Journaling As A Spiritual Tool

In this tender and reflective talk, Zemirah shares how journaling has become a lifelong spiritual companion—a space to slow down, listen deeply, and meet herself with honesty and compassion. This is not about recording a perfect story. It’s about revealing the truth, making space for the soul to speak, and remembering who we are beneath our routines and roles.

Transcript

So yesterday happened to be a full moon.

I don't know when you'll be watching this,

But sometimes,

I don't know if you've experienced this,

Sometimes around a full moon,

I will have some trouble sleeping.

And I'll wake up,

It's usually around 3 a.

M.

,

And it follows a little bit of a pattern,

But I generally wake at the same time,

Around 3 a.

M.

,

And I'm up for a couple of hours in this really silent,

Deep,

Focused time.

And there's something that I found that's just really mysterious about that 3 a.

M.

Hour,

You know,

That thin space before dawn when the world is really hushed and there's not many distractions around,

And the veil between our everyday life and the deeper rhythms of the soul-level life seems especially transparent.

And for me,

Those hours have become an invitation.

They've become a threshold into inner stillness,

This sacred pause that is gifted to me in the middle of the night.

And whereas in the past,

I would kind of freak out,

Oh my gosh,

I'm not gonna get any sleep,

And I'm gonna wake up tired,

And now I have embraced this as almost a gift.

It's this gift that comes in the night,

And it's time to just be with myself,

Be with God.

And in that quiet,

I have also turned to journaling.

And journaling has been a spiritual tool for me.

I started journaling when I was nine years old.

I lived on a farm in Illinois in the middle of the countryside.

There was a lot of quiet.

I had a forest behind my house.

But I always picked,

I was drawn to journal.

And my first journal was one of those little,

Tiny,

Little yellow books,

I remember.

And it had the little lock on it,

Like a diary.

And I would fill that up.

And the lines were so small that I had this stack of little,

Almost like sticky notes,

But they didn't have sticky in those.

Maybe they did,

But I didn't have sticky to them in those days.

And I would take that little block of colored paper,

And I would continue writing.

And so what would happen is that by the time I was done with that little journal,

It would hardly even close.

It was triple the size.

But this journaling,

This journaling that I've started at 3 a.

M.

Is not so much about completing a diary.

I mean,

Yes,

Sometimes I'll write stuff about my day.

But it has become more of a deeper spiritual practice,

A way to meet myself honestly,

To meet myself with a gentleness,

To meet myself with this sense of wholeness,

This place where the pen,

When I pick up the pen in my hand and I just listen in the stillness,

The whole world still being asleep,

I can reach beyond the noise of daily life,

The noise of the surface of my life.

And that's when I feel that I can hear what my soul might be whispering.

There's no pressure in this time to be eloquent.

The pages of my journal don't demand perfection.

You can see here that they're just,

I always get a blank journal because I write all over the place.

And sometimes I will even place stickers or a picture or something like a deity or something that's meaningful to me.

And there's a place in the back of my journal where I keep meditation cards.

And these are the cards,

Like I have one of the Medicine Buddha in here.

I have one of the 19th Tara and known as Satata Patra and the White Parasol Tara,

Those that has become meaningful to me in my life.

And so I keep these meditation tools in the back of my journal so that they're handy for me while I am doing my journal time.

And there's this place when I connect with my journal that doesn't need me to be perfect,

Doesn't need it to all be written like it's gonna be the next bestseller.

It's that spaciousness where presence begins to bubble forth and everything else falls away.

And it's these times when I can truly feel connected to the presence of God.

In those quiet hours,

Journaling becomes a form of sacred witnessing.

And I write not to record but more to reveal to myself.

So I begin to ask myself questions and I invite you to maybe consider doing the same.

There are questions like,

What is stirring in me that I haven't put a name to yet?

What am I afraid of that longs to be met with a sense of compassion?

And things like,

Where is the divine moving in my life?

And even if I can't see the whole path,

Where is the divine calling me right now?

And I don't push to answer.

I just sometimes write the question and sit with it.

Sometimes I ramble on like stream of consciousness writing.

And sometimes I say nothing at all.

Sometimes I really don't.

