You’ll emerge with:

• Deeper access to your spiritual identity
• Greater understanding of your authentic desires
• Enhanced ability to discern the ego’s voice from your soul voice
• A wider angle lens on your “life myth”
• An inner refuge that you can turn to for wisdom and advice
• Greater freedom from shame related to your shadow (and understanding of its wisdom)
• A higher comfort level with your secret passions and fears
• Increased discernment about where fear is blocking desire in your life
• A non-dual approach to desire
• A more profound understanding of your personal source of meaning and purpose
• The ability to focus your intentions, stop procrastinating and practice discipline with kindness
• Tools for healing from deep wounding in your life
• Expanded access to your personal and creative genius
• Deepened ability to express your innate gifts in the world

Module 1: Who Am I?
Accessing Your Soul

Every life is a work of fiction. Behind your worldly mask is an essential self — a soul identity — whose powerful voice communicates your unique truth and deepest desires. Many of us suffer from mistaken identity. Until we access this soul awareness, we’re split off from our own true nature and distanced from our gifts, passion and purpose. In this module, we’ll be exploring the gap in our lives between how we show up in our writing (and the world) and our true authenticity, and how to examine it through self-inquiry.

You’ll discover how to:

• Gain access to your soul identity
• Identify your authentic desires
• Discern the ego’s voice from your soul voice
• Listen to creative counsel from within
• Consider your life myth from a soul perspective

Module 2: The Secret Life
Finding Your Inner Refuge

The first step toward authenticity is surveying your secret life. Without exception, each of us has one — that vicinity of self that is yours alone — filled with memories, totems, obsessions, longings, dreams and vulnerabilities. This inner refuge contains a wellspring of inspiration and self-discovery. The soul loves specificity, intimacy and subjective uniqueness. In this module, we’ll be inquiring into our own secret lives, and how they provide us with wisdom and balance.

You’ll discover how to:

• Build an inner refuge of wisdom
• Examine the obstacles to this refuge
• Transcend shame about your shadow
• Connect with shadow wisdom (this is where the juice is)
• Identify your secret passions

Module 3: Fear & Desire
Liberating Your True Passions

The tension between fear and desire determines your quality of life. To live passionately, you must learn to walk this edge between both. But how is this possible? Our impulse toward control often prevents us from venturing through fear toward our deepest longing. How can you surrender control and abandon yourself to desire (without hurting others in the process)? When is it wise to listen to fear? Why are you afraid of things you crave (and vice versa)? In this module, we’ll be looking at the interface between fear and desire: how we walk the line — and sometimes tumble over it into passion — and the role of moral conditioning in the dance.

You’ll discover how to:

• Identify where fear arises
• Isolate where fear blocks desire in your life
• Step outside the moral matrix that binds soul to ego
• Practice the “art of abandon”
• Understand a non-dual approach to desire

Module 4: The Quest for Meaning
Finding What Truly Matters to You

From a soul perspective, what does your life really mean? Do you wonder whether you matter or not, and for what purpose you have been born? Our quest for meaning is hardwired in us. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion, and from these stories, we derive meaning. Without meaning, life’s tribulations lose their power to transform us. As Viktor Frankl famously taught, suffering without meaning equals despair (S-M=D). In this module, we’ll look at what our existence means (to ourselves and the world), where our sense of purpose comes from, and how to harness our energies to reach higher goals.

You’ll discover how to:

• Locate your personal source of meaning
• Overcome obstacles to meaning in your life
• Strengthen your commitment to purpose
• Connect your personal meaning to the greater good
• Reconstruct your life myth to accommodate authentic meaning

Module 5: The Mystery of Love
Deepening Your Intimate Relationships

When Viktor Frankl was in Auschwitz, it was the hope of seeing his beloved wife again that gave his life meaning. The power of love enabled this great psychiatrist to survive. Love is the greatest mystery — our very reason for being. Why, then, can it be so enigmatic, unstable, unpredictable and challenging? The answer is that love is a practice. Like every practice, it is often difficult and requires discipline, commitment and tolerance of discomfort. This is how love yields its joy, “against the grain,” in the Buddhist saying. In this module, we’ll be using our writing to plumb the mystery of love in its myriad varieties — passionate, platonic and familial.

