Mark Matousek – Writing to Heal 2014

In this month, you’ll look at the questions: Where do feel the most pain in your life? What is the center of your wound? We’ll begin by creating a safe container, and you’ll learn to locate your most vulnerable parts – becoming acquainted with the landscape of your losses, fears, and limitations. You will learn how to:

• Tell the truth about your pain
• Isolate the source of suffering and its effects on your life
• Free the voice of emotion
• Tend to your particular pain
• Understand the value of limitations

The wounds are nestled in shadow. Hiding the truth under cover of darkness, the wound wants exposure to the light. This month, you will illuminate your vulnerable parts, bringing more awareness, understanding and acceptance to them. In turn, this releases fresh energy throughout your life. You will learn to:

• Overcome shame towards your shadow
• Reflect on parts of yourself you deny
• Stop hiding behind your pain
• Become intimate with your own damage
• Cull the shadow’s hidden treasures

Your wounds are not burdens, but actual engines of awakening. You may not yet see it, but often, your gifts hide in plain sight. This month, you will be guided to explore and connect with the hidden power latent in your “broken parts,” and emerge with the gift that is yours.

You will learn to:

• Use the gift as a tool for self-healing
• Enter the “fruitful darkness”
• Turn the gift toward self-realization
• Grasp the power of paradox
• Change your wounding story

As you’ll discover, your greatest gift is guarded by adversaries. As you move forward on your path – fear, anger and doubt rise up alongside awakening. This is the paradoxical truth that this month will help you hold. Knowing it is the source of healing. In this module, you will learn to:

• Confront your adversaries as difficult friends, not strangers
• Tap the inverted power of anger
• Weaken fear through open awareness
• Stop resisting adversity
• Practice comfort in moments of discomfort

Moving out of the last module, your internal (and external) adversaries force you to face your story. In this month we look at: What is the nature of your life myth? Your memory is unreliable; as research shows, we “remember” things that never happened. And those that did happen are clothed in fiction. This month, you will learn to:

• See where your story diverges from reality
• Discern in what ways you are blind to yourself
• Step outside of the fiction you’re telling
• Reinvent this fiction over time
• Gain authenticity and well-being

When you tell the truth, your story changes. As your story changes, pain is transformed – and your life is transformed. This month, we look at the metamorphic, protean nature of personal reality. You will learn to:

• Become comfortable with life’s messes
• Connect vulnerability with strength
• Transform pain from suffering to wisdom
• Be tender with your wounded parts
• Accept the trauma of everyday life

As survivors, we see with new eyes. Having passed through darkness, we’re wide awake. We realize that our lives are always beginning; that untended wounds freeze us in place; awakened wounds enlighten us. That will be our focus this month. You will learn to:

• Harvest the gifts of survivorship
• Use limitation as a strength
• Establish a beginner’s mind practice
• Savor the ever expanding view
• Dwell in gratitude each day

The powers of habit are deeply conditioned. In order to balance this new way of seeing, mindfulness is necessary. This month, we investigate mindfulness as a tuning fork that harmonizes with the awakened self. You will learn to:

• Stabilize emotion using mindfulness
• Practice mindfulness off the meditation cushion
• Catch ourselves short when old patterns appear
• Use the body as a self-tuning instrument
• Practice openness to the view

The awakened self wants to pay its gifts forward. The wounded healer wants to share. Every wound yields its own medicine, its own particular kickback of power. This month, we look at the ways that you can use this power to improve your life and the welfare of others. You will learn to:

• Use the wound as medicine
• Put that medicine to the service of love
• Bless the gift of the wound
• Use pain as a bridge for connecting to others
• Know yourself, finally, as unharmed