Thursday, 16 January, 2025
It feels so good to empty all that anguish in your trustworthy friend, you journal. This writing exercise has two advantages. One, it lightens your heart and clears your mind. Two, when you reread it after one year or five, it feels different. You notice how it has lost its power over you. It turns into ash yet saves some energetic embers of ideas for you to use.
What you pour on the blank pages of your journal can be compared with autumn leaves. The mountain of dried leaves of your mental trash is all biodegradable. It decomposes into mulch with a few seeds which sprout later. It often happens, that upon rereading your journal you gain greater insight into the things that had happened the previous year or many years before. Personal events gather universal significance. You realize such exchanges and events, good or bad, are human. You notice where your one year’s journaling has led you. You’re pleasantly surprised.
When I don’t journal for a while a restlessness gnaws at me. My mind feels muddled and overwhelmed with mosaic of petty thoughts and feelings. And when I do journal, it helps me heal my wounds, clear my mind and affects the rest of my day with peace.
If for some reason you stop pouring out your heart in words you won’t know the cause of your irritability. When journaling turns into a habit it becomes an intrinsic part of your day. The desire to write stirs from inside like as internal alarm. Try to make journaling a daily habit and watch what happens.
As you may have experienced by now, when you purge a stumbling block or conundrum in your notebook at the end of the session, you receive answers. You get some inclination where you are and where you may go next. Possibilities open up. Journaling daily for a decade, and then on and off for two more decades has made my little world ridiculously positive. However, there are still days when I’m surrounded by negative thoughts. However, journaling keeps me from drowning in the whirlpool of mundane worries and anxieties.
Jennifer D. Diamond
Good morning, Madhu! Yes! Journaling has also kept me from drowning in the whirlpool, too! Thank you for sharing your wisdom!
Madhu B. Wangu
Thank you for being here, Jenn!
Namaste
Donna Lucas
Good morning, Madhu. I have written letters to those who have upset me, but I have not sent them. Doing so helped me remove the loop that my mind would circle around the ill-feelings. I always try talking to people about disagreements, but, I have found that there are people who just do not want those conversations, no matter how cleansing and healing they are. I’m thankful for the journal and the private way to work on forgiveness of others and myself.
Madhu B. Wangu
Good Morning, Donna,
When something like this happens, when someone hurts you and the resentment keeps interfering with your other tasks and you pour it out in your journal, it makes you realize that the most significant thing about keeping your heart-mind free of fetters is to vent them out. What other way is there to cleanse your inner self than venting it to your own private therapist! Namaste!