The Wisdom of the Elements
How the Elements help us Process
Why Journal?
Journaling helps process everything within us in order to keep a well - organized mind and create happiness. Take me on a tour through your mind. Would I find cluttered memories in the corner? Perhaps stacks of emotions in the sink waiting to be felt? Or maybe you have tons of ideas crammed in the closet, waiting to tackle the poor soul who dares crack open the door. If you’re like many folks, you have avoided the bills of memories that pile up in that forbidden drawer.
A Disorganized Mess
Cluttered, sojourner? Then, it is time to journal and here are some ways to know if you have journaled enough to process these four items in your soul.
Journaling helps process thoughts into a clear mind.
Journaling helps process emotions into a vibrant soul.
Journaling helps process imaginations into a directed spirit.
Journaling helps process memories into a peaceful body.
When the mind is cluttered with thoughts, one will usually find conflict of beliefs. “oh, I believe this”, you say and then go an do the opposite. Your mind then experiences friction, heat, steam as you act out the contrast between your beliefs. Or you do not actually believe what you say and the belief is a foreign virus that smuggled into your soul sometime in childhood. A cluttered mind then looks like anxiety, neurosis, and “squirrel brain”. You are distracted because you have many thoughts that have not been processed. Most likely, you are avoiding the truth, refusing to reconcile your inner logic with the outside world - and this avoidance is costing you clearing thinking.
When the soul is stacked with emotions, one will be constipated with feelings. And unfortunately, this means the feelings come out at unusual times, often outbursts of anger at the slightest infraction, or sobbing with no end in sight, or uncontrolled pleasantness of face, unable to even take a single thing seriously - an unbridled giddiness. This refusal to process emotions, probably because they are grief, worry or anger, means that the soul, which wants to vibrate to its fullest capacity, is not bogged down with unfinished business. Yes, it is the business of the soul to express. And emotions do not need to make sense, and when expressed, they must borrow words from our common tongue to express, therefore reducing the essence by a little in order to share with our fellow sojourners. But the raw, pure, instinct of feeling - that must be expressed, even wordless, through a grunt or groan, a dance, or song, and if not, then we cease to vibrate and in stillness we exist like dead water - with no movement at all, attracting all sorts of decay and rot. The avoidance of processing these emotions, no matter which one you have put off for so long, costs you vibrancy. And your soul was meant to shine.
When the closet is crammed with imaginations and ideas and dreams and visions, all unprocessed, the spirit fades. Like a candle with not enough air to breath, it dwindles to a flicker. When the spirit starves from within, one has no direction in life, and we say things such as “I’m lost”. What do you mean then? Do you need to be found? No, you know where you are - but you don’t know where you are going. And that’s the problem with unprocessed imaginations. It’s true, you are imaginative. You imagine things all the time, and you may say, “I’m not creative”. But all I have to do is take a peak into your imagination and watch the unfolding of doomsday thinking, or worry about the future, or worst case scenario thinking and see that you are creative indeed to plan for the worst. Or sometimes, I might look into your spirit and see that is consist of your imagination, but images from media, TV, reels and live-streaming has suffocated your vision to the point where indeed, your spirit is not lost, but distracted. Processing your spirit’s imaginations once again looks like stillness - nothing before your eyes (for they are the window into your spirit) except a blank page and pen. And then allow what’s within you to unfold onto the page. Honestly though, you might have to rid yourself of “false gods” these “images” that you have placed before your self for a time before the true imagination braves the light of day. That is what avoiding this work is costing you - your own spiritual direction - not a place to go, but a life to sojourn.
And finally - what would we be without our life’s experiences, aka “memories?” A pile of bills reminds me of what unprocessed memories look like. We avoid them because, well…they hurt. We don’t want to accept what happened, so we pile up bad memories with reckless experience, or we numb the body, or we busy ourselves in good work. Or perhaps, we choose to forget and become occupied with the present moment, praising ourselves for our godlike ability to “live for the moment.” This is what a cluttered body looks like - and finally, we stuff those memories in our body and believe me, our body suffers for it - it costs us our health. Processing a memory means putting it down on page; getting it out of the body. Processing a memory means returning to the source and saying “Something happened here years ago” and only if you visit this signpost will you remember. And that indeed, is the beauty of processing a memory - is that by accepting it, honoring it, it is forever a memorial and finally leaves you.
Journaling Helps Bring what is Inside Out
Can you see the pattern - air for mind, water for soul, fire for spirit and earth for body. This is where the tarot comes in - and any teaching on eleMental Health. I would advise you that if you know what you need to process - journal around that element. Find a breeze and chase it on a walk, until it stops and then write down what you believe. Go to the streams of flowing water and write until your soul aches with pleasure. Stare into the fire, whether the smallest candle or the brightest star and find the light gives you direction by reflecting the light within you. Sit underneath the ancient oak and write to leave a memory, for it can hold it for you. Journaling with the elements outside assist us to process what lies within. And a processed life is a happy one.
May your story continue.
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