Jour­nal­ing is some­thing women do very nat­u­rally. How­ever, most often men, when they were boys, were in gen­eral dis­cour­aged to keep a jour­nal. Jour­nal­ing is thought to be express­ing our inner most secrets and feel­ing, and boys are in gen­eral taught, “Real men don’t really express their feel­ings and it is only suit­able for women.” There are always excep­tions in this as it is for every­thing else. You prob­a­bly don’t keep a jour­nal unless you are a writer or work in a cre­ative field like art. If you are in sci­en­tific fields you prob­a­bly keep a research note­book record­ing your day to day research and find­ings. If you are an exec­u­tive or oth­er­wise pro­fes­sion­ally employed, you most pos­si­bly keep a diary or a note­book to record meet­ing min­utes, deci­sions taken, etc. Most often it does not have any­thing to do with resolv­ing your feel­ings, emo­tions or dis­cov­er­ing your true self or other related issues.

Jour­nal­ing is an excel­lent way to work on your­self, espe­cially if you are not able to just sit and con­tem­plate about it. It also adds vari­ety to your spir­i­tual toolbox.

I have kept a jour­nal off and on through­out my life. Espe­cially, after I started on my spir­i­tual jour­ney, I kept a jour­nal to record my expe­ri­ences, thoughts and emo­tions, to work through a dif­fi­cult emo­tion or a ques­tion that I am afraid to face by myself by think­ing or through sit­ting med­i­ta­tion, or just to record the dreams I have dur­ing sleep. Hav­ing the jour­nal reflect myself back to me, like a mir­ror, is of immense help in detach­ing myself from myself and see what I am going through in a more objec­tive way. Writ­ing, in gen­eral, puts me into a state of med­i­ta­tion and receptivity—at least it does for me.

I use jour­nal­ing for the fol­low­ing broad categories—(1) to write about a topic, (2) to get some answers to any ques­tions I may have or (3) work through a lim­it­ing thought pat­tern or an emo­tion. If I already have a few start­ing sen­tences in my head, I start writ­ing them down first. I keep my atten­tion within my body to be present in the here and now. Then, I let my con­scious­ness go where it wants to and let the writ­ing move by itself. Some­times, I don’t get any­thing coher­ent. I just let it keep flow­ing. I may even get dis­jointed words, mean­ing­less sounds. If I am already in a state of calm­ness of mind, this ran­dom­ness will be min­i­mal. But, I know that it is okay to write gib­ber­ish. I sus­pend the inner critic/editor dur­ing this process. Let it keep flow­ing. As the con­scious mind stuff starts clear­ing, my sub­con­scious and super-conscious stuff start com­ing in. That is where my answers lie. Even dur­ing this process I keep the inner critic in sus­pen­sion; just let the words flow. After some­time the writ­ing stops on its own accord. Then, I go through what was writ­ten, with my orig­i­nal prompt in mind, delet­ing all those sen­tences that are irrel­e­vant or don’t res­onate with me, and keep­ing the rest. How do I know, I got my answers to my ques­tions? While read­ing what was writ­ten I still keep atten­tion within my body to check if I feel joy, peace, and warmth in my heart. You may also get these feel­ings while jour­nal­ing, take a brief notice and keep writing.

A few years ago, I came to know that this process is called the stream of con­scious­ness or auto­matic writ­ing. But, this is how I have been keep­ing a jour­nal almost all of my teenage and adult years.

Some peo­ple say that the stream of con­scious­ness writ­ing may be chan­nel­ing of some other entity, but I don’t believe that it is com­ing from any­where other than deep recesses of your own being. Of course, some­times when I am agi­tated it helps me to give a name to my inner voice and have a dia­log with it.

As I men­tioned above jour­nal­ing is an excel­lent tool to work on your­self. You can use this same tech­nique in solv­ing any per­sonal, spir­i­tual or work related prob­lems are ques­tions. I use the same tech­nique for writ­ing my blog articles.

Sum­mary of the Technique

Here is the tech­nique I follow:

1. Write the ques­tion or topic name at the top of the page. If you like to use a com­puter, just type this at the top of the page in your favorite text edi­tor or word processor.
2. Just read that ques­tion or topic name a few times and mull it over in your mind for a few seconds.
3. Tell your­self that you are writ­ing this for your own sake and that it need not be shown to any­body, so you can sus­pend your inner critic. For­get all rules of gram­mar for the time being. Just enjoy the process.
4. Start by writ­ing down or typ­ing the first thought that comes along. Then, write or type the next thought and then the next and so on until you feel the need to stop.
5. Do this while keep­ing your atten­tion within your body or breath or both.
6. Make note of any feel­ings or emo­tions that may arise in your body while journaling.
7. If a draw­ing comes up, just draw it. What­ever comes up express it.
8. When you feel the need to stop, stop. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and feel in your heart that you found your answer for your problem.
9. Open your eyes. Keep­ing your atten­tion within your body in the here and now. Start going over what you have writ­ten while keep­ing your question/topic in your mind. Pay atten­tion to the feel­ings and emo­tions that may arise in your body. If you feel joy, ela­tion, warmth, and/or light­ness in your heart or the body relaxes just a bit more, then keep those sen­tences. You will know that what you have writ­ten is true for you. You will just know.
10. After you have fin­ished edit­ing, just go through your final ver­sion a few more times.
11. Imple­ment any fur­ther steps you may have writ­ten down in your final version.

Jour­nal­ing is one of the tech­niques I use which works for me. I hope this helps you. What tech­niques do you use to con­nect to your­self and get answers from within?