Journaling can make a difference in your life, and Intensive Journaling, ala Dr. Ira Progoff, adds an exciting new dimension.

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The Monthly Aspectarian: Kelly, Dr. Ira Progoff was the person who created the Progoff Intensive Journaling method; please talk a little about him.

Kelley Williams: Dr. Progoff was a depth psychologist and sociologist, social historian and philosopher with a great interest in theology. He did see patients and began working with them using a journal method and found it was so helpful that he expanded it and began to use a structured journal in workshops back in the '50s.

He was an associate of Carl Jung. The way he got to know Carl Jung was that his Ph.D. dissertation was on the importance of Jung's work, "Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning," which he wrote back in 1953. It was published, and someone sent it to Jung, who was so interested Progoff's ideas that he invited Progoff to come to Switzerland as a Bollingen Fellow and work with him. They worked together for a couple of years until Jung's death.

Progoff also studied with the Zen Master D.T. Suzuki who had written the key book on Zen Buddhism for the Western audience. The thinking and practices of these two great teachers were very important to Progoff and they underlie and inform the intensive journal method.

TMA: I've always thought that journaling could be useful over time, at the least to be able to look at the past for lessons learned and perhaps forgotten. But the type of journaling you're talking about is very different.

KW: It's different in that its a structured journal. It has 26 different sections, so there is a certain amount of skill in learning to work from one section to the other.

TMA: This is more than a diary.

KW: It is far more than a diary although many people start their work keeping a personal journal as I certainly did. I had kept a personal journal since I was in high school. What Progoff found was that personal journals have a tendency to become rather repetitious. I certainly found that was true, and did not often go back and read what I'd written in the past, I just kept writing and sometimes would stay stuck in the same place.

Progoff felt that if we had sections of the journal that we could work from, back and forth, one to the other, it would get us unstuck, in a sense, and help us to move forward rather than just keep writing about the same things again and again in the same way. For example, we work in what he called the dialogue dimension where we enter into a kind of dialogue script with persons, with our work, with society. We do a dialogue with the body, we do a dialogue with the events and situations of our lives. But we also deal with dreams and imagery in the context of the journal. We keep a life history log and look at the events of our life--our outer as well as inner life.

TMA: When you say dialogue with them, you're giving these areas, these aspects of the self, a voice?

KW: That's right. We work just as if we were writing a play script. I speak and then my body speaks, for example. Or the person with whom I'm doing a dialogue speaks. That would be the most familiar to people who have been to a play or have read play scripts.

TMA: People dialogue in their minds all the time.

KW: That's right. We dialogue with ourselves all the time; we have voices in our heads telling us certain things. Sometimes there's a punishing voice, and what we would do is a dialogue with that punishing voice and bring it out from standing behind us sort of whispering in our ear. Bring it around in front, and say, "Well, that's an interesting point of view that you have. Where did you get that idea?" We hear that voice speaking to us and maybe saying you don't deserve good things. We prepare to do this work by deepening our level of awareness and using certain very simple techniques just for quieting ourselves so that we can write in a very deep level of awareness. People often get some very interesting surprises.

TMA: What kind of surprise might somebody might get?

KW: Oftentimes we have wisdom that we didn't realize that we had. For instance, people in a workshop setting will be given the opportunity, although no one is required, to read aloud. In a workshop, we have maybe twenty or thirty people working in their journals in the silence, but at certain points we'll open the floor and give people an opportunity to read aloud if they choose. Sometimes a person will read a dialogue, for example, with a wisdom figure, and we're asked to identify people that embody wisdom for us and do a dialogue with that wisdom figure. Often the wisdom figure will speak to us in the most insightful and amazing way and tell us things that we didn't realize we knew. Yet here we are writing this dialogue.

In a journaling workshop I once did a dialogue with a teacher who spoke to me about a problem I had in her class that made it perfectly clear why I had the problem. Although all these years I had not really realized what that problem was, when she spoke to me in the dialogue, she was able to say to me, "Well, here's why you have this struggle." With her voice came something that seemed like a huge discovery, and a truth that came to me that helped me to understand something about my life that I had not realized before.

TMA: With our ability to tap into what some call the superconscious or higher mind, almost any information should be available to us.

KW: That has been proven to me over and over in this work, and it's why I keep coming back to it. Dr. Progoff calls it the magnitude of the human spirit. He said that our conscious mind, the self that we feel is the one that is me, my conscious ego self, is only a drop in the bucket. It's just such a small part of who I am.

