Tuesday 21 April 2020

WHAT IS JOURNALING REALLY? AND WHY SHOULD I DO IT?

Staircase inside The Museum of the American Indian,
Manhattan, New York City
©Michael G.O'Brien

How do we start the journaling process? - what is it actually for? and what can it do for us? For starters, journaling is not the same as keeping a diary or log. It's more than a dry description of the daily events in our lives, however useful such a log may be - it's not a bunch of lists. Sometimes journaling involves giving accounts of events in our lives, but then goes on to explore how the event impacts us (or not) and how we feel about the event. The journal entry may then go on to explore why that event affects us the way it does.

There are many different ways and reasons for journaling - ultimately we need adapt journaling to suit our needs - in this sense it becomes a very individual creative process whereby we build a bridge for emotions and images from the unconscious part of mind to cross over into our conscious. This unconscious mind has been described as being as vast as the ocean is to a single human - and just as full of nutrients and treasures.

The following quote sums up one aspect of journaling:

"Particularly among creative people – from Leonardo da Vinci to Anais Nin – journal-keeping has historically been a vehicle for releasing tensions, resolving conflicts, working through crises and connecting with the intuitive inner self – the “person within the person,” as philosopher/psychologist Ira Progoff described it, who can be the source of so much sound guidance and wisdom – your best counselor and spiritual advisor, in fact". 
Quoted from 'Life Examined – The Progoff Intensive Journal Process' by Ellen Littleton click here to see the whole article - it's really good.



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