Special Guest Expert - Marilyn Horowitz: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Marilyn Horowitz: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
Does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives and the art of vibrant living. Show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Alrighty. Alrighty. Alrighty. Aloha, y'all. Welcome to the show. I am Daniel Aaron, your host. This is the Art of Vibrant Living show and oh my goody goodness we have a great show today. I'll tell you about that in a moment. First though, it is my sacred duty and honor to encourage you to get the most out of this. As in yes, please be entertained, be inspired. Most of all though, be empowered and empower yourself by taking some action. As in our guest today is going to bring you gold. It's up to you though, to take some of that, put it in your pocket and then put it into place in your life. So try it out, put it into action and. Would you do that? Beyond that, if you are already living the most vibrant, thriving life you possibly could, awesome! Good on you. I would love to have you as a guest on the show. I think though, there's more possible. And in either case, if you would like some support if you'd like to connect, I would love to connect with you. Let's have a conversation. Send me an email Daniel at Daniel aaron.com. And. Let's get into the show today. Our guest. My guest today is Marilyn Horowitz. She is an award winning author. She has taught her trademark storytelling method at New York University for 25 years. She's got two new books out. One has an amazing process. That's part of it, a journaling practice, which is, as some of you all know, a core part of what I teach and share also. So I'm doubly excited to speak with her about this. Plus her other most recent book coauthored with world famous clairvoyant Martin Sherlock, shares a three year journey to self-awareness. Fascinating story, that is. Hopefully we will have time to talk about that, too. She's got a couple of novels also, and we could keep talking about all her accolades. However, I'd rather introduce you. So Marilyn, thank you so much for being with us.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Thank you Daniel, thanks for having me.

Daniel Aaron:
Oh it's awesome. I'm super glad you are here. And let's see now, since I have the wonderful advantage of knowing you just a little bit prior to us getting here live, I wonder if you would be so kind as to share with our audience a little bit about what got you to this cool point in your life as an award winning author and guide.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Um, well, it's a pretty it's a pretty good story. There's so many. You know, I'm a storyteller, so, you know, push the button. I could go on for three hours, but I'll make it. I'll keep it very condensed. So, um, I went to film school. I went to NYU film school. I made a film. I sold my film. I thought I was very fancy, I wrote a novel, went to a party. At that point, I was single and some guy was flirting with me and he said, hey, baby, my best friend's a Hollywood producer. And I was like, yeah, right. But he was. So I finished my novel. This is my first novel, uh, on a Friday. I went to the party on Saturday, and I sold the book to the movies on Monday. Sounds like the world's greatest thing that ever happened, right? Well, the producer was quite a piece of work, and this was a whodunit about a serial killer and his sister. By the time I finished working with this guy, uh, it was a whodunit. And who saw the whole point of my story, which is how, you know, violence evolves in the family. For five seconds, it became a real potboiler. I mean, it was still pretty good, but it was not anything. And he hated my work, or he was jealous or whatever. And he's like, okay, I'm taking it away from you. If you don't turn in what I want tomorrow morning, we're done. I was hysterical, I had a dream. And Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, appeared in my dream, and he was up a tree wearing a toga, and he was eating an apple, and he said, so, Marilyn, I'm where you are, metaphorically. How can I help you? And I'm a New Yorker, so I kind of went, okay, what do I do worse than writing, you know, like, we'll just dig my grave and just jump into it. So I said, send me a map because I can't read maps. So he says, are you sure? I said, sure, you know, it's too late now. I wake up, I scribble down these 12 circles, which you can see in my book, How to Write a Screenplay in ten Weeks, which is a book I wrote a long time ago.

Marilyn Horowitz:
My trademark method is in there. It's a picture of this map, and it turned out to be a simplified version of his 17 part hero's journey. And when I started to examine it, I come from a movie business background. My my father and my grandfather were both general counsel of Columbia Pictures. So I have that that awareness. And, you know, we grew up watching movies and knowing directors and stuff. And I went, whoa, this is the exact structure of a traditional American narrative film, which is all the stuff my father and my grandfather and I went, this is crazy, because then I realized, because I was already studying consciousness, I, you know, I practice Kundalini yoga for nine years. All these things I went, wait, this is how we organize our reality? Because I read a lot of books on conscious and I went, this is an amazing map. It goes both ways. It works both ways. I was like, wow, this is cool. So the way things work out is, you know, somehow I got a job teaching. Somehow people found me. Nyu called me. They said, we hear you have this book, which is a bunch of handouts, scribblings of this thing. My then husband, uh, was a filmmaker who also worked as a temp, you know, doing the pitch books for banks. He took all my little scribbles things, turned it into a book, and voila! I was teaching at NYU, uh, professional studies and also a grad school where I both taught for a long time. So that's the that's the origin story of this. And then during the pandemic, uh, my hobby was teaching. I have to say that as an aside, my actual work was as a writing coach. Somehow I was discovered and I worked on thousands of projects. People have won awards, movies, books, whatever. And, you know, writers, as you know, being one, we shelter in place anyway. I mean, the pandemic was not new, right? However, everybody was home with us. And that was crazy making, you know, one of my friends reported, she said she said I couldn't help myself. My husband was there and I looked at him.

