03/17/2001

By Wallace Chappell

Guest column

Almost as soon as writing was discovered, humans found out that it revealed deep things in their thoughts. Journaling began at that moment. (Almost as soon, the need to hide what one was revealing also emerged, and the earliest encryption was launched.)

Journal workshop The Rev. Wallace Chappell will lead a journaling workshop 6:30-10 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m.-8 p.m. March 24 at First United Methodist Church of Dallas, 1928 Ross Ave. Cost is $105. Call 214-220-2727 ext. 206.

Journals of famous people have long had wide circulation and reveal the power for growth that comes from writing down one's deepest thoughts. There are many approaches to such writing and many exercises that put us in touch with our depths. Some add drawing to their notebooks. Others find multicolored entries helpful. Still others incorporate bits and pieces of great writings from other sources that have special meaning.

The "intensive journal" is an approach developed by New York psychologist Ira Progoff almost 40 years ago, and it is the approach that I prefer. To begin with, it is a structured journal, with different types of work in different sections.

Dr. Progoff made significant discoveries. One is that the closer to the unconscious that one works, the more revealing it becomes of what is really going on within. That is, what Dr. Progoff added to an ancient discipline was depth psychology, awareness of the unconscious. So if you are happily creating literature so that your descendants will realize "what a great person I was," then put your pen down. That's not the way to do it!

Get back into a quiet, meditative state, almost asleep and yet awake. Set aside conscious agendas and topics, and let the entries flow in an almost free-association form.

Another discovery was that re-reading a group of entries produces (or reveals) movement in one's life. Dr. Progoff called that step "feedback," and it can be most powerful in revealing to us where our life is trying to go.

Probably his most significant development came with the procedures for writing dialogue scripts with the persons in our life, the events of our life, with our bodies and so on. These, too, are written in the deep, quiet levels of awareness in which one discovers amazing things said both by one's self and by the other "pole" of the dialogue. When such breakthroughs come, one is struck with wonder at the wisdom that flows out of our own ordinary minds: movement, new insight, breakthroughs that come as though from outside us.

We discover that we know things we didn't know we knew. The context of our lives is altered and deepened. The circumstances of our lives, the stresses and the problems, are seen in a different light.

No writing by ourselves changes anything "out there," of course. But these practices make dramatic changes "in here" – in the writer, in awareness, in our perceptions, in our emotional tone. Nothing may be changed, but everything is different.

Life is process. We change as the years go by. Our agendas at age 25 are not our agendas when we're 50 or 60. Our values change, our status changes. Our and wants and dreams and hopes are not the same from decade to decade.

Some of the most abundant living comes when the outer circumstances of life are in sync with our inner states of being, removing a sense of incongruity, dis-ease or being out of balance.

Dr. Progoff's method has integrity built in. It is undergirded by a broad theoretical base and sound procedures. When I teach his method, I keep faith with his work, which is psychologically based and yet has deep spiritual awareness.

At the same time, I am a Methodist pastor, and there is no way that I can remove my "perceptual screen" from the work. I cannot stop being me when I teach Dr. Progoff's method. So if scriptural or religious conditioning is exposed in my perceptions of the process, I identify it.

Dr. Progoff would often ask, Where is my life trying to go? What is my life trying to become? I take those questions as tantamount to asking, What is God doing in my life? For I perceive that the Holy One who works within and around us is exactly that: One, who is known in many ways and called by many names.

Thus, as I do my journal work, it is for me another of those great spiritual disciplines that have led believers for centuries to the very wisdom of God. In the hands of a secularist it might be only psychological. A Muslim or a Buddhist would be led to the Holy One who speaks in the imagery that is meaningful to each of them.

We have here a universal instrument for working in our personal depths, producing congruence between our inner states of being and the outer circumstances of life.

The Rev. Wallace Chappell is an assistant pastor at First United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas.

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