The Journey of Journal Writing - Connecting With Your SoulYour journal is a place for recording your journey: the many journeys within your great Life-Journey.
Pregnancy is a journey. Raising your children is a journey. Building a new business is a journey. Leaving home for the first time is a journey. ‘Travelling’ is a journey and so too are holidays. Marriage is a journey, and so is divorce. Discovering your sexuality is a journey. Losing someone you love through death is a journey. Moving towards a deeper connection with your soul is a journey. Your journal is a place for all your journeys. It is a place for recording and examining your thoughts, feelings and desires. Your journal is a place for gaining insights, hatching ideas, having ‘ahas!’, making decisions and becoming inspired. It’s a place for gaining clarity, and of understanding. It is also a place for exploring doubts, fears and confusion. It’s fantastic when you first realise the healing power of keeping a journal: no matter how bad you feel you can pour it all out, share it with your journal. Your feelings spill out. Often tears will spill and splatter onto the pages too. It’s a healing release on many levels. You release heavy energy, and ‘lighten up’. In other words you feel better for it. Some people do this through talking to a friend or a therapist. But by writing in your journal, you don’t offload your ‘stuff’ onto someone else, you offload it onto the pages of your journal. Through your journal you process your pain and you hear the advice and encouragement of your wisest most loving self. 
The act of writing down makes things clearer in your mind. If you use your mind alone it flits here, there and everywhere like quicksilver. Writing slows down your thoughts and allows you to think more clearly and to process with more clarity. Writing helps to focus your mind with laser-like accuracy. Slowing down your mind through writing enables you to more clearly hear the voice of your soul. Your journal is you. You do not have to hide from you, or pretend to yourself. You can swear, rant and rage, or you can be as loving and ‘flowery’ as you wish. You can be honest. You can explore your dark shadow and your light shadow. In other words, you can be as ‘un-evolved’, childish, angry, judgemental, petulant and unforgiving as you like. Or you can be stepping into your higher self, seeing the bigger picture, and expressing your sheer joy and gratitude for all that you have, and all that you are. If you aspire to be a writer, of fiction or non-fiction, you won’t find a better resource for material than your own ‘story’! My journals were at various times in my life, places to record and work out painful experiences. But for a long time now my journal has been mainly a place for creative ideas, gratitude, appreciation and personal exploration – peppered with the odd doubt or fear – I’m human after all! My journals are an expression of the joy of my creative spirit. My journals are me. Through my journal I connect with my true essence, I connect with my soul and with the Universe. My writing is full of exclamation marks. Some may feel the sentences don’t warrant them. But for me, the only way I know to express what I am feeling at the moment of writing is through the use of exclamation marks (I don’t think about them, they write themselves). Joy, exhilaration, enthusiasm, inspiration, insights, humour, surprise, love – and every other uplifting emotion imaginable, is: !!! My journal has been throughout my life, the most useful tool I’ve ever used, the most comforting friend, my greatest joy and commitment. I was not so much committed to ‘writing in my journal’. I was committed to myself. Committed, to nurturing my soul. I remember when I first realised that journal writing was my passion. I was willing to defend it! To defend myself against ‘You’re not writing in your journal AGAIN! What are you wasting your time with that for? That’s not going to make your fortune!’ Maybe. Maybe not! I am passionate about writing. I remember talking to a workshop member and saying “imagine if I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to write notes about the workshop I couldn’t bear it, I wouldn’t know what I would do” ! I didn’t feel I could possibly assimilate the information without writing it down. It simply wouldn’t sink in for me. One way of discovering your passions is to ask ‘Would I pay to do this’? Would I pay to write? If I had to pay in order to continue to keep a journal then YES! It’s an extension of me. It’s a reflection of my true self – all of me – ego and spirit. My journal contains all my doubts and fears, and all my love and beauty. The best way I can think of to share the many uses of a journal is to share entries from my own journal. click here for a Peek Into Claire's Personal Journal
|