Marilyn Horowitz:
I said, do you have to breathe so loud trying to write? And I thought, okay, there's a need. So I began to have these free podcasts every other week. I think it was every other week for a while, and they taught these techniques, and word of the day was a technique that I'd used in my private practice for a long time, but it never occurred to me to use it in a more generalized sense to help people feel better. And it was highly effective. And then once the pandemic ended, um, I was encouraged to write a book by an English publisher who actually published the book in their spiritual imprint. And then I went to Burning Man. If you've heard of Burning Man, which is quite a place to go, and my friend who I danced tango with said to me, you're not a teacher, Marilyn. You're a healer, I dare you. So there I was in the desert, and he's he's a shamanic. He's a professor of shamanism at Gallatin. There I am under a dome in a dust storm in in Burning Man, you know, and everybody's got their drums and their rattles and their sage. I had my notebook on my phone. I'm going home. So the purpose of this camp is a camp where after everybody has their transformative experiences and they have to come down, they come here to be healed by the healers because everybody's had a big transformation. So I get this big, beautiful, hysterical woman and I say, emotions go to 1 to 10. She was a 12. She was hysterical. And I'm trained in all these somatic modalities. So I thought, oh, okay. Looks to me like our heads off our shoulders. So I said, okay, sit down. I think her name was Tova. I said, Tova, sit down. And I just did a little, you know, I don't know if you've studied Alexander Technique, but one of the things is that, you know, you do this thing called the scratch. You kind of get your head back on. So I literally put her head back on her shoulders and I thought, oh, I'm doing great, you know? So she went from a 12 to a six.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And then I said, what? What is the problem that you're having? She was too hysterical to talk. I thought, oh my God. These sessions were like 15 minutes. And I thought, I'm going to fail. Barnaby's going to be disappointed. So I got out my little notebook and I said, just sob out a word. She said. Betray me. I went, great, give me another. And here she come. Uh, my father and, you know, 3 or 4 more words. And I said, okay, so what I'm getting from this is that somehow your father betrayed you. She stopped crying. She leaned forward. She straightened up and she said, no, it's my boyfriend. We got here and he's sleeping with my best friend. And I put up with it because my father did that to my mother and I'm not doing it. She got up, but, you know, did a little more massage. So I had a party about a week later and she's like, he's gone. I'm a writing teacher. I'm sitting there going, Holy cow, you know, like like, wow. You know, Barnaby was right. So then I did it 30 more times, you know? And after that I thought, yeah, I got something here. And then when the publisher put the book under, if you go look it up, it's an English publisher. They have five imprints. They have personal growth, they have writing, they have spirituality. They put my book in spirituality and they said, we want it to be like the next Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way. I'm still recovering from that accolade. That's one of the nicest things I ever heard in my entire life. And so that's how that's that's the lineage. And so now what happened was, um, I started to use it more widely. I have a friend who's a psychoanalyst who started using my techniques with his immigrant, um, uh, Spanish population who live in shelters. And he had a client who had been in an abusive marriage for 15 years, and his seven year old boy, they couldn't get her to leave. You know, that's what this not for profit does. They?

Marilyn Horowitz:
They find new homes and they get bad people away from your good people, away from bad people. And he had the session with her and he was like, okay, this is going to go as usual, you know, blah, blah, blah. He did this self hug with her, which will hopefully you'll allow me to try an experiment with you shortly. And she cried. She had clearly never connected with herself. And then they had the session did it again. Next day he gets a call saying, I'm at the police station. Can you come and help me sign the restraining papers? I'm leaving my husband. And she did. And she has it six months later and she has a new life with her son. I'm still sitting here gobsmacked. I mean, for all the writers, I've helped, honestly, to help one person in a really treacherous life situation. And you know, I'll stop talking, but you get it. Wow.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, well. Thank you. That's great. What a what an amazing journey you've had. And there's so much that we could dive into from what you spoke about. I've got 223 questions that came to me and, um. And yes, it's true, I, I am also a long time writer and author. And so there's a part of me that's would be would love to dive into the more writerly questions. Um, and given that this show is the art of vibrant living, let's, let's stay on the side of a little bit more how writing can be directly useful to people having their most beautiful, amazing, vibrant, healthy, thriving lives. And and I love what you shared about, um, you know, about the genesis of this practice and how that happened. And, and I'll interject by saying, too, that for me, it was writing that really opened the door for me to, to my own subconscious, to feelings. I didn't even know there was a thing called emotions prior to writing. Um, and it was really the the precursor to a spiritual awakening for me. And I use the word precursor, um, I guess in a specific way. And I'm curious for you if this relates to your experience with the practice that you discovered here, which is one of the things and hey, we can, you know, look to Julia Cameron to one of the beautiful things that she helped so many people do is create a flow. Right? And that's part of the Morning Papers project. Right. And so if anybody doesn't know that, that's just a practice of writing three pages, stream of consciousness every morning. Yeah. And my experience of that, one of the things it does is it it gets stuff out of us, right? It gets things moving, which then allows for movement inside. This might be a little bit airy fairy for folks, but it allows for spirit to pour in. Exactly. Um, so what's your sense, Marilyn, of, you know, how that practice works? And what is the relationship between writing and consciousness writing and spirit writing and vibrant living?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Well, you know, I mean, since we're in the spiritual mode, remember, you know, from the Bible in the beginning was the word right in the word was God. So, uh, the way that I would process what you said is that having studied consciousness and having studied sociology and many other things, what we learn from all these different modalities is once people feel safe, you know, in the sense of survival, you know, food, water, shelter, the next impulse, the most fundamental impulse is to make meaning, right cave paintings, petroglyphs, everything. And so because we're a literate society, the word is our paintbrush, our chisel. And so, you know, little kids, the first thing they do is they want to say words. And so and I'm a I'm a big fan of Julia Cameron. You know again I'm you can tell I'm a sort of encyclopedic people. So what I'm going to study conscious and I read everything. If I'm going to study journalist practice, I do everything. I'm very thorough. But this thing that I learned, which I got in a dream again, I see my dream seemed to be very reliable source of good, good content. Um, was this idea having been I was working on a particular study of the brain and how the eyes and the brain go together, and I discovered and I and I would teach this thing where I would have people gather. I called a gathering of stirring and and I would be people would have me come into their, their religious groups, you know, like the Buddhist or whatever, when they were doing zazen. I have no I'm a spiritual person. And we would stand there for 3 or 4 minutes doing the stirring thing, and people would be like, wait, this is crazy. How do you do this? How did you get this whole room to just, you know, and just I'm, you know, just just zone in and connect. And I thought, I have no idea, but I'm a writer. I'm going to do this on paper. And that's how I came up with the idea of having people draw the circle, which is the word of the day central theme, and then you draw and you see how my hand is moving.

