Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Marisa Handler - Live Your Creative Genius

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Marisa Handler - Live Your Creative Genius · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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My name is Victor Ferman. Some call me the Voice. I've always been
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fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and the crossroads at which they meet.
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Join me now and we will explore these topics and so much more with
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fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to Destination Unlimited. Is
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there an intersection between the creative process and spiritual awakening? Will this crossroad allow
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seekers to turn fresh eyes upon their lives and meet their circumstances with the openness,
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curiosity, and the resourcefulness of an artist. My guest this week on
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Destination Unlimited, Marissa Handler, calls this awakening the beautiful unfolding. Marissa Handler
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is a writer, singer, songwriter, coach, teacher, and the author
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of the memoir Loyal to the Sky, which won a Nautilus Gold Award for
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World Changing Books. Her essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications.
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Her music is available on Spotify and SoundCloud, and her videos on YouTube.
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On the spiritual side, she's been practicing insight meditation in retreats and daily
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life since two thousand and two and teaching since two thousand and twelve. She's
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also a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a powerful practice for
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questioning painful beliefs and accessing intrinsic wisdom. Her website is Marissa Handler dot com
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and she joins me this week to share her path and program Live the your
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Creative Genius. Please join me in welcoming to Destination Unlimited, Marissa Handler.
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Welcome, Marisa, Thank you. Victor. Please share with us your early
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path and how it unfolded into your calling. Yeah, so that's a great
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question. So I grew up untold age of almost twelve in South Africa,
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in a party of South Africa, and so that was a rigidly stratified society,
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and I think as a young child trying to make sense of the world.
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I was also quite a sensitive and quite a spiritual child in such a
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culture and in a close family with a black maid who I was very close
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to, trying to understand this world view which was profoundly segregated, and it
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didn't make a lot of sense really. So I think on some level,
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I started wrestling at quite an early age with wait, what's wrong here?
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You know, having some deep sense of beauty and kind of the internal goodness
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of life and how that wasn't necessarily playing out with what I saw around me,
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so kind of these mixed messages, and then you know, that played
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out I think until we left depart in South Africa and moved to the US.
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But I think it's set a blueprint for trying to understand the world,
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basically trying to make sense of a world which didn't make much sense and bring
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it into some kind of alignment with what felt like my deeper values. Tell
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us a little bit about your spirituality as a child. Well, I was
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raised Jewish, and we were observant, and I had a very very strong
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sense of connection with God, and so I would pray quite fervently as a
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child. So that was that was the route primarily that it took. But
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also I had I remember senses of the sublime or the almost the transcendent,
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looking at something very beautiful like a sunset as a child, having a sense
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of being lifted almost out of myself, and just really of a kind of
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ecstasy. So so that was mostly how it manifested, was through a sense
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of almost like a private connection with God and and and being deeply moved by
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beauty in the world. And how did your creativity manifest as a child,
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I in lots of ways, and my parents were very encouraging of it,
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which I'm grateful for. I wrote stories, I wrote plays, and then
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directed my peers. I illustrated the things that I wrote. I was very
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into visual art actually primarily as a child, which is interesting because I didn't
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end up going in that direction much at all. But a lot of my
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creativity came through withdrawing. And my mother used to say that I would happily
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play. They could leave me and I would happily play on my own for
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hours. You know. I just it wasn't hard for me to keep myself
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occupied. Yeah. What advice would you offer parents of children who express sensitivity
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and creativity. I would say just to really to do the best that you
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can to help your child cultivate those and explore those without a sense of pressure.
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We live in a kind of an interesting culture now where on some level
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creativity and the arts are fetishized, but in other ways they're seen as kind
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of just not real or not realistic. So I think what often happens is
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is children's creativity gets encouraged at a certain age and then it's like okay,
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time to put away to play things and get serious about life, you know,
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And I would say just to just to really nurture a child's sense of
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what they themselves are drawn to intuitively, and of play. I think the
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more we get to play, the more we have room. I think play
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is a child's is a child's form of art. Basically, it's a child's
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form of creativity. And there's a quote from I think it's Ursula le Guin
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who said, yeah, the artist is the child who survived. I love
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that quote because it really speaks to how it's in all of us. It
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really is in all of us, and it requires, I think, some
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sensitive parenting to let that continue to grow in us. And then at some
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point, either you know, we decide or decide these society decides for us,
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or our parents decide for us that it's not appropriate anymore. And I
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think as much as possible to let that child not just survive, but thrive
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throughout our lives teenagers, and then, as you know, when we ourselves
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come into responsibility for ourselves as adults. Absolutely I've shared this before. There's
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a quote from the Woody Blues. They wrote a song called the Eyes of
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a Child, and it says with the eyes of a child, you must
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come out and see that your world spinning round and through life, you will
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be a small part of a whole, of a love that exists. With
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the eyes of a child, you will see. Yes, yeah, we
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have to keep those children's eyes and us open. Absolutely. What was the
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inspiration for your Nautilus Award winning memoir Loyal to the Sky and what did you
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share with your readers? So, I in my twenties, I did a
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lot of activism, social justice and environmental justice activism, and I was also
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writing about these things. I was freelancing as a journalist. I wanted to
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amplify voices that we're not getting heard, and so I'd been kind of writing
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and sharing my experiences in smaller ways. And I got to the point where
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a lot of what I'd been doing was in the global justice movement. So
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we were organizing for just for different ways of gosh, of of structuring community
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and life and you know, life and all its all its attendant gifts,
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the planet not being dependent on the market really for its survival, I suppose
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we do, and rather coming into essentially into wiser ways of being and interacting.
