At a Journal Workshop

1. At a Journal Workshop Summer Session Seattle University

2. Working on your Journal • Write in class • Share in class what you can: • Disguise personal information • Proper disclosure • Keep confidentiality of what you hear. • Benefits of sharing: • Difference: learn new things • Similarity: knowing that I am not alone • Read At a Journal Workshop to expand what we have done in class • What you get depends on what you put in; very different outcomes, but usually amazing. Write a paper at the end.

3. Period log (green) Daily log (yellow) DIALOGUE DIMENSION (orange) Dialogue with persons Dialogue with works Dialogue with society Dialogue with events Dialogue with body DEPTH DIMENSION (blue) Dream log Dream enlargements Twilight imagery log Imagery extensions Inner wisdom dialogue LIFE/TIME DIMENSION (red) Life history log Steppingstones Intersections Now MEANING DIMENSION (purple) Meditation log Connections Mantra/crystals Peaks, depths and explorations Testament Sections in the Journal

4. Positioning Myself in the Present: The Period Log, Beginning • Date & label (with section) all entries. • Peace: close eyes; relax; breath slowly, deeply, softly; be comfortable • Feel the moments of our lives: “Where am I now in my life?” • Silent: there is no dominating thoughts in our mind. Thoughts simply come, and go. No judgment. No effort. Not following. Not affirming. Not interpreting. Simply observe.

5. The Period Log: Imagery • Let the quality of our experiences express themselves to us in different forms: image, metaphor, simile, adjective, etc: “It has been like…” • Keep entries very short to achieve a large scope quickly.

6. The Period Log: Specifics. • When did this period start? With an event? • What memories come to us: arguments, angers, friendship? physical/spiritual love? family, work, dreams? Strange events? Strong religious experiences? Inspirations? New ideas? Luck or good fortune? Illnesses? • Keep entries brief

7. Twilight Imagery (wake/sleep) • “Period Image”, with date • Quiet calmness: breath slowly, deeply, softly; let thoughts pass; be comfortable • Feel the tone & quality of the period • Do not think about it or evaluate it • Let the Twilight Imagery of this period present itself to us in the form of images, impressions, emotions, symbolic awareness—see, hear, smell, intuit—by inward perception at the twilight level. Record them as they come to us.

8. Life Correlations: Conscious & Non-conscious Symbolism • Cross-validation • Especially useful when life is uncertain or ambiguous

9. Daily Log • UNLIKE diary. Unpremeditated, Succint • Of mental, emotional, imagery occurrences • Brief entry > large range • Transfer to other parts; cross-references • Recapitulation: at end of day • Current: less falsifying

10. First Daily Log Entry • Quiet • At begin of day: emotions, desires, anxieties, hopes, plans,…? Bodily feeling? Light or heavy? Fantasies? Images? Sexual feeling? • NO CENSORSHIP/JUDGEMENT • Rhythm of inner experience < go back over the events • What feelings WHILE writing? AFTERWARDS? • Not as uneventful as it might seem at first. Aware. Best as brief entries.

11. Steppingstones • Relax • “Feel” the movement of our lives, as a whole • Recognize events, without judgment. The attitude is passive receptivity • Write down a limited number • Start with some external steps: birth, graduation, move, deaths, • Later years: more subjective/psychological • Let steps come spontaneously. Renumber later • Add a different set if needed

12. Using your Steppingstones • Grasp the inner thread of our lives • Decision for next step or at crossroads • Tapping into the deep movements, starting from the first list. • “Cultivated spontaneity” needs preparation

13. Journal: Roads not Taken • Imagine life as a road. Robert Frost. • Potentialities not taken, thus not touched, not explored • Review steppingstones. List the roads not taken • ACTIVELY explore one (Next slide) • Maybe NOW is a better time • Example?.

14. Twilight Imagery for Roads not taken • AFTER laying down the facts (ns) • Describe the decision • Describe early steps of the road TAKEN • Road NOT taken: what wish lies behind it? Maybe valid, but time has not come. • Still possible in New form, new circumstances.>

15. Twilight Imagery for Roads not taken • Place myself on the road • Project myself forward on a road not taken • Let the imagery form and present itself to me on the twilight level, WITHOUT conscious guidance

16. Dialogues • Unfold and integrate various aspects of life • Mutual: aware, explore, express, and LISTEN

17. Dialogue with Persons • We might notice significant relationships and dramatic encounters of love or anger or abrupt changes that took place, • but we should not overlook the more prosaic, everyday relationships.

18. Dialogue with persons • Who would be most beneficial for us to meet in dialogue? Whose existence, as well as actions, has an important bearing on our life as we experience it from an interior point of view. Can be present or past, problematic or pleasant. • List the persons. Then choose one. • Do not analyze, but open them and draw forth the potential in them.