Marilyn Horowitz:
You draw circles, I'm moving in a specific fashion. Then you direct them with a line each. Each one of these movements does something and moves your brain chemistry around. And what it does is it gets you right into that, uh, endow Yin yoga, which is Taoist yoga, which I'm training. They call it the Crystal Palace. In the middle of your head is a place where there are four glands, including the pineal gland, which is the seat of the soul. And there's something about the way the brain chemicals move when you do this that puts you right into that place that you're talking about. It puts you right in the center of your subconscious right away at will because you feel like it. And once I discovered this, one of the reasons that I've been so successful as a coach is that my accelerated writing system, which is, you know, write a screenplay in ten weeks for a professional, became write a draft in five weeks because we could access this intensely creative part of this, people in a in a literary way. In other words, it came out in words. You know, that whole part of the brain only works in pictures, which is why it's hard to tell your dreams and why people write messy drafts and it's hard to organize them. None of my students had this trouble because this technique was self organizing, because in some way, you know, we time exists so that we don't we run away from the bear before it catches us, not after time is a biological imperative that we have on the creative part of the brain. It doesn't exist because it's not relevant. We're not trying to get away from something, but that's why it's so hard to tell stories, something about this technique, and even do it in the air. If you feel like it, you'll see your brain kind of does something. You'll feel your brain kind of going, hey, wait, just do it a few times and you'll start to see and breathe. As we're sitting here, you can you feel that sort of coherence and that there's kind of like, aha, I see you. I see your aura changing as we're sitting here. How cool is that?

Marilyn Horowitz:
So imagine now you write this down and you, you say, okay, what's a word that I need to work on or what? I'm developing our workbooks. Like, for example, for this, uh, social working population, it's a list of 30 prompts because it's a 30 day practice. The book is called How to Transform Your Writing in 15 minutes a day. It's a 30 day practice, and each morning you do this little hug, and then you take a breath. And you, you're not doing this on the air. You're now doing this on a piece of paper where you're drawing these circles, and then you say, what do I need to work on? And as I say, the most amazing thing because you're in direct contact with your subconscious, but you're doing this in the language. Now, you know exactly how amazing that is, because you do it all the time. But you have to have the translation process because it comes in an image and then it has to go in words. Something's lost there.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Let me, um, let me backtrack us a little bit and make sure I'm understanding. Um, because I would love for everybody to get this really clearly. Uh, and if there's, um, anything that you might be able to turn off that's making sounds that could be good for us also. Um, yeah. And so what what I understood you say in the process is it starts with, like, a hug or some self-soothing, which is, I imagine, what? Go ahead. You want to say something on that specific?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Could we do an experiment? I don't mean to interrupt your flow.

Daniel Aaron:
No, please.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Okay. This will this will help a lot. Okay, so so here's the actual thing that we do, okay? It's an experiment. You'll see how you feel about it. It's kind of hokey and a little cheesy, but go with me. Okay. Perfect. All right. So now you're going to you're going to do two things. You're going to sit up in your chair and get on your sit bones. Okay, so you have a good, good flow. Take a couple of breaths, roll your shoulders. Just get very physically present okay. And now you're going to put your hands up above your head. And if you're at home and you feel like doing this, it's really fun. And then as you relax your hands, you're going to exhale and you're going to imagine that you're carving out a nice bubble around yourself. So no internet can get in. No one can bother you. You get to be in this beautiful space. It can be like a beach or a forest, but you are with yourself, okay? You feel that I can see it in your eyes. And then you do that again, and then you bring that and you put your hands on your shoulders gently and you breathe again. Inhale for four. Ah exhale for four. 123, four. Give yourself a squeeze. Drop your chin just a tad. Relax. Yeah. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. Okay, now you're going to close your eyes. Look at yourself in the zoom. If you're doing this at home, don't use his name. You're going to use your name. But what you're going to say is I love you. Your name. Take a breath. Give yourself a squeeze. Go on.

Daniel Aaron:
I love you, Daniel.

Marilyn Horowitz:
We'll always be together.

Daniel Aaron:
We'll always be together.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Breathe. And we'll always be safe.

Daniel Aaron:
And we'll always be safe.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And we are enough.

Daniel Aaron:
And we are enough.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And then take a breath and you see how that feels. Are everybody there at home? Isn't that a great feeling? Now, what I discovered after doing this with thousands of people is that this is actually what happiness is. This feeling of self connection is the actual working definition of the word happiness. And this is the other part of the practice that's so important because you can do this for yourself anytime. You can literally make yourself happy anytime. You don't have to go through all the elaborate thing of sitting there and just go to the restroom and you're in a bad meeting, put your head on your shoulders. And even if you hate yourself, say, I love you. You know, just get it. Make sure you have a big fake smile, because that's what sends the brain chemicals up. And then just take a breath. And from there, it's being centered. But you know, Daniel, you can tell I'm pretty encyclopedic. I don't settle for just center. That's not good enough for me. I want to know the pinpoint of this thing and the pinpoint. I'm sorry. There's someone at my door. I have no idea what to do. Can you hang on? Oh, I just okay.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, um, we're going to.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Hang on. Stay stay there.

