“Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do.
It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves
in a new way — in the newness of each moment where all is
possible and nothing is limited to the old.”

~ Stephen Levine

The healing process is a return to wholeness, a reconnection to your integral nature. For healing to happen, you must be willing to release your suffering – including the narratives that bind you to the past.

In this seven-week online writing course, Mark will guide you through an integrative healing process aimed at quickening the healing process in key areas of your life. Using his Writing to Awaken method, you’ll explore knots of internal resistance that perpetuate suffering, preventing you from thriving and fully enjoying your blessed existence.

The practice of self-inquiry helps you to clear away obsolete beliefs, biases, fears, expectations, regrets, grievances, illusions, and attachments that keep you stuck in the old ways of being, and which prevent you from savoring the beauty – and mystery – of the present moment. These lessons will open portals to insight and healing that are deepened by Mark’s weekly written responses to your work. He offers personalized prompts each week to guide you deeper into your process of self-exploration and clarity.

LESSON OVERVIEW

Week One: Clinging
Craving and clinging are the primary sources of suffering in a human life. This first lesson prompts you to explore the roots of clinging in your life, the places where you get trapped by craving, and how to release the bonds of fixation that interfere with healing your mind and spirit.

Week Two: Surrender
Spiritual surrender is a priceless tool for liberating yourself from the bondage of unnecessary attachment. In this lesson, you examine your resistance to surrender, the limitations of personal will, and how trust increases wisdom in the healing process.

Week Three: Grief
Grieving is essential to metabolizing the inevitable losses, uncertainty, and insecurity of life in a body. This third lesson examines the dynamics of grief, the transformative power of darkness, and ways in which your life is enriched – or impoverished – by the willingness to pay the price for love.

Week Four: Regret
Regrets are a natural part of aging, as organic as stiffness in your joints or wrinkling skin. Yet we’re often shamed for having regrets, as if that were, a sign of failure. In this fourth lesson, you explore the regrets in your life, what they teach you about yourself, and how they might deepen the gratitude for what you have.

Week Five: Longing
Longing is yet another misunderstood emotion whose power is frequently overlooked. Longing is existential desire, connected to yearnings for completion, connection, spiritual innocence, and a return to the sacred.

Week Six: Wonder
Our sixth lesson focuses on the healing powers of wonder, awe, and elevation. Awakening to the mystery of your existence, the line between life and death becomes porous. Impermanence is seen as a cause for wonder that opens you, heart and mind, to the unknown.

Week Seven: Love
Finally, we come to the healing power of love. In this final lesson, you look at the legacy of love in your life, obstacles to self-love, and what remains to be healed – or redeemed – by what the poet John Keats called the “holiness of the heart’s affections.” Loving and healing are intimately linked, as this week’s topic reveals.

This course will help you to understand:

~ The ways in which craving and clinging create suffering in your life
~ Why surrender is essential to living wisely, with resilience
~ The value of grief as an adjunct to healing, and how to work with grieving
~ Why regrets are inevitable and what they have to teach you  
~ How longing opens the heart to mystery
~ Why wonder is mandatory for wholeness and a sense of the sacred
~ How love heals fragmentation and separation

Who this course is designed for:

~ Seekers on the path of self-knowledge, exploration, and healing
~ Memoir writers who wish to bring increased self-awareness to what they create
~ Journal writers who want to deepen their self-inquiry practice
~ Therapists who use expressive writing and/or share it with their patients
~ Caregivers who work with people in need but need more care for themselves

Healing is always possible, even when physical curing is not. The possibility of returning to wholeness is within your reach when you take the time to inquire within. Exploring essential questions is a time-honored method for clearing the mind, mending the heart, and shining a light on the places that scare you.

Join us for this powerful seven-week voyage of healing into life and death, and treasuring your blessed time on this planet.

Registration

Seven-Week Online Class Tuition: $467 USD