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And I started writing a book that was subtitled a Spiritual Analysis of Corporate
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Globalization. So it was actually looking at what's the consciousness underlying the systems we've
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created that are destroying the planet and thus ultimately ourselves. It seems very it
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seems pretty obvious this is not a healthy way to go. Why do we
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do this? And I wrote a book. I wrote about four hundred pages
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of a book that was looking at spiritual texts, looking at economics, looking
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at philosophy. And I took that to Johanna Van Deeling, who became my
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editor at Barrett Kohler Publishers, and said, hey, you know, this
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is what I'm writing. Are you interested? And she looked at my portfolio
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and she said, you know, I think the message you're trying to put
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out about it a deeper way, a much more conscious way of of being,
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of living, of interacting, of running an economy, et cetera,
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would be better put through narrative, through your own stories. And I was
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quite resistant to the idea for a while, but then I tried it and
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turned out she was right. You know it really, once I started writing
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creatively, which that project was, it really just had a life of its
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own, and you know, at the time I was twenty eight years old.
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I wasn't famous. She said, write a memoir. I said me,
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why, But but that's actually the way that it ended up going.
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And it was a It was a very rewarding book to write, and then
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also to see out in the world and how it was reaching people. Yeah,
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you earned a master's in Fine Art from the Iowa Writer's Workshop and received
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many fellowships in creative writing, including a full Bright and an Elizabeth George Foundation
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grant. With all of this achievement, you experienced what you referred to as
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the dark night of the soul. Please share with us what happened and how
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you emerged from this. Yeah. So, I after Loyal to the Sky
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came out, I applied for m f A programs in fiction and was accepted
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to IOWA, and so I was there for two years. And while it
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was tremendously enriching time on the on the level of just devoting myself to the
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craft of writing, which I'd never really done, and really learning the craft
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and learning how to write story, how to write literary fiction, it was
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also psychologically, I think challenging for me for a number of reasons. And
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I came out of that and got this full right to go to India to
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work on my novel in Varanasi, which is a very intense place to be.
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And I think I entered that experience in a psychologically fragile state basically,
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and I'd had anxiety. I'd always had anxiety, although I don't actually know
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that I knew i'd had anxiety, but it started becoming very clear once I
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was there, and and anxiety grew and grew, and at some point I
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stopped sleeping and just was kind of stuck in terror, and so ultimately end
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up left. I ended up leaving, leaving India and returning to the US
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to yeah, to navigate my way through a breakdown. Ultimately breaks through,
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but at the time breakdown. And I call these experiences dark Knights of the
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Soul because they really challenge us. I teach on the theme of the dark
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Knight of the Soul because I believe very passionately that these kinds of experiences where
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we really lose ourselves as we knew ourselves to be, have great potential for
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our own unfolding spiritually. And that said, at the time, it just
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it was tremendously humbling. I had a lot of shame come up. I'd
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been quite a high achiever, and all of a sudden I found it challenging
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to go to the grocery store. I didn't feel I wasn't capable really of
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working. I wasn't sure how I was going to pay rent the next month.
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It was tremendously confusing, and I think painful for my friends and family.
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And there I was just stuck. And this person that I'd known myself
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to be highly creative, confident, clear, kind of solo, traveling,
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backpacking through the world, going to the Amazon to write about communities resisting oil
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exploitation, et cetera. Leaving the house was challenging. So it was an
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intense passage. I would say, it's an initiation. And I imagine some
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of your listeners have had experiences like this and can probably identify and how did
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you emerge from this? It took time. It took years, really,
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and a tremendous amount of inner work and and other supports. You know,
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there were there were medications at times that were very supportive. I had a
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good therapist, I had a mentor. I reached out for other At that
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point i'd been I'd been in the in the DARM. I'd been sitting meditation
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for a long time. Gosh, I mean I started at least a decade,
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I think fifteen, ten or fifteen years, so that was my primary
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practice, and I realized that that wasn't going to cut it, you know,
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I needed to go. Basically, I was navigating some old trauma that
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was coming up, which is very often at the roots of these experiences,
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and I needed a whole range of tools and support to get me through.
