In this six-and-one-half-hour audio course on six CDs, Christina Baldwin (Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest) explores the manifold benefits that come from personal writing, group process, and spirituality. She was one of the early advocates of journal writing and over the past 30 years has led retreats, workshops, and seminars on this creative endeavor. The 12 sessions here are filled with practical suggestions, tips, and exercises that will enable you to tap into the meanings and messages inherent in your everyday experiences. A special treat are twelve cards that reprint the most inspiring exercises from each session, along with a Spiral of Experience overview of the structure of the course.
Baldwin begins with "Why We Write" and alludes to the benefits of taking stock of our lives and making our life journey as fully conscious as we can. The Lifelines for this session include ideas on flow writing, sending yourself a letter, and making a collage of the day.
As we put words on a page, we join with others who down through the ages have tried to know themselves better and to communicate with others by personal writing. This is the focus of session two. Baldwin talks about the survival's tale, the story of integration, and the story of insight and meaning on session three, which also includes suggestions on creating your own lifeline. This is followed by a chance to work with resistances to writing and dealing with shadow elements of your personality.
Session five covers the challenges of becoming an embodied writer and writing as a sensual experience. Sessions six and seven deal with writing in our times: creatively dealing with tension and handling the hinge of history. Baldwin next takes a look at Godalogues (dialogues written between your self and your soul) and rituals for gratitude. Session nine deals with making the most of crises and difficult times when we try to make sense of what is happening to us and around us.
The last three sessions revolve around loving people on the page, living with writing and leaving a legacy, and the story as what makes us human: "Story is a round space in which the ear and the tongue, together, create the magic. Write like heaven. All will be well." For more on Baldwin's work, visit www.peerspirit.com.
