Mindfulness Journaling is key to a Spiritual Awakening

Lesson Outline:

• Lesson Aim: The aim of this lesson is to introduce the idea of unconscious vs conscious behaviours and introduce you to a method of Journaling which unearths the unconscious ones and shines the light of consciousness on them. Slowly this leads to a development spiritually towards higher levels as we move away from our unconscious ‘animal’ or ‘lower order’ behaviours. Such is the nature of Humans to have elements of lower order beings and higher order ones.
• Instructions: Read through this information or watch the video (video is to come but I will add in time). If you’d like to start a Journal as per the below instructions then feel free. A more formal course is in the works but I have outlined the process below for you and given a template to fill in.
• Questions? Come find me in the Community platforms.

What is Mindfulness Journaling?

Mindfulness Journaling is where we note down what we are doing in a day for a period of time, I suggest 66 days, in order to watch where we are making conscious decisions vs unconscious ones. Humans have significant amounts of both deliberate conscious behavior and automatic (emotional or reactive) subconscious behaviours.

When we journal our goal is to find and change the ‘automatic’ decisions based on a sub-conscious pattern of reaction to a situation or often an emotion and shed some light on these. In my experience, without journaling daily for a significant period of time we don’t have the presence of mind to catch and analyse these sub-conscious behaviors in order to learn where they come from and how to alter them (in the case they are negative behaviors like addiction) or consciously support them (in the case of positive behaviors we want to promote).

When we journal we understand why and how we do these sub-conscious behaviors and we can then control them by deliberately and conscious lifestyle decisions to reduce negative patterns and promote positive ones. In fact, after 66 days these decisions are easier to make and automatic and ‘no big deal’. Such is the nature of how we form habits.

I like to create a daily journaling exercise for myself which is ‘aspirational’ ie ‘how would I like my day to look’ and then see where and why I am falling short. With this method I can understand the unconscious patterns keeping me from achieving this and go from there.

These 66 day periods are repeatable so you can just keep going with this until you have achieved the state of behaviors you want. You can take this method all the way to a new lifestyle or all the way to Moksha – stop wherever you feel you are content.

Are humans conscious beings or unconscious animals?

Journaling allows us to, day by day, turn ourselves more towards the conscious being than the unconscious animal. We humans are in state of transition between them both because that’s where we are at in our particular spiritual evolution. Some beings are behind us and some are in front. Those behind will be where we are one day and we will join those who are ahead of us in spiritual evolution at some point in the future. You will come back to this Earthly realm until you have learned the lessons to be learned here (which are ultimately spiritual in nature) and then you’ll progress onto someplace else where the lessons to be derived from that place are applicable to your stage of Spiritual Development. Some people refer to this as other ‘dimensions’ or ‘octaves’ of existence or immaterial realms. There are many and I will not attempt to categorize them here.

Scientific View:

Reptilian Brain and Neurological Perspective:

Humans are indeed complex beings whose behavior can be analyzed through the lens of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. The triune brain model, although somewhat outdated, provides a framework for understanding human behavior:

Reptilian Brain (Brainstem and Cerebellum): This is the most ancient part of our brain, responsible for instinctual behaviors, including aggression, mating, and the basic survival mechanisms like fight or flight. It operates largely on autopilot, responding to stimuli with pre-programmed, largely unconscious reactions.

Limbic System (Paleomammalian Brain): This includes structures like the amygdala (involved in processing emotions, especially fear and pleasure) and the hippocampus (critical for memory formation). This part of the brain deals with emotions and is where much of our unconscious animalistic reactions come from. Emotional responses can override rational decision-making, leading to behaviors driven by anger, fear, or love.

Neocortex (Neomammalian Brain): The outermost layer, responsible for higher-order brain functions like sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and, importantly, the ability to choose actions based on complex reasoning rather than just instinct or emotion. This part of the brain allows for the human capacity for self-awareness, ethical decision-making, and planning beyond immediate needs or desires.