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Miraculously, I found these. I've come to believe, you know, even
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with very little resources, and I've really come to believe that when we do
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the work that is ours to do, whether this is internal or you know,
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we're in a community, there's a community that's facing a problem, we
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see what is ours to do, you know, internal or external, that
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we are supported in it. And that was my experience. But it did
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take a long time, and it was bit by bit baby steps really coming
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out. Oh here I am driving a car, Here I am you know,
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going to the grocery store. Here I am working for a couple of
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hours and getting paid. You know. It was like that kind of one
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small step at a time, and I had such shame around at the was
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as crippling, I would say, on some level, almost as the experience
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itself. And because of that, I thought, you know, what would
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it have been like to go through an experience like that which ultimately opened me
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in such deep ways that a ways that I never would have been opened without
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it? You know, I'm a I'm a hell of a lot of a
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bigger person, I think for that experiences and subsequent ones, because that wasn't
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for better or words, that wasn't the last one. What would it have
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been like to go through an experience like that without without carrying such shame?
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And then I realized, you know, I really actually need to kind of
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come out of the closet and start writing and speaking about like to talking about
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this and I and the things that were most helpful during that experience were when
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I was reading thinkers or writers or listening to teachers who framed it in a
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spiritual way. So starting with Saint John of the Cross, where the term
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comes from the dark knight of a soul, and then contemporary teachers and you
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know, people who have spoken about on the spiritual journey, this is this
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is going to happen at some point, you know, it's not to everyone
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but um, but the sense of being completely severed from what we what we
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knew, almost like taken apart, much the way a caterpillar and a crysalis.
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It turns into complete mush before these imaginal cells I love that name,
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they begin to they begin to sprout, and it takes form as a butterfly.
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You know that that that many of us have this kind of experience,
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and what if we were able to hold it as that as an initiation into
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our next level of being as a gift, Yes, a hard gift.
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Assanti talks about fierce grace, and I love that because it is grace,
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but it's ferocious. You know, at any point I would have chosen anything
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else. You're a practitioner and teacher of insight meditation. What is insight meditation
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and what are the gifts of this practice? Yeah? So it is also
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known as opasta meditation, meditation, pasta meditation, and the traditional I practice
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in its you know, the lineage really is Thai forest Um, Thailand and
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Burma, and it was brought to the West by m. Joseph Goldstein and
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Jack Cornfield and Sharon Salzburg and so much of my own practice history has been
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through Spirit Rock in in Marin County in northern California, and also some at
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the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts. The most base, at its
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most basic, it's it's it's breath based meditation and quieting the mind and coming
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into the deeper layers of our our being and letting that unfold. You are
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also a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. Please tell us about
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the work and how it enhanced your life. The work of Byron Katie is
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this deceptively simple practice that is laser focused at getting right to the points in
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us of pain and suffering. Really, and just as I was speaking about
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with the Dark Night, when we really go into these places with good tools,
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they have the potential to expand us tremendously. And the work of Iron
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Katie is an amazing tool. I haven't come across something else like it that's
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quite as simple and profound in terms of dismantling the kinds of beliefs that we
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hold that cause us suffering and keep us stuck in certain patterns. So it's
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really been a joy to come into practice. It's been a liberating for me
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and I've seen how transformative it can be for for my clients. Yeah,
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please tell us about your music, your songwriting and singing, and how this
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form of expression blessed your life. Mm. Yeah, so I've been singing
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since since college when when a couple of friends heard me sing and said,
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hey, you you sound good, and and then I picked up the guitar
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and yeah, it's it's a big part of me. And you know,
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I there's many ways that I can express myself through writing. I write poetry,
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I write um fiction and essays and um. And then there are ways
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that song can capture things on a level that's that's quite visceral, really comes
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from deep in the body, and of course melody carries emotions, so there
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are, at least from me, there are ways I can access certain things
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through song that writing there's a different filter that's happening there. And as much
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as writing can go very deep, I can be writing a scene and I'm
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sobbing Ei, there's something about the immediacy and the visceralness of song that,
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at least for me, Yeah, it just touches me very deeply. And
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then of course there's also the way that it translates to an audience where there's
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a kind of a deep, immediate communing happening. I think when things are
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when things are going well, you know, between a singer and her and
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her listeners. Yeah, and your poem, The Vanishing won the Lowest Cranston
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Memorial Poetry Prize award. Please share it with us, Okay, yeah,
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the Vanishing. Yes, I know the world is blursting clear off its tracks,
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spilling its marbles, leaving us reeling like drunks before the hangover clamps down.
