Sacred Journaling with Karma and Rebirth
Sometimes we get so caught up in the minutiae of everyday living that we forget to pull back and look at the bigger picture. The same thing can happen with Journaling: if we don’t expand our view, we will end up focusing on the same old problems. Do you sometimes feel like you're just repeating yourself in your journal writings?
But, what if we knew with a high level of likelihood that our consciousness will not only survive physical death, but also continue evolving on another plane of reality? And, moreover, that how we progress there will be based on how well we comprehend the impact of our actions in this life?
Karma, the ancient Sanskrit word for “deed,” refers to all our mental and physical acts and their consequences—not only in this life but in the past and future as well. Do you sometimes sense that the work you’re doing now is an outgrowth of what you achieved in other lifetimes or dimensions?
Sacred Journaling is an ideal way to monitor our daily actions in light of how they reflect on our spiritual development. It’s not about merely recording events and passing emotions, but also exploring our actions in relationship to what we came to Earth to learn and ultimately to accomplish. Journaling helps us discover how those actions will determine the level of spiritual growth we can achieve in our next life, whether on the other side or in a rebirth into this physical life.
At the same time, Sacred Journaling provides a key to understanding the source of much of the tension and anxiety of day-to-day living, and serves as a tool to relieve it. If our life is simply a midpoint on a growth chart that extends indefinitely into the past and future, and if we are here primarily to learn through the crucible of physical existence, then journaling is an ideal way to monitor our actions—call it karma in the making. Challenges that we evade during our physical life will continue to face us after we transition to the nonphysical. Our hard-earned spiritual growth, our development of love and compassion, won’t be lost just because our body and brain stop functioning. Far from being gloomy, this knowledge provides us with an extraordinarily optimistic way to view the ups and downs of everyday life.
In this iteration of Sacred Journaling, we will use the techniques and hacks of journaling that I’ve developed over 15 years of teaching and 30 years of keeping journals. But we will use them in new ways, based on the information that I will share with you about the relationship between karma and rebirth. My confidence in an afterlife of some kind is not based on religious beliefs but on scientific and medical research that has uncovered startling information suggesting that our consciousness does not rely on the brain—or our physical body—to exist. The overwhelming evidence also strongly suggests that our consciousness continues to prevail—and to evolve—after our transition to the nonphysical plane.
Whether you’ve been journaling for years and need some inspiration to keep going, or if you’ve long wanted to start journaling, you will discover how to get started and keep moving—even when you feel blank or stuck. We’ll make use of Archetypal awareness, Dream Journaling, Timelines, Chakras, Pre-journaling and more. Even if you’ve taken this class with me before, you’ll find a vastly different, far more urgent approach to examining our lives in this new version of my course.
Even if you've taken the class before, you'll be able to apply these hacks to your journaling in fulfilling new ways.
As usual, my class takes place in cyberspace over 8 weeks, using an online classroom that is open only to registered students. You don't have to be online at any specific day or time, just check the website and your email regularly, read the new class I post each week, and respond as your schedule allows. The class is administered through Writers.com, “the oldest writing website on the internet.” Please go here for a full description of the class, a week-by-week syllabus, and a link to register. Or write to me with any specific questions you may have.
Denying Death
Medieval monks often kept a shining skull on their scriptorium desks as a memento mori, a reminder that physical life has limits. Buddhists call this awareness samsara, the endless, dissatisfying round of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, life and death (aka "The Wheel of Cyclic Existence"). But Western culture has largely evolved to be in denial about the reality of death. The beliefs taught by all the major religions—not only the heaven and hell of Western monotheism but also the reincarnation teachings of the Eastern traditions—are out of sync in many ways with what we know about death today.
I’ll discuss our current state of knowledge about “the other side”; the reliability of channeled teachings and mediumship; the latest research on near-death and out-of-body experiences—and what this means for our practice of Sacred Journaling. I’ll also share excerpts from my forthcoming eBook, Circles of Belief, which delves into this emerging information in more detail.