Sacred Writing as a Mystic Journey

Aug 22, 2011 by cara moulds

I’ve been reading Writing as a Sacred Path while sitting in a hospital room with my son, who had emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix last week. After several days with very little sleep in this tiny hospital room, the normal world begins to fade away. It was here that I started reading Sacred Path, a book I had never heard of before Rus suggested it for this series. The structure of the book appealed to me, focusing on writing through the viewpoints of mystic, monastic, shaman and warrior. I opened the book and began reading “The Call” with a book light in the darkened hospital room.

Responding to the call to write, as with following any true vocation, requires a kind of surrender – a yielding that can be painful and frightening. It takes the courage to forge ahead even when you have no idea where you’re going. It takes a willingness to accept the possibility of failure. It means relinquishing a certain amount of control over your life for the sake of something larger.

I think about surrender and the loss of control as I sit in this hospital room with a list of things I was supposed to be doing. I am reminded that control is and always has been an illusion. I am reminded of the beauty of letting go, surrendering to the belief that things will work out.

My attention turns to “The Sacred Gift.” I realize that I am “Receiving Stories from Everyday Life” and “Discovering Story Seeds in the World Around Me” right here in this hospital. In “Offering Your Story,” Jepson reminds us that our stories are divine gifts, “vital and living things” and not merely entertainment for ourselves.

Knowing their sacredness, you cannot do other than care for them. Awareness that they are not ours to keep helps us pass them to others, not just as the work of our own creativity, but as a service to the world.

In that frame of mind, I started the “Sacred Tool: A Message from the Universe.” This is a meditation to experience the mystic’s consciousness of oneness.

Our poems and stories grow from the same great creative forces of the cosmos. They are manifestations of the creative spirit that pervades the Universe.

In this meditation, you visualize yourself on a beach and pick up a conch shell.

It has been waiting for you. The sea has brought it up right at this time, for you to find. What it has to say is for you alone. Put it to your ear. What does it tell you?

At first I found it difficult to focus on the scene enough to truly visualize myself there. I was not going to hurry and take the conch before I was ready. I decided to listen to ocean waves and used my Ambiance app on the iPad to look at a beautiful ocean beach scene while listening to the waves roll in and out. Then I was able to slow down enough to truly focus. Closing my eyes, I pictured the sand under my feet and walked down the beach. I felt the breeze blowing and the sea air brushing against my skin as the water lapped around my ankles. Now I was ready to find the conch. It was big and heavy. I concentrated on its weight and the sparkles of sunlight on it. Only when I felt that I was fully immersed in being there did I hold the conch up to my ear and begin writing by hand in my journal.

I was shocked at the flow of my writing and at the story that emerged, a story I had not thought of before and that would not have come to me while sitting in this hospital room were it not for that meditation. Each time I drew a blank, I paused my pen and mentally put the conch back to my ear. Each time, the writing flowed again. After a 30-minute session and because I was interrupted, I stopped writing and mentally put the conch back on the beach, leaving it there for my next writing session.

That story did not come from me; it was a gift from the universe. I intend to honor it by nurturing it to become an offering to the world.