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Yeah, I know things are bad and good people are worried. I
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know that some of us will disappear and won't come back. The giant Ibis,
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for example, or the new Caledonian outlet night Jar, the Georgia Ester,
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and a picky golden rod that loves only certain mountains. Even the great
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lumbering mammals smiling from mascots and advertisements may fade into a red sunset. Yes,
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things are vanishing a mile a minute. But right now I'm standing in
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a circle of humans hip to hip, a hut river of music playing so
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slow, so thick, we sway as one body in the golden cage that
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balances in my chest has a door it swings wide open, no guards,
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no whistles, no luck to pick, just a cloud of birds, white
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birds with no name. They keep coming, this blurred murmurtion, these flowers
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with wings soft. They settle about the room, watching as eyes closed,
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voices stilled. We feel our way over mountains of bones, along the edges
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of freak and horror, and faggot into a species of peace, an amnesty
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of the soul. And all this time they are watching, blinking, roosting
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close, ready to lift their wings, ready to knock at the walls for
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hours, days, years, ready to sing, beautiful, beautiful. My
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guest is Marisa Handler. Marisa, please tell our listeners like and find more
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about your beautiful work in your creations. Thank you. My website is a
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probably the best place. It's Marissahandler dot com. And there are links there
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to my writing, my music, and my coaching. I work both one
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on one and with groups as a creative and life coach. So there's,
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yeah, there's there's probably, there's there's so much there that a brief tour
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will serve you. Yeah. Absolutely, We'll be back with more of Marissa
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after these words. On the Home Times Radio Network, The Cutting Edge of
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Conscious Radio Hometimes Radio IOMFM. Home Times Magazine is one of the leading online
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Through their commitment to creating community and providing conscious content, the buyer to uplift
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Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week Marissa Handler. Marissa, tell
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us about your upcoming book, The Beautiful Unfolding. So this book synthesizes really
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two decades of my experience in pursuing what I think of as my two vocations,
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the one being art through writing and song, and the other being awakening,
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healing and awakening our transformation. And the deeper I have gone into both
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of those vocations paths, the more I've seen how profoundly connected they are.
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And so this book looks at how essince see how our awakening journey is itself
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intrinsically creative. We are part of something that is unfolding through us and of
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course through everything, and it's profoundly creative. And the more we can come
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in contact with that source, the more we come into what is uniquely ours
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to do and give and be in this world. Now you share your method
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of seven principles for creativity and also for creating the awakened life. Let's start
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with being radically open. You say that, like an artist facing the blank
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canvas, we should stay radically open, even to questioning our own ways of
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seeing. How do we radically open? So this is very connected with what
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we were talking about earlier about the child, you know, and keeping the
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child's eyes on the world. It's not always easy to stay radically open,
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for very good reason. We have old ways of seeing that have perhaps we're
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our survival at some point, all old strategies, old protective strategies and very
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likely no longer service and probably do us a disservice. So really, the
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path towards radical openness is looking at what is preventing it and working using the
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best tools we have to transform those places. And you know, when I
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sit down to write something, or you write a song or a poem or
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whatever, I may well have my idea about what it's going to look like,
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but there must be some degree of hopefully a large degree of openness to
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whatever that mysterious force is that moves through us when we engage in in something
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creative. You might call it the muse or God or source. And that's
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what I mean about staying radically. The more the more we can open,
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the more we allow that to move through us, and the more the more
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we give way actually to what is deepest in us, which is of course
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not separate from that. And is that also a process of dropping our shields
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and being open? Absolutely? Absolutely, And I want to say, you
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know that this requires nuance too, because you know, there's situations where it's
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good to have certain amount of shields, and we need our shields in certain
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ways. And then there are situations and this is actually most of life where
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we really don't you know, but we still kind of hang onto them.
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So here it's really about again doing whatever work needs to be done to let
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our deeper selves, our child seals, you might call it the inner child,
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see that. Actually it's safe now, it's safe now to drop the
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shield, to come out, to open, to see the world even in
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completely different ways maybe than we've seen it before. And that really is actually
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that is the spiritual path. It really is the scales dropping from our eyes.
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The next principle is to use our practices intuitively. How may we do
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this? So we live in an unprecedented era of access to amazing, an
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amazing array really of traditions, practices, tools, whether we're talking the work
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of Byron Katie and inquiry or you know, a meditation practice that's twenty six
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hundred years old, or thematic experiencing and various other trauma modalities or yoga.
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There's just so much out there, and we do need to muster craft.
