A 6-week Gateless writing salon
for liberating the creative imagination
in the age of entrapment

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In this age of entrapment — where imaginations are colonized like indigenous peoples across the earth, and the youth of children vanish in a poof of social media comparisons, and even the most good-natured people struggle to value the pure gold of their sincere hearts in an ocean of consumerist superficiality — often the most protective act we can make is to simply have an active inner life — a living relationship with our own well of living images within, which connects us to the deep current from which all symbols and meaning emerge.

 
 

“Inner knowledge of the mysteries does not come down by means of written sources, but by means of symbols, images and music... if we meditate upon these deeply rooted images, a series of realisations will connect us to the true source of the material... Such moments of vision are gateways to the Otherworld.”
~ Caitlin Matthews

Without a connection to this Otherworld which we are all sons and daughters of, we can no longer hear the inner pulse of our own way, and our inner lives fall prey to possession by fictitious forces. We forget who we are and where we come from, and we get colonized.

 

“We are no longer participants in a traditional culture. We are living in a scientific civilization, which is said to have gained mastery even over images... Might one not have to say then that the greater the success of this reduction, the more people lose their sense of the imaginal and the more they are condemned to producing nothing but fiction?” ~Henry Corbin

 

The images of our imagination are like ropes thrown from the Otherworld of our being, living symbols which wait for us to enter a living conversation so that we may open the door into the mysteries of life, beginning with our own.

 

It is through learning to speak this lost symbolic language and falling in love with the meaning we find there that we can begin disentangling ourselves from the life-destroying images of empire and find the sustenance of our own inner imagery as our true identities strive for birth. 

 

‘Each of us has a well of images within, which are the saving reality and from which may be born the individual myth carrying the meaning of a life” ~ Helen Luke

Our personal well of living images reconnects us to the meaning of the story of our individual lives, and also to the Big story of which we are all a part of. It is a penetration so interior that we find ourselves connected again with the Soul of the world, as well as an adventure so beyond that we find, at last, the true center of our own being.

To reconnect to this Otherworld through the power of the imagination is, therefore, an intrinsically revolutionary act, crossing back into conscious reunion with this living mystery that empire sought to separate us from long ago.

***

This 6-week Gateless writing salon is a response to the question posed by M.C. Ricahrds, ‘What are some practices to strengthen and enliven living images, in contrast to mechanical and life-destroying images?’ 

Gateless writing is a methodology conceptualized from Zen Buddhism and creative brain science to support you to drop beneath the conditioned critical mind into that ‘sunless sea’, 'under sleep, where all the waters meet' — the mysterious current of all being where all creativity springs (Coleridge; Eliot).

For 6 weeks we will gather in circle online to dance our ways out of critical, ordinary consciousness, enter the realm of imagination through image, poetry, and song, and engage in dialogue with the living images of our souls through writing. With the safety of the Gateless guideline of only positive feedback, you will be supported to quiet your inner critic, court your imagination out of hiding, and liberate your unique voice in creative writing.

$200
Limited to 8 participants each

Co-ed salon:
Fridays 2-4pm ET
begins March 4th

Women’s salon:
Thursdays 7-9 pm ET
begins March 3rd

This is how we break entrapment:
by falling in love with the wellspring of our own living imagery.

 

Messenger by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -

equal seekers of sweetness

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to

the sleepydug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.