Self-Reflection
Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 30
Best journaling wisdom
A diary begins in the same direction as a blog or Facebook but goes deeper and further. A diary or journal is less a thing and more a process. The thing is a notebook, sketchbook, or a blank screen; the process is discovery, and self knowledge.
I have not met a serious artist, scientist, inventor, or creative instigator who did not rely on a journal and notebook as a fundamental tool of discovery. I know I depend on journals. If schools were wise they’d teach this process; This classic book would be the textbook. It is by far the best guide ever written to exploring the benefits of cultivating a functioning diary.
First written in 1970s after 12 years of research and experience, it was updated in 2004. I am amazed at the author’s depth of insight into human nature, and the natural power that can be unleashed by deliberate journaling. Forget about superficial diaries and calendars; a deep journal is among of the most potent medicine on Earth. It is a magic mirror.
Write out yourself. And give a blank book and this brilliant guide to a friend. -- KK
Paul Gauguin, the painter, began his intimate journal with the phrase, “This is not
a book.” He repeated the line frequently throughout the journal to remind himself
that writing a diary is not like writing a book or any other form of literature. Gauguin wanted to write his diary as he painted his pictures, dabbing a few experimental colors at first, adding more as his intuition told him, following his fancy, “following the moon,” discovering the pattern from what had occurred by chance.
When asked how to write a diary by those just beginning, I generally respond: “Write fast, write everything, include everything, write from your feelings, write from your body, accept whatever comes.” That is often all the guidance they need.
Even if you never share a sentence of your diary with anyone else, however, you will share it through your life. Its existence will touch other people by the way it changes you and permits you to develop in self-awareness, directness, and honesty. As you acquire and refine the talent for helping yourself in the diary, you will also grow in your ability to understand and nourish others. While it permits you to take responsibility for your own emotional well-being, it also opens the way for a deep understanding of human nature. As Anais Nin has said, “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”
The importance of the diary in these cases is not as a product--a point I can’t repeat too often--but in the life that is freed from excessive anger, confusion, and grief. Putting the pain in the diary keeps it from destroying a life. The life liberated from such destructive emotions is the true “product” of this purgative process.
Sometimes reflection takes the form of speaking directly to the self, of giving
advice, encouragement, or bits of philosophic wisdom. I call this self-helping,
healing, guiding voice the Silver-Lining Voice of the diary, since it often appears in times of stress as a voice of hope. At first it may speak in adages, such as “Keep
on trying. Don’t give up,” or “You have to believe in yourself.” As it is allowed to be
heard and to develop, it can expand into the most important guide in your life--your voice of inner wisdom.
Guided imagery, like catharsis, free-intuitive writing, and maps
of consciousness, taps the right side of the brain--the feeling, intuitive, imaging side. Doing guided imagery is very much like daydreaming and recording in your diary what images appear on the screen of your mind. Some people see distinct images, as if they were watching a movie on the insides of their eyelids. But many people have much less distinct visual impressions and seem to hear an inner storyteller describing the fantasy.
Guided imagery used in this positive way is one of the highest forms of self-nourishment. It is actually a written form of meditation, with all the benefits generally associated with meditation--relaxation, clarity, elevation of mental outlook, heightened consciousness, and sensory awareness. Experimenters have documented the success of guided imagery for inducing mental and physical relaxation, and the effectiveness of imaging a nurturing fantasy figure for helping with creative problem solving.
The most valuable use for guided imagery I have discovered through offering journal workshops to everyone from officers in the U.S. Air Force to recovering women in drug rehab, from college professors to parents of special needs children, is the visualization of one’s figure of Inner Wisdom, followed by a dialogue with that imaged figure. You begin by putting yourself into a state of relaxation. In the beautiful, safe place that you created, see yourself sitting
on a bench with your eyes closed. You sense that your figure of Inner Wisdom
comes and sits next to you. You open your eyes and see what your figure looks like.
When you pick up your pen to write in your journal, describe your figure of Inner
Wisdom, his or her face and hair and what he or she is wearing. Remember, for some people writing guided imagery feels more like making up a story than seeing and recording clear images.
That night I entered the date June 27, 1958, as if I were writing in my old Betty
Betz diary. I allowed myself to use the unsure, childish script I had written in
when I was thirteen. These alterations in point of view permitted me to re-create an entry from my old diary, which I think must be very close to the original.
I was so excited by the accuracy of tone achieved through changing the date and
my handwriting that I subsequently wrote other entries from the perspective of my thirteen-year-old self. Gradually, through altered point of view, I was able to reconstruct much of the diary I had destroyed in my childhood.
Diaries are a bridge between dreams and the waking life, a space of your own
creation where the subconscious and the conscious mind meet and inform each
other. Through the diary the dreaming self can deliver its messages to the waking
self. And through the diary you can walk awake into your dreams to observe, learn,
and bring back images, insights, and creative ideas that will enrich your life.
The benefit of isolating dream themes is achieved in the New Diary by titling
dreams as you record them alongside waking thoughts. If you put a box around
your dream titles or write your dreams in red ink or otherwise distinguish them, you can later read through the dreams alone as in a dream log. The added benefit is that the night dream and the day life remain side by side. You can tap the emotional energy and intuitive wisdom of a dream when it first delivers its message. In retrospect you can see even more patterns and interconnections, and you can also observe to what extent you successfully listened to and answered your dreams in your waking life.