From a neurological perspective, while we react instinctively due to our brain’s ancient structures, the neocortex enables us to consciously override these reactions. Techniques like mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and even simple self-reflection can enhance this capacity, allowing individuals to make choices that transcend basic survival instincts or emotional impulses.

Spiritual View:

Humanity in Spiritual Evolution – A Greco-Roman Perspective:

In ancient Greek thought, particularly through the lens of Theogonies and the philosophies that followed:

Between Gods and Animals: Humans were often seen as intermediaries or a blend between the divine (gods) and the earthly (animals). This perspective is reflected in the idea of humans having a dual nature – part mortal, part divine. The philosopher Protagoras famously stated, “Man is the measure of all things,” suggesting that humans possess a divine-like capacity for understanding and shaping the world, yet are bound by the physical and emotional aspects of our animal nature.

Spiritual Evolution: The concept of spiritual evolution was not directly articulated as we understand it today, but Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle discussed the idea of the soul striving towards perfection or eudaimonia (flourishing or happiness), which can be seen as a spiritual journey from animalistic to a more divine state.

• Plato’s Theory of Forms: Suggests that humans have an innate understanding of the ideal forms, striving towards them through reason, moving from the sensory, animalistic world to a higher, more divine understanding of truth and beauty.
• Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics: Proposes that humans can achieve a god-like state (eudaimonia) by cultivating virtues, which involves overcoming lower, animalistic tendencies through rational and moral choices.

Choice Beyond Instinct: Here, the spiritual view parallels the scientific in that humans are seen to have the capacity for choice beyond mere survival or instinct. This choice is part of a spiritual journey towards enlightenment or divine understanding, where one transcends base desires and emotional reactions to embody higher virtues or cosmic truths.

In this spiritual narrative, humans are on a path of becoming more than what they are by nature, using consciousness as both a tool and a goal, aiming towards what might be considered a god-like state of understanding, morality, and existence.

Both perspectives acknowledge the duality of human nature but approach the reconciliation of this duality from different angles – one through biological evolution and brain function, the other through a journey of spiritual and moral development.

How to do Mindfulness Journaling?

NB: I am in the process of developing a formal course on Mindfulness Journaling which I will link to when it becomes available but in the meantime it goes something like this.

The way I like to do this is to

1. Write a journal entry everyday for a period of 66 days and
2. Write an aspirational ‘daily schedule’ with all the things I’d like to do from day to day in my ‘perfect’ existence. It covers things that are important for me to focus on like diet, exercise, spiritual practices, work, focussing on areas I need help on or am bad at. It would be the schedule of a person who is ‘who I wish to be’. Your ideal schedule is individual to you but may include some of the things above. Or not – it just depends on your particular goals
3. Then, everyday, I keep a journal of where I am at with achieving these things. Which things are standing in my way, which things I’m doing well at etc etc.
4. As I note these things from day to day I start to shine a light on my unconscious patterns or behavior and thinking which are holding me back. I shine a light of ‘attention’ or ‘mindfulness’ on them and slowly I start to understand why and where I am falling short of my goals and also in what ways I am doing well.
5. This practice takes unconscious behaviors and makes them conscious. Once they are conscious we have control over them because we understand how, when and under what circumstances they happen. Once we have this information we also understand how to minimize the ‘failures’ and maximise the ‘successes’ in future.
6. Slowly, through this process, the patterns that cause us to fail become less and less and we promote patterns of behaviour that cause us to have success. We naturally start to form habits that are healthy and we start to experience the world in a better way. A more healthy way for us. At the end of a cycle of 66 days you start to feel as if the patterns which used to cause you to fail are now naturally avoided. There is no more struggle to maintain the changes as it’s hard wired into our Neurology now. Remember that Neurology takes 66 days to hard wire.

