Materials May Shape the Message

Materials we use to write may shape our results. My current journal has soft brown recycled paper pages, slightly crinkled and earthy feeling. My pen has the slightest bit of drag, creating a sense of connection with nature. Perhaps this earthy setting prompted an unusual recent experience.

My hand had stopped moving while my thoughts followed a tangent.  When I noticed this, I resumed writing, picking up in the  middle of my abandoned sentence. After writing a few words, I was visually transported into a forest, walking along a brown, fern-edged path shaded by leafy green boughs. The path stretched ahead only a couple of hundred feet before disappearing around a bend. I had no idea where it led.

Re-vision Your Life

If you aren’t happy with your life as it currently is, do a re-vision and trance-form it. Let your pen rip through the bonds of limiting beliefs, restor(y)ing the magical sense of possibility and wonder you had as a young child.

This idea derived from reviewing several podcasts, interviews and other material relevant to the topic of beliefs and transformation. Through this exercise, several things have become clear:

From Grief to Hope: My Pathway to Healing Through Journaling

A Guest Post by Kathleen Pooler:

I still have the blue cloth, three-ring notebook that I created for my senior English teacher Miss Philips back in 1964. The page dividers have pictures depicting the section: hopes, beliefs, thoughts, ideas with varied colored plastic tabs where the white labels were inserted. At the time, it seemed like a silly project. What did Miss Philips know? I can still see her, pencil-thin frame, always dressed in some dark colored--grey, navy blue or black-dowdy dress or suit. Standing so straight by her desk, she never smiled or wore makeup. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun and her wire-rimmed glasses dangled at the end of her nose. What in the world would I ever do with that silly notebook?

I packed the journal when I went to nursing school and every once in a while, I’d pull it out to glance through the sections. Sometimes, I’d even jot a few thoughts down. For the most part, it lay dormant. But, as I began my career and started out on my path to contribute to society as an adult, the pages started beckoning me.

Which Wolf Do You Feed?

In a recent interview with Doug Parks, host of the Conscious Activist teleseminar series, Bruce Lipton told a short story from Spontaneous Evolution, a book he co-authored with Steve Bhaerman:

A Cherokee elder was talking to some kids and giving them lessons. He said, “Within me right now is a terrible fight.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the kids.

“Within me I have two wolves fighting. One is the wolf of love and peace and the other is the wolf of anger and war.” And he said, “It’s not just in me. It’s in every one of us.”

The children thought about this for a minute and one child asked, “Tell us Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

“Whichever one I feed,” he replied.

Beyond the Finger Pointing

“It was all your fault.”

“Yeah, right, you were such an angel!”

“Both of you always ganged up on me!”

“Well, you were always asking for it.”

“Mom always …“

“Dad never …”

Stressful conversations like this are common in many families, and even more families would have them if it weren’t for all the elephants in the room. Despite — or perhaps because o­f — their obvious potential for escalating stress, these conversations offer rich opportunities for reaping healthful benefits from expressive writing.

Harness the Power of Questions

Questions have paved the path to wisdom, enlightenment, and solutions in cultures throughout history. You may recall that the Socratic Method was based on the use of questions between tutor and pupil. Jesus often posed questions to his followers. Zen roshis challenge disciples with koans (enigmatic riddles like what is the sound of one hand clapping?).

Fortunately you don’t need a time travel machine or a guru to tap into the transformative power of questions. Every person on earth is born naturally curious, and mining the depths of our own curiosity can lead to a wealth of wisdom. Journaling and freewriting are powerful ways to harness that power for any purpose you wish, whether that's solving a perplexing problem, finding your way through the maze of life, or untangling your thoughts as you write a memoir.

As you write, you may often find yourself wondering some version of, “Why does this keep happening?” or “What’s really going on?” or “How else could I go about this?” Listen to that small inner voice, and write down the question, then without further thought, start writing the answer. For example, you might ask yourself the question, “Why am I so stuck?” You might be startled to watch an intuitively obvious answer emerge from your pen or fingers: “Because I don’t really want to be doing this in the first place. I’m only doing it because Grunterman will have a fit if I don’t and . . . .”