TMA: One drop in the ocean.

KW: A drop in the ocean, truly. What has come to me, and what I hear in the work of people in this process, is that when we open ourselves to these many dimensions, we uncover capacities and gifts and wisdom that we have but sometimes don't have access to on a daily basis. Yet in the quiet of the workshop, working deeply as we do in the method, things come to us that are tremendous riches and treasures of understanding.

Another aspect of this is that we have the sense that we are living our lives. So often we're saying to our lives, this is what I expect you to be, this is what I'm requiring of you. But in this method, we give our lives the opportunity to speak to us about what they're seeking to become. Often, what our lives are seeking to become is so much richer and so much grander, and have so much more to offer than what we would ask of them.

TMA: I know I am trying to get out of my way.

KW: That's right. And this is an opportunity for us to listen to our lives and give them the opportunity to speak to us about what they're asking. To, as you say, get out of the way. Our ego self thinks it knows everything, that it has everything defined.

When I think of what I am, I see it's been defined by my schoolmates and my school experiences and my workplace and my friends and family. But that isn't the whole story. What I have discovered through this journaling method is much more of the whole story. There is always more unfolding. My life has opened up in really amazing ways.

TMA: What are some of the standout things that have happened for you as you've done this work?

KW: Probably the first thing is that I discovered an inner life. Even though I was raised in a church, my spiritual and religious life had lost a lot of the energy and meaning that I needed from that aspect of my life. My work in the journal really opened up my spiritual life to me, my inner life, my sense of connection to something larger than personal. It has given me a way of experiencing my spiritual journey in a way that I don't think I could have done in another way.

It also has given me access to sources of creativity. I am a poet and a novelist. I now have a way through the journal methods of accessing creative sources. A few years ago I looked through my poems and found the keepers ... you know, the ones that really had some energy to them. I realized that almost every one of them had come out of my experience of working with imagery in the journal method in workshops and my ongoing work with the method. We don't only work in workshops, we also work on our own. The point of going to the workshop is to learn how to use the method so that we can work on our own.

TMA: There are 26 sections of the journal? This might seem daunting to some people.

KW: It might seem that way, but in actual experience, the way that you encounter the 26 sections the first time would be in a journal workshop. You would be simply led through the journal in a very gentle and organic way. As a journal consultant, I take you from section to section of the journal. You would be introduced to all of the sections and their different uses.

TMA: Describe the first handful of steps that you take people through in the workshop.

KW: The first five minutes are just simply quieting ourselves and having a feeling of where am I now in life. How does it feel to be where I am in my life at this point? We get a sense of how our lives feel to us. Then we begin what is called the period log, which is simply drawing together a number of different aspects of the present period of our life. We have half a dozen log sections where we gather together information--inner and outer facts of our life.

In the period log we gather together a list of the names of people who are important to us at this point and the work projects we are engaged in. We look at our spiritual lives and where we are. Is it a time of questioning, a time of growing faith or of loss of faith? We look at our physical life and what our body is experiencing. What decisions have we made in this present period? We look at our wise teachers, where we turn for wisdom. Are we facing any situations or a historic event that has impacted our lives? We look at our dream life. We spend maybe half an hour just gathering together the data of the present period.

Then we move to another section that is called the stepping stones, where we look at the eight or ten or twelve events or pivotal points in our life, from the first one, I was born, to the present time. They would be the way that we would track our life.

TMA: If a person has had a complicated life, they may have many of these steps.

KW: Yes, but we try to limit them to eight or ten or twelve just to give us a selectivity so that we can follow the stepping stones of our life to the present time. The idea is to get the whole sweep of our lives from that earliest point, I was born, through the important events or occurrences. Then we choose one of them, and we describe them in a phrase or a word or just a very brief way. Then we go back into one of those earlier ones, and we do the same thing we did with the period log--in the sense of looking at the cast of characters, who were the relationships that were important, the work projects then, self-image, spiritual life, body and wise teachers. All the things that we looked at in the present, we look at in earlier times.

I should also say that we look at the period image, which is to try to find a way of expressing the present period with imagery in some metaphoric or symbolic way. I don't give people examples but you might say, My life in this period is like", or It's as if I were" and try to see if you can get an image that would have meaning for you. Recently the image of the present period for me is like a saturated sponge. My life is so full that until I squeeze some of the water out, it can't absorb anything more.