Daniel Aaron:
So I'll take over for a minute with y'all. Um, while Marilyn's attending to what she needs to attend to. And, uh, this the power of, uh, the power of writing to access the subconscious is tremendous. It really is. And I'll. I won't tell the story now, but another time. Or if you want to hear more, um, I'll share about how impactful writing was for me as part of my journey. So. All right, let's see. We got Marilyn's back with us.

Marilyn Horowitz:
I'm sorry. I live in a brownstone in New York, and I'm basically the ipso facto super. So Amazon rings my bell, and it's nothing I can do about it. I'm sorry. To the audience.

Daniel Aaron:
That's our. We're we're we're back. And you were you were talking about being encyclopedic and centered. Not good enough.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Let me just make the point. The point is I want to know what happiness was. I started, I was I was tired of reading and I've read thousands or skimmed, let's say thousands. We all have. We've all read lots of books about happiness. And I just got to a point where I'm like, you know what? And I told you, I've studied unconscious. I've done a lot of research. I thought, there is a feeling that is happiness. This is not this is not a moveable feast, that there is a thing in there. And this is the thing when you're in the hug, you have that feeling with yourself. My experience after doing all this work is that is happiness. And there are so many other feelings which are all beautiful. But this way, when someone tells me something about happiness, I can come from a place of I know this is power, I know how to make myself happy and I'm in control. And whatever you say about happiness can be great, but I know who I am in this happy place. I know who I am, I'm in control of it and I can give it to myself anytime I want. Power. Now that's the point of my story. Now I'm dying to know how writing was impactful for you. Please tell us.

Daniel Aaron:
Oh, well. Thank you. Um, and and I love part of your process there in, in the self-love component. That's something that we've spoken about on this show several times. Um, in fact, uh, author friend of mine wrote a book on how to love one's self, and we spoke about that maybe a month ago. So I love that that's a part of the process. And let's take it to the next step, though. So we've done this beyond centering. We've created happiness. We've we've had the hug. Then what's the next part? Marilyn.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Well, this is the writing part. Now again, I told you I'm developing a manual for this population that is not are not writers. So you can do this process mentally as well as writers. But what we discovered is that everybody wants to write. I sort of found a way for people to write, but everybody wants to. So if you're if you're at home and you can get a piece of paper and put a big circle in the middle and put a few circles around it, we can do this. And Daniel, if you want to again conduct an experiment, you could try this.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, sure. I'm I got those kind of things in front of me here. I'm ready.

Marilyn Horowitz:
So circle the center and then make maybe three, four circles and then connect them just so you can write in them. And then the idea is you, you, you part of the work of that. Because I've worked with so many writers and we have to deliver products so fast, is you just keep doing the hub. So with each word you give yourself another hug. You don't have to go through the whole rigmarole. But this again, what you're doing is a neuro linguistic programing language. You're anchoring this feeling of happiness as opposed to all other feelings, if that makes sense. And so. Huh. Uh, and we're going to use the word of, of vibrant because that's a big that, that's beautiful original word that you have in your show. So you and anybody else can write the word vibrant in the middle of that first circle. Okay. All right. So now the way that this works is we think about what is vibrant need get a mental image of vibrant. And because you're my guinea pig, do you mind sharing what comes into your picture. Mind of the word vibrant.

Daniel Aaron:
Sure. First thing that comes is colors, right? Lots of not not specifically a rainbow. They're kind of for me in this moment anyway. And I live in Hawaii where we have a lot of rainbows, but in this image they came as like, I don't know, blotches or circles, but just a palette of different colors.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Wonderful, wonderful. Now pick out the color that is the most vibrant in that imaginable thing that you're doing.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay.

Marilyn Horowitz:
All right. And now that's what you write. That's what you write in the first circle. Was it red? Was it green? Whatever it was, write it. And you can tell us as you write it.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. So I write that in one of the external circles.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Exactly.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. Yeah. And there's probably a very specific language for this color. I don't know, it was a type of orange. I'm not a a word, a color label expert. I appreciate that there are an infinite number of colors, though. Well, if.

Marilyn Horowitz:
It was an object, what would it be? This is again, because remember, this is all about this idea of synesthesia that we we experience things in the creative side on many, many, many senses.

Daniel Aaron:
It's okay. Sure.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Is it a volcano? Is it a pair of pants?

Daniel Aaron:
Well, when you ask the question, the. The image that came to me is, uh, it's like. I don't know if this actually exists, but this is the way it came to me. It's it's a combination of a top, like a spinning top. And, uh, what do you call those things, like a gyroscope type thing. So it's kind of like a top and it's spinning, but it's moving three dimensionally.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Fantastic. So that becomes your second image. That's your second image. Gyrosphere corpus.

Daniel Aaron:
All right. I'll call it a gyro top.

Marilyn Horowitz:
A gyro top. Wonderful. And then now when you think of the gyro top, what's the next image that comes in? And again, you know, for people at home, it's good to keep doing the hug because you're training your mind to associate pleasure with creativity. That's part of this is to is a you know, you know, this. You've you've talked about habits on your shows and stuff like, this is the way you make a new one. You create a pleasurable outcome and you repeat it endlessly until it becomes something that you reach for a craving. So what's the next one that you have?

Daniel Aaron:
Okay, cool. The next image that came to me is, gosh, I don't know. I'll have to describe it before I can figure out what the word is, because I it's been since I was a kid. When I was a kid, we used to have these. It's kind of like a top, but it's like plastic propeller. And somehow we would take a rubber band and like, pull on it or something like that, and that would make this thing go kind of, you know, like a helicopter type of thing. Wonderful.

