Beauty as the Path to Inspiration

Sioban said...
This is an interesting post. In your books, do you connect beauty and inspiration?

Thank you, for the wonderful question, Sioban. I do think that when we allow ourselves to contemplate the beautiful, we are taking ourselves to the state of connection with spirit. This is a sure and easy path to allow ourselves to feel connected to everything and all that is, which is our God nature. Sustaining this state of awareness puts us in a place to receive inspiration, starts the creative juices flowing. When we are connected to all of creation, we become creation and are moved to express creatively.

I think that usually my poems express a state where everything is coming together into such a flow. My trilogy of novels also, follows the main character as she is able to appreciate and express this more and more until finally, she is living from it. Byron’s “she walks in beauty like the night” is the perfect example of a character that learns to live as the creative force, in a state of inspiration. My third novel, Shadow Dancing, portrays the main character moving beyond her own shadow to fully embrace her own beauty and live from it. Seen from the broad pallet of the trilogy of novels, this character has come a long way from allowing life to happen to her, to creating a life expressed as her own highest potential.

Each Character Their Own Voice

Kim said...
I finished Chasing Twilight! Whew. I have lots of comments and questions but need to think about it some more. To begin with, I wonder, was it hard to write such a big novel in the format of letters between two characters? Developing the story in the things that two people say to each other can't be easy, but I will say it worked here.

Thanks for your question, Kim. You are right, this format for the novel was one of the biggest technical challenges that I faced while writing Chasing Twilight. This technique is tantamount to writing in the first person for two characters, which proved to be an exacting task. The first person is considered by many to be the most difficult voice in writing fiction because the story has to unfold in the confines of the psychological filters of the character. They may not be seeing events clearly because of intense emotion or immaturity. Yet in the first person, the writer can only convey to the reader the thoughts and feelings of the character within these confines. The format for Chasing Twilight doubled those confines because each of the two main characters wrote in the first person and conveyed their own version of the story as it unfolded.

While I found this difficult at times, I thought the technique reflected our contemporary world, and allowed a wonderful exchange of spirit between the characters. Romance beginning with emails over the Internet has become common place. The increasingly popular use of computers and the Internet has expanded our individual worlds and led us to a more worldcentric view. We can now develop relationships and exchange ideas with people we will never see. It is easier for us to stay connected with loved ones without having to take the time to physically visit with them. The technology not only expands our worlds, but offers us insights into who we are and opportunities to explore our consciousness. All of this came into play as I wrote Chasing Twilight.

I have also found that when people are writing to one another, they are much more profound and poetic. They can take as long as they like to write a paragraph, writing and deleting until the words are just right. We can’t do this in conversation. Using this format gave me a chance to explore what two people might express to each other, without the problems of emotional reactions, body language or time constraints. Letters allow our very best expression. The more we write them, the more profound we can become. I think this allows our hearts to open, not only to others but to ourselves. Molly Brogan

The Death of a Character Gives Life New Meaning

Jim said...

I finally got around to reading your book, remember me, something I've been meaning to do for awhile. One question, why did you kill of your main character?

This is a great question, Jim, thanks for asking it. The Mary Margaret character in Remember Me died for reasons intrinsic to both the story of Remember Me and to the larger story of my trilogy of novels. Each of my three novels examines love and loss from different viewpoints, and all three together examine love, life and death, as they fundamentally effect our experience.

Because Remember Me was written as a plea for reform in US family courts, it was important for the main character to die because each year, thousands of people take their own lives or have their lives taken as a result of the ineptitude of the US family court system. To research my book, I spent countless hours in family court, listening to these stories and interviewing litigants. There is an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness in domestic violence cases because weak laws, inexperienced State's Attorneys, and burned out judges allow cases to go unresolved or perpetrators to go free, empowered to continue the violence. The death of this character and destruction of this family was a common story in US family court.

