Writing Workshop: The Mythology of Belief

Workshop Description

The two-hour lecture explores various characteristics of what comprises a personal myth. It will also suggest some differences between beliefs, opinions, assumptions and prejudices, all of which can harden us into a dogmatic point of view on the world if we do not periodically reassess them.  At the end it will pose “Whose Reality Do I Believe and Why?” and offer some suggestions on the power of our beliefs to shape the reality we assume to be true.

The workshop will posed a number of writing meditation questions to help us understand how we form a worldview that we rely on, especially in times of crises, like the current pandemic.

This course is ideal if

• Explore some of your most dearly-held beliefs.
• Understand more fundamentally what comprises a number of terms of your personal myth.
• Recognize beliefs that you no longer hold to but continue to use to navigate through daily life.
• Deepen your understanding of where the origins of some of your beliefs reside.
• Decide what beliefs you might best let go of to further your own growth.

Course Overview

Lecture: The Nature and Importance of Myth

Recording Available Now

In this two hour event we will explore how “Believing is Seeing” to grasp what our beliefs are, ways of becoming aware of and processing our interior life and its connections to the external world.  There will be time for Q&A during the class as well. 

Workshop: Writing as a Form of Witnessing and Healing. 

No Recording Available

During this five hour practical part of the workshop, you will be getting Writing Meditations which will lead to identify several assumptions that shape our vision of reality. We will ask: 

1. what assumptions might one be ready to relinquish because they impede rather than promote our growth?
2.  if our wounds are central to our personal myth and if being wounded has affected what we believe.
3. What crossroads, thresholds or deflections in life have altered what you believe?
4. In what way are the stories we tell ourselves and others in fact our beliefs in narrative form?

By the end of this course you will

• Learn how to question your own beliefs through writing.
• Be able to listen more closely when others tell their stories to hear into them their beliefs.
• Understand some of the terms of a personal myth and its insistent presence in what we think, believe and behave in unique ways.
• Identify what it is about yourself that you believe is unique and could not be replicated.
• Distinguish what is different between a faith you hold and a belief you treasure.