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You know. Again, this is using the metaphor of an artist like I.
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If I want to attain any level of of of of skill or even
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virtuosity in an art form, I do need to I do need to learn
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craft. I do need to learn from from musters. And we do need
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to do this otherwise we kind of just become dilettants, really. But so
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there needs to be some degree of commitment to some practice with some sort of
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oversight or teacher or guidance. Because we cannot see ourselves clearly at the beginning,
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we really can't. But as we grow in practice, as we grow
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in our ability to see ourselves more clearly. Um, you know, you
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might say that the sort of oft cited ten thousand hours to Mustery. I
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don't know how many hours exactly, But there's a certain point where we come
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into a place where we actually know ourselves well enough, and we know we're
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in touch sufficiently with our bodies and our intuition to trust our own internal gps.
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Of course, we can always on some level trust our own internal GPS,
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but sometimes our internal GPS gets confused with fear or resistance. And once
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we get to know ourselves a little bit better, that's when we step off
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into what I call the blessed rebellion, where we actually this is an important
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point where we say, Okay, you know, I've gotten so much out
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of this teaching, and there's something else that's calling to me. There's some
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element that I need to tend to. Maybe I've been sitting in silent practice
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for ten years and now I actually really want to bring a little more attention
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to movement and what's how movement can express what's moving you know, what's moving
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through me, through the body, etc. And then we become ultimately we
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become our own teachers. Really like that's the journey we learn from. We
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learn from from good teachers, and ultimately the movement is towards becoming our own
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best teachers. And how do we use that intuition when selecting the teachers and
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the teachings. It's a very good question. I think partly we just certainly
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initially, we just go with what calls us, and we don't necessarily know
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why, and we don't always need to know why, but there is some
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discernment that's required, you know. I definitely, when I was younger,
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came into certain paths where there was something that was quite appealing or even seductive
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about it, but there was something that just felt off, and sometimes I
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wasn't always able to even articulate what that was. So really I moved very
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intuitively in the direction of what felt right, and happily that that really served
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me. Notice what calls you and be curious about it. So I think
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that's the best way to go about it, Like it might be with a
32:08
certain teacher, there's a strong heart connection, right, and then just get
32:14
curious what's happening in the body, what's happening in the mind, what's drawing
32:19
me? We want to get some sense of what's under what what's motivating us
32:22
on a deeper level. It doesn't need to be very clear, It certainly
32:27
doesn't need to be sort of psychoanalyzed, but just to have some sense of
32:30
what's drawing us. Usually they'll be mixed motives. And then the other thing
32:35
to say is it may be that there's a certain teacher or teaching that serves
32:39
you for a while and then at a certain point it just doesn't anymore.
32:45
And this may again come through like a just a moment of insight, or
32:49
it might come through a body knowing like there's something happening in the body.
32:52
The body doesn't lie. The mind will tell us so many stories, but
32:55
the body doesn't lie, you know, so just noticing, ah, something
33:00
isn't sitting quite right here. That's been one of my personal great lessons,
33:05
to embrace the teaching if I resonated with it, and not deifying the teacher.
33:10
That's a struggle for many, isn't it. Yes, Yes, absolutely
33:15
absolutely. Look, we take all our stuff and we projected onto and what
33:19
better figure to project our stuff from childhood onto than a spiritual teacher. Right
33:23
here it is our father, our mother, God, whatever, all of
33:27
it, right, So we're going to put it on those people it's not
33:30
a question of if or whether you know it's it happens. I've seen I've
33:36
seen myself doing it over and over when I'm in this position of student,
33:40
and I've seen students clients do it to me. You know, it's just,
33:44
it's just what's going to happen. The real question is can we have
33:49
some good self awareness around that so we're conscious to some extent we're doing it,
33:52
and we start to discern between what's real and what's our stuff. For
33:59
me a way, it was like looking for that loving parent. I think
34:04
that's what we do. That's what we do, and we go out and
34:07
we find that and then of course when that person doesn't match up to the
34:12
ideal, it can feel like heartbreak. It can be shattering, devastating.
34:16
We finally found someone who seemed to live up to everything that we possibly hope
34:21
for, and it turns out that person's human, and that sense of abandonment
34:25
all over again exactly, And that is important. So that's what I'm talking
34:30
about when I say the things that block us, the things that come in
34:34
our way, like the portals, the initiations, whether it's something as big
34:38
as a dark Knight or or some kind of experience of profound grief abandonment as
34:45
you mentioned, or possibly jealousy. This might manifest as or rage. How
34:52
dare she say that after me believing in her or you know, etc.