Mindfulness Journaling Templates

I use a spreadsheet to note my ideal schedule but you could also create a PDF or just note it down in a physical journal. Here is a link to my current ‘ideal daily schedule’ to show you how I am doing it. It goes through things like,

1. Diet (helps my Arthritis and pain management)
2. Sleep routine (lowers ADHD symptoms which stress me)
3. A morning routine which makes sure I do some basic mental and spiritual health activities int he morning which ‘keep me balanced’.
4. Has some practical tasks I need to do in order to support my life like language learning, work etc
5. Has some time in nature programmed in (ground me and my ADHD symptoms while getting exercise)
6. Includes physical exercise (ideally in nature)
7. Includes some prompts to get me to think about various things and where I am at with my schedule for eg,
   • Did you eat only of your selected diet?
   • How did you feel when you woke up?
   • Did you have any pain today?
   • The previous night was it easy to fall asleep?
   • Did you feel like it was difficult to motivate yourself to do your schedule?
   • How do your ADHD symptoms feel?
   • Do you feel tired when you going to sleep or are you full of energy?
   • Was today a fasted day?
   • Did you feel bored today of the routine?
   • What things are worrying you at the moment?
   • What things are throwing me off of this routine?
8. As I make daily notes I I notice patterns which are throwing me off and I adjust as I can to minimize me ‘falling off the routine’.
9. If I forget for a few days or even a few weeks it’s OK. It means that something happened which really threw me off and in fact this is exactly the kind of thing which we want to know about and analyze.
   • Even if you forget to do it for a few days or cant be bothered filling it out these things in themselves are things we want to analyse. If you are feeling unmotivated to fill it out then write about that. Just start writing or talking to yourself about it and uncover some feelings.
   • It is the nature of unconscious patterns of emotions, feeling s and thoughts that we aren’t aware of them and they ‘just happen’. Its the deliberate exploration for 66 days that eventually illuminates us to the unconscious behaviors as this is long enough to fall off and also to come back again.
   • If you completely fell off and didn’t fill it out for days then likely an stressful or triggering event came up and you lost your ability to stay on track. Well in this case you have learned that when you get stressed you completely fall off a routine. You can spiral in this case into unconscious behaviors and tendencies. Perhaps they are addiction to drugs, perhaps they are eating habits or depressive type scenarios. This is all the ‘Gold’ we are looking for ie unconscious behaviors to analyze.

Link to spreadsheet is below if you want to see how I’m doing this. It’s not fancy by any means its just a place to put everything that I have access to daily (as I’m on the computer daily) and allows me to hav some level of repeatable structure to keep things consistent. I just created a new tab for every day of the 66 days in the doc.

Mindfulness Template

Spiritual Journaling vs Mindfulness Journaling:

Spiritual Journaling is more about noting gratitude and intentions amongst other things and the methods I describe in this section of the course are not really directed towards being a Spiritual Journal so much as they are trying to shed the light of consciousness on our unconscious behaviors. In saying that there is cross over between these two methods and I see great benefit in a Spiritual Journal as well. Feel free to keep a Spiritual Journal as well if this appeals to you.

Key Differences:

• Focus: Spiritual journaling focuses on the ‘why’ and ‘meaning’ behind experiences, often linking them to a larger spiritual framework. Mindfulness journaling is more about the ‘how’ of experiencing life moment by moment.
• Approach: Spiritual journaling might involve seeking answers or connections outside the self, while mindfulness journaling is about being with what is, internally.
• Goals: While spiritual journaling might aim towards a spiritual awakening or enlightenment, mindfulness journaling targets mental health, emotional regulation, and living more fully in the present.

It is certainly the case the when you get further into the the spiritual practices I describe in the coming sections yo may indeed want to keep a Spiritual Journal as well. It would also be possible to expand the templates below in order to add in Spiritual type observations. I find that I am constantly receiving spiritual insights which are worthy of being noted down in this kind of fashion.

[You might as well add this kind of thing into yoru practice and develop it slowly].

What things have you learned over the last few days which could go in your journal? Many spiritual insights have been made aorund art appreciation and also the reasons for your ailments, your name’s meaning and the lesson of desire and control being taught to you via an illness which requires your denial of pleasure through food and lifestyle but instead in order to develop great care and consistency in behaviour. These are things to add into a Spiritual Journal.