Tim Sullivan was recently featured in our IAJW Spotlight Interview.  He shared how he engages a specific inquiry process and then engages with journal writing to explore new insights and awareness.

Tim says:

Frequently, when I journal about a session, as I recall the experience I can re-enter the states as experienced and new realizations or aspects can arise, other aspects deepen. The process of putting the experiences into words evokes more experience. The Logos!!

Here’s a sample of journaling that followed an inquiry session (please note this is an unedited journal entry).

Autonomous Heart Session

… a feeling, arising in the heart, of yearning, very intense longing, almost painful. As I tried to stay with it the feelings/sensations intensified and I began to see/feel the longing as a kind of flow moving through my heart from back to front – a ribbon of colored light and energy piercing my heart from behind, extending way back into limitless before-time, moving through and out my chest, extending forward into a future-time/space. I perceived this ribbon as an energetic movement pulling at my heart, tugging almost; also, as a kind of dimension, mysterious and yet with a definite forward movement.

The longing I felt was for becoming one with that movement, that flow into an unknown and exciting unfoldment. Yet the painfulness, as I focused on that, revealed that there was an aspect of me resisting that flow, that forward movement. The ribbon of liquid colored light had an insistence or force within the movement but was twisted, producing a torque I could feel energetically. This revealed more of the part of me that was resisting; this part became more visible and I could feel its nature. It was the ‘me’ that was strongly resisting. I could feel its truculent determination to just resist. And within that I began to feel a concentrated mass of summed-up resignation, sorrow, bitterness, disappointment, despair, sadness, hopelessness about life, the future and any possibility of success, liveliness or joy – in short, this mass was the antithesis of life, a concentration massed into a solid, flattened splatter of burnt, frozen, grey metal. Yet, sensing it more deeply, it was now more than just an inert solid. There was an energetic willfull quality to this ‘one who resists’, which I saw now as a stubborn, teary will-to-be but only by saying ‘no’. And as I became aware of this energetic willfullness I could sense the aliveness within this ‘me’. I felt more affinity, more liking toward ‘him’. As I felt more of the aliveness and liking, I became more fluid, more like a medium containing all these qualities, feelings, and feeling more the medium itself I became more relaxed and allowing.

While at the heart region I felt large sections of a dark mass appearing. The texture changed and the dark mass looked more like liquorish, black and brown, chewy. I was becoming aware of what it tasted like. As I sensed into allowing the taste to become more present I had the intuition or sense that this particular taste quality was important to recognize, for it was revealing or about to reveal something important about the nature of my heart and thus truly being myself. I became more quiet, relaxed, opening to the emerging realization. Then I knew.

The taste of sweetness while slightly astringent in a sense, was anise. The taste of liquorice revealing the nature of my heart. The heart that gives away sweetness, inviting the universe to savour that sweetness but also revealing the distinct ‘upright’ sense of anise, engendering a sense of ‘take notice of this’. The liquorice-flavoured heart, unique, singular and in a certain way standing out, revealing itself in its autonomy, and as my own.

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About the Author:  Tim Sullivan is a journal writer, artist and expressionist painter.  He lives in North Vancouver, BC, Canada where he writes often.  You can see Tim’s art on his website at https://www.timosullivansart.me