
recruit our friends and families into supporting our writing life
maintain focus (this shuold be number one)
plan how to get to what we want by working backward from it (to get a contract, I need an agent, to get an agent, I need a proposal, to write a proposal, I need….)
refuse to surrender to all the menaces around us
Are you a writer? Is this the year you create your writing life? Find your voice? Get published?
If you’d like to know more about working in The Intersection, visit Writing Down Your Soul and view the course outline for Plug In! We begin on February 2nd.
Whether you join Plug In! or not, take whatever wisdom you can from the Teach for America research. Are there any parts of it that resonate for you?
This could be your last Labor Day
Posted: September 4, 2009 Filed under: Covenant, Life Purpose, Practical spirituality, The Intersection | Tags: Covenant, Do what you love, Labor Day, The Intersection, the money will follow, Writing Down Your Soul Leave a commentOh yes it could. Not that the holiday is going away anytime soon; I don’t mean that. Just the word. Wouldn’t it be lovely to put the word labor to bed? Labor. How does that make you feel? It rings in my gut as heavy, sweaty, and hard. Do I want more labor? No. No, I do not.
It isn’t that I don’t want to work. I love to work. I disappear when I write. My fingers start floating over the keyboard and the next thing I know it’s seven o’clock at night. I love teaching. If you’ve been to a Writing Down Your Soul event, you know how much I love teaching deep soul writing. And I love speaking, too.
I love my work. That’s my point. Work that is loved is a holy thing. A divine thing. A blessed thing. It’s the way we become the hands of Spirit soothing, lifting, and healing one another.
Or at least, that’s what work could be. Or should be. But for so many of us, it’s labor. And hard labor at that. I know. I labored my way through my first three careers. Yes, there were good moments, but those moments always got buried in the next tidal wave of activity and pressure.
When I was a headhunter, I used to give a cute little talk called “Sunday Night Disease.” The audience always laughed in recognition. I laughed along, but the truth is, I had a bad case of it. Around three on Sunday afternoon, my stomach would start roiling. I couldn’t enjoy dinner. Then, I couldn’t fall asleep. I’d wake in the night desparate for antacids. Come morning, the alarm would kick me out of bed unrested and unready.
So did I do anything to change this pattern? No. Because I thought my job was something I had to do sixty hours a week. This is an awful thing to admit, but I went to work the morning after my wedding. Insane I know, but I thought I had to work that hard to make the money to support my home, my family, and my precious son. By Friday, I was numb. All I could do was sit on the sofa, stare at the TV, and stuff pizza in my mouth. Go out? Play? See friends? Are you crazy! I needed the whole weekend just to recover enough to crawl out of bed again on Monday.
That job was labor. Pure unadulturated labor. It wasn’t healthy physically. That was obvious. But guess what, it wasn’t healthy spiritually either. And I knew it. I told friends, “I leave my soul on the side of the freeway at the exit to downtown Tampa and pick it up again on the way home.”
So, how do you know when you’ve stopped laboring and started working? There’s a clue, a big clue. I got it from Marsha Sinetar, author of Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. I was driving home from my labors late one evening listening to her on NPR. The reporter asked how you know you’re doing your right work. Marsha’s answer hit me in the chest. I pulled over and wrote down exactly what she said:
“You know you are doing your perfect work when you feel joyous as a result of your efforts.”
I sat there staring into the night as my fellow commuters flew past. Joyous? Joyous? Oh my God, I so want to feel joyous as a result of my efforts.
Looking at my life that day, that week, even that next year, you would not say that anything happened. I kept driving to my job. I kept laboring. I kept collapsing on weekends. But something profound had happened. I had been cracked. The idea that work could be joyous — should be joyous — had snuck into my head and, like a good little virus, begun to spread.
- Do you want to stop laboring and start working in sync with your soul’s purpose?
- Do you want to feel joyous as a result of your efforts?
- Do you want work that is physically and spiritually healthy?
- Do you want work that expresses your whole, authentic, holy self — your soul?
You can. And you don’t have to find a new job to do it. All you have to do is start working in The Intersection.
And the first step in The Intersection is developing and declaring your Covenant with your Self and with Spirit.
What happens when you say “I will” to Spirit
Posted: August 28, 2009 Filed under: Creative Blessing, Creativity, The Intersection 3 Comments
I taught the first in a series of short teleclasses on how to work in The Intersection. The Intersection is the confluence of your work or craft, your spiritual practice, and the creative flow of the universe. The first teleclass Your Creative Blessing was held in July. Peggy Lynn was one of the participants. She sent this story today of the impact of creating her Creative Blessing. I asked her for permission to reprint it for you. Not everyone has this dramatic a result, but her story IS important because it illustrates the power of saying YES to Spirit. And, it also illustrates the astonishing amount of toxic energy we all lug around. Janet Conner
Instilling Joy by Peggy Lynn
Sometimes we see ourselves only as we think we are. I always thought I was living a life filled with joy. Great, right?! Yet my joy-filled life had a little gnawing going on regarding my writing. I fed the rumble and wrote whenever I could, viewing my writing mainly as a leisure-time craft. There were always others’ needs, projects, plans, etc, etc, that came first for me as a busy entrepreneurial wife, mother of four, avid volunteer for consistent varying needs and the keeper of all the schedules. Time to write came late at night when oh, so tired. Nevertheless, plenty of ideas were a constant and the endless cast of characters throughout my life populated my undefined literary village where words streamed onto paper as I drifted off…
Yet with children now as adults with families of their own and the three and a half-decade-long marriage dissipated, plus the chronic volunteering curbed, and even a career change back to my creative roots, I sat with some things written, but no book published, yet still joy in my life. Or so it seemed.