34:57
Etc. That's a that moment has tremendous potential for healing because the stuff is
35:04
old, it goes deep, and when we can come to it and see
35:07
this and work it through, whether with that teacher or with a good therapist
35:13
or mentor or using just our excellent tools, there's going to be so much
35:17
treasure hidden there. Absolutely, you say that rather than doing and controlling,
35:24
we shift the emphasis to being and receiving. How may we be open to
35:30
receive? Mm? Yeah, So in my in my group program, you
35:38
know, there's a whole module devoted to this. So we spend really six
35:43
weeks like just how do we practice doing that? And a lot of it
35:47
because we live in a culture where it's so oriented around productivity and achieving and
35:54
getting things done and is it measurable what I'm doing? And when it comes
35:58
to creative work, a lot of the time we put in a lot of
36:00
what we do and it it just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work
36:05
in our schedule. I remember Alan groganis on one of my teachers who wrote
36:10
the Oldest Living Confederate with Hotels, all fantastic writer, saying that for every
36:15
page he published, he put in a hundred pages of work, you know
36:19
which, And that book is a tone you know. I think it's seven
36:22
hundred pages long, so you can imagine the amount of labor that goes into
36:24
it. In short, the deepest work that we do, whether this is
36:29
creative work or spiritual work, it just it doesn't move in a linear way.
36:32
It's not about productivity. We need to go deeper. And really,
36:37
for a lot of us, that on a kind of ground level means we
36:44
actually need to tend to the nervous system. If the nervous system isn't to
36:47
some degree relaxed, it's gonna be hard for the body to settle and for
36:52
us to go deeper. So in my group program, we actually spend quite
36:55
a bit of time learning how to how to receive, how to come into
37:01
a place where we open the senses, where we slow down and learn,
37:10
how to how to resource basically, how to open to beauty, how to
37:15
orient to the actual world that we're in, dropping out of the mind and
37:17
into the body. A lot of it has to do with the nervous system
37:22
and the body. And once we can come into a place of some degree
37:25
of relaxation and ease and grounding, with that, we can begin to open
37:30
to reality, which is pretty incredible. Actually. You know, if we
37:37
if we really sit with a flower and pay deep attention to it, it
37:43
just keeps opening the deeper we look, it just keeps revealing the patterns,
37:47
the colors, the textures. So we all have this potential to see deeply
37:53
to receive, but we have to get quiet enough. The system has to
37:58
quiet enough where we can just be and come into a place of actual receiving.
38:05
And what about those who have worthiness challenges? When it comes to receiving,
38:12
it starts with ourselves, right, So I think, you know,
38:20
ultimately, when we have these challenges, it's because we don't believe we really
38:24
deserve it, and so it's coming. It's it's doing the work again with
38:30
good support if possible, or you know, good to the work of buying
38:35
katie or you know, a therapist, or there's so many good things out
38:39
there right now to draw from. But coming into a place of unpacking what
38:45
led us to the point of thinking, we don't deserve this. Once we
38:47
do that, you know, once I mean seeing like the awareness, kind
38:53
awareness awareness that that's not judgmental, it's it's I don't know, I think
39:00
it's about seventy five percent of the journey. Really Like, once we can
39:02
see what's happening underneath there and hold it with some kindness, things can begin
39:07
to unfold, and we can begin to open to deserving and receiving and perhaps
39:14
the acknowledgement, but the fact that we've made the effort to obtain the teaching
39:20
work with the teacher, that we are worthy, We've made the effort to
39:23
get there, We're worthy to receive it. We are all inherently worthy.
39:29
We're so much more than worthy. Actually, it makes me sad, you
39:31
know, because I've certainly dealt with a lot of this in my own life,
39:36
and I just see it time and again. We are creatures of incredible
39:42
power and beauty and profound access really to just such light. We're so much
39:52
more than worthy. And yes, and yes, at the same time,
39:59
right the since charity with which we've engaged, the steps that we've taken,
40:02
how far we have come all of these. If we need a proof It's
40:07
there absolutely. My guest, as Marissa Handler, will be back with more
40:13
after these words on the Olm Times Radio Network. Humanity Healing International is a
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40:39
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40:45
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us dot org, brought to you by the AD Council. Welcome out Machine
43:15
Back on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week is Maurica Handler. Maurica,
43:22
we're talking about these seven principles, and one of them that you're saying is
43:25
you share that rather than seeing them as restricting, we engage creatively with our
43:31
limits or edges, letting them lead us to new insights and ways of being.
43:38
How may we do this so just as the artist does. You know,
43:44
when there's something about writing a sonnet, for example, a form like
43:47
a sonnet or a villainil where it's a very it's very it's very prescribed.
43:54
You know, there's a there's a certain way of doing it, and this
44:00
many couplets and this etc. This you know, um this meter etc.
