Hi Friends-
After a long period of retreat and introspection, I am re-animating! Today, I was picturing myself as both the mad scientist hunched over their creation and the reconstituted body being awakened to new life. It me! 🧟
After spending an unholy amount of time hanging out with me, myself, and I... I am truly enlivened by the prospect of anchoring back into hosting gatherings, holding community, and coming back into my energy work practice.
Over the next few newsletters, I'll be sharing more about my vision and the various offerings I'll be rolling out slowly over the next few months. For now, I'll just share a little tease of the first piece of the plan…
This June, my creative incubator, KILN, will be coming back in a new incarnation — retooled and updated for these tumultous times! 🙃
On Tuesday, May 20th, registration will open for KILN: Chrysalis Edition 🐛✨🦋, which will run from June 17th through August 19th.
Having just emerged from my own cocoon, I know a little bit about the warm, generative space into which the caterpillar retreats to undergo its dramatic transformation into a butterfly.
It is a space where the caterpillar can rest, dissolve, re-envision, re-create, rebuild, and — ultimately — be reborn.
Similarly, KILN: Chrysalis Edition will be a space for holding (and leaning into) deep creativity, consciousness, and change.
If you have a specific creative project you want to work on in the space that's great. If the project is *you*, that's also great. So many of us are navigating the fog of uncertainty, the tug of new callings, and the necessity of reinvention right now.
This special summer school edition of KILN will be all about honoring this gooey, liminal space — this soup of uncertainty — that so many of us are inhabiting right now. And understanding just how generative that space can be! ✨
Stay tuned for a newsletter on May 20th with details on how to register for KILN: Chrysalis Edition, plus a contemplative essay, links, and all the other usual goodies.
As always: Thank you for being here. I am so grateful for your attention & your presence.
Tingling back into being,
Jocelyn
The Power of Reverence
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Wherein I re-dedicate myself to my writing practice, make a collection of tiny "book spirits," and tune into the power of reverence, ritual, and sacred boundaries.
When I began this year, one of my intentions was to re-dedicate myself to my writing practice — to treat it as a sacred ritual.
Even though I am both an energy practictioner and a writer, I sometimes forget that writing is an excellent way to move energy.
Part of what I wanted to do was to alchemize my relationship to my writing — to release the intense self-criticism and judgment that was often excruciatingly present during my writing process.
I wrote, "Your job is to move the energy, not to judge" and tacked it up on the wall next to my desk. When I focus on the energy — rather than the outcome — I rarely have trouble being fully present.
From the moment I began practicing reiki, it has always been second nature to drop right into deep presence and to inhabit the space in a way that is improvisational, open, loving, and tender. There was an immediate ease that I had rarely encountered in other creative spaces. And, as soon as I had that experience, I thought to myself: I want to feel like this in all of my work.
In the eight years since that initiation, my acquaintance with reiki has slowly permeated and changed the way that I do everything. My style of teaching has become less planned and rigid, which has allowed me to be more improvisational and the content more emergent. My approach to speaking has become less prepared and serious, which has allowed me to speak more fluidly and be more playful.
In recent months, I finally felt this shift rippling into my writing practice. A new level of presence and tenderness and enjoyment is flowing into my process and I feel so profoundly grateful for it.
For me, a critical part of the writing process has always been my connection to the audience. (So thank you for being here!)
As I was thinking about this book project I'm working on, I was struggling to understand how to connect into that energy — as the audience for a book is, in a sense, found after you write the book. Unlike this newsletter space, or the podcast space, where, to a certain degree, I already know who my audience is.
The past few months I have been doing some very powerful art therapy that involves working with clay so I decided to make a set of totems to assist me in writing the book. (I only came to understand later that I was, in essence, creating a very small audience that I could connect into for support in my writing process.)
After I made the totems, it was obvious that I needed to make an altar, and so now I have this beautiful little scene, which almost feels like a crèche, where my totems and crystals are gathered around a little cauldron of creativity, with flowers sprouting from a wooden "vase" that is actually a beautiful, custom-made box that my brother made for a book he gave me as a gift.