And I'll just sit there with my journal in front of me and I'll make a cup of tea and I will just allow that time to be a time of balm for my soul.

And journaling in this way,

When I do journal becomes a dialogue in a sense with the divine.

A place where my soul and spirit can commune through the pen,

The writing on the page and with an honest voice.

And sometimes it becomes a prayer.

Sometimes it becomes a meditation.

But it's about remembering who I am beneath the roles,

Beneath routines,

Beneath the voices that are all around me throughout my days.

And I wonder that if you too might want to invite this space the beauty of journaling at 3 a.

M.

Is that time seems to stretch.

It's like two hours will go by.

I'll look at the clock and I'll be like,

It's 5 a.

M.

Already.

And it feels like this eternity of spaciousness.

So there's no urgency,

No demands,

Just that raw,

Quiet intimacy of being present with right where I sit,

Right where I am.

And I absolutely invite you to consider finding a time when the world is asleep that maybe you want to sit in silence,

You want to explore and see what wants to bubble forth from your own soul,

What wants to bubble up in your own communion with spirit.

And if you decide to take up journaling,

I just wanna say that for me,

Since I've been doing it since I was nine years old and it has been a really cornerstone of my own spiritual practice,

My own ability to regulate the story of my life,

Sometimes on paper and sometimes on paper,

I feel in communion with the divine.

Over time,

Sometimes the pages become archives,

Places where the shadows that I'm facing in my life become more seen,

More collected,

They're held.

Insights are born out of the pages of my journal and in rare instances,

Sometimes a breakthrough emerges.

But I will say that the thread that has interconnected my journaling throughout the years has been absolutely a thread of grace,

Has been a thread of the divine,

Has been a thread of spirit,

Has been a thread of inspiration.

And sometimes even years later,

I can see the evidence of spirit at work in my life in times where I couldn't see it maybe when I was writing it on the page.

But years later,

I see how with spirit,

I've stitched together this tapestry.

That is my life and I believe it's true for all of us.

So now when I look back,

Sometimes it's very clear and this luminous tapestry is so apparent.

It's something that I really cherish and value this ability to see and to,

I think for me,

It raises up a deeper sense of gratitude for the path and the way that the path has meandered and continues to meander in my life.

So I invite yourself,

The next time maybe you find yourself awake in the stillness of the early hours,

Perhaps it's a different perspective.

It's not necessarily an inconvenience,

But maybe it's more of a holy invitation.

So light a candle,

Brew some tea for yourself,

And perhaps even open a journal and let the quiet be this sanctuary.

Let your pen be an instrument of communication,

Perhaps even an instrument of prayer.

But most of all,

Perhaps let it be a space where you get to be seen and felt by you and by spirit,

By the divine.

I think that the silence speaks volumes in our life.

So we'll just close with a moment of prayer.

So we gather here together to recognize that infinite presence of the divine right here,

All around us,

And knowing that one of the languages of the divine is that deep sense of silence.

And so we open our hearts,

We open our minds to sense that silence right here.

And here in that stillness,

What I know is that each one of us is an emanation of the divine.

The light of the divine shines so brightly through each of our hearts.

Each one of us,

A divine spark,

Shines so brightly from within.

And in the stillness,

We allow ourselves to allow that divine spark to come to the forefront of our awareness right here in this moment.

And so what I know to be true is that when we sit in the stillness,

We can touch that sense of God's presence right here,

The presence of spirit right where we are.

And in that touching,

We open to a greater sense of contentment,

A greater sense of gratitude,

A greater sense of wholeness,

A greater sense of health,

A greater sense of abundance.

And so in the spiritual practice that we have explored today,

Perhaps we recognize the presence of spirit that flows through that stillness.

And when we show up to be in that,

To touch that place,

All of the beauty and the harmony and the peace and the serenity flows out from within.

And so what I know is that this peace is a peace that is beyond our understanding,

But is always present.

And so I give thanks for the presence of that deep serenity,

The presence of peace within stillness,

Knowing that it is the very truth of our being.

And it's with that gratitude,

I close this prayer,

Just releasing it into infinite source,

That love and law,

That alchemy,

Feeling and knowing that it is manifest.

I say,

Thank you,

Spirit.

And so it is.