You’ll discover how to:

• Access your soul’s power to love
• Heal from breaches of love in your life
• Appreciate the variety of love relationships you have
• Accept the shadow in love
• Reaffirm love for your precious existence

Module 6: Intention & Power
Creating From Your Inner Sourcee

The soul is a power source. We plug into this source through intention, which shapes and guides us through life, holds our aim, and keeps us on our path. The world is full of brilliant people whose lives would improve dramatically if only their intentions were focused. Without concentrated intention, creativity suffocates and dies. Manifestation requires single-mindedness. In this module, we’ll learn practices for focusing and strengthening our intention in order to reach our goals.

You’ll discover how to:

• Focus your intentions
• Find the path of least resistance to what you desire
• Stop procrastinating
• Practice kind and consistent discipline
• Commit to your own dreams

Module 7: Awakening Genius
Discovering Your Unique Gift

Each of us is born with a unique gift. The Romans called this gift our “genius,” and explained that we come into this world with a “tutelary deity” that guides us toward our own fruition. The deity is our soul itself. When we free this soul, we liberate our inherent creativity and the inborn offering waiting to be born. If you do not offer your gift to the world, it will never truly exist. But what is your particular genius? What will the flowering of your soul be? In this module, we’ll learn about efflorescence (what Christian mystics called “viriditas”) — poet Dylan Thomas described it as the “force that through the green fuse drives the flower” — and how we fuse with this power in daily life.

You’ll discover how to:

• Identify your personal genius
• Understand what its voice is telling you
• Fuse with your creative genius
• Manifest the gifts you were born with
• Connect these gifts with the world around you

The One Life We’re Given
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Mark Nepo

In this profound talk, Mark talks to bestselling poet and philosopher Mark Nepo about the connection between writing and spiritual awakening, and how to use adversity as a doorway to self-realization.

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 30 years. He is best known as the author of The Book of Awakening. In 2010 Oprah Winfrey chose this book as one of her Ultimate Favorite Things for her farewell season, launching it to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Nepo has appeared several times with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. He has published 12 books and recorded six audio projects. A cancer survivor, Nepo writes and teaches about the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. His recent book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, won the Books for A Better Life Award.

The Price of Love
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Elizabeth Lesser

In this inspiring heart-to-heart discussion, Mark dialogues with bestselling author and consciousness pioneer Elizabeth Lesser about her own education in love and mortality during her sister’s cancer journey.

Elizabeth Lesser is the co-founder and senior adviser of the Omega Institute, the largest adult education center in the United States, focusing on health, wellness, spirituality and creativity. For more than 30 years, Elizabeth has studied and worked with leading figures in the fields of healing, spiritual development and cultural change. She is the author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and A Seeker’s Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure.

Dropping the Struggle
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Roger Housden

In this eye-opening interview, Mark talks to award-winning author and teacher Roger Housden about how to drop the struggles in our lives — in writing and elsewhere — and transform conflict, self-punishment and competition into joy and commitment in creative and spiritual life.

Roger Housden, a native of Bath, England, immigrated to the United States in 1998. He calls himself a lifelong student of the beauty of the word. He is the author of several works of nonfiction, including the Ten Poems series of reflections on poetry. He gives occasional public recitals of ecstatic poetry from the world’s great literary and spiritual traditions and has led contemplative journeys in the Sahara Desert, India, and the United States.

Story of a Soul
Audio Dialogue With Mark Matousek and Mirabai Starr

In this penetrating conversation, Mark talks to memoirist and mystic scholar Mirabai Starr about her personal journey toward surrender and unexpected wisdom while writing her memoir, Story of a Soul, about her relationship with a missing child.

Mirabai Starr writes creative nonfiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialogue. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. She has received critical acclaim for her revolutionary new translations of the mystics. She is author of the poetry collection, Mother of God Similar to Fire, a collaboration with iconographer William Hart McNichols, and the award-winning book, God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Her newest book, Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation, received the Spirituality & Practice “Best Books of 2015” award. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story
Audio Book Read by Mark Matousek

Mark reads his 1996 breakout memoir about leaving a fast-track publishing life (working for pop artist Andy Warhol at Interview Magazine) and hitting the dharma trail in search of a meaningful life and spiritual wisdom. Hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “brave, beautiful, and brilliantly observed,” Sex Death Enlightenment became an international bestseller (published in 10 countries). Like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love and Paul Monette in Borrowed Time, Matousek takes the reader on an insightful, rollicking search for answers to life’s deepest questions in this landmark memoir.