Albert Flynn DeSilver: Awakening Through Writing: The Space Between the Words

September 6, 2017

Albert Flynn DeSilver: Awakening Through Writing: The Space Between the Words

Albert Flynn DeSilver September 6, 2017

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an author, poet, and leader of writing workshops held worldwide. In addition to work appearing in dozens of literary journals, he has published the books Beamish Boy, Letters to Easy Street, and Walking Tooth and Cloud. With Sounds True, Albert has released the new book Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Albert about the difference between writing as a creative endeavor and writing as a gateway to spiritual inquiry. They talk about the exploration of difficult subjects such as failure and death through writing, and how those deep inquiries can help open us to the present moment. Finally, Albert comments on the cultivation of discipline and how the concept of time is one that we create for ourselves. (57 minutes)

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Meet Your Host: Tami Simon

Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.

Photo © Jason Elias

Also By Author

4 Ways to Cultivate Creativity This Holiday Season

4 ways to cultivate creativity this holiday season

In the craziness of the holiday season, it can be challenging to cultivate personal creativity—but when we think of creativity in terms of a gift, our hearts open to great and beautiful possibilities. Here are four ways you can cultivate creativity this holiday season. 

Write a series of haiku you can print on paper, ceramics, cloth or food

Spend some time reading and reminding yourself of the art of haiku. Practice writing a few of your own on paper first. Make it a ritual; bring presence and mindfulness and reflect on the immediacy of your experience here and now—and maybe touch of some sentiments around the holidays.

Transfer your haiku to a holiday ornament you can hang from a tree or. . .

Have fun with this practice! Invite your friends and family members to engage in this practice and have fun exploring different ways you can share your haiku on an ornament.

Write a haiku you can eat

Haiku holiday cookies anyone? Use icing as your ink. Explore different ways you might “write” your haiku using food.

Haiku writing with objects and documented in photographs

You can create your haiku with sticks, string, stones, sand, any material you want, and then document your poem by photographing it. Your last step is to create it so that you can give it away as a gift!

Happy holidays! 

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an internationally published poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. He served as Marin County’s first Poet Laureate from 2008–2010, and his work has appeared in more than 100 literary journals worldwide, including ZYZZYVA, New American Writing, and Exquisite Corpse. Albert is the author of Writing as a Path to AwakeningBeamish Boy: A Memoir, Letters to Early Street, and Walking Tooth & Cloud. He has taught workshops at The Esalen Institute, The Omega Institute, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and literary conferences nationally. visit albertflynndesilver.com.

A Meditation + Writing Exercise to Conquer Your Fear

A meditation + writing exercise to conquer your fear, banner

To prepare for the dog days of summer, we move from amusement to audacity. Being a dog owner and lover, I particularly enjoy the expression “dog days.” I always picture a pile of lazy dogs panting away in the shade of a chestnut tree, waiting out the heat of the day to go for an evening walk. Venturing into the heat of creative and spiritual practice takes courage; it is an audacious undertaking.

This July, I invite you to take on a “BHAG”—a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. Write forth your truth and wake up to expanded awareness in the process. Whether that means starting a journal or writing a poem, novel, memoir, or letter to your grandmother, audacity will drive you forward. I want you to commit here and now to do your best in any given moment. Move forward with your best intentions of creativity and spiritual awakening at heart. This combined meditation and writing practice will help you get there.

A Meditation on Audacity

Let’s begin with where we are—in a grounded and courageous place, fully embodied. Find your comfortable place to sit. Rest your hands easily in your lap and your feet flat on the ground or cushion. Gently close your eyes. Take a few breaths inward and release. Find that natural rhythm of your breathing, connecting with your breathing body. Tune into your immediate sensory experience, just noticing what your experience is right in this moment. Let your breath be your anchor and ground.

See if you can bring to mind a particularly scary or vulnerable situation. Think of one in which you recently felt exposed, sensitive, even fearful; not one in which you were in a dangerous situation, but a memory of you putting yourself out there in some way—confronting someone, speaking to a group, asking someone new out on a date. As memories of the situation come to you, breathe deeply into your belly and know that you are safe now, breathing here in this moment in this body. If you need to, you can open your eyes, but try to remain grounded in your breathing body. Notice the rush of sensations and allow whatever arises to arise with love, patience, and compassion. Be gentle with yourself and remember that you are safe. See if you can stay with the feelings and simply explore how your fear or discomfort exists as a bodily sensation.

