that’s why God and Jesus didn’t help me. They were on some island helping other little children.
And so I lived my life wanting the feeling of connection that writing and art gave me. I found I turned more and more to writing because all I needed was a pencil and paper and myself. I could write anywhere. My writing gave me a feeling of connection to my life source in an everyday, regular way. In times of despair I could write a poem, a story, or just put down what I was thinking and feeling. I learned I could ask myself questions and write the answer until I felt my heart opening to myself and others. Writing helped me connect to my soul. It is this feeling that makes me a larger person and makes happiness a part of my daily life.
In my work with clients, I often ask if they notice any connection that they may already have to a higher power. Many times a client will at first say there is nothing to build on, but then remember loving the smell of the lilies of the valley that grew in the neighbor’s yard where she grew up, and wondering how that scent was made. We then explore how the smell makes her feel and what that has to do with her spirit.
What I’ve found is that it is often easier, and more genuine, to build on something we already have in our memory and may have forgotten than to search out something altogether new. Of course, the process of developing our inner selves and our connections to our wise powers through writing will not be a linear one. We will remember the old connections that stirred in us as children. We will remember questions we once asked. We will start to accept our feelings and to let go of our fears. And then we will find ourselves doubting those connections and feel that we’re back at the beginning. We will follow our intuition to find balance and, after a good jog in the rain and a ten-hour night’s sleep, the feeling of connection will return.
The exercises in this book were designed to help you more regularly find this connection, to tap into your wise self. With practice, growth sneaks up on you much like a garden when it’s ready to bloom. After seeing only buds for the longest time, suddenly you are awash in blooms. How could it happen all at once? Why did it happen in just the left end of the garden this day? Was it the sun? It didn’t seem stronger there. Maybe it was the soil in that section. Whatever it is, after the clearing, the seeding, and the nurturing, a pattern of growth is displayed. And sometimes, too, in the midst of the garden, are sunflowers you didn’t plant. You have no idea how they got there, but they grow the fastest and tallest of all. You’re glad to have them for beauty and eating and the mystery of it all. That’s the way it is with writing about spirit.
The first time I taught Writing as Spiritual Practice as a workshop, a woman who was grieving the loss of her partner cried as she asked to read to the class what she had written. As she read, I had the feeling that doves were flying out of this grieving woman’s heart. I could hear their gentle flapping wings. She told us she felt so openhearted just then and so filled with such forgiveness for herself and love for us. I knew the doves were alive in her life now and that writing had released something that had held her in darkness. Now she could move on toward her own hopeful dawn.
As you write and explore yourself, you are a part of a long history of seekers. This longing for spirituality can be traced back to the limestone caves in France where Cro-Magnon people left their ritual markings and paintings. Writing gives us the power to pull back the blankets of night and see what the light will bring. You may change. You may deepen. You may find the souls in your body and feel more connected.
I developed the process we’ll use in this book out of my own feeling of overload. For years I had cast about for ways to develop my faith, and had ended up feeling overwhelmed by all the information I was getting from church, workshops, classes, and books. And so I sat down and thought about the qualities common to most spiritual and religious searches. What was it that allowed people to live with a greater feeling of soul and spirit? I identified nine key qualities: Awareness of Connection, Acceptance, Letting Go of Control, Trusting Our Knowledge, Sense of Self, Creativity, Integration, Peace of Mind, and Cycles of Life. I then intuited what each one would entail and began to sketch that out. That sketch has become the program I call Stirring the Waters.
Over the course of nine weeks, we’ll explore each of the nine qualities in turn. For each day of a given week, you will find a discussion of one aspect or component of that quality and then several writing exercises to help you explore it further. You’ll discover how that aspect of the quality appears in your life and how it can be transformed. On the seventh day of each week, you’ll have a “reward” day, where you are encouraged to take yourself out into the world to write.
The first week is devoted to Awareness of Connection. Here we’ll look at the concept that there is something more than the life we see in front of us. How we feel expansive as we sit in a redwood clearing or connected to a friend who is feeling vulnerable and tells us her fears. We’ll explore how wondering about our spiritual connection leads to hope and all the opportunity hope opens, and how faith develops from our belief that connection is possible. Awareness of connection can be the insight that we are related to all other souls.
We’ll use our writing to explore how our lives have shown courage and triumph. We’ll remember what it is we love: where we live, the particular mosses and wetlands or neon streets and winter with the good smell of fresh rain. We’ll notice how grace begins to enter our lives with a soft touch, hesitant at first, then more enduring, when we pay attention to connection.
In the second week, we begin to explore Acceptance—accepting ourselves and accepting others. We’ll use our writing time to look at loss, anger, difference, change, and to begin to truly open our hearts to ourselves and the world.
Letting Go of Control takes Acceptance a step further. In this third week, we’ll look at how, when we care less about what others expect of us and more about what is soulful for us, we begin to grow emotionally. Control is a big part of all this, of course. Letting Go of Control is saying I’m not in charge of everything. We will write about letting go of other people’s expectations for us and moving into a more authentic way of being. We’ll do exercises designed to help us notice how often we compare ourselves to others and how we can stop that process, and how to stop the flow of the negative and critical thoughts that stream through us. Through the process of letting go of control we become more a part of things and know that others will share our burdens. It’s surrendering to life and saying “Help me.”
When we reach the fourth week, Trusting Our Knowledge we should begin to feel a turning point in our lives. We will begin to explore the many ways in which we receive knowledge: through thinking, emotions, body sensations, and intuition. Of course, this doesn’t happen all at once, but you’ll begin to realize that through your writing you’ve been going inward for answers, and that you can recognize a body feeling, a voice, a place of truth for yourself. In this section we’ll look at how to nurture your intuition so that you can have ready access to that truth.
There are many ways to let the wise voices come through. A man I know leans against a tree at the edge of the pond at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, breathes for a minute, and lets the wise voices come. A painter friend in Chicago uses Lake Michigan as her muse, finding quiet there. You, too, may discover a place in the world that can help you hear your intuition, a special place that takes you to yourself. Or you may find that simply sitting quietly in your living room helps you remember a time when you just knew what to do. Through the exercises in this chapter you will find ways to build on this feeling, to explore ways to release the feeling of being overwhelmed so you can hear your wise voice.
Writing itself can help. It structures your thoughts and emotions and helps you make sense of body sensations and intuition. Once we are less overwhelmed, we can find our clarity and stand up for ourselves. I saw a bumper sticker today that said, “Even if your voice shakes, stand up for yourself.” The car was filled with young women laughing and talking, and I wanted to give them a power sign, a goddess, “Yes.”
What can be more important than developing