Marilyn Horowitz:
So we can call that a hello gyro or whatever you'd like it to be a hello gyro.

Daniel Aaron:
That's, uh, some kind of gyro. All right, I like it.

Marilyn Horowitz:
All right. Now, what's interesting, and I'd like you to to notice this is how the images were perfectly clear and the words were problematic.

Daniel Aaron:
Hmm.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Now, now, this is why the word of the day is so useful. Because words are problematic. But if you can see it, you will find your way to the proper expression. So if we were so now, the next part of the practice is you write a couple of sentences about what you what you just created. So we're going to do this in the air. And I'm a writer. I'm putting you on the spot. So I'll say what I might have done with your words, and then you'll say what you did, okay? That way you're I'm protecting you. Okay? So, I mean, no one's going to be worse than me, right? So what I saw was, um, I would write, um, in Hawaii, there were many rainbows. When I see this orange rainbow. It reminds me of a time when I was young. And I was with my brother, my lover, my friend, whoever it was. And we would set off these gyro jellies with a little rubber bands. And there was a time where one went through the air and I almost hit my grandmother, but she caught it and she came over and she kissed me and she said, you're so lovely.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful virtue. Okay. So I'm going to make up a little, uh, couple of sentences statement. Okay. So, um, uh, let's see if I think about a Rorschach test. Uh, what comes to me is that life can be full of multicolored clouds that are filled with the brightest orange so bright and light that it feels like it lifts us up like a Giro heli, revolving us around the center of our hearts like a Giro top.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Whoa! All right, so you can tell that I write narrative fiction and you write spiritual fiction, but when when you when you get the transcript, go look at what you wrote. That was absolutely fantastic.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, that was fun. Cool. Thank you. So let's take it a little bit further, though, because, um, you know, us being writerly types and weirdo weirdos. Uh, not not everybody is wired in the weirdo weirdo way. If I can get four in a row in there. Um, so for a for a normal person and even I think you brought it up like some people got word phobias, right? They've got writing trauma and fears. How does this work for, um, you know, normal people or people that might have some resistance?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Okay. This is. Thank you. You're letting me tell one of my favorite stories. So when I first started, um, uh, people decided that I could help them with writer's block. And I don't believe in writer's block. I think writer's block comes from not having enough information. I believe it comes from fear. I don't think it has to do with actual writing. So what I would do, and this is early precursor to that, this will make you chuckle. Early precursor I would put a little circle on a page, and someone would be earnestly telling me all about their writer's block and how they were suffering, and I'd say, oh boy, you know, that is just terrible. You know, I've been there myself. It's well, but while we're talking, could you just write a word in this little circle? And of course, they brought a word. And I'd say your problem is not writer's block.

Daniel Aaron:
And what what kind of response would you get from that?

Marilyn Horowitz:
I would get a laugh. I would, I would, you know, and once in a while someone would get mad at me, but mostly people would laughing. You tricked me. And I said, I absolutely did. But what was the purpose I tricked you into? Into getting real with yourself. What are you afraid of saying or what? Don't you know at that point? Because you know, like you, Daniel, we're both very intuitive people and you get a sense of, you know, it's not this is not this comes from wisdom, sort of, you know, from being around a lot. I would be able to pretty much figure out, you know, like I did with the lady in Burning Man, kind of what was going on with them, which, which, which variation it was. And I would this is what I do. I would create a little system for them, personalized that they would get them out of their word. So if I were talking to people that don't think that they're writers or have trouble with it, I'd say. This is a story you're telling yourself. Because how many texts do you said today? How many emails do you do? How many shopping lists? This is not the problem, you know. Stop destroying yourself. You know, we're always our own worst enemies. Don't do this. You know that's not the problem. You write fine. So now do the hug. This is what I'm. This is my would be my prescription. Do the hug and really try to feel some good feelings towards yourself. Like like, don't just fake it. Just really, really find a way to like yourself in that minute and then say, okay, creative, subconscious, give me a word that describes the problem I'm actually having. Mm. Take a breath and wait. And the weirdest things come in and immediately you see people's faces, they go, yes, that's it. That's exactly it. And then again, the hard part is that is that the thing that we all need to do is find a way to accept ourselves. I was at a party and I was talking to some guy and he was having a terrible time.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And I said, look, you know, the key here is to accept yourself. You know, you're I can hear the internal argument, you know, you're you're terribly angry at your mother. You're not angry at your mother. You're angry at yourself because you've allowed yourself to participate in her movie. Remember, I write screenplays, so it's my right. And he looked at me and said, how dare you? And then he laughed. He seemed to get the laugh and he just went, oh my God, he goes, I have been feeling so guilty. But that's not why I'm mad at myself. This happened two days ago. I felt like I'd been given the Oscar I honestly did. When I get a response like that, I am the happiest woman in Europe because I'm like, yeah, okay, one down, you know, 1% of 1% of the population of the Earth. Now, I only have to get 799,000 people to wake up.

Daniel Aaron:
Right? Yeah. That's beautiful, I love it. Well, and let's I want to zoom in for a moment on something you said there and see if. See what? See what you think about this connection. Um, I might I might be reaching here, though. We've been talking a little bit about writing the creative process, accessing the subconscious and ways that that relates to living a vibrant, thriving life. And you said something a moment ago about one of the the way I heard it. Anyway, I don't know your exact words, but one of the human struggles challenges is, is believing that we are good, that we're good enough, that we're lovable, right? That we're okay. Yes. That we're.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And that we're enough.