Notice where in your body you feel them. Breathe nurturing air into those places. Allow yourself to become familiar with the sensations of fear and vulnerability without the need to disconnect, distract, or avoid altogether. Be patient and kind with yourself as the emotions and feelings stream through. Gently note any physical changes: increased body heat, increased heart rate, tingling in your arms, increased sweating, and so on. Notice how the sensations linger, change, and dissipate. Become curious and open while kindly grounding yourself in the breath.

Put both hands on your heart, left on top of right, and take a deep breath. Say to yourself, “May I be well, may I be at peace, may I be bathed in the light of lovingkindness and compassion right now.” Take another deep breath, exhale, and release your hands. Bring them back together, palm to palm, at your heart and bow to yourself in gratitude for your courage and love. Open your eyes to complete the meditation.

You might try this meditation for five minutes at first and then extend it as you feel more audacious and courageous. The more you allow the feelings to arise and exist, the more familiar you will become with them. In turn, you will be better able to let them go and dissipate and see them for what they are—waves of energy and information arising and passing away.

Now for the writing . . . Write down three things you can do in the next month that scare you. They don’t have to be drastic acts such as speaking in front of 400 people. How about just sitting down to write that first scene of your novel? Typing up your first few poems? That can be scary enough. And these frightening endeavors don’t have to be related to writing. Maybe it’s a little terrifying to sit in meditation with your eyes closed for more than five minutes. Check in with yourself and see what’s a little scary for you—where can you push yourself a little further? Book a trip overseas, sign up for a rock-climbing adventure, agree to read at your local open mic. Keep in mind that you don’t have to actually do these things right now. Simply start by writing them down and sitting in their presence for a bit. Then you can take action to feel your fear and do it anyway!

This excerpt has been shortened and adapted from Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life.

A Meditation + Writing Exercise to Conquer Your Fear, Albert Flynn DeSilver

 

 

ALBERT FLYNN DESILVER is an internationally published poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. He has published several books of poetry, Beamish Boy, and his newest book, Writing as a Path to Awakening. He teaches at the Omega Institute, Esalen, Spirit Rock, and writing conferences nationally. He lives in Northern California. For more, visit albertflynndesilver.com.

 

 

 

A Meditation + Writing Exercise to Conquer Your Fear, Writing as a Path to Awakening, Albert Flynn DeSilver

 

 

Buy your copy of Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

A Meditation + Writing Exercise to Conquer Your Fear, pinterest

A Guided Standing Meditation to Activate Your Creative...

 

Albert Flynn Desilver - A Guided Standing Meditation to Activate Your Creative Imagination Blog Banner

Springtime in the heart of May is a time of renewal and discovery, a time of reminding, reconnecting, and remembering our true imaginative potential. Mother may I? Yes, you May. Express your full imaginative self, just as the flowers, fourth graders, and fully feathered birds do.

You are your imagination. It’s not something outside of you that you read in the pages of some book, or something you overhear in the next booth over at Bubba’s Drive-In, or even the memory of your adventures trekking across Nepal (although these are all terrific things to write about). It’s found within you — your imaginative heart and soul, looking like a nebula of stars throbbing in your bloodstream a thousand times a second, at this very moment. Here’s a way to practice conjuring up (imagining) and letting go: the standing “skeleton scan” meditation.

Skeleton Scan Meditation

  • Find a quiet place in your house with a soft and comfortable surface to stand on. Close your eyes and take a deep breath inward.
  • Ground yourself in this moment, in your body. After the first deep breath, let your breathing become natural.
  • Now lightly bring a thread of your awareness to your feet and breathe into your feet. Feel the stability and grounding of your breath at your feet. Now, with your mind’s eye, see the little toe bones of your feet, then follow your imagining to the main parts of your feet and to where they meet your ankle bones.
  • Continue up your legs to view the bones joining to your knees then up to your hip bones.
  • See your hip bones where they connect to your sacrum and your spine. Now visualize your vertebrae climbing and then branching out into your rib cage. See the ribs of your body wrapping around you and joining at your sternum, protecting your heart.
  • Notice now the bones of your shoulders holding your arms, and see those bones of your upper arms, into your elbows, and down to your hands and finger bones.
  • Now bring your visualization back up your arms, past your elbows, back up to your shoulders, and see now your neck and where your spine connects to your skull.
  • See your skull, the round smoothness of the bone with hollow sockets for your eyes and nose, and see the bones of your jaw and teeth.
  • Breathe into this visualized experience of your skeleton. Breathe in and feel your body
    swaying gently, knowing right now that this skeleton is your stability and ground—these mineral bones are your conduit to earth and sky.
  • Take a deep breath inward, exhale, and open your eyes.

