Enhance Your Journaling Experience

“Be easy about this. Be playful about it. Don’t work so hard at it. Let your dominant intent to be to feel good, and if you don’t feel good, then let your dominant intent be to feel relief. Feel your way through it. If you think your way through it, you can get off on all kinds of tangents. If you feel your way through it, you can come quickly to your Core Energy, and when you do that only good can then flow to you.” ~ Abraham

Your journal is your guide and companion on the journey to personal development and spiritual enrichment. It is a wonderful and delicious companion for easing the stresses and worries of daily life. Your journal is also a tool for identifying your hopes, dreams and allowing your creativity to flow and be expressed which increases your energy level and boots your confidence. Your journal is also for tapping into your negative or shadow side, shining light on some of the feelings and behaviors that are keeping you from living a life of passion and peace.

“In the middle of the journey of our life,

I found myself in a dark wood.

For I had lost the right path.

~ The Divine Comedy by Danté

Like Dante, sometimes we find ourselves lost in a dark wood. We are going along, doing our daily things and like a bolt of lightening, or like a candle being snuffed out – we lose our way. The challenges of life enter into our existence. When these challenges happen, we are thrown off kilter and we begin to operate out of our reflexes that we sometimes cannot make responsible decisions. Recording all of these moments in a journal not only helps you stay balanced and focused, but also chronicles your journey back to wholeness; because I guarantee, you will continue to have challenges. By recording the journey, you can be better equipped the next time because you know what you are capable of doing and being.

Journals are also tools to help us discover the wisdom and power that we already possess. Using the spiritual practices in this book along with our journal, we will be able to tap into that power and access our inner wisdom, activating more creativity in our life. This is very empowering. When we receive the answers from our inner spirit guide, and record them in our journal, we can also access and return to them for further instructions. Journaling helps us clarify our thoughts and emotions.

There are many forms of journaling. Try a few and see which one works best for you and your spiritual journey. For myself, when I was going through a deep and painful loss, I created a Grief Journal, which was my spiritual companion on my journey through the dark path of grief and loss. Having this journal and recording in it on a daily basis also allowed me to see my “progress” from lost and lonely to alive and renewed. Journaling helps us validate some of the ideas and concepts we encounter along our spiritual journeys.

Journaling is also a great way to release and let go. We get it out of our heads where it can roam around and do major damage. When we release it to paper, we can view it from a different perspective. The same thoughts go round and round in our heads producing the same results – keeping us stuck in our same old ruts. When we commit our fears and limiting beliefs to paper, we not only release their hold over us, but we give them a chance to become positive energy by diffusing them. They don’t look nearly as intimidating or frightening.

Your weekly SARA, the Self-Awareness Reflection Assessment is just that – an article with self-awareness reflection questions at the end for you to reflect on and answer for yourself. The SARA is meant to be interactive with your journaling, as well as your Weekly Intention Form. So each week you have two very comprehensive and reflective journaling opportunities.

To interact with your journaling, each week date and title your journal page to correspond with the SARA. You can either copy the quotes or pull out 2 ideas from the article – or both.

“Journaling everyday provides the tool to help you live your dreams.”

“My journal catches the shattered bits of my life neatly in straight lines.”

“Journaling is perhaps the most powerful personal development tool.

With journaling, we capture on paper the thoughts in our minds,

the passions and longings of our heart,

the shadowy mysteries of our subconscious and the wisdom of our authentic selves.

When we reflect on the words we ourselves have written,

we bring to light new dimensions of who we are.

And as we understand ourselves more clearly, our life changes.”

Self-Assessment Reflection Questions:

* Where in my life am I in alignment with these principles?

* Where in my life am I out of alignment with these principles?

* What is one small action step I can take right now to re-center, re-focus and re-align?