11 Benefits from Spiritual Journaling

We are a “what do I get out of it?” society, aren’t we? We expect every transaction we make to result in a discounted cost to us, not just a bargain but a super bargain like a give away. If the house is for sale as a foreclosure, we expect the sale price to be 1/2 of the normal price.

Journaling is no different; we expend our time and energy when we could be doing twenty other things so we expect that the resultant benefits will hugely outweigh our perceived cost. Let me list the benes that I have found; you run the calculator:

1. You get to write a letter to and dialogue with God or your Higher Power. Yes, I know he knows what we are thinking but when He sees us write it down and communicate on paper, I believe that it means more; it holds more weight.
2. You get to know yourself better. This will happen as you go back and read your earlier journal entries; you will wonder at what you wrote and what you have done since and where you are now.
3. Writing is healing; we get to lay out all of our emotions and examine them like a doctor or a lab technician.
4. Recording our daily gratitudes, ever so small as a smile, will quickly show us that He is wanting to love us and give us pleasure.
5. We get to empty our “worry bucket” and free our mind to start afresh on the new day. No hold-over worries to cloud the arrival of fresh ideas.
6. Emboding our inner voice is an amazing benefit. Martha Graham said, “… and because there is only one of you in all time, its expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost, the world will not have it.”
7. Stress reduction — when our angers and feelings of disappoinment gain control of us, we become frozen; writing them down makes them smaller and lightens our load.
8. We enlighten our relationship with God or the Higher Power. Writing down our prayers to Him allow us to show Him that we are interested in the love he gives us.
9. Our discernment powers become sharpened. We can analyze our choices from the spiritual standpoint; writing the process down enables us to see where we are going.
10. We can record our daily accomplishments and affirmations. We need a pat on the back every day and this is a good way to do that.
11. We grow closer to God by putting “spiritual” into the writing process. It is more than a daily log of events in our life; it records the spiritual connections of those events.

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