For example, to stimulate dreaming, before you go to sleep tell yourself: “I want to
remember my dreams,” or address the dream directly, “Dreaming Self, send me
a dream,” or use whatever phrase feels comfortable to you. If you invoke dreams
for three nights in a row, generally you will recall a dream by the fourth night. I repeat my phrase three times just to make sure my dreaming self hears me. Once dream recall begins you can invoke specific kinds of dreams by asking your dreaming self before you fall asleep: “Send me a flying dream” or “Help with this problem, please.”
The Diary as Time Machine. People who keep diaries inevitably become aware of time as one of life’s ineffable mysteries. Some of them even become time travelers, unhooked from the limitations of time and place that confine most people. The diary becomes a time machine that takes them into the past-where they can learn who they are by understanding where they have come from. And it takes them into the future-where they can clarify their goals and discover their destination.
Through written recollections you can gain self-knowledge, release delayed or
repressed emotions, find hidden misconceptions that have influenced your
self-image, forgive past offenses. You can imaginatively explore the roads taken and not taken in your past to discover present fulfillment as well as future options.
You might also use childhood photos as an aid in sparking recollection. For example, you might have a photo of yourself at a birthday party about which you remember nothing. By analyzing the photo carefully, as Dr. Robert Akeret suggests in his book Photoanalysis, you can gain a sense of who you were at that moment. Are you touching anyone in the photo or do you seem aloof? Are you hiding behind someone else or are you the center of attention? Can you imagine what you were feeling? The body language in the photo can tell you a story about your past.
Guide to unobvious, inherent meanings
In art, literature, film and life, even the littlest image or reference can open a world of interpretation. This thick encyclopedia, with contributions from scholars in various disciplines, is an excellent guide to the major and more esoteric origins of seemingly everything — from “abracadabra” to “Zodiac.” There are a ton of spiritual, mythological and/or cultural tangents that hopscotch the globe and back in time. Whenever I pick it up, I learn something new. I find the animal and food-related facts particularly enlightening (ex; oranges, a fertility symbol, are given to young married couples in Vietnam; and in Ancient China a formal offer of marriage was accompanied by a gift of oranges to the girl). The book’s title is somewhat misleading. It does not have illustrations — it’s all text. Some entries are a couple sentences, others stretch for a few pages. If you have plans to deconstruct the next season of Lost, you might find this one handy. -- KK
almond (Italian: mandorla)
Because of its husk, the almond is generally taken to symbolize the substance hidden within its accidents; spirituality masked by dogma and ritual; reality concealed by outward appearance; and, according to the secret doctrine, the eternally hidden Truth, Treasure and Fountain… The almond is Christ because his
divine nature was hidden in the human, or in the womb of his virgin mother. In esoteric tradition the almond symbolizes the secret (a treasure) which is hidden
in some dark place and which must be discovered in order to nourish the finder. The husk around it is compared with a wall or a gate. To find the almond or
to eat the almond means to discover or to share in a secret.
otter
The otter, which rises to the surface of the water and then dives below it, posses lunar symbolism and from this derive the properties for which it is used in initiation. Otter-skin is used in initiation societies both among North American Indians and among Black Africans, especially the Bantu of Cameroon and Gabon… The shamans of the North American Ojibwa Indians keep their magic shells in an otter-skin bag. The messenger of the Great Spirit, who acts as
intercessor between him and mankind, is supposed to have seen the wretched state of human weakness and disease and to have revealed the most sublime
secrets to the otter and interfused its body with Migis (symbols of the Mide or members of the Midewiwin Medicine Lodge) so that the creature became immortal and could, by initiating humans, make them holy. All members of the Midewiwin carry otter-skin medicine bags. These are the bags which are aimed at the candidate at initiation ceremonies as if they were fire-arms and ‘kill’ him. They are then laid on his body until he is restored to life. After song and feasting the shamans present the new initiate with his own otter-skin bag. The otter is therefore an initiating spirit which kills and restores to life.
liver
The liver is commonly linked to outbursts of rage, the gall, from the bitter taste of bile, to animosity and to deliberately spiteful designs. Whatever the culture, there are few meanings without some similarity with the foregoing, Islam attributing the passions to the liver and suffering to the gall… ‘Dragon’s gall’ is contrasted
with wine as the opposite to the drink of life. The Suwen, the basic treatise on Chinese traditional medicine, states that the gall has a bitter taste and a
green tinge. It states that the liver generates strength… In Ancient China it was customary to eat the livers of one’s enemies. Not to do so would have been to cast
doubts upon their valour which the eater believed he assimilated.
genius
In most ancient traditions and under a variety of different names, a ‘genius’ was believed to be the companion of every human being, as double, demon, guardian angel, counselor, intuition or supra-rational voice of conscience. The genius symbolizes the flash of enlightenment which, uncontrolled, engenders the deepest and strongest convictions. Immanent in every individual, physical or moral, the genius symbolizes the spiritual being… In Dogon tradition, the Nommo,
eight little people, represent the eight genii who were the ancestors of mankind. They are often carved as the legs of thrones, chairs or stools. Their limbs and bodies need to be supple ‘as befits the genii of water, essentially protective spirits, in dry savannah country.’ They revealed to mankind the laws which the gods had given to regulate human activity… They are regarded as archetypal of the social
order imposed by God.
One of the most wonderful essays I've read in a while. Thank you.