Writing to Heal – Mark Matousek

The wound is the place where the light enters you.
– Rumi

Have you struggled to release or heal some of your darkest corners of shame, pain or grief? Have you felt these areas are holding you back from living life to its fullest?

The good news is that your wounds can become the source of your greatest gifts. Places where you have been broken, faced trauma or loss can become wellsprings of strength, resilience and wisdom — after you have fully integrated them.

With enough awareness, courage and love, you can find the blessings in your pain and access the power trapped inside your most defended parts. This writing process becomes a curriculum in self-realization. Your wounds can provide the doorway to spiritual awakening, making you a conduit for grace, healing and transformation to enter the world.

In the immortal lyrics of Leonard Cohen, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. It’s where the light gets in.”

Most of us have areas of unresolved wounding or closely guarded secrets, partially because it can feel unsafe to air the full messiness of our emotions. This is a prerequisite, though, to awakening and to discovering the blessings within our wounds.

When we stuff our feelings and truths down deep, we can poison the rest of our lives and act out in unconscious, addictive or sabotaging ways. In the recovery community, there is a saying that “you are only as sick as your secrets.” Bringing your secrets and authentic truths to the surface is a key to well-being and reaching our full potential.

If you haven’t experienced wounding in dramatic ways from devastating loss or pain, you may think that there are those who are wounded — and then there is you. But the truth is we all have wounds. They are part of the human condition. And they can manifest in many ways — your insecurities, your limiting beliefs, your challenged relationships or issues with anxiety and depression.

Not only do we all have wounds, but we also have aspects to our identities that are lived out in the shadow. And yet, these forbidden parts contain essential elements of our true nature. They hold wisdom, energy, creativity and power — and need to be brought into the light so we can be free and whole. Actors often prefer to play dark, complex or tortured characters because there is more juice, aliveness and liberation that comes when they give these shadow parts a voice.

But how do you make this journey into your personal wounds, secrets and shadows safe? And how do you not get stuck in old stories or loops but genuinely free yourself?

A practice of deep, transformative writing is one of THE most powerful ways to release and transform your past and find the blessings in what you once saw as burdens.

There is powerful science demonstrating that, for instance, when people write about the loss of a job, they get rehired FAR faster. The same is true of divorces, deaths and many other areas of wounding.

The practice of writing is also very safe. Even safer than sharing with a trusted friend or therapist. It allows you to express in voices that might otherwise be taboo. You can vent. You can rage. You can feel self-pity. You can allow yourself the full spectrum in a space of total confidentiality.

And then, after the raw, naked truth is on the page or screen, you will start to feel freer. Lighter. More whole. More capable of seeing the treasure that was held in the tragedies. More aware of your deeper insights and a higher vantage point on your life.

However, this journey is not simple or easy to take. Defenses and fears come up. Resistance and distractions get in the way. Much of your conscious identity has been created to protect yourself from the broken and hurt places. Thus, it is important to enter into a transformational practice of writing that is guided and supported by a teacher and a community of fellow explorers who can — in their own vulnerability and compassion — give permission for you to do the same.

In Writing to Heal, you have an unprecedented opportunity to enter into a powerful, 9-month journey to birth a more healed and whole version of yourself, one in which you have alchemically transformed your darker places into gold.

It takes 9 months to gestate a baby, so why not give yourself the time, space and community of support to help you with deep healing and self-inquiry? You’ll discover a new and freer you — one who has learned the deepest lessons from challenges and turned your tragedies into triumphs.

During Writing to Heal, you will have the time and space to fully open to your sacred depths and develop a powerful, transformative writing practice that expands your mind, heals your heart, deepens your relationships — and frees your soul.

Writing for Liberation

Exploring your unsanitized emotions, uncensored thoughts and most challenging life experiences in a safe way will be a profoundly liberating experience. You will learn to open to more of yourself, love parts you once found unlovable, heal past hurts — and even access the highest states of consciousness connected to spiritual awakening.

It’s a path that leads into deeper and more trusting intimacy, enhanced creativity and more powerful manifestation in the world.

