To change the path of one’s life requires strong forces of energy.
- Ira Progoff, At A Journal Workshop

The objective of journaling is to see what is really going on – going on for instance in our lives. It isn’t easy. As human beings we are highly emotional. We think we work on logic, but base emotions like fear, the desire for status, the desire for happiness, the desire for love, motivate much of what we do.

Whenever you see human beings doing irrational things, violent things, look first for fear. Fear causes us to lose our sense of perspective and balance. Fear of change for instance. People who sense change coming at them, especially change that might leave them at a disadvantage, change that might make their skills obsolete or their status diminished, do irrational things. Immigration, white privilege, technology – let’s build big walls to keep change out. Climate change, pandemics – these are engines of change. If we ignore them, deny that they exist, maybe they’ll go away.

Change happens at the edges, at the margin. Artists work where change happens. We work where things, truths, are sensed but not understood. We work in mysterious realms.

The job of the artist is to always deepen the mystery.
- Francis Bacon

Artists are always in the process of becoming someone else. We’re always trying to experiment, to grow. If we’re static, self-satisfied, if we resist change, we stagnate, become repetitious, lose our inner momentum and our creative momentum. We become fearful.

Artists like things a little unsettled, a little out of whack. That’s where new forms, new ways of thinking, emerge. Artists, whether they paint nature or not, paint that which is wild, free, unrestrained. Human society is about rules and conformity and security -- the spirit-killing, the imagination-killing, search for safety and comfort.

As human beings we exist, suspended, between the outer world and our inner world. Both are mysterious. We assume we understand both. We think we understand what is really going on. That makes us feel comfortable. The problem is, we don’t. That’s fearful. So we invent stories, myths.

Journaling is helpful in all of these aspects of life and creativity. Journaling is a digging tool for truth – the truth that underlies, the hidden truths of our lives, the uncomfortable truths that we seek to avoid. Journaling about the big events of our lives, the setbacks, the times of deep peace and meaning, will reveal hidden patterns. Those patterns exist on the boundaries between who we are and who we want to be. The hidden patterns determine the decisions we make, the decisions we avoid, without us realizing why we do what we do.

They are worth trying to understand.

Who are you? Who do you want to be?

What are the main beliefs that have based your life on? Have they served you well?

What are the similarities of the major highs of your life? What about the major lows? When you study those, and write about them in your journal, what patterns emerge? What do those patterns tell you about who you really are?