Journaling For Clues

A lot of people think it really matters that they make a lot of money, and become successful at something with heavy bragging rights. The only thing that matters is that no matter what you do, be present for the experience. To paraphrase Woody Allen, "The secret to success is showing up." Just make sure you bring your intention along with your attention. And one thing I've discovered over the years is that if you are really "present" in what ever you do, and I mean REALLY paying attention, that you will begin to run across clues, clues which will lead to your over all understanding and awakening.

There is a part of us, our higher self, our Soulful self in a timeless place which is constantly urging us on and even leaving us “physical clues”, if we are paying enough attention to spot them. Sort of the opposite of being "paranoid". Instead of someone out to "get you", you'll discover that the Universe is here to "assist you" in the process of waking up and becoming more conscious.

By discovering these clues along the trail of your life you'll gradually come to--"understanding". And what specifically will you come to understand? Well for one thing, you will come to understand that this is not the “end of the day” reality you have been taught and a second thing you will learn, is that you are much, much smarter than you have ever been led to believe. But most importantly you will want to pick up these clues so that by the time you pass on beyond this frame, you'll have succeeded in "getting it!" You don't want to be utterly confused and taken by surprise at death, at the moment you detach and separate from your body. You want it to be a gradual unfolding. May your spirit outgrow your body before your body gives up the ghost. There's nothing worse than having wasted a life stacking up stuff and chasing vaporous ego dreams until you become so distracted that when your time finally comes to separate Spirit from body, you're taken totally off balance. You don't have a clue, you don't "get it". You don’t want to end up wandering as a ghost or maybe attach to another and become part of their dream. Now's the time to, "Get a clue".

Now to learn what is required you don't need to attend college or to belong to any particular church or esoteric cult. Life will offer up an abundance of lessons on its own. All that's required is that you bring your attention to the present moment (no matter what experience the moment may hold). Pay attention and remember that everything you encounter is a metaphor. Life is first and foremost a metaphor and the experiences you encounter in life are metaphors. The specific value and symbolism of these metaphors is for you to discover (or create). Together the totality of your experience forms a metaphor bridge between body and spirit, between the dense physical frequencies and the less dense higher frequencies of Spirit. You are here to learn to walk across that metaphor bridge. "Remember who you were. Remember who you are. Remember why you came."

Now clues can be as subtle as an unaccounted for familiarity with a town in a foreign country, an early talent for playing the piano, a birthmark marking the spot of a mortal wound in a previous existence, the deep recognition in a stranger’s eyes. Clues can remind us of a past life or point towards a future one. Clues can come in the form of messages from our higher self to our time imprinted self. Clues can be about what we should do, who we should do it with. Clues can be extremely positive and enlightening or seemingly negative pointing towards unaccountable fears, phobias or deeply held pockets of frozen emotion. Clues can be about the past, the present or even the future. Often there is no real "value" in the specific clue other than the symbolic or metaphorical value we assign to it.

As we leave clues to ourselves in our personal life, we also leave societal/cultural clues as well. Some of the basic tenants which separate America from other countries, those wonderful "high minded" ideals of our forefathers are, in a very real sense, "clues" from our higher selves to our "time imprinted" selves. The Bible as well as other spiritual texts are filled with clues.

Here’s a personal example of a clue from my own experience. Once upon a time I used to drive taxi in San Francisco. One day I picked up a guy at the airport in my taxi. He was to pick up some papers at a specific bank in SF and return to the airport. A quick in and out. We stopped at his bank, it was a few blocks away from the downtown area. Would I wait for him? Sure. It was a beautiful day. He said he'd be about half an hour. I stretched out in the front seat and resumed reading a book I'd been carrying about the life of Jack London, the famous author. At one particularly poignant point I set the book aside and simply gazed out the window. I was facing the old brick bank building. On the corner of the building I noticed a large brass plaque. Obviously some famous person was born here or used to live here. I looked closer. On the plaque was a simple message giving a date and noting that this was the very spot where Jack London was born! This was the spot where his spirit had entered his body and through sheer "coincidence", I was sitting there in the sun reading about his life.