Enter Janet Conner with her concept of Writing Down Your Soul. Very nice idea. Enjoyable writer to read. Now offering a Creative Blessing class, teleclass to boot! Hey, I can take that even where I am! I can see what Janet’s method is! I can pick her brain. I am really good at that too – picking brains! I truly love smart people! The more the better and the more I know personally, the better person I am too. We can always learn something more, it seems. Although I thought I knew myself pretty darn well. I knew I have been blessed with many gifts. So many, in fact, that sometimes the tug of one gift got in the way of the other ones. Oops. When that happened, something had to be shelved. I discovered I was good at shelving things. Yup. Knew myself pretty well.
Could I learn from Janet, the soul writing lady? Just maybe her method will work for me. Production of some of these endless ideas is just the focus I need. I can feel it in my bones.
Commencing one Wednesday evening, Janet told us her story, her unfoldment as an author. She didn’t want to just be a writer. She was determined to be an author. Nice. She had gifts needing use just like I do. So far so good. She had plenty of things occupying her past times. I could relate. She had a gazillion signs from the Universe that all is in perfect order. Hey, that’s the story of my life too! Impactful connections, but, of course, everyone in the teleclass probably had similar thoughts otherwise they wouldn’t have responded to the call. We are all on loan by Divine Appointment. Isn’t that thrilling? Yet here we were like baby robins breaking out of their beautiful sky blue shells looking for mama to feed us something – anything. Why was our Divine Appointment on hold?
I made the commitment to follow Janet’s pattern and see what will transpire. I did not expect what happened.
The next morning I awoke early and was full of enthusiasm. I gathered my array of altar items, found matches from Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Hemingway’s favorite hangout, to light my candle and placed the matches right there on top of the I Ching, Book of Changes, as yet another symbol for lighting this fire. Let’s get this party started! I began to write in longhand as a little poem flowed:
Amulets, guides, symbols and such
Are paths to let us know we’re loved much,
For it’s hard for us to believe it ourselves –
We come and forget and pack it on shelves.
What? Who me? Hello. That can’t be.
Yes, it is the truth, don’t you see?
No, not really, that’s for others, not me!
Nonsense, my child, you don’t need all the hype.
You need what you need for your unique type,
And it’s here for you everywhere you look:
Believe it and know it and live your own book!
This should be called “The Awakening.” I didn’t title it then because I immediately began getting sick. Nausea swept me into the bathroom with the urgent need to expel everything and anything from my system. I felt fine a few minutes ago. As soon as I finished the poem: BAMM! I began to sweat as up chucked a watery substance tinged yellow. Not much of anything but that did not stop it from coming, and coming, and coming. Over and over again. Wow! What is happening? Had I been around anyone with the flu? No. Had I eaten anything bad? No. Hadn’t even had a bite yet. Did I drink a little too much last night? Not even a drop! I was so sweaty now I had to jump into the shower to cool and let water flow over me. I have a real kinship with water. So cleansing. So forceful with its flow. I felt as though I was actually purging my system, baptized by a Divine nod. I was cleansing myself of a toxic blockage to my flow of creativity in writing.
Ordained by God, instigated by catalyst Janet Conner, confirmed by my own commitment, the time was right for me to shed the monster of doubt or procrastination or whatever toxicity within that held me back. The time had come to evict the crafty little booger! My head swooned and I collapsed in the tub with enough cognizance to thank God I didn’t fracture any bones in this aging body. Better to let this cleansing water flow while I’m not standing! It flowed and it flowed and it flowed even as I upchucked nothing several more times comingling with the draining water. I could not remember a time when my body had been so dramatic. Even after having four children with natural childbirth. I felt like a high school student in their first school play. Jeez!
This was actually embarrassing. I had no idea I was this toxic to myself! So glad no one was near but God who is the Most Forgiving Soul. How can I say I honor God and still harbor any negativity in my system as a precious Child of God? Can’t even believe I am telling this story now, but Janet asked and I made the commitment to journey forward on the adventure of living my Creative Blessing. This dis-ease lasted about three hours from start to finish. The flu would have lasted longer. Any food poisoning would have started way earlier, say ninety minutes after my last supper. I thought I knew myself but I was hiding from my own talents it seems. I only wanted to use them when I wanted or could fit them in, not because I have been called. Sends chills up and down now.
So as I am answering my call, I encourage any who may have that inkling because the word inkling even starts with “ink” and, aspiring writers out there, you know what that means: write, let it flow, live your blessing, give back what you know, trust in yourself and you will live in true joy! May the blessings continue along your path! And thank you, Janet Conner, for your Creative Blessings!
Love is all there is.
Peggy
(If you’d like information on the upcoming teleclass on Your Covenant, visit Writing Down Your Soul.)
The Soul Directed Life 