Writing is the process of recording thoughts passing through your mind onto a piece of paper or a computer screen. Casual reflective writing, such as in a journal, provides the outlet for endless ideas, feelings, opinions, and musings that continuously flow through both our conscious and subconscious minds. Sometimes we surprise ourselves by fishing out the innermost secrets of our deep subconscious and reeling out feelings, ideas and thoughts cast down by our conscious mind. These are the times when we find self-discovery and healing in our writing.

From my personal experience, I have found that relaxed reflective writing is the best way to acquire these gifts of self-discovery and healing. Whenever I feel great distress, enormous elation, deep depression, or a bewildering uncertainty, I record these feelings into my journal with informal language and little attention to grammar but with complete honesty. On those pages I captured the fleeting emotions that would otherwise rush forward and disappear forever into the rapids of forgetfulness. They are frozen into ice blocks of memories, from my first crush, biggest embarrassment, grandest achievement, first kiss, first break-up, up to my first impressions of college. The words never melt away; they just keep bobbing up and down along the river of thoughts. The colorful and diverse ideas take vivid forms and odd shapes, swimming aimlessly and waiting to be tempted by the right bait. Little details find their way into the sea, filling up little notches of space.

The gifts however, are not fully received until I find my self in a calm stable mood and immerse myself into this sea. I wade gently past the schools of trivial details and admire the diversity of creatures. If I see something I particularly like, I reach in and scoop it out. Occasionally I will find a wonderful application for it and place it into that new environment.

Progressively, I make my way over to rougher waters. Here I am more cautious because the emotional tides are stronger and it takes more energy just to stay afloat. Memory ice blocks sometimes appear without warning and hit with immense strength, knocking all the breath out of you. The warmer memories I openly embrace because they buoy me up and enliven me so that I can continue on cutting the tides.

Others tend to be very slippery; especially those with profound insights that I find very hard to fully comprehend. It takes diligence and many tries to finally hold it firmly in your grasp. The struggle is well worth it because by seeing it from an external and less emotional aspect, I can understand my inner nature a little better through a more objective view. I get a glimpse of a part of me that I had never seen before because I was too emotionally involved and my attention scattered around to several simultaneous happenings. Sometimes it’s an aspect of me that comes and goes and I never realize it until I really come face to face with it.

The most important yet dangerous of all are the blocks saturated with pain and anguish. They are so cold that they burn to the touch. These memories do not bob along the surface of the water lightly like those happy memories; instead they rise to only to the tip of the water surface with their heavy burdens of confusion, hurt feelings, long-lasting grudges, and deep traces of guilt.

These painful ice blocks are extremely hard to handle and seriously injure when they hurtle themselves at me without warning. First, I temper the anguish and rub out traces of any guilt or grudges with the soothing waters of forgiveness. Next, I sort out the maze of feelings and absolving the confusion. Lastly, I need to fill in those cracks left behind by the hurt feelings by implementing wisdom I have acquired since this particular incident.

When my energy runs out, I make my way out of the sea and return through the gateway back into the realities of life, leaving enough in the waters for future explorations.