Journaling

Ariadne’s Thread: The Journey of BODY-MIND-SPIRIT recommends a tool to take with you on your journey. It becomes a constant companion and brings illumination when things get dark. The Journal is a companion to “record experiences, ideas, or reflections that are kept regularly for private use.” These definitions of journal are a great beginning, but let’s dive deeper into journaling.

I have been writing in some form much of my life. When you create a practice of writing, it begins to peel the mind away and reveal the heart. It becomes a mirror and reveals to you what is deep inside that wants to reveal itself. Often, when you look back on what you have written, there are feelings of “aha” or “surprise” that lead to wonder about where those words came from.

The most powerful experience in my healing journey was having a place to put my pain. It would flow out of me onto the page, and when I was done, I felt as though I had released something. Writing can be powerful, revealing, cathartic, and nourishing.

Listed below are the different forms of writing I have included in my journey, each powerful in its own right. And each came along at a different time. I encourage you to try them and see which one meets your needs.

I hope you will try one or all of these forms. Looking back on all my writing has helped me measure the immense change in my life.

Natalie Goldberg wrote the book, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. She talks about "learning to trust your own mind" as a way to begin writing. She believes we must start with a writing practice. She believes "to do a writing practice means to deal with your whole life." To begin writing, we must consider the pen we use. "It should be a fast writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your mind." Also, think about your notebook, "it should make you feel like you have permission to write the worst junk in the world and it would be okay." You could also type out your thoughts. Writing is always physical, so the equipment you use. Natalie finds that "handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart."

The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise. You must commit yourself to it and for that full period: 1. Keep your hand moving 2. Don't cross out 3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar 4. Lose control 5. Don't think, don't get logical 6. Go for the jugular These are the rules. It is important to adhere to them because the aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what your mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks you should see or feel.

The more writing you do, the better writer you become. You begin to connect with the deeper part of yourself that is often hidden at first. Just as in any other endeavor we pursue, sports, games, hobbies, the more we practice, the better we become. The same always applies to writing.

For those of you interested in poetry as a form of writing, a book I adore is Poetry As A Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions by Robert McDowell. He talks about how our schools have choked off poetry, and our publications rarely include poetry. Yes, you can still find books of poetry, but it has disappeared from our regular lives. He reminds us of poetry for spiritual practice in reminding us of Mirabai from India and Hafiz and Rumi, the Sufi poets. "Robert Frost said that poetry doesn't so much tell us anything new, but reminds us of things that we need to know but forgot." Poetry as a spiritual practice can bring us into stillness and call, and bring us into the focus of now or the present moment. One of the delights of writing poetry is that poetry is written in lines, not sentences. This conforms to the breathing of the creator rather than the worry of conventional grammar.