Daniel Aaron:
That we're enough. Exactly. Thank you. And, uh, and as I reflected on your story about, uh, curing that person of writer's block. Right. Part of part of what? Block is, to me, is a fear that what's on the inside is not good enough. So we don't want to put it on the outside. Right. And I think for me, in my early experience with writing in a very particular format, that there was such an encouragement and again, um, what's her name? Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, there's so many great, wonderful right there. Just encouraged us. And this was a huge part of my upbringing in this world. Just encourage us to put it all out, right. Don't worry about the quality. Turn off the editor, the critic, just just get the flow going. And and when we do that, you know it. Not only does it move us out of block, but it it starts to teach us that, hey, it's good enough in there. It's good enough that I can put it out there. It's okay. Yeah. What do you make of that? Does that make any sense and relate to what you're sharing? Yeah.

Marilyn Horowitz:
But but yes, it's 100%. But it's not enough. Otherwise everybody would be writing. And I'm unhappy about that, you know. And I was absolutely the I'm my worst student that that goes without saying. I still am. I have a hard time with myself, but what I, what I understood was we don't we need more specificity. You know, when you're a writer, the more specific you are, the more universal you are. That's one of those interesting, paradoxical, uh, tropes that we get. So here, this was the cure. The cure was not. You see, as soon as you tell people to do something or not do something, you bring up the duality. Right? And the thing about vibrant living, and I think that what you're up to, Daniel, is so extraordinary, is that vibrant living implies a way of being in the present without having to do this in the now stuff with the in the now stuff is great, but everything implies a duality. This is the problem with language. That's why it's so important to do the word of the day and have the images, because the images are not dualistic. Does that make sense? All language is dualistic. It's the way, the structure of the language itself, and that's what we're up against. So to be able to work from this place of pleasantness. My word. It's not a real word, but it's my word means that those things. You don't even have to contend with them. I want to go one step beyond this. I don't want to have two people to have to go to continue to have this inner conversation with themselves. I want to shut down the conversation and have people just go, word of the day, okay, look what I wrote. Look at. I mean, if you look at my website, people come to my webinars, we do the practice. People write the most beautiful poems, extraordinary paragraphs. They reveal things they don't even it's not even really the them that that that they know. It's this other part of them that had that is just as you say, fluid. It's just there. So the key, um, I hope I'm answering it. And one of the things I love on your show is that you're always going there. Whether you say or not is you have to get past the mental construct of everything in order to be creative as soon as you're vibrant is one of those rare words that doesn't imply its opposite.

Daniel Aaron:
Hmm.

Marilyn Horowitz:
There aren't very many, if you think about it, but vibrant is just a brilliant word, because when you're vibrant, you're so busy saying the word, you can't think of anything else. It's like the it's like your rainbows and and that's the that's the thing about vibrant living is to be in that space where you can only be in one space at a time. But if you're aware that there's another space, you've already defeated the whole process.

Daniel Aaron:
Beautiful. Okay, so. So, um, clearly a a wise member of our audience, or we could say the wise viewer and or listener will clearly want to ASAP get a hold of the word of the day book. How do they do that?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Uh, at the moment you would go to Amazon and you would order it from Amazon.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. And did I get the title right? Is it called what's the official title? The full title.

Marilyn Horowitz:
This is good because this is tricky. It is called word of the day. Transform your writing in 15 minutes a day. It's not called the word of the day. And if you try to find the word of the day, it will take you to various dictionaries and thesauruses. So it's word of the day with no the.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. Awesome. Okay. And, um. So great. And then you you want to tell us a little bit because you just had two books come out, like in very close proximity. What's the deal? So clearly we have a sense now of word of the day, not the word of the day. Word of the day. Right. And I love that you got the word transform in there also. Um, so we've got a good sense of that book. Will you tell us about the other.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Yeah, the other, the other book. And as I said, I mentioned that I have sort of a larger mission, and the mission is that I've just created this company. And what we do is we provide people with the tools to make themselves happy and to keep themselves happy, because that's the hard part. You go to a workshop or whatever, you feel great, and then two days later, this, this, this practice of the self acknowledgment hug keeps you in that serotonin space for as much as often as you want to. The other book is a curious story, where I had consulted with a psychic a couple of times over the last 20 years, and we clicked, and it was very nice, and I'd speak to him once a year or whatever, and then he retired. Um, and I get an email from him a few years ago saying, oh, hi, Marilyn. You know, are you still writing? My spiritual guides would like me to work with you once a week. Unheard of. It would take you, you know, eight months to get an appointment with this guy, maybe once a year, you know, like. And he was, you know, he delivered his amazing stuff. Clairvoyant. So he got everything. He got the dead people. He got the future. You know, he just he he just he was he was the he was a bag of chips, like they say, you know, all this sort of bag of chips. He was. And I was had been in therapy for 17 years. At that point, I was completely disillusioned and I thought, oh my God, if this could only help me, I was going through a divorce and other stuff. I said, thank you. You're like a lifeline. And so and also, as I say, he and I had always clicked. He'd won a new age bookstore in Australia, where he's from, and he was very, you know, very, very, very like minded. And after a year, I finally began to understand that when he would would give the messages because the way it would work is he'd say, here's an opportunity to have a conversation with your guides. You know, he's the guide. Speak to me, I speak to you.

