All posts tagged: albert flynn desilver

Writing as a Path to Awakening & Healing

Published by dmcblog

by: Albert Flynn DeSilver * One morning when I was twenty-two years old, I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed with no idea how I got there. And I was under arrest. It was the seven words of the District Attorney, uttered with searing conviction, that saved my life. “You will not get a second chance.” I didn’t tell her that this was my second chance. Two years prior I was at a rowdy party drinking myself to oblivion in order to numb-out a recent break up, when I wound up stumbling around outside then passing out face-down in the driveway. A couple hours later my best friend jumped in his car, cranked up the tunes, and with no idea I was there, drove right over me. Another story. I took my first verbal standardized test when I was twelve scoring in the lower tenth percentile. In the parent/teacher conference that followed I heard the phrases “he has trouble expressing himself verbally” (Yeah, no shit) and “he’s showing signs of dyslexia.” Dyswhatsia? I had no idea …

Writing as a Path to Awakening

Published by dmcblog

By Albert Flynn DeSilver // Writing as a Path to Awakening begins with a primal human question; who am I? Who am I, really? I can not tell what I am, because words can describe only what I am not, said the great Indian mystic Nisargadatta Maharaj. We set off writing on the path to awakening by tuning into what we are not. If we are not what words can describe, and words can describe pretty much everything, then what the heck are we? This is Writing as a Path to Awakening’s ultimate question, with the invitation to write and live your way into the answer. Writing as a Path to Awakening is about how conscious living informs conscious writing (conscious creativity) and in turn, how conscious writing and creativity inform conscious living. It’s one infinite loop, the helix of return. The practice of writing is an exploration of consciousness, a practice toward deeper self-awareness, and moves us along the path of awakening to our true nature. Many of our greatest spiritual teachers from around …

Albert Flynn DeSilver on Writing as a Path to Awakening

Published by Travis Newbill

Albert Flynn DeSilver is a well known poet, memoirist, novelist, and one of the foremost teachers of writing as a spiritual path. In this recent interview, he shares insight into how the seemingly paradoxical practices of meditation (which involves dropping thoughts) and writing (which involves solidifying thoughts) are actually quite complimentary. And, in case anyone thinks that to be a spiritual writer you must only write about sunsets, God, and geese, we asked Albert to speak about finding divinity in the quotidian moments—eating donuts, for example—and how we may awaken through writing about such experiences. Enjoy the full video interview below, or scroll down to stream or download the audio. Stream audio below. To download, click here. About the Authors Albert Flynn DeSilver is an internationally published poet, writer, speaker, and workshop leader. His latest book is Writing as a Path to Awakening (based on his popular workshops by the same name) and will be released September 1st from Sounds True. Albert served as Marin County, California’s very first Poet Laureate from 2008-2010. His work …

Reading As a Path to Awakening

Published by dmcblog

By Albert Flynn DeSilver // Here’s a funny question: What is reading? I mean really. The act of looking at words splayed out across a page or screen? (An army of ants skittering across an expanse of white sand, a flock of geese strewn windward against a dusk-lit sky). Maybe reading is a primal act of tracking and hunting. Footprints, deer trails, wing movements in the batted-down brush. We are looking for signs of movement, action, food. Contemporary reading is based on an ancient primal embodied knowledge of studying the landscape—scrawl of branches against a winter sky, tide patterns left in the sand at the tip of the ocean’s reach, a musical script the wind left via quick ripples against the calm face of the bay, hexagonal patterns of drought-cracked earth, debris patterns at flood lines, terminal moraines and glacial erratics (giant stones left behind in open meadows by receding glaciers). Each a lone word, sentence, phrase, or paragraph—nature leaves her book wide open, her journal pages flapping in the wind, for us to drink …

How to Write Memoir, Spiritual Memoir and/or a Novel: 10 Key Elements of Story Structure

Published by dmcblog

By Albert Flynn DeSilver ~~~ How to write a novel, a memoir? Honestly, I have no idea, even though I’ve written both. I’m joking. Sort of. Writing a memoir or novel is a great and beautifully complicated mystery, and yet there are some pointed things to be said to guide you along. How to write a novel, a memoir, a poem, a script, a short story, an essay. . .begins with desire, an urge, a need—to say something significant and important from your unique perspective and experience. In that regard the trick is to first connect with that insatiable drive, that gnawing need, and let it propel you forward. Add to that your biting curiosity, your burning joy for words and stories, language and song, and let the practice itself be your inscrutable guide. A novel begins as an idea, a seed, an inkling in the brain that slowly starts to take shape and form like a flower in bloom. The other trick is transferring this idea from your mind to the page and …

Writing as a Path to Awakening

Published by dmcblog

By Albert Flynn DeSilver Writing as a Path to Awakening is a dynamic and fun process using mindfulness as a way to deepen your writing practice and expand your creative potential. Spiritual practice has always brought insight to my writing—increasing the flow of ideas, the big open inclusive ideas of beauty and of being and of surrendering to a state of love and compassion. Too often we get pigeon-holed into false conceptions of ourselves. There are a million distractions, negative self talk, old voices of doubt and self recrimination often holding us back. We experience it in the form of writer’s block, in the creation of flat characters, in novels left half-written collecting dust on the table. I know if my heart of hearts when people have a safe place to express their true poetic self they can realize who they really are, and this process of awakening can change the world. If you take a look at the great spiritual teachers from around the world— Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Amma, Thich Nhat Hanh — …