Writing to Awaken with Mark Matousek

The author, teacher, speaker and mentor on the power of journaling to awaken and heal

In his late 20s, Mark Matousek’s life took a dramatic turn when he was diagnosed with HIV. It was the late 1980s, and the diagnosis altered his entire perspective. Before, he was focused on climbing the publishing career ladder as a senior editor for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. For years, Matousek’s primary goal was to see his name in print. But the shock of his health situation forced him to reevaluate the trajectory and meaning of his life. Suddenly, he realized that his life lacked deeper purpose.

“It was all about making it, making it, making it,” Matousek recalls. “Then none of that really mattered to me. My life wasn't pointed toward meaning and what really mattered. It was pointed toward ego and status, looking good and kind of proving myself in the world.”

Matousek felt he “needed to find some kind of inner life, to figure out what really mattered, before it was too late.” So he quit his job and embarked on a spiritual journey to India, where he spent the next 10 years “really as a Dharma bum experimenting with every kind of meditation practice, trying to just find my way through that really dark time.”

The transformative period divided his life in two distinct parts — before and after the diagnosis. The experience also instilled in him a desire to help others navigate their darkest moments, while maintaining a sense of self. That has been his driving force for the past 30 years, shaping his career as a writer, teacher, and guide for people seeking awakening.

Earlier this month, I spoke with Mark, who runs The Seekers Forum, an ongoing life course and community focused on the path of self-inquiry for a more awakened life. Speaking from his home on Eastern Long Island, Mark discusses the power of journaling for clear thinking, navigating dark periods, and more. 

I read that you grew up in a turbulent childhood with no father and a mother who struggled in poverty to raise you and your sisters. Later, when you were still fairly young, your sister committed suicide. At what point during all of this chaos did you gravitate to the written word to make sense of everything?

I grew up with no authority and nobody really to talk to, so I started writing without even planning to. I scribbled something on a piece of paper and I noticed that I felt more grounded. It just became a way of sustaining myself and asking myself questions the way kids in traumatic environments often do. Questions like, what's going on here? Why is everyone in so much pain? What's this anger?

Those kinds of questions that nobody would answer, but I could feel them as a kid. Kids are so intuitive. And what I saw was that I knew more than I realized I did when I put it down on paper. That’s how I got hooked, because I always felt better, regardless of whether things changed externally. I always felt more centered and less anxious after I wrote. 

When did writing become a habit or ritual for you?

I've written my whole life. It took off in college because college is such an angst-ridden time, with big kinds of existential questions that really start to hit you. My journal absolutely saved me. It also showed me that I'm a writer, that writing is my first love. That's what led to me becoming a journalist, then a memoir writer and teacher.

How do you advise or teach students who struggle to sit down and write?

There's a small percentage of people who really don't enjoy writing. For them, maybe they shouldn’t write. They don't get clarity from it. To them, I say, go and play music and go and dance and create art and do whatever it takes for you to express and ask those kinds of questions.

Write: What do I need to understand? That's a question I ask a lot and students respond to that. What do you need to understand now? Or, what most needs healing? That's another good question. Everyone has an answer to that. The objective is to put the answer down as clearly and simply as possible.

What role does writing play in calming the mind?

For students I have, it absolutely mitigates anxiety when they’re feeling depressed, confused, or kind of numb because of all of the overwhelm that those feelings are spreading.

I feel like we're dealing with so much communal anxiety at the moment. And what generally helps is to peel away from the mob and peel away from the 24/7 news cycle and say, how is this landing for me? Where am I anxious? How am I increasing my own anxiety? Writing in your journal helps you recognize your patterns of rumination very clearly.

You’ve said something along the lines of: When you tell the truth, your story changes, and life transforms. I was curious if you could just expand upon that a little bit more?

It's really the essence of what I teach. It's the essence of writing to awaken. When you tell the truth, your story changes, and when your story changes, your life is transformed. 

We're telling stories all the time. We're storytellers and we're constantly interpreting our experience. We’re always telling stories and living in a conceptualized narrative.

When you start to tell the truth on the page, your perspective shifts, then your life shifts. It's about recognizing that the journal is a place where you can tell the whole truth as you know it. The work is all about provoking people into questioning their given narratives, questioning the stories they tell themselves about who they are, and realizing that they are not the story. This is a huge thing to realize: You're the storyteller, not the story. Making that shift creates this space where insight can come in.

Facing a challenge or roadblock seems a ripe time for that kind of journaling.

