NOTE: The following information and instructions are revisions of information from At a Journal Workshop: The Basic Text and Guide for Using the Intensive Journal Process by Ira Progoff, published by Dialogue House Library, New York, NY, 1975.
Progoff’s Intensive Journal is a way you can explore your past as it relates to the present. This exploration involves using both the conscious, rational mind and the nonrational, intuitive mind. The basic writing for the Intensive Journal involves preparatory work that leads to writing dialogues with persons and events/concepts. There are many other writing exercises, but these are the basics. According to Ira Progoff each person has his or her own, unique evolutionary process. His Intensive Journal is a way to cooperate with this process.
Metaphors may help explain the need, to begin with, with the preliminary exercises — Period Log, Period Image, Life Steppingstones and Steppingstone Period/Life History Log. Gardening is one of them. One must prepare a garden by breaking up the soil to make it fertile ground for new growth. The beginning writing exercises are intended to accomplish this. A computer is another. A computer can store vast amounts of information, but only a portion of that is available for active use — Random Access Memory or RAM. When RAM is increased, more information is available and more work can get done more quickly. Our minds, like computers, contain far more information than is available in consciousness. The basic journal exercises increase the amount of conscious information.
Things to remember:
- Label and date all your journal entries with the month, day, and year.
- Don’t destroy what you write. It might not seem to make much sense today, but next week or next month or next year it may prove to be very valuable. Your journal can be a charting of your experiences in the medical sense of the word. Cumulative entries can show patterns that may help you understand yourself better or provide suggestions for writing in other sections of the journal.
- Let your writing happen. Let it flow without criticism or censorship. A disorganized, rambling entry is often more valuable in the insights it makes available than one that resembles a literary masterpiece.
- File your journal entries. As you accumulate different types of journal entries, file them in the appropriate section of your journal or make notes referencing and cross-referencing entries to different sections. Where you write something is not as important as that it gets written. Where it’s filed is less important than being able to find it when you need it.
Current Time Log
The Current time Log allows us to discover where we are in our growth process now. It should cover a period of time that is more than last month. It usually covers three to six months or longer. If you haven’t done much interior work, the Period Log may cover several years. (See Addendum for a Period Log Meditation)
To write in the Log:
- Sit in silence allowing your mind to travel back over this period in your life. Let it take shape within you.
- Focus more specifically on the contents of this recent period and write about them. Write the memories and facts of your experiences without judgment and without censorship. Record the specific contents but not the details of this period. This is an outline picture and an overview of this recent time in your life. Write simply and briefly.
- Questions to help your writing:
- When did this period start? Is there a particular event associated with this period?
- What memories do you have of this period?
- Friendships: loving, spiritual, and/or physical?
- Relationships?
- Your work – the way you spent your time?
- Social activities?
- Physical illness?
- Inner experiences: spiritual, artistic, extrasensory, dreams?
- Success or failures?
- Good luck or misfortune?
- Strange, uncanny events or coincidences?
- Begin your writing with: “This time that I’m living in began when…”
- Conclude your entry with: “This time that I’m living in feels like…”
- When you’ve finished writing the Log, examine your feelings about what you’ve written. Are you comfortable with it? Does it feel complete? Record your answers to these questions at the end of the Period Log Entry.
- Read it aloud to yourself. Does this change your experience of what you’ve written? Record your reaction.
Current time Twilight Image
The Period Log primarily used your rational mind to focus on the conscious thoughts and memories of the “now” of your life. The Period Image uses the nonrational mind to do the same thing.
(Progoff records this journal entry in a separate log called the Twilight Imagery Log. )
Twilight imaging allows access to the nonrational and the intuitive. The twilight state is that place between waking and sleeping. It happens just before you drift off to sleep. It also happens during those times we’ve put ourselves on “automatic pilot.” We’re performing some routine task, like driving or washing dishes or shaving and our minds are a million miles away. We finish our task but don’t remember doing it.
While we speak of “twilight imaging,” the experience may not be an image. It could be sound, a touch, a sensation, a fragrance, or any other type of experience. Each of us has our own unique inner language of metaphor and symbol. Whatever comes to you in whatever form is your “twilight imagery.”
Allow the experience to just happen. Let go of control of your mind, and allow whatever happens to flow without censorship or direction.
When working alone:
- Reread your Current time Log entry. Read it aloud if possible.
- Sit in silence. Relax and just be with yourself.
- Allow the experience to just happen without censorship, control, or direction.
- Record your experiences when you are ready.
- Reread what you’ve written. Read it aloud if possible.
Co-relation – go back to the original Current time section Answer and record the following questions: How does your twilight imagery experience relate to the Current time Log? Does it relate? Is it parallel? Opposite? Seemingly unrelated?
Life Markings or Steppingstones
The purpose of Life Markings is to “loosen the soil” of our lives to give us access to life events that we may have been too pressured to truly experience at the time they were happening and to get acquainted or reacquainted with who we are and from where we’ve come. Progoff uses a mountain climbing metaphor: Steppingstones as like “markings’ that a mountain climber makes. They outline the route that he’s taken — sometimes up, sometimes down — to get from one place to another.
Life Markings are significant events that mark a period of time in our lives and set the theme for that period. The Life Markings are like chapter titles. They are the chapter titles you would use if you were to write your autobiography now. The next time you record Life Steppingstones will be from a different “now,” and may reflect different themes and patterns.
You should have no fewer than 8 and no more than 16 steppingstones; 10 to 12 are recommended. The limit on the number is to encourage you to see patterns and cycles in your life rather than a series or list of significant events. The limit helps us to see the relationships between the various events of our lives.
As you list your Life Steppingstones, specific memories of events associated with a steppingstone may come to mind. Note them briefly under that steppingstone as if they were subheadings within that chapter.
The steppingstones may not come to mind in chronological order. Write them down as they present themselves. When your list of steppingstones is complete, you can number them appropriately..
Outline of instructions for Life Markings or Steppingstones:
- Sit in silence passively reflecting over the course of your life.
- Write the steppingstones as they come to mind including specific memories associated with each as a subheading.
- Number the steppingstones in chronological order if they need to be.
- Read them to yourself in chronological order — the steppingstones only, without the subheadings. Read them aloud if possible.
- Record your reactions to reading the steppingstones.