Looking at the larger canvas of the trilogy, on the journey of the spirit, the death of the ego is the first step to be taken toward enlightenment. Some say, for instance, that the Tibetan Book of the Dead is actually a manual for ego death. The Mary Margaret character in Remember Me never catches on to this process as she cannot let go of her egotistical concerns, and suffers her losses, defining herself with loss and pain. Because this is a dead end for a journey of the spirit, her death frees her spirit to begin again.

In the second novel, Chasing Twilight, the character is resurrected, and begins to understand the importance of ego death and resurrection of being – or consciousness raising. So, her journey can continue and the concept of death takes on new meaning. With death, comes rebirth and the cycle of life is felt in the soul.

This will bring up interesting questions in the third novel, Shadow Dancing: What is death? What parts of us die while we live? How is this integral to being and becoming?

I sincerely hope you enjoy the stories and the concepts. Thanks again.

Artwork by Moira Marshall Many thanks.

Recognizing Emotions and Feelings

Morgan said...

I have given this some thought. I think I understand what you say about negative emotions that keep us from finding any happiness. But I don't quite get what you think about the difference between emotion and feeling. Please explain. Thanks.

Thanks for the thoughtful question, Morgan. I think the words feeling and emotion are often used interchangeably, but I am convinced that there is a distinct and profound difference. Gregg Braden tells us that prayer consists of thoughts, coming from the crown, brow and throat chakras - and feelings coming from the base, sacral and solar plexus chakras - into the heart. I think that this feeling that moves through us is the energy that moves through the matrix of our being that we can FEEL. By remembering the feeling, we can move energy through our system. If we are feeling low, we can imagine feeling joy, and our energy will rise to the feeling of joy. By understanding our feelings like this, we learn to command our energies and can heal our bodies and raise our consciousness.

Emotions, on the other hand, are like feelings because we feel them too. But they are responses of our emotional body to events in our experience. If we lack emotional body maturity, our emotions can be based on patterns of previous experience. We feel fear when our hand is near fire because our hand has been burned before. When we are young, our emotions occur naturally, like the physical body functions of breathing and digesting. As our emotional body matures, we understand that the emotions that occur naturally can be changed by the way we formulate our responses or even our perceptions. We can choose to feel caution instead of fear. We can perceive fire as a thing of beauty instead of danger, because we have learned to respond appropriately.

In my first novel, Remember Me, Mary Margaret comes close to understanding the nature of her emotions and feelings, but in the end, is overwhelmed with loss and grief. In my second novel, Chasing Twilight, Molly has the emotional body maturity to not only pace her emotions, but utilize her feelings for healing and consciousness raising. This character will go on to explore the possibilities that feelings allow in the third novel.

Thanks again for this great question, Morgan.

Developing Timeless Characters

Blythe said...

Why did you choose for the love interest in Chasing Twilight to be a Scientologist? Was this character taken from real life or did you write his as a Scientologist for a different reason?

This is a great question, Blythe, thanks for asking. How do we create our characters when we write? There are probably as many answers to this question as there are fiction authors. Part of my research for my first novel, Remember Me, was to work with a psychotherapist, who gave me wonderful suggestions as to how to base a character on my personal experience, and yet give it a separate personality that would be congruent with the outcome of the story. In Remember Me, the Mary Margaret character gives up on life. I had to create character traits and behaviors for her that would ultimately lead her in that direction.

For the second novel in my trilogy, Chasing Twilight, the love interest or anti-hero is a Scientologist so that the main character has someone who can understand her spiritual quest. The book is a dialogue between two people, and through the dialogue, the plot of the story and development of the characters are revealed. I chose Scientology because it has a new age, yet rigid doctrine and could provide some resonance, yet stark difference for the main character who believes only in the golden thread of truth that runs through all.