Marilyn Horowitz:
I realized that he was half here and half there. He was sort of blended. And so he heard some of what he said, but he never really got to hear kind of the really good stuff that was coming out. And I thought, what a nice thing. I'll transcribe our meetings and I'll clean them up and edit them, and I'll send them to him as a gift. So I took a year's worth and I did that. Um, and I gave each message a title and date, and I sent them to him, and it was and we got what we got back was, well, Marilyn, now you know why they want you to work with him. We want you to make this book. So it was it was like a setup from the guides already, if you believe in things like this. And so three years later, the book is now available on Amazon. It's three years of the teachings now. They're not like, you know, they're not about the minutia of my life, because the way it would work is he'd give me a message from the guides, you know, three pages worth or two pages. And then he would ask, say, questions. And that was the cue that I cut off when I took these things, because the rest of the stuff was, you know, do I sell this house? Do I trust this? You know, the usual stuff that was of no interest. But this these were these profound things, and they covered the gamut. They were about identity, the world beyond the truth about how time works, how to invest your money. You know, how to buy real estate, how to get along with your mate, how to forgive yourself. I mean, fantastic things. And, you know, finally, when I got the book all organized, that's when it was revealed to me that that's why the guides had put him with me. They didn't bother to tell him either, by the way. He was as surprised as I was. So that was interesting. And, you know, I'm a believer. I'm not a believer. I'm a storyteller. So, you know, I have a sort of a different orientation.

Marilyn Horowitz:
But I'll tell you a true story. This is quite a good one. So, so my my father died and I was with him when he died. And my father had something called sepsis, and it made him incoherent. And he sort of babbled at me for a half hour and was very earnest. And I tried to, you know, understand the subtext of what he was saying. Um, but he and I had had had a bad fight just before he died. And when he was talking at me, I was I was a bad girl. I said, you know, dad, this is not going to get you into heaven. And I was pretty annoyed. So he dies. I feel really horrible. But that night I happened to have my annual session with Martin. This is about ten years ago. I get on the phone. There's no way Martin could know this. I don't think Martin even knew I had a father. He goes, the guys want you to know that your father was not trying to get into heaven. How could he know that? I mean, you know, and I can tell you ten of those story, but that was a big one.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, so I'm sure that's not the only time you've had that kind of how how could they know that experience? And that's a particular interest to me. And I'll tell you why in a moment. What what happened for you, what happens in that moment. Like you just had a, you know, a physical movement from that. What what's what's the process? What happened in you when he said something that he couldn't have known?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Well, you know, um, what can I tell you? I'm a sag, so I'm going to love it. I'm going to. I'm going to be like, hey, let's party. You know, my that's my my nature is to celebrate, you know, event like that is so much fun. It was like, wow, that's so cool. And of course, the fact that my father was really sincerely apologizing to me and not trying. I mean, there's no doubt that Martin was telling me, because how else? I mean, it was it was clear that this was an act of mercy from some whether it came from, you know, whatever it was, whether I made it up, whether it came, this was an act of mercy because I felt so bad about being mean to him in that moment.

Daniel Aaron:
Um.

Marilyn Horowitz:
And I was and I was forgiven and I was freed.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, beautiful.

Marilyn Horowitz:
I mean, so I cried and then I drank a glass of champagne. I mean, I was like, wow.

Daniel Aaron:
Perfect.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Because. Because I felt I honestly I mean, you know how these things are. You feel blessed. You suddenly feel like you're in a column of golden light with that orange color in your in your, your cluster. You know, you just feel like you've been you know, you've been given the spotlight for a second. You know, the they noticed you up there, you know, whatever that means.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well, a couple of things that I take from that one is, you know, it sounds like it for you. The, the, the shock of it wasn't, wasn't the fact that here's this unexplainable thing happened. You're kind of used to that. I think, um, it was more the reprieve or the forgiveness or the freedom, which, you know, to me goes right back to part of what you were saying earlier about, you know, in the early process of the word of the day, if we can, when we create that self love and, and, you know, maybe part of that, at least in the way I work, is also forgiveness. Right? Then there's this, this, this, this freedom that comes and and that's what it sounds like happened for you in the midst of that.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Yeah. But I have to tell you, I was pretty shocked. No, honestly, things like that don't happen that often. I'm sorry. I don't care how good you are. That's pretty amazing. You know, that was that was a shocker on that level as well. Like, how could you know that? You know, you really must be psychic, you know.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well, and so, I mean, the other thing that that brings to mind for me, there's a story that a lot of people know, some don't. So I'll tell a real brief version of it. One of my teachers, heroes friends, a guy named Ram Dass. Oh, of.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Course, be here now.

Daniel Aaron:
Right? So yeah, he was originally famous in the West for the this book Be Here Now. Prior to that, though, he was a professor at Harvard, got fired from Harvard, his mother died. He went off in search of the meaning of life. And he goes to India and, you know, this whole long process, and he ends up at an ashram with a guru, and he's thinking to himself, like, come on, man, I, I was just a Harvard professor. And he sees people like bowing down and touching the guru's feet. And he's like, you know, I don't know about this stuff. And then when he meets the guru one on one the next day and the guru says something to him. That no one else could have known, you know, similar to what you had with Martin there and that that moment for Ramdath at that point, his name was Richard Alpert. That moment just, like, blew his mind. It pulled a string that unwound some sense for him of of reality and also some sense of limitations. Um, so, you know, that's that's what, what I'm reminded of as you speak. That and it sounds like maybe that's part of what can occur for people through the book. Is that does that sound true?

