Tiferet Literary Journal: Fostering Peace Through Literature and Art
05/30/2019
The Spiritual Aspect of Writing Memoir: How We Find Stories in Our Quest to Find Meaning
PDF Excerpt of only Sanderson's pages
Camilla Sanderson
...earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is an ordained interfaith minister. She enjoys functioning in the roles of writer, spiritual guide, fierce feminine dakini, shamanic practitioner, alchemist. Her writing is subversively in service to the awakening of the Divine Feminine energies within women and men, and in service to the awakening of consciousness in herself, in you, and in all of humanity. ✨🌟💖🙏
United States
Thanks for stopping by!
I'm passionate about writing memoir, particularly for women writers, as memoir has the potential to be an agent for radical social change.
Presently I'm in process with a third start-to-finish revision of:
TREETOPS AND THE BUDDHIST MONKS ACROSS THE ROAD: A Memoir.
(Other titles considered:
A SPIRITUALITY OF ONE'S OWN: A Memoir
HOW I LEARNED TO LAUGH AT MY EGO AND LISTEN TO MY SOUL: A Memoir of Learning How to Live My Dharma.)
I'm also the author of The Mini Book of Mindfulness (Running Press/Hachette, 2016).
The central questions infusing my writing are:
HOW DOES ONE LIVE THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE AS A SPIRITUAL BEING (without getting hung up on religious dogma) and
HOW DOES ONE TRANSMUTE ADVERSITY INTO SPIRITUAL GROWTH?
My own spiritual yearning for mystical unity, along with eschewing what I observe in religious institutions—crumbling patriarchal hierarchies, dogma, hypocrisy, deadly earnestness, judgmental attitudes—inspired me to read deeply.
The most significant influences in the awakening of consciousness within me include the work of:
- interfaith minister, Reverend Doctor Stephanie Rutt;
- Tosha Silver, astrologer and author of 'Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead,' and 'It's Not Your Money';
- Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodron;
- shamanic practitioner Sandra Ingerman
- vulnerability and shame researcher Brené Brown;
- Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn; and
- spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.
Serendipitously, I was led to study world religions with Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt at Tree of Life Interfaith Temple in 2012. Rev. Dr. Rutt asked for a commitment to a daily spiritual practice, or sadhana, for the two-year duration of the interfaith seminary program, advising this to be the most important aspect of any spiritual journey.
A commitment to a daily spiritual practice began the first significant shift in the awakening of consciousness within me: I learned how to observe my humanity from my divinity, and to consistently connect with my own inner divinity and authority. Which also led to more conscious awareness of living from my soul rather than from my ego - I continue to practice holding my ego like a beloved pet, and laughing at it when it tries to run the show, which it often does.
This two-year study of world religions included a deep dive into the ancient Hindu sacred text, The Bhagavad Gita. I was so inspired by the Gita, I acquired seven different translations and compared sections side-by-side to gain deeper insights - perhaps I'm a slow learner, but by reading select verses in multiple translations, each spiritual principle was reiterated in a slightly different way, helping me towards a deeper understanding. Yes, you could say I'm a Gita nerd 🤓
Dharma is one of the essential concepts in the Bhagavad Gita (different from the Buddhist definition of the same word.) We do not even have an exact equivalent English word for the Hindu concept of dharma, but it centers around the idea of our “sacred duty,” or “the great work of our lives,” or our “personal legend” as Paulo Coelho puts it in The Alchemist, or as the poet Mary Oliver writes, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
From Hinduism, the world’s oldest religion with a recorded written text, to Shamanism—one of the world’s oldest indigenous spiritual practices, the Aboriginal Dreamtime being even older—to Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, native American Indian spirituality, and more. The perennial wisdom, found in ALL faith traditions, points towards how an evolution of human consciousness is possible and necessary, for our planet to survive.
My intention is for my writing and stories to embody the energy of mindfulness and speak to your inner divinity, also known as the awakening consciousness within you.
After becoming an ordained an interfaith minister, I became a guide for the Tree of Life interfaith seminary program. If you feel called to embark upon this transformative spiritual journey, I would feel privileged, humbled, and delighted to be your guide. https://www.tolinterfaithtemple.org/overview.html
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Born and raised in Australia, during her early twenties to early forties, Camilla worked in the publishing industry while living in Greenwich Village, New York City with her American husband Jamie Jones.
In 2011, after Jamie recovered from cancer, they both quit their jobs in Manhattan and moved to TreeTops, a log cabin in the woods of Southern New Hampshire.
In November 2014, a Thai Forest Buddhist monastery happened to take root on 250 acres of land across the road, bringing much loved Buddhist principles, ideas, and practices into the local community: http://forestmonastery.org/
Camilla also works as a memoir writing coach, and teaches 'Writing Personal Essay and Memoir as a Spiritual Practice' through Tree of Life Interfaith Temple.
Jamie creates hand-crafted maple syrup, and connects with his own spirituality in nature and through friendships with our Buddhist monk neighbors.