I like to use the Stoics as an example. Thousands of years ago, they said that when you're facing a huge adversity or a challenge, take it apart and reduce it to its smallest parts, instead of seeing it as this monolithic thing that you can't overcome. Ask: What is it really? When you do that, it doesn't have the same power over you. It also makes it easier to turn the obstacle upside down. You find the creative possibility, the growth possibility, the thing that surprises you inside the challenge itself.

Have you noticed a trend of more people becoming “seekers” amid busyness, social media’s rise, and the chaos of today?

There's definitely more of a need. People turn to self inquiry for the same reasons. I don’t see demand for therapists going down any time soon. What’s shocking to me is how inexperienced most people are — how unfamiliar most people are with their ability to ask themselves questions. This muscle of self inquiry is radically underdeveloped because as you were saying, we're always looking outside ourselves for answers. It’s completely counterintuitive and almost countercultural to look within for answers. 

When I say to people, what's the question that's driving your life? Often there's confusion. They shut down. But then there will be a little light bulb. They will say, “I don't know if this is it, but I’ve always wondered…” That’s the juice and engine for the writing. It's the curiosity. It’s the need to understand something that really matters to you. 

I’ve seen you use the quote to the effect of, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see” from Theodore Roethke. What does that line mean to you?

It has meant everything to me. I went through a long period after my late 20s, when I got a bad diagnosis and I expected not to be here very long. I went through a period of about 10 years when I really thought I was going to be checking out. It was the most intense part of my life as a seeker. It was actually really rich and fertile, but it was a terrible time of life in the true sense.

I was terrified, and there's no question that if I hadn't been able to see some light there, if I hadn't been able to see some crack in the darkness and some kind of opening in this dark tunnel, I might have given up. It was being able to find beauty in the moment of terror — about finding compassion with another human, too. Those are the moments that inspire you in the darkest times. 

Cheryl Strayed talks about how when things get big and scary, she zooms in on the little beauties — the hugs, the walks and the flowers that might provide a glimmer of home. 

Someone I know described it as a cactus in the desert  — you find any little drop of moisture you can. A friend of mine had a very serious cancer that almost killed her, and she wrote a beautiful book about it. She wrote about being in the hospital room and seeing a tree outside the window. Everything felt like it was falling away and she was losing everything. But there was something about this tree. She began to have a relationship with it. 

The changes in the tree, the light on the tree, the leaves in the tree — that was her light in the dark time. It was a symbol to her that life begins again and that nature will evolve. 

Tell us about the Seekers Forum and what it entails. 

The Seekers Forum is my labor of love. About 12 years ago, I had this idea to start a group for a non-sectarian, non authoritative, non-dogmatic philosophical dialogue. For people who are on a path, it doesn't matter what path, but it's some path of self understanding, and they want community. We have six programs a year. Each program is something to do with the path of awakening. I interview luminaries in the field. There’s a weekly guided writing session for self inquiry. There are recommended resources. It's just a great group of people — my kind of people. 

I've been a seeker ever since I was a little kid. If I saw someone I connected with, I’d wonder, why do I have so much in common with that person? And I have nothing to say to someone else. And it was because that person was a seeker. They were curious, they weren’t satisfied with conventional answers. They asked themselves questions about life and death, existence and faith, and we had endless things to talk about. I wanted to create a space where people like me can get together with no obligation. You can attend live or watch replays. We have beautiful people from all over the world. 

What’s one of the kindest things someone has ever done for you?

A few years back, someone I know was in rehab and it was very traumatic for all of us who cared about him, and I needed to go visit this person. Someone I know in New York, who was an older person, put everything aside and got on a plane to go to Florida with me because she didn't want me to have to face it alone. She sat with me. I’ll never forget riding to JFK — she was holding my hand in the cab. It was just an extraordinary thing. She went so far beyond the call of duty. She didn’t have to do that, and I didn’t have to ask her. I think that’s the part that touched me so much. 

When have you felt most alive in the past six or 12 months?

I love to write.  Writing is my first love. I'd say that when I'm immersed in something that's really giving me pleasure. That's my number one high, but a close second is working with people. 

I do a workshop in Italy every year and, by the end of that workshop, everyone is so high. It's a week in Tuscany, where it's gorgeous, and we do deep writing. People get to know one another. It's just idyllic and we're all in love with each other by the end of the week. It takes me three or four days to come down from that. It’s like a powerful drug. I love that kind of transformation — being with people who are engaged in a process of transformation. 

I also love teaching. In our courses, people reveal stories that are secrets and shame filled, and they're able to really work through a lot. We stick together and know we’re not alone. We’re all living a trillion iterations of the same human story, so let's witness and support one another. There's a lot of joy in that.

Celebrate your gifts,

Matthew