Journaling: Can help for cleaning up, maybe hurts for waking up 📔

One of the unique ideas that I’ve seen come out of the Finder’s Community is that standard methods of journaling reify a sense of self. Can be good for “growing up” and “cleaning up,” but not for waking up.

Hadn’t thought of that before, but of course! A lot of psychological well-being comes from developing a stronger sense of “I” that can set and maintain boundaries, resist unhealthy social pressures, and create one’s own meaning no matter what’s happening (a la Victor Frankl, Stoicism, etc). We need a strong self-identity to face the wounding and chaos of the world that we’ve previously rejected and projected. We need an even stronger self-identity to integrate those with acceptance and compassion. If that’s your goal, journaling can be extremely helpful!

But even a healthy “I” (ego in Latin), traditionally must be transcended to “wake up” / recognize the Universal Christ. So if that’s your goal, try writing down the quality of your experience of experience, or your awareness of awareness, instead of your narrative self experiences. What’s it like to be aware right now? Here I’ll do it, unedited:

As I type and focus on this, my vision becomes much more light-centric, and “I” enter into a flow state. I’m very content pausing, so I do. I am experiencing sound, light, ideas, body sensations. “I’m a strawberry blonde now” someone says. They come and go. I can still recognize distance, objects, etc, but they’ve flattened to a certain extent into one wholeness that’s a little more fluid than the usual way of parsing the happening. 

“But Jordan, how can you symbolically write down non-symbolic consciousness!?” Since this question requires a “symbolic” orientation, engaging it continues the reification... I’d recommend trying out the alternative writing practice instead, and drop it if it doesn’t do anything cool for you.

With love, Jordan