Journaling Prompts
The Open Road
The Open Space is everywhere; it is in your heart, but it is also in everyone and everything. For some, it is completely concealed from their knowing and sight; for you, as a practitioner, you are starting to see more and more. So your journaling invitation this month, and forever, is to take some time to meet the open road as you travel and observe and write about, photograph, paint, etc, what you see. Don’t be afraid to write about the contrasts you see.
Adventuring
Reflect on how you can treat your journey as an adventure or a series of adventures around the specific areas you are working on.
So many people meet everything in life mechanistically or as problems to be solved, so how can you make your journey an adventure?
Love is…
What does doing things with love look like to you?
Take that old chestnut of greeting card fame which goes ‘Love is…) and lay it on the line.
What is love for you?
How do you do things with love?
How are you with love for yourself?
And so on… come up with variations of your own and go.
Get Arty
Take yourself on a date to an art gallery with your journal and pen and walk around until you find a piece of art that you don’t know already but that catches you somehow.
Spend time with the piece in presence, and when you are ready, or over coffee in the gallery cafe, write about the piece itself, or your own feelings that moved with it, or the life of the artist. Go any way you like with this.
You Moment
A very simple and foundational journaling prompt for you this month. Which is to grab your journal and write this moment - for ten minutes or so. No past, no future, only this. Who are you right now? Where are you? What do you hear and see? What is no one seeing?
Tune into Presence
Tune into presence wherever you are, feel the axis of being and doing within yourself, as we discussed in this month’s Satsang video, and write from that axis.
Alternatively, if you have been out in the world and working from the axis in your day, take some time to self-regulate if need be, record your experience and explore the steps the genuinely lead you forward. This is a life long journaling exercise - repeat often.
Daily Reflections
Each day of this month, write a short, personally meaningful (non-cheesy) daily reflection for yourself.
You know like those little books of 365 thoughts for the day etc… Like that but real and in your words.
Videos
Beginning To Keep A Journal
After many many years of keeping a journal, I'd like to encourage anyone with an inkling to pick up their pen and have a go, whether for creative expression, and/or to improve your relationship with yourself, writing by hand in a journal is a wonderful human tool for us all.
In this short video, John introduces us to how reflection and expression in the form of journalling can help develop our mindfulness practice and gives us some tools to help with this.
Getting Back After You Have Crashed & Burned
How do we return to writing after a long break, or a disaster, illness, failure, or simply losing our way with being creative?
Getting Creative Nourishment
I just wanted to share this little video with you about the importance of engaging with the arts in a nourishing way more centrally in your life if you are a writer or a creative.