 

ALBERT FLYNN DESILVER is an internationally published poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. He has published several books of poetry, his memoir Beamish Boy (Owl Press, 2012), and his new book Writing as a Path to Awakening (Sounds True, 2017). He teaches at the Omega Institute, Esalen, Spirit Rock, and writing conferences nationally. He lives in Northern California. For more, visit albertflynndesilver.com.

Buy your copy of Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life at Sounds True or your favorite bookseller. 

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A Message of Gratitude

Dear Sounds True friend,

At this time of thanks-giving, I want to thank you, a beloved member of our extended Sounds True community of listeners, readers, authors, and learners worldwide.

Thank you for your interest and willingness to be an explorer of your inner world.

Thank you for your perseverance, your willingness to be here, with all of life’s great joys and terrible griefs and sorrows. Thank you for being ”on the journey,” with all of the ways life breaks open our hearts and asks us to expand and hold a larger space of love.

Thank you for your courage to be you, beloved and singular, the you that carries a unique gift, some special look, a cry and a laugh never heard before, a contribution we need. Thank you for being yourself and extending yourself to others, even in small ways, which often turn out to be huge.

My own prayer this Thanksgiving is to remain steadfast and true. Please know that here at Sounds True we remain so—and we love doing so in connection with you. We are here because you are here. This thanks-giving, I bow to the strength and goodness of our human hearts.

With you on the journey,

Tami

P.S. Here is a thanks-giving offering, a classic poem from Mary Oliver:

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be 
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 
small stones; just 
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t 
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence, in which 
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver, Thirst

Tami Simon

Craig Foster: Belonging to the Wild

All of the myriad forms of life on our planet, whether plant or animal, predator or prey, contribute to our survival. And when any one of the fragile threads of the web of life begins to fray, all of us are threatened. Craig Foster—the Academy Award–winning creator of My Octopus Teacher—has since the age of three spent his life intimately connected to the natural world, in particular the Earth’s endangered marine ecosystems such as the Great African Seaforest. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Craig about his ongoing mission to reawaken humanity to our interconnectedness—and our interdependence—with each and every living being, seen and unseen. 

Tune in now to a fascinating conversation about: the community of activists behind the Sea Change Project; being part of the Great Mother; the extraordinary biodiversity we depend on; attuning to the “forest mind”; establishing a comfortable connection with the wild of nature “that your whole being is craving”; balancing the tame and the wild aspects of ourselves; getting to know the natural environment through places close to home; therianthropes and other mind-boggling images enshrined in the rock art of Indigenous peoples; the healing power of the cold; underwater tracking and learning “the oldest language on Earth”; staying relaxed in dangerous natural settings; a new understanding of the impacts of species extinction; appreciating the vast intelligence and awareness of the creatures who share our world; what nature can teach us about death and dying; the great potential for rebirth and regeneration at this time; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Michael A. Singer: Releasing Blockages to Inner Flow

The question of how to find peace in the midst of uncertainty has been on our minds a lot lately. Listeners of this podcast have heard many of Tami Simon’s guests speak to this central challenge of our times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, we’re thrilled to share what one of the world’s leading spiritual teachers has to say. 

Here, Tami talks with bestselling author Michael A. Singer about deepening our ability to maintain inner peace while living in an unpredictable, uncontrollable world. Singer addresses audience-selected cards from his Living Untethered Card Deck, as he and Tami discuss: why we do our inner work; staying in the seat of the Self; consciousness and objects of consciousness; how our thoughts and emotions can distract us into identifying with them; when your daily life and your spiritual life are the same exact thing; the energy called Shakti; rattlesnakes and butterflies; letting go of resistance to what is uncomfortable; the ego as a set of thought patterns we protect at all cost; accepting the deferred pain that comes when we release the past; the meaning of freedom and the liberation of the soul; trauma, psychology, and physiology; Michael’s advice—practice the simple things first; allowing the energy of what we experience to pass through our hearts; a commitment to living free; compassion versus sympathy; discovering your inherent greatness; learning to relax in the face of disturbances; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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