DETAILS, AGAIN?
Facilitated Intensive Salon of peers interested in living in present awareness, ordinary rapture and sharing their everyday writing.
Seven weeks March 8-April 24th.
$40 covers all materials: daily prompts and facilitated online peer group with feedback (private just like most writing circles are). Register by clicking on big yellow BUY NOW button below.
Loose and structured. Loose in that you decide on your topics of rapture and length and style of writing--erotica or renku or brochure or video game or watercolor sketch....; structured in that there are optional daily prompts (except Sundays) and I'll nudge you to submit something to the shared space if we don't hear from you in a while (i.e. no spectators).
IS THIS A WRITING COURSE, A MINDFULNESS COURSE, A HEALING COURSE OR WHAT?
Short answer: Yes, it's writing and awareness and perhaps you'll find it healing.
It's not a course. I am not the instructor; your life as it is, front and center, is the teacher. It's a loose, flowing gathering of peers, let's say it's a Salon, of people who witness the miracles of everyday life, and share their observations with each other in an intimate space. It's faciliated just as a salonneire facilitates a Salon.
Writing-- The focus is on writing in the present and from the present, however this unfolds for you. Sure, sometimes this means an image of the future flashes in your brain; that's the present moment too. The emphasis is not on writing perfect drafts, rather just streaming whatever is wanting to pour forth whether it is capitalized or punctuated or not. In fact, it's all okay.
“This actual moment! That bedraggled crow! This moonlit evening, that cold rain on your skull! There you stand, inhabiting your body with animal clarity, wide-open senses, and no preconception or abstract idea can touch the experience itself. Buddhists call this tattva, thusness. “No ideas but in things,” William Carlos Williams famously wrote, setting ten thousand poems free from abstraction. He could have been reading Basho: “To know the pine, go to the pine. To know the bamboo, go to the bamboo.”
…Haiku’s simplicity of spirit is what so quickly allies it to Zen Buddhism. I like to think the current popularity of Zen in America is due in part to a tenacious belief that we remain a no-nonsense people, a people who talk straight and try to keep life simple – this and a mounting restlessness with our overabundance of things… This Thoreau-like hunger for unadorned living, and the belief that the richest insights can only be acquired through close-to-the-bone experience, carries on in the spirit of modern poets.” - from “Rucksack Poetry: How Haiku Found a Home in America”, Winter 2004, Tricycle, (in The Best Buddhist Writing 2005 anthology)
"Aquinas defines beauty as that which pleases; that’s a very nice definition. There is another aspect, however, to art which is the sublime. And the sublime is that which simply shatters your whole ego system." – Joseph Campbell, from his lecture “The Way of Art“
Mindfulness--Rather than pay attention to the contents of your mind or focusing your mind or eliminating thought, this Salon is about everyday, mundane awareness and sacredness, also known as The Middle Way. We're not striving for ecstatic or mystical experience--yet, not necessarily blotting them or pushing any thing away either. This is far more like ordinary rapture than shamanic journeying, to give you a comparison.
"It is actually realizing the underlying unity of all things." - Adyashanti
Healing--For those whom are interested, I'll share clearing techniques to allow moment by moment inspiration (readily available when it's not obscured by extrapolating our memories and past conditions into the present moment).
IS THIS GOING TO BE BUDDHIST?
Great question. I only realized after answering a few questions here, that it certainly seems so.
No, it's not. Just in that mood today, I guess. Perhaps thinking about the Beat writers too much.
And it's not necessarily Christian either, although our most "intense" period of focus happens to fall during the Lenten season before Easter.
It's about the present moment, being aware, and writing from that space which doesn't require additional teachings or trappings to it--whether they are Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Harvard MBA, New York Times or anything else.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
IS THIS LIKE WRITING A DAILY JOURNAL/DIARY?
Up to you. A journal/diary format is what I kept for 40 days in 2006, yet I also incorporated fantasy and flashback into it if that if that's where my attention flitted.