Marilyn Horowitz:
Well, well, this is that you're thank you. This that story about Rob Joss is fantastic. Thank you for sharing that story. I didn't know the story. Um, the answer is that that the book is the compendium of all those years of wisdom. And when you read the introduction, the introduction is written by the guy. You have to be you have to be in the mood for this book. I mean, it's, you know, it's it's it's it's first of all, it's 535 pages and you can use it to, you know, hold your door open. Um, but the guides deliver a message through Martin. When I was writing about this book and they described Martin, I mean, it's you really have to be there. I mean, it's a thing. Um, now, at the time when this happened about my dad, I had I didn't know. I mean, like, now Martin and I know each other, but I, you know, Martin was sort of this, you know, you know, it was anomalous for us. I, one of my, one of my students would buy me a session with Martin as a gift every year. That's how I ever met Kent. Met him. So this was maybe the fifth session I'd ever had with him. So, you know, I may be more used to him now, but at the time, I was blown away, I really was. This is creepy. You know, this is this is eerie. This is otherworldly. There's no explanation for this. And, um, and then like, like rom-dos, I was just like, okay, you know, this is a demonstration of of being connected to a some kind of a larger force. And that made me happy because, you know, obviously heal wounded healers are make the best teachers. Right? So who was the person who needed to to find a way to have a decent relationship with themselves the most? You got it. And I felt so lonely. And this is the longest story. I felt so cut off from spirituality. I felt so abandoned. And so and so when this happened, I mean, now I haven't even thought about it until you're asking me the question. I realized that that was when I regained my faith in that moment. Mhm. You know, I always had a working level of faith because I always felt, unlike most people, that faith was a tool. It was something you needed to be able to make sure that your upward GPS was working, you know, so you'd find the parking spaces and stuff like that, but not at this level. So I'm going to cry now. I'm going to try not to cry. But yes, that was the moment when I really. Plugged into spirit.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, well that's beautiful and thank you for sharing that. And and to me, that's one of the greatest liberations that any of us can have is a moment of realizing that there is more, that there is that which is beyond us. I know for me, that was 100% life changing in the first time I realized that.

Marilyn Horowitz:
When did you realize it? You you told me, Rom-dos, but you didn't tell me yours.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, I'd be happy to share the story with you. And it's a long story. And we are unfortunately, almost to the end of our time. So we'll we'll pause that one for now. Um, and let me ask you this, though, because I have a sneaky suspicion that you, uh, came to this party with a gift in hand. Um, is that true? Is it accurate that you have a gift for our audience? I do. Okay.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Um. And the gift is to follow the way that I think it's clear that what I'm trying to do is I would like to get that 1% of 1% of the world population was 800,000 people. To start to experience this and change their relationship with themselves and the world. Can you imagine if we got 800,000 people to get up in the morning in bed and say, I love you, I'll always be together and you are enough? And then have a little moment of creativity where you make up a word in a story. The world could be a very different place. So the way that I would love to to have this happen would be for people to sign up for the newsletter, where they get all kinds of prompts and articles and stuff. Um, and then if they find something, they like to share it, because I say each time we we get someone to do it, it cuts down my task list, which is right now is 700,000 799,000 people. Um, and uh, anybody who signs up for the website, um, will get a copy of the free book.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. Well, that's that's amazing. So, wait.

Marilyn Horowitz:
I had a good idea. If you will email me at Horowitz dot Maryland at gmail.com, you can tell me which book you would like. You can pick either.

Daniel Aaron:
Oh look at that okay. So let's let's make it clear and let's make it, uh, especially clear even for those who are listening and not viewing. So if you're viewing, you can see Maryland's website, which is Maryland horowitz.com, and I'll spell that for you in a moment. Um, so one option is to just go to Maryland site and you can opt in for her newsletter, and that will get you a copy of the word of the day book. However, bonus time if you email Maryland directly, which is Horowitz dot Maryland at gmail.com. You can say which book you would prefer either of her new books. She will get to you free of charge. That's amazing. So and then let me spell out both of those words. And they go in different orders depending on which way you are going here. The website is Maryland m a r I l y n Horowitz, which is h o r o w I t z.com. And those words are spelled the same way, but in reverse. If you're going to email her it's Horowitz dot Maryland at gmail.com. I bet you know how to spell Gmail already. So awesome. That's a beautiful gift. Thank you so much, Marilyn. And for, um, outside of that, for anybody in our audience that would love to connect with you more, what's the best way should they go to your site, or is there another way you prefer? No.

Marilyn Horowitz:
You know, as I say, that if you could, if you go to my site, you know, please sign up for the newsletter. But if you just want to connect to me, you can. There's a contact form there or you can email me at this email. Just put just put Richard, you know, put Daniel Aaron in the, in the, you know in the subject header and I will open it quickly.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Thank you. Cool. Well I think that brings us along, sadly to our final question. It's a great question though. It's the big question. It's so big it's actually impossible. And I say that because you've got a tremendous amount of wisdom and experience. And now I am asking you to distill it, to reduce it, to boil it down to just one thing. So if you had just one thing to say to help people to create their most vibrant, thriving life, what is it? What's the one thing?

Marilyn Horowitz:
The answer is to get up in the morning and tell yourself you love you self and that you're enough, and make it your intention to cultivate unconditional self acknowledgment, which is self acceptance without a but after it. Just just be willing to be who you are to yourself and not have an argument about it, and then fix what you can fix and accept what you can't fix. That would be my one thing.

Daniel Aaron:
I love it. That is fantastic. So super cool. Marilyn, thank you for not just for being here. That's great. I appreciate that also though, for for you, following the nudges of spirit all along the way through your path, um, through the work you've done, the creations you've put out into the world for creating yourself into such a masterpiece of value and sharing that with us here today. Thank you for being with us.

Marilyn Horowitz:
Thank you so much, Daniel. Back at you. Okay.

Daniel Aaron:
And y'all, our audience amazing, amazing people. You not only interested in vibrant living, you're doing something about it. You're rewiring your brain in this moment. Again, please take that also into some action, some experiment. Play with it. Act upon it in your life. And again, I so appreciate that you're here. Thank you for being with us I love you, I appreciate you, see you soon. Mahalo for tuning in to the Art of Vibrant Living show y'all! I'm Daniel Aaron and may you live with great vibrancy.

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