44:07
Um, when we have those constraints, they actually inspire creativity. So it's
44:12
kind of interesting. We think often, oh, creativity is total freedom,
44:15
but it's actually not, because when there's a certain kind of a structure that's
44:21
brought that is limiting it, it pushes us to think in new ways.
44:24
It pushes us you could say, you know, forgive the cliche, but
44:28
it pushes us to think outside the box to fit inside the box. Interestingly,
44:32
so it's the same with our own growth. You know, we tend
44:37
to view we often sometimes I think unconsciously equate our our experiences of transcendence or
44:45
our mystical experiences, our experiences of deep connection. That's real growth. That's
44:51
that's the spiritual you know, that's the spiritual evolution happening there. And then
44:55
there are these difficult places which we rather would not see, where, um,
45:00
you know, the way I'm acting is very immature, or there's a
45:04
certain pattern that I'm recycling that's decades old, and so we tend to either
45:12
you know, we kind of want to bypass those places, or we get
45:15
mired in them. We just get stuck. No, this is what's real.
45:17
There's nothing else. That was just a nice delusion, all that spiritual
45:22
stuff, right, or like we just we bypassed, We don't we don't
45:25
want to see it at all. But ultimately, these, when we open
45:30
to them, much as a certain form does in any art, can inspire
45:36
us creatively to find new ways of being and doing so. Really, the
45:43
things that we think of us are our limitations. When held with the the
45:49
the view, the mindset, through the scene, through the eyes of an
45:54
artist, as if we ourselves are the canvas, can inspire us to new
46:00
insights, new openings, new ways of being. Absolutely, you were touched
46:07
upon this in the last segment. You say that obstacles do not block the
46:10
path, they become the path. Please explain. Yeah, So on a
46:16
related note, you know my experience with A Dark Night, I thought,
46:22
oh my god, like this is. I had a whole trajectory laid out
46:24
after the full Bride I was going to try to get Yeah, I mean,
46:28
I had a whole plan basically, and my novel would be out in
46:30
X many years. My dad dadda, you know all of this, and
46:34
then that happened and I was like, I mean, of course, on
46:37
multiple levels, it was it was, you know, challenging his understatement but
46:43
it became the path because I had no choice right and so what it opened
46:47
me too ultimately was really my my vocation as as as a healer, as
46:55
a as a teacher of others. I was already pretty pretty active on the
47:01
creative front, and I was certainly doing my own spiritual work, but just
47:08
the way that played out, I sort of had to come into a place
47:14
of devoting much of my energy and time to healing and to unfolding, and
47:22
then that became the gift I was able to give others. So we think
47:28
we're in charge, and it's a lovely delusion to have sometimes, but we
47:31
really aren't. But we do get to choose how we hold what happens to
47:36
us, how we react to it. You know, it's interesting when my
47:40
path fully opened in my late thirties early forties, I found that these series
47:46
of synchronicity started taking place. And synchronicity was defined by Carl Jung as meaningful
47:52
coincidences without causal connection. And I found that when I opened to something or
48:00
something was presented to me, I had three choices. I could dismiss it
48:04
out of hand. I could say, yes, that's interesting, but not
48:07
for now, for later, or I could say, yes, I need
48:09
to approach that now, I need to embrace that now. And with every
48:14
big yes, the next one came, and the next one came, and
48:17
the next one came. Have you found that in your path? Yes?
48:21
And so that's what I think of as us really doing what I'm talking about
48:25
in this book. We are being the artists of our own unfolding. We
48:30
are co creating with source you might say, or God, or however you
48:36
want to call it, right, and that's how we know. These are
48:39
like the lovely little I don't know, you know, lovely little treats or
48:45
lovely little magical A gentleman by the name of Squire Rushnell called them godwinks.
