My first book, Writing Down Your Soul came out ten years ago on January 1, 2009.

Eleven days later I gave my first public talk at Wings Bookstore in St Petersburg Florida. I had taught a live course on deep soul writer at First Unity in St Pete a few months prior, so I had quite a lovely turn out of new soul writers.

As the time came for the talk, 32 women and 3 men crowded into the bookstore’s café. I was nervous but also thrilled to look out at a small sea of people each holding a freshly signed copy of my shiny new blue book.

I took a deep breath and launched into my well-practiced 20-minute talk trying to answer the question everyone asked me: “What is deep soul writing?”

I’d been asked this question so often, that I wrote a chapter in the book called “What is Writing Down Your Soul?”

In that chapter—and in my talk—I began with the #1 question people asked me, “Is it journaling?”

This one is easy because the answer is so clearly no. When you journal you are in the alpha brain wave state. You can do some lovely self-reflection journaling in alpha, but you’re not accessing information or guidance that you do not already have somewhere in your conscious mind.

That’s the whole key to soul writing: we want to exit conscious mind.

The #2 question, “Is it meditation?” is a little trickier, because you are in theta both when you meditate and when you deep soul write.

But—this is the big distinction—when you meditate, although you may be dropping into a deep silence and touching or being touched by grace, you do not engage any part of your being that might capture the wisdom or guidance as it surfaces in the silence.

In deep soul writing, you record both sides of the conversation, what you say and what Grace says, and end up with a transcript of sorts, or at least snippets, of what flowed through you that is so much greater than you.

The #3 question people ask is, “Is it prayer?”

This one is the hardest because you are in connection with—I’d go so far to say communion with—The Mystery, and that’s my personal definition of prayer.

Today, as a Prayer Artist, I definitely perceive my soul writing as prayer. But then, I now perceive everything as prayer!

But at the time, I viewed prayer the way the whole world has viewed prayer for the last five thousand years.

Our patriarchal religions have relegated prayer to a small tight box of prescribed language and formulas.

And—these are the 2 aspects of prayer under patriarchy that really fry me—prayer is seen as supplication and the “person” you are supplicating is a very distant and very male god.

So, if deep soul writing isn’t journaling and it isn’t meditation, and it isn’t prayer as the world knows prayer, what in the world is it.

I answered that question as best I could at the time.

I said it’s a conversation—a conversation between you and Source, you and Grace, you and the Mystery.

I thought that was a pretty good finish.

Just then, a man sitting right in front of me—a man I did not know and who had not purchased my book—raised his hand.

I thought that was odd, but I nodded at him.

He said, “I know what this is.”

I cringed. I wanted to say, hey fella, please. This is my first talk. My very first. And I’m already a nervous wreck. And now you’re going to hijack my little talk. In front of my first fans!

But I could hardly ignore him, so I smiled as best I could and nodded.

He said, “This is a romance.”

I gasped. And almost fell backward with the power and truth in his words.

He was right.
This IS a romance.
And not just any romance.
This is THE Romance.
The first Romance.
The only Romance.

You carried it into this world in your heart and you will return to this cosmic Romance when your heart stops.

I smiled in recognition and found my voice.

I said, “You’re right. This is a Romance and from now on whenever I talk about soul writing, I will tell everyone, ‘This is a Romance.’”

And then he said, “I don’t know anything about this. I just came in to get a cup of coffee.”

And he stood up and walked out. Leaving us gaping at the door.

Ten years later, I am not only still in The Romance, The Romance has expanded and expanded and expanded.

The Romance is now not a spiritual practice, not even a mystical practice. It’s not a practice at all. it is my life. It is how I live. All day and all night.

I am in love with and loved by The Mystery in ways I could never have imagined ten years ago.

And The Romance has everything to do with my stepping into this new calling as a Prayer Artist.

It was The Romance that kissed me on the cheek and told me what I really am and what I’m here to do. It is The Romance that writes these prayers. They come through my hands and my heart but not my logical mind. They write themselves and I just type them up.

I am always floored by the depth of the mystical wisdom in these love songs. And yes, they are love songs. What else could they be!

This one, “There You Are” confirms and affirms that The Romance is in each one of us and always has been—just as the mystics of all traditions have always known.

But, if you were raised in any of the patriarchal religions, you probably were not told that God is in you. Or that God is you. As long as I saw God as a masculine entity, I couldn’t grasp that. No matter how many times I was told God loves me, there was always an element of judgment and supplication.

But when the divine showed me her original form as the Goddess, she entered my body and The Romance carried me deeper and deeper into The Mystic.

Are you surprised that God was first a Goddess?

In The Heart of the Goddess by Hallie Iglehart Austen, she writes, “The vast majority (over 90%) of human images from 30,000 to 5000 BCE were female. Woman was recognized as the life-giver and sustainer, and she was most likely revered as a priestess for her ability to transcend her ego…. Paleolithic people first honored woman in her human form, later developing the abstract idea of a Goddess.”  

Millennia later, Meister Eckhart, a priest of the most powerful patriarchal religion of the time, Christianity, described the ultimate Godhead as “laying on the birthing table and giving birth all day.”

Yesterday, human goddess Emma Kupu Mitchell and I opened the first prayer intensive for 2019: Your Three Fields in 2019.

We shared mystical information from numerology, astrology, the element of earth, the Goddess and more. And I demonstrated the orant, the original position of invocation, which you may be shocked to learn was how Jesus was depicted in the first 1,000 years of Christianity!

All these mystical elements came together in a full body 3-dimensional anointing prayer practice we call “The Anointing Dance of 3.”

As you stand in the orant and move through The Anointing Dance of 3, you feel yourself embodying divinity. You are The Romance and The Romance is you.

Everyone came away vibrating. That’s what happens when you are touched by the Romance. 

If you’d like to join us, you can still register today through Tuesday. You’ll receive the first recording, all the bonus videos on numerology and astrology, and soon you will be creating your own “Anointing Dance of 3” feeling yourself loved and supported as you have never been loved and supported before.

Here is one prayer that bubbled up from The Romance this summer that captures this visceral full-body feeling of being One with the Mystery of Love.

There You Are

©Janet Conner, Monday, July 9

how can God be in the chlorophyll
and not in my blood

the mystics say you are here

here in the towering pines
here in the yellowing palms

here in the brazen blue jay
here in the screeching osprey

here in the grasshopper probing the air with its foot
here in the small black butterfly seeking I know not what

here in the invisible breeze
here in the foraging bees

everywhere I look

there you are
there you are
there you are

inside the container that is me

lover in lover
goddess in goddess
holy in holy

turning together to sip the coffee
stare out the window
capture this love song

how can I call to you when you are already here?
how can I make love to you when you are inside me?
how can I pray to you when we pray one prayer?
how can I seek you when you arrived in me and never can leave?
how can I long for that which I am?

ah, there you are
there you are
let us sing

to The Romance!   

Janet