You are free to experiment. Another alternative is to focus on a "What is true?" inquiry based on your surroundings and explorations each day similar to Adyashanti's writing technique or Jed McKenna's "spiritual autolysis" technique.
Myself, I'll be writing by hand in my journal each day real-time, daily happenings and observations. Later in the day, I'll incorpate those into a fictional story, and typing it up for submission to the Salon's gathering space.
WHAT IS YOUR ROLE AS FACILITATOR?
It's like the function of a salonneire in the era of Salons--lightly mingling and ensuring that the shared space is inspirational, and welcoming.
During the Intensive, I'll curate and offer potential prompts and/or inspiration cues as the spirit moves me--although you may certainly deviate from them and go directly to your own intimate, moment-by-moment inspiration.
As a fellow participant, I'll read and listen to participants' writing (none of us is obligated to read each and every submission). I will also participate with my own writing, shared with everyone else's.
In all exchanges, Evelyn strives to be your "noble friend:"
"The Buddhist tradition has a lovely concept of friendship. This is the notion of the 'Kalyana-mitra', the 'noble friend'. Your Kalyana-mitra, your noble friend, will not accept pretension, but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. No-one can see their life totally. As there is a blind spot in the retina of the human eye, there is also in the soul a blind side where you are not able [or as I say, willing] to see...The honesty and clarity of true friendship also brings out the real contour of your spirit. It is beautiful to have such a presence in your life." - John O'Donohoe, Anam Cara
HOW CAN WE HAVE BLIND SPOTS IF WE'RE (SUPPOSEDLY) WHOLE NOW? AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE ARE WHOLE NOW?
Yes, if you read quote above it does say "there is also in the soul a blind side where you are not able to see..." You are whole and perfect as you are truly are, yet a reinforced misperception of identity tends to seemingly obscure that recognition from us. As my own teacher says, "It's an innocent misunderstanding."
WHAT MATERIALS DO WE NEED?
It is prefered (although optional) that you write and jot down by hand on paper as you go about your day, and then transcribe 250-750 words (or lower or higher; note that 250 words is roughly one typed page) for prose, or distill it into a poem (shorter than 250).
You will need to be able to get to a computer (or smartphone with Web may work for poems), an email account to submit your writing via email, and an Internet browser to view the group's blog, and that's about it as far as requirements.
Coloring pencils, paints, sketch paper, collage (you will be able to upload scanned drawings and original music if you wish to experiment in your creations), etc. are all optional.
There isn't really any assigned reading, but if you are in the mood to splurge, I like A Thousand Names for Joy, by Byron Katie and/or The Book of Hours, by Rilke translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.
So, that comes down to notebook, pen, access to computer (could be library) with Internet access. That's it.
HOW DO WE SIGN UP?
I'll send you a confirmation when I receive your contact information and payment. Note that the fee is $40 for the seven weeks (March 8th-April 24th). An alternative is to become a monthly member of Encanto here at $25/month which includes this Salon.
Ongoing monthly Salon after April 24th will potentially be $20/month but we'll get around to those details after you've enjoyed the March 8-April 24th Intensive.
WHY WRITE IN A GROUP CONTEXT?
Part of my personal impetus for doing Casi Cielo is I have tended to write better and more consistently with an interdependent writing group; and it is a level of sharing and intimacy that I enjoy. I am working on a narrative that interweaves my present happenings into a fictional context, and I believe writing 250-750 words consistently for 40 days is a great kickstart.
If this is calling you in even the subtlest way, take that as a cue to join us. You can also ask me more questions in the comments below, and I'll get back with you.
WHO ARE YOU?
That's a very good question. Do you know who you are? It's the same answer.
WHERE CAN I READ SOME OF YOUR WRITING?
More forthcoming. Some original writing--fiction, poetry--is here, here, and a tabled project here.
I wrote a 40 days series on everyday inspiration during Lenten season 2007 (that's #1 in the series, you can click at the top of each post to get next blog post). My musings on inspiration have evolved considerably since then, but it's a taste.