Writing—The Sacred Art Quotes

“spiritual practice is conspiratorial rather than inspirational; it conspires to strip away everything you use to maintain the illusion of certainty, security, and self-identity. Where spiritual writing seeks to bind you all the more tightly to the self you imagine yourself to be, writing as a spiritual practice intends to free you”
― Rami Shapiro, Writing—-The Sacred Art: Beyond the Page to Spiritual Practice

“Writing creates something new: an “art emotion,” i.e., an image of emotion, an illusion of emotion, which exists only in the context of the written work. This is quite different from Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility.” It suggests that, whatever the process of”
― Rami Shapiro, Writing—-The Sacred Art: Beyond the Page to Spiritual Practice

“three rules for writing as a spiritual practice: (1) Don’t write what you know; (2) Don’t write what you don’t know; and (3) Just write. Don’t write what”
― Rami Shapiro, Writing—-The Sacred Art: Beyond the Page to Spiritual Practice

“PREFACE This is a book about writing as a spiritual practice. This is not a book about spiritual writing. Spiritual writing—inspirational writing—has to conform to what the reader finds inspirational. Spiritual writing has to make the reader feel safe, certain, and self-satisfied; it has to leave the reader believing that what she already knows is all that she needs to know. Writing as a spiritual practice is something else entirely. Writing as a spiritual practice has nothing to do with readers per se. You”
― Rami Shapiro, Writing—-The Sacred Art: Beyond the Page to Spiritual Practice