19. Dialog with persons • Describe the relationship NOW—forthright and spontaneous, no embellishment. • Recognize the feelings • Open out the full possibility and implications of our relationship. • Place myself inside the actuality of her life as though I am participating in it from within. Once I feel her life from the inside, I can be aware of what it is secretly seeking to become. Then I can enter into deep dialogue with that person. P. 134 >

20. Dialogue with persons • List about a dozen steppingstones for that person, using “I,”: I was born… • Add the Twilight images of that person. • Feel the presence of the person • Speak, greet, have a dialogue, without conscious or deliberate thought. • Conclude: record the interior movements. Reread the dialogue. Record additional feelings. Reread it again later, maybe in group./.

21. Dialogue with Works • Were there any outer activities that became a focus for our energies in a way that held an inner meaning for us? These artworks may be of many kinds, and may include works that were carried through to completion during the period, works that were begun and were left incomplete, and also works that were conceived and planned but were not actually started or given an external form.

22. Dialogue with Works • “The artist is a person who directs energies toward an outer work… he feels harmonious with it and continues to grow inwardly.” 142 • “A work is a specific project that emerges as an outer activity drawn from an inner source in a person’s life.” 142 • Further possibility of development?

23. Begin the dialogue with work • From steppingstones: “what were the projects and activities that were especially meaningful to me and that had an inner importance for my life?” 144 • Include the childhood period, with a brief description • Choose those that seem to be the most meaningful in terms of possibilities of my future.” 145 • Start with a basic description

24. Dialogue with work • Steppingstones of the life history of the work: when did it begin? What led to the idea? Difficulties? Events that enable it to continue? Variations & compromises? Relationship? Situation now? Twilight images of work • Twilight images • Speaking & listening • Conclude: record the interior movements. Reread the dialogue. Record additional feelings. Reread it again later, maybe in group.

25. Dialogue with the Body. • Were there occurrences or situations during this period that were especially concerned with your relation to the physical aspect of your life? This may include illness, health programs, sensory pleasures, contact with nature, sexuality, athletics, drugs, indulgences, and addictions of any kind.

26. Dialogue with Society. • Was this a period in your life when you were deepening or changing your relation to groups or institutions that havea fundamental connection to your existence? Were you reconsidering old allegiances to country or religion or political party? Were you redefining your identification with your race or your family or social group? Was it a time when events took place in history that involved you in serious questions of personal commitment? Did you find yourself during this time deeply involved in literary or artistic works of past or present time, the artworks of others that brought you into profound consideration of the nature of human existence?

27. Dialogue with Events. • Was this a time when unexpected, and often unexplained, events took place in your life? Were there situations in which it seemed that life was testing you either with pain, as with physical accidents, or with pleasure, as with unusual good fortune? Were there especially difficult or challenging circumstances during this period, outer and inner pressures that forced you to come to closer grips with the riddles of human existence?

28. Dream Log. • Do you remember having dreams during this period that stood forth with special force and had striking impact on you? The strength of these might be great enough to cause you to remember them even if you did not record them at the time. On the other hand, many people have kept an unstructured diary at various points in their life in which their dreams are recorded. If you kept such a diary, it may be valuable to consult it now when you are working on your Steppingstone Periods, especially with respect to your dreams.

29. Twilight Imagery Log. • During this period do you recall having waking visions or other experiences at the twilight level of consciousness? Were there any that had a major impact upon you and influenced your decisions or other actions at the time? As you consider these experiences in the retrospect of the events that have taken place in your life since that time, do any of them seem to have had a prophetic quality, or a symbolic meaning for your life which now suggests itself to you? Consider their inner correlation to the movement of your life.

30. Inner Wisdom Dialogue. • What experiences do you recall in which you recognized a profound truth of human existence that was new to you at that time? Perhaps you did not reach an ultimate answer then, but the question has continued to stir inside of you. Who were the persons who played the largest role in stimulating and deepening your thoughts and feelings at that time? Were they individuals with whom you had direct contact in your life? Were they persons from history whose books you read or whose lifeworks you studied? Or were they persons whose reality lies beyond history in the symbolism and teachings of a great religion or philosophy?

31. Intersections: Roads Taken and Not Taken. • During this period of your life did you come to crossroads of decision that affected the course of future events in a fundamental way? Perhaps it was an intersection in your life path that depended upon an act of decision which you yourself made. Or perhaps it was an action which you failed to take, which was to that degree a decision made by omission. Perhaps it was an intersection in your life in which the decisive factor was not left within your discretion but was forced upon you. In either case it was a crossroad in your life and the fact that one road was actually taken for whatever reason meant that another road was not taken. Has that road remained a possibility of life that has not been lived?

32. Journal: Assumption • “Writing”. • “To access the power of the unconscious” • “Evoke creative ability” • There is an inner nature in me • Different parts in me • Highest stage: integration (Erikson, Loevinger, Hy)

33. Journal: more assumptions • Needs action, like a cookbook • Needs a physical journal to touch, feel, reread, cross-reference, integrate (will check on the next-to-last day of class). • May take awhile to get a feel for it, but must start. Can’t rush. Can’t fake. Can be guided, but can’t be told.