The First Godwriting Workshop

Under the recent entry called Open Letter to Jack, Engin, who translates Heavenletters into Turkish, wrote:

Will you write about the Godwriting™ seminars you gave? Where did the courses take place and such details? I do wonder.

I will gladly tell.

Quite naturally, many of the workshops were held in Fairfield, Iowa, where I presently live. Definitely, all the first ones were. I’d better give you some background on Fairfield.

It is quite a spiritual community. It is the home of Maharishi University of Management. There are students here from many nations of the world. There is The Raj, a spa associated with the University where some celebrities come. There is The Raj Restaurant which, if you come to Fairfield before I leave for Argentina, you will have to let me take you to. There is a blog entry called Lunch at the Raj that shows photos.

A whole community has grown up here. There is even a newly-deveoped town nearby called Vedic City.

The University bought the defunct Parson’s College about thirty years ago. The University is accredited in undergraduate and graduate study programs. There is a wide variety of offerings, all the subjects you would expect at any university and also Transcendental Mediation and the Science of Creative Intelligence. Many families and individuals from all over the U.S. and the world also moved here to be part of a spiritual community. I was one of them.

Before the University moved here from Santa Barbara, California, this was totally a rural farm community. It wasn’t easy for the townspeople to be overtaken by what seemed to them to be a foreign university with so many international students and cosmopolitan New Yorkers and California people who migrated here.

For a few years there were like two factions – the Townies and the Roos -- that’s what the townspeople called people associated with the University. I believe the name came from the word Guru. Sometimes, Roos met with snobbery, and vice versa. Some of the Roos were really blissy, so you have to forgive the townspeople. Can you imagine perfect American ladies floating around in saris in your farm town, sure that everyone in the world should meditate, and that those who didn’t were unfortunate? But pretty much now, the people who live here are just people. Fairfield even has a Roo mayor.

In a way, now there is a third category of people in addition to the townspeople and the Roos who continue dedicated to the teachings of the University. These are the Roos who have felt a need to go their own way and follow their own hearts. I am of the latter. This is no offense to the University. It’s just that sometimes hearts get pulled in a different direction, an irresistible direction, and, of course, “to thine own self be true."

Since there are so many spiritually-inclined people here, you might think this would be a good place to offer Godwriting workshops. Actually, it’s harder here. The University doesn’t want any other teaching linked with what they teach, any more than I want Heavenletters and Godwriting to be linked with anything else either.

Godwriting and Heavenletters are their own thing. In any case, it was not always comfortable to give a workshop here, and for a long time, I didn’t even try.

Here’s how workshops began:

Joyce, a friend of mine who was subscribing to Heavenletters, called me up one day and said kind of pleadingly: “Gloria, would you teach me how to Godwrite?"

I said, “Well, sure."

Of course, I had absolutely no idea of how to do it.

Joyce came over. We talked ten minutes or so, and then I had her try Godwriting, and her Godwriting was fabulous. That’s when I knew that God somehow comes in and makes the whole thing happen, and I’m just a bystander. Nevertheless a bystander who is compelled to continue.

Another day I will tell you more about other workshops in Fairfield and other places.