Journaling As Soul Work
Allowing your inner knowing to speak.
Somewhere inside you, something knows. I call this something by many names: your inner knowing, your wise part, your intuition, or just your Self.
This is the part of you where your embodied sensing, values, desires, and intellect come together, forming a coherent truth. This knowing might emerge into your conscious awareness through dreams, through images, feelings, or fragments. Through sensations (including that of resistance or dissonance) or the sudden rush of emotion.
Often we don’t hear it when it speaks. But when we (truly, deeply) listen to this knowing, our truth becomes clearer and our lives begin to change shape.
How to listen (and why to journal)
Journalling has always been my portal to knowing. The simplicity of picking up a pen and writing words disguises the powerful magic of this practice. And it is a spiritual, creative, contemplative practice. Journaling is nothing short of—and sue me for sounding cliche if you must—soul work.
To journal is to journey back, again and again, past the debris of mind chatter and into your own truth. It’s an energetic clearing. A way to clear out the stagnant and touch (even if just for a moment) the well of inner knowing alive in, and running through, you.
I find the same pattern at work every time: thoughts come thick and fast. First the mundane recounting of life, then the “shoulds” and “I have to’s” begin to flow out. Then, a wave of questions. “Why?” and “Since when?” Then, a calm assurity: “I believe”, “I will”, “I won’t”, and “I know”.
There is one inside you who knows. One who already has all the answers. Who has the truth, as it appears at this moment. And not the one you’ve been told or sold. Rather, the one that’s raw, ancient, certain. Not even certain in terms of answers or guarantees. Just certain in terms of trust.
In many mystical traditions, the soul’s not a fixed object, floating somewhere in the matter of our meat suits. It’s a process, a verb, a dynamic unfolding of consciousness. I see your inner knowing like that too. It’s not a certainty, it’s an orientation. And for me, writing (of any kind, but especially journaling in this case) is a way towards that truer orientation.
Most people write a journal as if it will be read. “You are your own voyeur” to quote Atwood. They try to explain or perform. This is still incredibly fun. But I think writing is its most magical and psychospiritually alchemical when it’s about invocation. Devotion. A way of asking: “Who is here, inside me, under all this noise? And what do they know to be true?”
When we meet the page without an agenda, a kind of portal opens. We enter into a relational space with our own minds, bodies, the space around us, and with our own felt senses. The part of you that you might typically silence could begin to speak. The nervous system and its associated experiences may feel safe enough to share something of their intelligence. And the wisest, most deeply held aspects of our knowing may emerge.
It might not always be poetic or clear, but it will be honest. It definitely won’t all come out in one sitting, or one week, but it will come out. I don’t know how it works, but I do know this: in any therapeutic creative practice, journaling included, what emerges is exactly what needed to for that specific moment.
If you let it, your inner knowing will make itself available to you more and more over time. And it will be your anchor in any storm.
A provocation to journal
I dare you to start journaling a little every day. (I dare you to re-start.) I dare you to give it the sanctity it deserves this time. I dare you to light a candle. To use the good pen. To return to your breath and bone. To the eternal hum beneath each passing thought.
Don’t expect it to be beautiful. Don’t ask it to make sense. Just purge. Some days it will pour out like a fire. Other days, you’ll be wading in fog. But stay. Stay long enough for the page to act as a mirror. And you see not just the familiar face and voice, but the deeper one who knows. And who’s been waiting for you.
Also, journalling doesn’t have to be limited to words. I like to collage and draw too. I recommend moving your body before you begin journaling. Sense into what’s with you in this moment. Then you might like to start by marking abstract marks, with colours or images that capture these sensations. Then move into words (or not!) when you’re comfortable.
Writing prompts about writing
꩜ What I’m afraid to write is…
꩜ The big question I have for my wisest Self is…
꩜ My inner landscape contains (name the roses and the thorns)…
꩜ What I know to be true in this moment is…
꩜ How can I recognise my inner knowing when it arises…
꩜ When I write, I allow myself to remember that…
Write about now
If this stirred something in you and you’d like to learn more about my mindful journaling method, and practice in community, please reply “Yes” to this article. I’d love to get an idea of numbers, so I can run my 90 minute journaling workshop, Write About Now, on Zoom soon inshallah.
P.S. I have paused payments on my Substack for Gemini season, while I attend to some life admin. Thank you to all my Creative Kin (paid) tier members for your understanding.
Warmly,
Jerico
Yes ✨
yes, yes, yes!