On the other hand, if you don’t know how to foster a truly transformative approach to writing, you can dredge up your history in a way that leads you to get stuck in emotional ruts, feed negative thinking and cycle through old stories in ways that leave you frustrated.

The difference between that and writing as a path of healing and liberation lies in treating it as an actual transformational practice — one that is every bit as potent as meditation, prayer or yoga. In fact, writing can help free areas of yourself that most conventional spiritual practices never touch.

When you start to see your writing as a sacred tool for enlightenment, and understand why and how you have held yourself back, that’s when true power is realized.

You can use the Writing to Heal program to embrace your shadows and mine them for their blessings — while expanding the depths of love and compassion.

By the end of the journey, you will be able to access more and more of your unique gifts. This can have profound affects on your public identity and career because people respond more powerfully to someone who is clear, integrated and whole.

When you know yourself fully, you become more heartfelt, insightful, truthful, funny and creative. You’re not imprisoned by the past, but are able to relate from your depths — and others find that truly compelling.

Writing to Heal will take you into the deepest, darkest and brightest parts of yourself to experience a kind of liberated wholeness — which is the ultimate goal of a transformational practice.

The Importance of a Master Guide

As with any genuine spiritual inquiry, it is vital to have a master guide — one who knows the territory and the actual sequence of practice — far better than you do. A master guide can keep you on track and help you avoid the many pitfalls that emerge when healing through writing.

Fortunately, you have such a guide available to you for the 9-month Writing to Heal program. Over the last three decades, Mark Matousek has become one of the world’s foremost chroniclers of the spiritual path — as an author (of the bestselling Sex Death Enlightenment ), journalist (for publications, such as The New Yorker and O ), collaborator (on seminal books like the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying ) and editor.

Mark began his practice of writing to metabolize some early losses and traumas in his own life. While it started as his personal survival mechanism, it eventually became clear he could turn it into a gift for others.

He now has a lifetime of experience going into dark places with people, holding their hand, showing them that they will find creative, spiritual dividends from the exploration. You will not find a wiser and more compassionate guide to take you through the painful spots you thought you could never face.

Mark is also a master of language and, more importantly, a genius at marrying the depth of spiritual practice with the practice of writing. He is a dynamic, funny, self-revealing and profound teacher, who will be sharing the practices and disciplines that make for a liberating, life-long practice of writing.

In Writing to Heal, he will take you on a carefully designed journey through nine month-long modules that allow you to explore the unknown depths within you in order to help free you from old limitations, stories, traumas and fears. And not only will you get Mark’s teachings and practices, each monthly module will include a group coaching session with Mark to deepen your transformation through integrating Mark’s feedback into your writing journey. You will have an opportunity to be coached by Mark in the group setting and also learn from the example and insights of the shared experiences of the group as you transform tragedies of the past into real gifts for the world through writing.

We can assure you that you will be in exceptionally compassionate and skillful hands for your path of healing through writing.

How You Will Benefit from Writing to Heal

Throughout the nine months, you will learn how to use writing to safely unearth and work through the parts of your history (and the present moments) that bring you the most pain — freeing yourself from these inner wounds and allowing yourself to embrace life with greater joy and gratitude.

Each LIVE training session will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices and principles you’ll need to use writing as a path to healing.

One of Mark’s gifts is his ability to help others use writing to discover the gems within the very parts of themselves that have been most shielded by pain or shame. Mark is a brilliant writer, profound teacher and humble heart-friend who delights in sharing this approach to profound healing — and who has practiced it himself successfully for decades.

If you are truly ready to dive into transforming the pain of your inner wounds into blessings that can fill your life with a richness you have until now only imagined, this 9-month odyssey with Mark Matousek is the perfect experiential program for you.

Each of the 9 modules will last 1 month, with 2 teaching classes per month and 1 Group Coaching Session with Mark where you will have an opportunity to be coached in the group setting about specific aspects of your healing process through writing.

The main teaching sessions will air live from 12:00 PM Pacific on Tuesdays. Even if you cannot make the live calls, you can still access the recordings and get the full benefit of this intensive.