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NEW EVENT LISTING!
August 3-5, 2012
Zen Mind, Writer's Mind
Alexander, North Carolina

 Sept 30 - Oct 7, 2012  

The 10th Annual
Fearless Writing on the Blue Ridge Retreat
Early Bird Deadline Extended to July 20, 2012!
Canton, NC (Lake Logan)



November 10 & 11, 2012
Follow the Pen: A Two-Day Journey to Fearless Writing
Montreat, North Carolina

 
Visit the website
for more details and
all things ClarityWorks

My experience at Medjugorje
was my point of spiritual
integration. There have been
other times in my life
when I was aware of making a
major shift.

I can vividly recall the
moment at which I decided that
I could choose not to have
depression run my life.

This was a vivid moment
at the beginning of a long
process. My week in
Medjugorje, however,
turned my life inside out
immediately and permanently.




Peggy Tabor Millin
 Mary's Way: Cultivating a Peaceful Heart inTrying Times

Practice Makes Possible

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Process before product.

Writing requires silence, solitude, space, and the courage and awareness to search our shadow side.

Write from the belly, not the brain; write from the heart, not the head.

The body with its intuition and our willingness to listen to what the body says are our greatest assets as writers.

Writing and publishing are not the same thing. If we write, we are writers. If we publish what we write, we are published writers. A published writer is not a better writer. A published writer is simply a writer who is published.


-Peggy Tabor Millin
excerpts from

Women, Writing, and Soul-Making

Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin
 
Visiting Silence,
Meeting Self

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.


My friends said they were leaving town. I asked, "May I stay at your house?" They said, "Of course." Finding myself a silent 3-day retreat 15 minutes from home was just that easy.

I'd told my husband what I wanted for my birthday: silence and solitude. I get hungry for it, ravenous, my soul becoming skeletal without this necessary food. My body exhausts itself without this nurturance.

My friends' home sits on a hill overlook the French Broad River valley. The Great Smokey Mountains fill the horizon with shades of blue, purple, and gray. My first two days were cool and rainy and I spent hours on their screened porch, almost at treetop level.

From my journal:
My practice is to listen to my body and my intuition and to "do" what "feels" right. I meditate, read, nap, cook, eat, wash dishes, bathe, nap again, journal, digest the rich teachings of Joel Goldsmith. I watch my mind, searching to see if I want to make one activity more worthy than another or if my mind skips to undone things at home and back again.

I'm surprised to find myself present with doing nothing but the next thing. I am able to sit and watch the clouds and able to transform the noise of the freeway that rises from the valley into the sounds of a stormy ocean.

Time stretches here. I'm not bored or lonely or worried or hurried. I am present to myself; the outside world with its lists seem to have vanished from my head.

I come into myself and the world comes right. I can do nothing meaningful except from this inner place.

I recommend you try it: silence, solitude, not doing. This is not easy. I've been on this road a long time and I still ignore my craving and longing for the food that truly nurtures me. Some find solitude and silence frightening: the idea of what voices might speak if the daily tapes of the mind are shut off. I understand. I'm not saying they are not.

And, I also know that the voice wanting to be heard is your own belovedness, your own true self that waits to embrace you and to lead you to the highest expression of your gifts. To be writers, to speak our truth, I believe we must be willing to enter this place.

Keep Writing!