What Is Journaling?

Journaling is a writing practice that allows you to connect internally and express yourself.

Journaling helps energize, uplift, and organize thoughts to create a life of one’s imagining. An important spiritual tool, journaling allows creative ideas and subconscious attitudes to reveal themselves, accessing the unlimited power of Divine Presence as you.

What Is an Example of Journaling?

Journaling is traditionally a writing practice, although it can include typing on a tablet or laptop or speaking into a recorder. You may choose to create a specific type of journal such as an intention journal or a gratitude journal, or a more general reflection journal.

Why Journaling Changes Your Spiritual Practice

By Rev. Lesley Miller

Journaling is a powerful and practical way to increase awareness of the inner, spiritual self that resides at deeper levels of consciousness.

As individual, creative expressions of God, each of us has unique, personal desires, dreams, interests, goals, body needs, and purposes in life. There may also be pain, fear, and grief that yearn to be healed.

The insights that come from journaling help us make choices aligned with Source, choices that throughout time and with greater self-knowledge can bring positive change.

Journals also provide a record of achievements as well as a healthy way to stay motivated, work through setbacks and frustrations, and heal relationships, especially those with ourselves.

As with meditation and prayer, developing a habit of journaling grows with practice. There is no right or wrong way to journal.

Whether longhand in a special notebook or on a computer, journaling makes a space for more than just feelings or sorting out what happened. Make it your own with gratitude lists, sketches, mind maps, goals, ideas for projects, things to do, or places to go.

There are journals of all sizes and shapes available locally in San Angelo--and almost anywhere you travel.  A journal can be large or small, have lines for writing or not, be an "artist's journal" with drawings or paintings.  Journals are (generally) NOT shared--they are your own personal record.  Each journal entry does not need to be of any specific length--just as much as you want to jot down.  The important thing about keeping a journal is to be faithful to making an entry every single day.  Journals don't have to be perfect in grammer, sentence length, etc.  Remember--it's your journal and path of discovery.  The gift store at Unity World Headquarters sells journals as well.  The link to their "Just For Today" themed journal is here: UNITY JOURNAL or here is another Unity Journal available for you to try: RANDOM JOURNAL.  There is one more journal you might want to explore from Unity: WORTHY OF WONDER JOURNAL.

Another particular type of journal helps you get the BEST night's sleep - the "gratitude" journal.  There are a bunch of them on the market - (Gratitude Journal Source) or Sarah Ban Breathnach has an EXCELLENT journal (The Simple Abundance Journal) and just by writing three to five things that you are grateful for EACH DAY at bedtime, you focus on the positive in the day's events and it's off to a peaceful slumber.