Journaling the Questions - Opening to your own mystical inner realms

Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000

Today’s Livestream Flow and Yin class centered around a quote from Clarissa Pinkola Estes and I am offering some journaling prompts here for those of you who would like to explore living your questions further.

Through our yoga practice, we explored letting a question that is alive in us to be moved and breathed with, interacting with it in a dialogue through our body rather than our cognitive process that might be inclined to try to analyze and find an answer. It can be a strange and refreshing practice to live with the questions we have circulating inside of us right now rather than striving to find an answer to them.

“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Journaling Exercise:

I invite you to consider a question that has been coming up for you lately. Write it down. Close your eyes and feel in your body how this question is causing a germination of consciousness inside of you at this very moment. What sensations do you feel? Try to identify 3-4 sensations.

What colors do you see? Any textures, shapes, images, landscapes? Write these down as well.

Turn your gaze back inward and rest your attention deeply inside yourself, letting your inner being know “I’m here and I am curious, I offer receptivity to this moment”.

Continue to notice any sensations, colors, images and symbols that show up. As you focus your attention inward, feel consciousness within reaching towards you as well, perhaps making contact.

Ask you inner being: What would you like to share with me?

Rest with whatever you hear, see, feel. Write it down.

Allow a new question to emerge, free-write in response to that question for 5 minutes without striving to answer it at all.

Another question may emerge, write that down and do another 5 minute round of free-writing without striving to answer it at all.

You may feel complete with this process or repeat this a few more times.

Look back over your writing and underline 5-8 words that pop out at you. What question is brought up in your awareness now as you see this 5-8 words underlined. Write this question down and do a final 5 minute free-write without striving to answer it at all.

You may choose to tune back into your inner being for a 4-5 minutes now and rest with the new question inside and see how it is germinating consciousness within you at this moment.

Reflect upon any secret doors of the psyche that have opened inside of you in this process. Option to draw, color or scribble on a piece of paper as a way to reflect upon your experience using new neural networks in your mind/body.

Feel free to send me an email or write comments below with any reflections or questions from this practice!