I did quite a bit of research into Scientology, reading and interviews, to build this character. I worked very hard to portray this character as an anti hero in the true sense, not as a villain. The constraints of his character are reflected in his passive aggressive attempts to control the relationship. The value of the faith of Scientology itself is never brought into question, but the main character does present some challenges and is answered, providing an interesting Q&A. I found it to be and extremely effective tool. Thanks again, Blythe. Molly Brogan

Artwork by Cindy Hesse Many thanks.

One Journey, Three Novels

Linda said...

How about the second novel, Chasing Twilight - what part does shadow play with these characters? Their emotions are so intense. And what about all three books together? Do they all relate to each other in terms of shadow?

Thanks for the question, Linda. In Chasing Twilight, the characters have evolved in their recognition of their shadow aspects. Molly does some wonderful shadow transformation, not only when it comes up in the love relationship, but in her past life regression sessions. However, her lover, the Scientologist, will not acknowledge his shadow behavior, as he is unwilling to give up his attempt to control outcome. This shatters the sacred space which requires honesty, appreciation and psychological safety for the relationship to flourish. Molly is, however, able to recognize this and move on.

Shadow transformation can be very intense and takes a great deal of courage. Since this post, I have had several folks tell me that most people don't live like this or understand themselves this way. I think that more and more, we do.

The trilogy of novels is a journey of spirit for one woman, so yes, quite naturally, her ability to integrate her shadow is reflected in the stories of each book. When the novels are read in succession, I hope you can see her process and triumph. Molly Brogan

Heroes, Villains and Rudolph Steiner

Linda said...
Can you tell me about "the Opposing Spiritual Powers," and how they are like anti-heros?

Thanks for the question, Linda. I should preface the answer by saying that I have read the Rudolph Steiner teachings for several years now and find them to be mythical and complicated. I feel that whatever organization there is to life is much, much simpler, but I do admire some of his concepts. One of my favorite is his idea that humanity has a soul that influences and evolves along with our individual souls, much like CG Jung’s collective unconsciousness. Another is that our awareness unfolds, and humanity evolves due largely to the interplay of opposing forces (the tree of knowledge or good and evil.) The Steiner teachings tell us that in the course of human history, three specific opposing forces have provided our common soul and individual souls with opposition to our perfect nature (the Christ impulse) or the God within us. The dynamic of these forces are such that either we transcend the opposition and realize freedom by reconciling the forces (transcending duality) or we continue to battle.

Lucifer was the first, providing our natural, darker side. He is closely linked to nature and the mechanics of human nature so that the opposition he presents are storms or plagues or the fall of an civilization or the domination of our ego nature. His gift to humanity was free will, obtained in the choice to realize the Christ impulse and to transcend.

Ahriman was the second. His influence was first felt about 4M years ago and is still present today. He is associated with technology and materialism and prevents us from not seeing through the material to the spirit. He is also closely linked to the laws of karma, and keeps us from understanding the process of our freedom from karmic debt. But once the Ahrimanic forces have been reconciled, and we are free from karmic debt, we enter the age of Azuras. The Steiner teachings tell us that humanity is just beginning to enter this age but is still primarily ruled by Ahriman.

Not much is written on the Azuras and to research, I joined the Steiner library in New York, and read several of his books and lectures that hadn’t been taken out of the library in decades. I also joined Steiner discussion groups all over the world, talking to folks who had their own ideas about where Steiner was going with this. The forces of Azuras distract us into looking away from spirituality and convince us that our material experience is reality, not a reflection of our conscious awareness. It tricks us out of taking our objective into the subjective and becoming the creator with it, and believing the reverse is true. The Azuras has both the natural quality of Lucifer and the Ahrimanic qualities of technology and materialism. There is a bit written and much discussed about Steiner’s notion that once we give any part of ourselves to the Azuras, it can never be recovered. My (controversial) belief was that Steiner understood that once we transcend duality, mind and soul (karma), our lives and the formation of our experience is more immediately effected by universal laws. Once we consciously understand how to reconcile the opposition and realize our connection with all of life, we are distracted less easily even though the distractions become more dramatic. Ken Wilber would say it hurts more but we suffer less after the One Taste.