TMA: What if somebody's image would be the wolf at the door or something like that? How is this used to positively change problems in people's lives?

KW: What we try to do is come to any imagery that stirs in us without judging it as being good or bad. We have ways of working with imagery that help us to expand upon that. We look at that image, the wolf at the door, which might feel negative, and try not to judge it as a negative image.

TMA: That could be difficult not to take negatively.

KW: That's right. But somehow, just stating it and seeing it in that way would give us a starting point. Then as we work through, we might hold that image and work through it in many other sections of the journal. We might ask, to what in my life is this image of the wolf at the door drawing my attention? Or is there something that my life seems to be asking of me? What is the next step, what do I need to do? As we work through the various sections of the journal, we might do a dialogue with the wolf. The wolf would be treated like a wisdom figure, even though it might seem frightening or negative, we would treat it like it has something to say to us about our life. We might ask, why have you come? Why are you at the door? Are you asking something of me?

TMA: I am reminded of Fritz Perls. He recommended giving voice to things in dreams that were threatening, or otherwise important.

KW: I was doing some work in a journal and a very negative image came to me. In fact, it was a Nazi woman. So I engaged her in dialogue as I worked. The effect of doing that, of bringing the frightening aspect into consciousness, is that we bring it from behind us to around in front. If you can engage it in dialogue, the first thing that you realize is it's not me, and it's not the whole story, it's not everything that I am. It may be a part of me, but it is not everything in me. If you can keep it talking, the way that we work, these beings will say the most amazing things to us. Even though it sounds very difficult, when people actually do it, it flows in the most surprising and amazing way. If you are willing to allow yourself to just be there with your journal open and you say to the wolf, "Well, here you are, you came to me as an image and I need to speak with you because I'm feeling a little uneasy. I had been hoping for a different kind of image and you're kind of frightening to me. Why are you here?"

TMA: Or, "Does anybody have a rifle?"

[laughter]

KW: At the end of maybe a half-hour of writing in the quiet of the group, I might say, "The floor is now open. Would anybody care to read?" Somebody might say, "I think I might like to read." You would read not for anyone else's benefit, just your own, to hear yourself reading because there is something that happens in hearing yourself read it aloud that sometimes will surprise you even further. Even if you were writing rather dispassionately in the journal, as you read it back, emotion is stirred, sometimes delight, sometimes tears come, sometimes this great strength. Sometimes the voice speaking to you in the dialogue, the other voice, will be very assured and have a lot more strength and ability to see the truth, to cut through a lot of confusion and get right to the point. It will speak to you in a way that is quite affirming and encouraging. Somebody will read and their voice will be really strong and I'll say, "What stirs in you as you hear yourself read that?" My role would never be to interpret what someone else reads. However we make sense of our work comes from our own experience. Nobody interprets to us; we have a strict protocol about not interpreting or commenting on what anyone else would read. You don't comment or say," That was beautiful" or "What I hear you saying is", or "I hear a lot of anger." That would not happen.

I would say, "What stirs in you?" and the person might say, "I'm so surprised at how much assurance that voice has."

TMA: This seems like a very powerful technique for achieving an integration of our inner and outer selves.

KW: It is a wonderful way of doing that. That is the way we work, always to say we work with our inner life and then our outer life and look at how they compare. At the beginning we do the period log then we do the period image. Then I say, "Read what you've written in both of these sections and see if they contradict one another or whether they seem to be in sympathy with one another, harmonious." People will sometimes say, "Well that's interesting because my outer life seems very much this way and yet this imagery was very affirming." There is an integrating aspect that comes as we see what's happening in our inner lives and see what's happening in our outer lives.

At the end of the workshop there is a section called "Now the Open Moment" where we've been together for two days, perhaps, and we're ready to go back out into ordinary time. We've been in sacred time or kairos time, and we're going back to clock time, chronos time, so we need to sort of draw together what's happened. We sit in quietness for a few minutes, and without intellectually analyzing what's happened, we just allow something new to come up, some image that we can take with us out into the world.

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Progoff Intensive Journaling workshops are ongoing all over the United States and other countries as well. The program is administered by Dialogue House in New York, 800/221-5844, and more information is available on their website, www.intensivejournal.org

Kelley Williams will be giving a Progoff Intensive Journaling program at the Jung Institute at 1567 Maple Avenue in Evanston, IL (registrar ext. 226),

July 20-21. For more information, call 847-475-4848.

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