Now this is what CG Jung would call a "meaningful coincidence" or a synchronistic event. Statistically the odds of reading a book and then randomly picking up someone at the airport who's destination turns out to be the birth place of the author of the book you are reading would be very great. On one hand it means absolutely nothing. On the other it means simply that I was paying attention and that just perhaps there is more going on here than one might at first realize.

I have kept journals for many years and amidst all the "weenie, weenie, poor me" entries, there are the "pearls", the "clues" that somehow slip by and go directly from the higher self to the printed page and the art of it is to manage to be out of the way when this happens. The art of journaling, it would seem, is to become successful in managing to stay out of your own way.

So how do you get out of your own way? Simply by practice and repetition. Until you are no longer captivated by the sound of your own voice. Because what journaling really is, is a sort of ritualistic, metaphorical drumming, but instead of using sticks and skin you use a pen and paper But the bulk of the writing serves purely as a rhythmic background cadence so that, after a time, when you finally succeed in getting out of your own way, your spiritually higher voice has an open bandwidth to ride in on. Over the years I have noticed that the bulk of my journals will be very similar, almost like a background music and then…."a clue", seemingly falls from the sky and lands on the printed page. Often parts of the same clue will be separated by months or even years as if their author had a higher vantage point and a droll sense of humor.

So, this is where journaling can come to your rescue. It can serve as a letter to your idealized "Best Friend", It can serve as your therapist, it can serve as your very best buddy or best girlfriend but perhaps most of all it can serve as an historical document. It will testify to the fact that you have wandered this road and it can document what you have seen and felt along this path. Nobody in this entire universe has ever been you before. Like a foreign correspondent far, far from home, you owe it to your "publisher" as well as your 'public" to take notes.

Do not for a minute diminish yourself by saying--"Who cares?" "Who would ever want to read my scribbling on the skin of a long dead tree?" The fact is you will read it and you will write and the bottom line is you are a multifaceted being and in this present materialistic experience you are alienated from certain higher aspects of yourself.

If a person can verbalize their experience; their position, front, back, top, bottom--all around; if they can get a glimpse of their place in the ongoing process which we call this life, this world, this universe; and if this person can verbalize it at least in their own terms, to their own satisfaction and write it down, then they are like the skipper of a small sailboat in mid-ocean armed with the appropriate charts and sextant. They are not merely surviving, lost at sea on a raft awaiting rescue or death. They are on a voyage. They know where they started and they have a past track at hand from which to judge their present speed and position. Life is a cruise, not an ocean rescue. This person is now a cruiser...attitude is everything.

The fact is, no one need read your writing for it to have great value. All pretty girls don't have to become beautify queens, or movie stars. And all people who make note of their personal human adventure do not have to become professional writers. But it is important for you to re-read your own stuff at least every couple of years. After awhile you may find a rather "amazing clue." You may find, as I have, along with many others, that upon re-reading your journal there will be "thoughts", creative ideas and insights seemingly stopped in mid-sentence, that will complete themselves months or even years later. This is a "clue" that there is a part of you which is operating outside of your present time constraints. There is another part of "you" which has access to what might be called the "future" as well as what might be called "wisdom". When you visit a psychic reader, if they are good, they aren't actually telling you anything, your higher self is telling them something and they are simply repeating it to you for your benefit. It isn't anything you can't do for yourself…with practice.

So, in the long run, it matters not whether another person reads what you have written. It matters only that you read what you have written and respect the process where a human scrapes the outer bark from a long dead tree and then creates a dark liquid with which to stain the skin of the once living tree purely in order to leave impressions and "clues" to be re-discovered at another time and in another place. The process and intention are the crucial events. You are not only writing upon the bark of a tree, you are literally writing upon the Akashic record with your earthly intent. But if you are a goal oriented sort and find that this isn't enough, then by all means put your life's long writings in an air tight container (plastic US military rocket tubes are plentiful and available) and bury your earthly impressions for a future generation to discover and deal with. Who knows, if you secret your documents with supreme intention, perhaps you will be the very one to unearth them at some future date. Now what sort of a clue do you think that would be?

Be present, pay attention, lend your intention and realize that ALL is process, not product. By the time it becomes product, the process is over and the Artist has left the building.