It’s easy to see how these opposing forces can be used as the hero/anti hero of a novel. I develop the characters of the three anti heros in my trilogy to reflect the nature of Steiner’s opposing forces. This allows me to develop the character of the heroine along a natural line of spiritual development, learning to release her karmic debt and move into a more harmonious storyline. And who doesn’t love a happy ending?

Fulfilling the prayer for love

Catherine said...
I will read that part of the book over again, but it sounds like you are talking about getting in touch with an archtype of love, by creating a prayer for love. I wonder if connecting like this with ourselves doesn't "attract" others with those qualities into our lives. Just thinking out loud...

Catherine,

Your comment encompasses so much more than a section of my book, I thought I would begin another post. By thinking out loud, you bring up the concept of how we create our lives. I have more of a “feeling” for this than a theory that I can articulate. So much has been written about this, including portions of the bible. I am currently reading Thomas Troward, 19th Century mystic, who does a pretty good job of giving us an outline of the process as he sees it, without becoming terribly “religious.”

He begins with the concept of Alpha and Omega – the entire series of causation from the first originating movement to the final and completed result. Everything has its origin in an idea, a thought, and it has its completion in the manifestation of that thought in form. Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the Alpha and Omega of the series are the thought and the thing. This shows us that in essence the thing already existed in the thought. Omega is already potential in Alpha.

Like Greg Braden, Troward thinks that it takes thought and feeling to create prayer. He says thought creates form but it is feeling that gives vitality to thought. “It is this indissoluble union of Thought and Feeling that distinguishes creative thought from merely analytical thought and places it in a different category… it is that entering into the Mind of the Spirit.”

This leads us to the idea of the prayer including archetypes: “Now the images in the Mind of the Spirit must necessarily be GENERIC. The reason for this is that by its very nature the Principle of Life must be prolific, that is, tending to Multiplicity, and therefore the original Thought-image must be fundamental to whole races, just what Plato meant by archetypal ideas. This is the perfect subsistence of the thing in the thought.”

Troward on the relation of the prayer to the manifestation: “This specialization can only take place through the individual himself, it logically follows that the Life, which he thus specializes, become his own life. This self recognition through the individual cannot in any way change the inherent nature of the Creative Sprit, and therefore to the extent to which the individual perceives its identification with himself, he places himself under its guidance, and so he becomes one of those who are 'led by Spirit'. Thus he begins to find the alpha and omega of the Divine ideal reproduced in himself, in a very small degree at present, but containing the principle of perpetual growth into an infinite expansion of which we can as yet form no conception.”

There is so much trendy information today about the Law of Attraction and how it can get us what we want in life. I think much of this info misses the point that Troward hits right here, and that is, that the will that makes manifest is Divine Will. Our self will must be in agreement. Unless our prayers connect with the archetypical ideas, and our egos detach from the “things” coming into manifestation, how can our prayers be fulfilled? This is the crux of “Thy will be done.” We direct our thoughts and feelings to the universal, or archetypical, place ourselves in the flow of infinite expansion, and have faith that what will come from it, will be just what we need, to allow us to be led by spirit on our beautiful journey.

Thanks for the conversation. Molly Brogan

The Sacred Space of Relationship

Linda said...
You say, "in the sacred space, anyone who understands can become your twin..." Please explain what is meant by "sacred space."

Hi Linda: When I refer to “sacred space” I am referring to the conditions that people allow for relationships to flourish. To achieve this, the people involved need to create the space for themselves that includes complete honesty, appreciation and (psychological) safety for one another. This space allows for self exploration and connection with spirit. It can only occur when each person is first able to witness themselves and maintain an internal balance that allows them to experience without “charge” or judgment of positive or negative.