The totems themselves are made from clay and a variety of natural objects that the art therapist shared with me. The shawl is made from a hornet's nest, the wings from a milkweed pod, and the other ornamentations come from shells, leaves, thistles, and such. These little beings remind me of the dioramas I used to construct from found nature objects when I was a small child, and as such, they seem to call in an energy of play.
Now, each morning, before I begin writing, I kneel at the altar, I light a candle, and I ask for whatever assistance I think I might need in my writing practice. Often, I ask for ease and flow and the ability to really sink into and enjoy the process. And, lo and behold, it seems to be working. I am writing with greater ease and more self-compassion.
And a lot of that is coming out of the shift in my approach. That, rather than approaching my practice in a purely instrumental way — to get something out of it, or to produce something — I'm approaching it with ritual, with reverence, as a sacred energetic practice that is worthwhile no matter what is produced.
A teacher of mine recently shared this beautiful quote from John O'Donohue's book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace:
What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.
When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.
The approach matters.
And the ritual of the approach matters.
And the reverence that we bring to these sacred acts of ritual matters.
The astrologist Caroline Casey says that ritual is a way of showing the gods you mean it. That, in taking an ethereal idea and grounding it into the realm of a physical ritual, you demonstrate your dedication to manifesting that thing in the real world.
Another important part of the ritual is creating the sacred circle inside of which I can engage in this devotional practice of writing. That means setting boundaries. Because the time and space I am setting aside for writing cannot be sacred if I just let anyone or anything inside.
At the moment, some of the most essential boundaries relate to my phone. I toggle it to "do not disturb" as soon as I wake up and leave it there while I go for my morning walk (where I contemplate what I will write about), eat breakfast, and then engage with my writing practice. This creates a kind of sacred boundary around my brain so that I can enter into my writing ritual undistracted.
Of course, I make mistakes. A few days ago, I thought it's okay to crack the door open for just a minute and take a peak, and as soon as I opened the door, in plopped a text from my ex. It was a mild, administrative communication so no big deal really. But a clear lesson in: If you break your boundary and open your texts, you really don't know what's going to spill in. And it definitely might not be something you want in your sacred space.
I am receiving lots of lessons about boundaries lately. I am learning what happens when I fail to respect the boundaries that I myself have set. (Shame, disappointment, distraction.) And I am learning what happens when I do respect them. (Safety, sacredness, presence, magick!)
Boundaries help me be in deeper relationship with myself and my creativity. When I draw that sacred circle around myself and my writing practice, I am able to drop in with significantly more presence, ease, and tenderness. This grace alone is worth it.
More and more, I am understanding that the point of ritual isn't to "get something out of it." It's to cultivate a relationship.
The practice is showing up with reverence.
Everything else is gravy.
LINK ABOUT IT
A gripping and emotional interview that covers a lot of territory: Ocean Vuong on writing as a medium for understanding suffering.
Austin Kleon on: The power of thinking outside of your head. (I am a big fan of Annie Murphy Paul and extended mind theory, as well!)
Rebecca Solnit on how: The US is being stripped for parts.
What is AI good for? Heather Havrilesky talks to ChapGPT about writing, self-doubt, and generating book ideas.
I learned many things in this conversation with Thomas Friedman about what we're getting wrong about China.
File under "dog wisdom": Why humans don't shake off trauma like animals do.
I've been enjoying the poetry of Anis Mojgani: "To the Sea" and "The Tigers, They Let Me" and "5 Months."
A streaming music "translator" if you don't have Spotify.
Own your inner weirdo.
✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ |
SHOUT-OUTS:
The artwork is: A selection of memes culled from The Fourth Way's X feed.
Link ideas from: Austin Kleon, Ordinary Plots, Ann Friedman.
You can support me & my work by: Sharing this newsletter with someone, or taking my course, RESET.
Website: jkg.co
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