Mystical Memoir:
The Power of Your Story
with Mirabai Starr
January 30-February 1, 2026 | Weekend Writing Retreat
Authenticity, lucidity, and true transformation through spiritually embodied writing
Everyone has had a mystical experience.
Whether the sky opened during a state of deep meditation and the cosmos revealed its intricate design, or you experienced your interconnectedness with all life while chopping vegetables for dinner, intimacy with the sacred is our birthright.
What is your story of direct connection? Write it with your body, reclaim your spiritual history, choose the most succulent language you can find to express the ineffable.
Writing your story is alchemical. When you allow your experiences to flow from memory bank to page, you cast the lead of personal experience into the flames of creativity and they are transmuted. A golden elixir spills into the world and the senseless begins to make sense. The catastrophe reveals its quiet beauty. The seemingly mundane is imbued with luminosity.
Memoir can be a mystical experience. It connects us to the web of interbeing and reminds us that we belong.
This Retreat Is For You If...
- You're interested in more than journaling and approach writing as a transformational practice
- You have had significant life experiences you wish to chronicle with authenticity, specificity and vibrancy
- You've had mystical experiences (big or small) and want to write about them with embodied language
- You're a beginning or seasoned writer seeking to access deeper creative flow
- You want to generate a significant amount of raw material in a short time
- You desire a reliable technique to continue your writing practice for publication or personal growth
- You're seeking community with others engaged in writing as a spiritual practice
Through This Weekend, You Will...
- Access a deep flow state where the writing becomes effortless and leads to deeper self-awareness
- Experience the freedom of creative flow and the power of community through small circles of deep listening
- Open blocked creative channels and bolster your courage to tell authentic truths
- Generate a significant amount of material you can later distill and shape into polished pieces
- Walk away with a simple, powerful technique you can use on your own or in small groups
- Create writing that is both therapeutic for you and an offering of beauty to the world
- Experience a community of companions on the transformational writing path
Your Weekend at a Glance
Friday Evening: Dancing With Your Memories
Maybe it happened; maybe it didn't. We explore the fertile space between memory and creativity. You are not expected to be a historian of your life. Rather, you are invited into a co-creative dance with the things you remember and the way your imagination quickens them into story, into revelation, into art.
Saturday Morning: The Wisdom of Your Broken Heart
Our sorrows are intermingled with longing. We reclaim the sanctity of desire. Hard things have happened to you. How have they unraveled and rewoven you? Your losses are a portal to greater aliveness. Let writing carry you across that threshold.
Sunday Morning: Rewriting Your Origin Story
Your past contains an endless fountain of writing material. You do not need to belong to a prominent family who took you on unforgettable adventures or broke you beyond repair to be worthy of writing about your people. The most ordinary experiences are imbued with transformational power when you tell them with your own vivid and authentic voice.
We begin with a ritual to tap on the gates of your memory and open the way to unfiltered truth-telling. An inspiring teaching, evocative reading, provocative prompt, small group sharing, and time for questions and responses.
On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we will write our asses off. Mirabai will share an array of inspiring passages and offer writing prompts designed to send you down trails you may not have explored before, or guide you to familiar territory in such a way that you will discover these spaces with fresh eyes and write about them in radically new ways. You will emerge with a brimming basket of new writing and a whole community of companions.
Bonuses
Resources to Carry With You
The weekend is just the beginning. These offerings will continue to stoke the flames of your practice long after we've written together.
"The Alchemy of Art"
Mirabai's luminous essay from Wild Mercy on how creativity transmutes suffering into beauty, exploring why the feminine mystics understood art-making as holy work.
Writing Through the Fire
A downloadable guide to navigating the heat of truth-telling. Mirabai shares what it takes to write the stories that frighten and liberate us in equal measure.
The Sacred Unspoken
Full replay of Mirabai's gathering on freeing your authentic voice. If you missed it, here's your chance. If you were there, return to these teachings as you continue the work.
Mirabai & Natalie Goldberg: A Conversation
Two beloved teachers discuss ordinary mysticism, the discipline and wildness of the writing life, and what it means to be held by mentorship across the decades. Intimate, inspiring, essential.
Your Guide
Mirabai Starr
Mirabai is an award-winning author, internationally beloved spiritual guide, and translator of the mystics. Her latest book, Ordinary Mysticism, invites readers to find holiness in the mess of everyday life.
Through decades of spiritual practice and the transformative experience of profound loss, Mirabai has discovered that our most shattering experiences can become portals to the Divine, and that our stories, however ordinary they may seem, carry medicine for both ourselves and the world.
Mirabai's wild heart writing methods help writers move beyond journaling to allow their writing to be lyrical and provocative, transforming raw material into art. Her memoir, Caravan of No Despair, demonstrates the power of telling one's story with vibrancy and specificity.
Retreat Details
Dates: January 30-February 1, 2026
Format: Live Online Retreat via Zoom
Schedule:
Friday: 5-7pm Pacific
Saturday: 8-11am Pacific
Sunday: 8-11am Pacific
Investment:
Early Bird: $299
$199
Register by January 20
Recording: Available to all participants via course platform
Financial Support
Retreat Details
Dates: January 30-February 1, 2026
Format: Live Online Retreat via Zoom
Schedule:
Friday: 5-7pm Pacific
Saturday: 8-11am Pacific
Sunday: 8-11am Pacific
Investment:
$299
Recording: Available to all participants via course platform
Financial Support
What Writers Are Discovering
"I was so touched and honestly, shocked, by what I wrote and the sharing in the groups. It was just wonderful."
—Mary Kay
"I think it is the first time that writing had no struggle or resistance. The critic was nowhere to be seen. Mirabai was a master chef who provided the ingredients for us to taste savory dishes of discovery."
—Patricia R.
"In the presence I was able to drop down and into my place of knowing and intimacy with myself. This resulted in a confidence and capacity for self expression that I have been longing to reconnect with. A truly enlightening process that leaves me feeling encouraged and deeply held."
—Kathleen C.
"There is a vibration that sets in between the one who shared and the ones who partook; meaningful passages remembered and repeated, hearts and minds stirred in unison, a chorus of gratitude. This experience touched me deeply, my own words being received and then gifted back to me as priceless gems."
—Suzi L.
Writing Our Lead Into Gold
The metaphor of alchemy maps onto the process of writing with stunning accuracy. When you embark on the journey of telling your most compelling stories and your most ordinary memories, your shattering losses and your enduring epiphanies, you are casting the lead of your personal experience into the flames of creativity and they are rendered golden. That is, they reflect light back to you and cast your light out to a darkened world.
Join us for a weekend of alchemical writing where your mystical experiences become medicine for yourself and the world.
January 30-February 1, 2026
Early Bird: $199 (through January 20) | Standard: $299