This means that before we are ready for a sacred relationship, we each have to have done the internal work necessary to allow the sacred space. A good understanding of anger and how to effectively process it is essential. An understanding of our shadow aspect is necessary, that part of us that holds the unrecognized fear, and projects a victim – villain - hero triad or good and evil dynamic into relationship. It is also important to have an understanding of golden shadow, and how an over involvement with the beautiful parts of ourselves can interfere with the appreciation or psychological safety of another. It is widely thought that once we have “readied” ourselves, we have cleared the way for twin flame and soul mate relationships to enter our lives.

Having sacred relationships does not mean that problems or crisis will not enter our lives. As long as we are alive we are drawn to all levels of the mirror experience, even what we judge in the moment and the dark night of the soul. But the sacred space in relationship provides the foundation for our experience to be clearly realized. We must make sure that our partners are provided honesty, appreciation and safety at all times and that includes not assigning blame for deconstructing circumstances or emerging shadow. If we can provide our loved ones with the room to explore all aspects of themselves and appreciate who they are and who they are becoming, they can do the same for us.

Once we have learned to create a sacred space for relationship, it becomes easier to walk away from relationships incapable of providing it. It becomes the kindest thing to do because it establishes the model for all relationships to follow. You will be surprised at how many people can rise to the understanding, if given the time and sacred space.

The characters in my book, Chasing Twilight, are discovering how to create this sacred space. Thanks for asking. Molly Brogan

Discussion of Chasing Twilight and the nuances of relationship

Eileen said...
I bought your book because I heard that it was written as an exchange of emails between two people . . . Last year I rekindled a childhood romance this way. It occurred to me that the Internet lets us relate to each other new ways. It is very different than meeting and getting to know someone. I liked the way that your characters in Chasing Twilight were able to get to know each other in so many ways. Thank you for showing me that the rest of the world does this too.

Eileen,
Thanks so much for your comments on Chasing Twilight. Indeed, the book was written to highlight the notion that the web allows us immediate access to information and relationship like never before. When two people can't be together physically, it heightens their awareness of relationship on other levels. This is like what happens when one of our senses is taken away, say sight, and the senses of smell, sound and touch become more keen. Because the Internet allows us to develop relationships with people we seldom physically encounter, many of us better understand how we relate to each other on the most subtle levels, beyond the senses. The understanding of our intellectual and emotional exchange through words over the web is most obvious. Great debates over the quality of these relationships continue. Through the ages, philosophers have given us many models for the structure of human exchange and many are more dimensional than just physical, emotional and intellectual. I am particularly interested in the exchange of soul and spirit that occurs between people in relationship, and how it effects experience. I hope Chasing Twilight was able to convey some of that to you.

Very truly yours, Molly Brogan

Discussion of PD's comment on Rudolph Steiner

PD said...
Hi Molly. I see by your company webpage that you, like me, are a student of Rudolph Steiner. Do you use the ideas of Anthroposophy in your books?

Dear pd,
It is always great to meet someone who has an understanding of the Steiner teachings. They certainly can take a lifetime to study. As a matter of fact, I incorporate these ideas into my writing in a number of ways. The most obvious, is my creation of each anti-hero in my novels. Each is based on the characteristics of what Steiner would call the "opposing forces."

In Remember Me, the anti-hero, Bob, is motivated by his own primevil nature. His tempestuous personality driven by his darkest emotions create the opposing force most like Steiner's Luciferian forces. If the Mary Margaret character was better able to look inward for the answers to her problems, she would be better able to reconcile the conflict in her experience.

In Chasing Twilight, the anti-hero, Jake, is motivated by finances and technology. Even his Scientology beliefs are based in self will and control. In this, he represents Steiner's Ahrimanic forces. By embracing and releasing this relationship in grace, Molly can fully own her soul, release her karmic debt, and move into a direct relationship with spirit.

This is not easy to understand unless one has studied Steiner. I would love to discuss this with you further and invite you to email me directly. I know some other Steiner students in LA, Las Vegas and Switzerland who dialogue with me on Steiner. We would all enjoy your input.

Best Regards,
Molly Brogan