48:54
I love that. Yeah, I'm definitely flailing here it up with a good
49:00
way to phrase it. But godwins. Yeah, that's lovely. So right,
49:04
so these are these are the little godwins, the indications, Hey,
49:07
you're in creative flow. Not only are you in creative flow in terms of
49:13
what you're actually doing, but you're in creative flow. You're you're dancing with
49:16
life itself. As one of my clients likes to say, she talks about
49:22
dancing with life. Yeah, and that's that's that's These godwins, as you
49:28
call them, are life saying to us, hey, you're doing it,
49:31
you're in it, you're open, and it's unfolding and you're creating, and
49:37
it's who knows where things are going to go? Watch out? You know,
49:40
we're on a ride here. Get ready, and you share that we
49:45
must stay attuned to our own knowing. How do we do that? M
49:52
Yeah, I think a lot of that happens through the body really um and
49:59
so you know, there are a number of things I've already mentioned sort of
50:01
slowing down and pausing, But ultimately what I'm saying here is really our path
50:09
will be distinct. You know. Rundus talked about this uma data. Maharaj
50:15
talked about this in different ways, saying you're going to have to walk your
50:22
path alone. It's only because it's your path, you know. So if
50:24
we look, for example, at contemporary maybe some of contemporary examples of pretty
50:30
awakened beings, let's say, m like Adyashanti or Byron Katie or I don't
50:39
know, Ekartoli or you know, people that are actually on the contemporary landscapes
50:45
landscape, they they each of their form of awakening takes its own distinct shape,
50:52
its own distinct message. They may be saying very similar things or in
50:58
the depths the same thing, even their own distinct way of being. And
51:01
that's true for all of us. Our own awakening path is going to be
51:07
our distinct path. Nobody else can do it right. Nobody else can see
51:12
the world in the ways that we can see it can give the worlds the
51:15
distinct gifts we bring. And so it really is about staying attuned to our
51:21
own way of being, because it can be very seductive to think, oh
51:23
my God, like, look at what she's doing or what he's doing,
51:27
or what they're being in the world, That's what I should be doing.
51:31
And of course we go into comparison all the time, you know, we
51:37
get our our spiritual super ego gets online and tells us all kinds of things.
51:43
But ultimately we we truly want to go is into our own truth and
51:49
only we can can know and express that. And so that's what I mean
51:53
about staying, no matter how far we are on the journey, staying attuned
51:59
deep to our own sense of truth. Really absolutely, and you're touched upon
52:07
this before lastly, you share that we stay curious what is the gift of
52:13
curiosity? Ah, so many gifts. But here's the paradox that the further
52:21
we go on the spiritual path, the more we come into a sense of
52:24
deeper knowing or understanding of reality. Really, and it can be that we
52:30
also get attached to those views like oh right, I get it, emptiness
52:35
or whatever. Right, Um, oh yeah, I get it, like
52:37
we're all one right, um. But the journey just keeps unfolding and um
52:45
and age almost you know, um, I mean. Eli, the founder
52:47
of the Diamond Approach, speaks about this beautifully in his book Runaway Realization,
52:52
where he talks about how the it's it's it's a runaway journey. You know,
53:00
realization just keeps unfolding new layers of itself, so we don't necessarily know
53:05
what it's going to look like, so we don't want to get stuck at
53:07
anyone station. As he says, you know, okay, right, it's
53:10
non dual, I got it. That's what it is. There's always going
53:15
to be more to see into experience. As he says, you know,
53:19
endless ever, subtler layers of delusion, which is true, mean endless ever,
53:24
subtler layers of awakening. And so that's what I mean by staying curious.
53:31
Even when we think we've got something or we really get it in a
53:35
deeper way than we have ever gotten it or seen it before, we still
53:38
want to stay open and curious. Absolutely tell us about your program, Live
53:44
your creative genius. Yeah, oh gosh. So this is really a love
53:49
child, I would say, between me and source, or me and the
53:53
creative current that runs through me and my teaching. And it's a nine the
54:00
in depth creative coaching program designed to really help the participants to come into what
54:07
is distinctly theirs to do and to give those gifts to the world, you
54:10
know. And that looks different for different participants. It may be writing the
54:15
book that they've been planning to write for years. It may be simply stepping
54:20
into their creativity. It may be um, you know, putting out a
54:27
certain like building an NGO actually, but typically it's like, you know,
54:32
the thing with coaching is we do the inner work and we do the outer
54:35
work. Right, So we were going into deep places and then we're taking
54:38
actual concrete steps in the world to make manifest our vision. And it's a
54:44
real journey. We go, we go, You know we we we we.
54:49
There's a whole chunk, as I said, on being and receiving,
54:52
and then we there's a there's a module called Embracing the Shadow and Turning Obstacles
54:58
into Allies, where we do exactly what I've been talking about here. We
55:00
really go in deep into these shadow places to transform them so that they begin
55:07
to lose their grip on us and we move into into our deepest creativity.
55:13
You know, we really do give our genius to the world. My guest
55:16
is Marissa Handler. Marissa, please tell our listeners where they can find out
55:20
more about you and your work in that program, Live your Creative Genius YEP
55:24
at my website Marissa Handler dot com and that's spelled m A r I s
55:32
A h A N d l e r dot com. And what else can
55:37
they find there? There's songs, there's poetry, there's writing, lots to
55:42
inspire you, and there's also yeah, there's links to yeah music videos and
55:47
interviews and and just more information also about my coaching and teaching. Yeah.
55:53
Marissa, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your path and your
55:58
wisdom. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Victor, and thank
56:02
you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor, the boys Berman of
56:07
a wonderful week,