Mar 14, 2010, 12.00am IST
MARGUERITE THEOPHIL.
One of the most simple and effective healing tools that helps us know ourselves more deeply, and unearth the deep spiritual parts of ourselves is writing or journaling. Yet most people even those who know or accept this ^ still tend to avoid it.
Adopting the discipline of 'flow-writing', or doing 'morning pages', is an amazingly effective tool for uncovering issues and stresses, in a kind of basic self-therapy process. And surprisingly, the 'disowned' parts of us that emerge often in such writings are not just the unacceptable, but often our hidden and submerged noble or spiritual aspects too.
"But how should I do this?" you might ask. Kabir tells us, "Wherever you are, is the entry point." There is something very healing about simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that is to begin where you are.
This writing process of our journey to wholeness invites a different approach than we are used to. Instead of the usual blow-by-blow account of how our day has been, we are encouraged to put pen to paper, preferably each morning, either for a timed period or for a specific number of pages ^ and just write, just flow.
"Write what?" you ask. The simple answer is: Whatever floats around in your mind at that moment. Write as the thoughts tumble out; no matter how disconnected, rambling, repetitive, banal and boring, or as deep and profound as they might be. Strongly resist the urge to leave out, cancel, correct grammar or punctuation, or bother about the neatness of the handwriting. Just write.
Be warned, it's mostly banal and everyday, with rare flashes of insight or profundity. And while it's recommended you focus on the here-and-now, it's quite permissible to flip into the past and future if your thoughts take you there.
The good part is that you cannot do this exercise wrong. It's fine to sound happy, excited, adventurous, creative or even petty, critical, worried, whining or scared.
But if it's that simple, and the results are that good, what stops us? It's those assumptions about 'good writing', and those critical 'voices', often from our childhood, that almost all have internalised and just can't seem to shut off ^ even when they are not needed at all.
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, a book on creative practice, who recommends her 'morning pages' almost as a spiritual discipline, has perceptively noticed, "We are trained to self-doubt, to self-scrutiny in the place of self-expression."
As a result, most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it 'right'; we try to sound smart; we'd like invisible others to approve of or admire what we write. But flow-writing goes much better when we don't work at it so hard; we need to give ourselves permission "to just hang out on the page".
Writing this new way, as we gradually come to learn, not only provides a means for all those jamming thoughts and opinions in our heads to be cleared out and sorted, and perhaps processed, it also gives us all kinds of insights into ourselves we can slow down enough to get to know ourselves better.
Reading a month's worth of back pages can shock us with how much time we focus on a particular area or time of our life. It can show up unhelpful habitual patterns, help us with goals and direction, making those necessary changes, or show us perhaps that things are not as bad as we assumed, or how much there is to be grateful for in our lives.
The writer is a Mumbai-based consultant, personal growth coach and workshop leader.
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