For those of you who are not a member of, “Sigafoose Weekly,”(our weekly phone consultation group with recorded calls from Dr. James Sigafoose’s) you won’t know about my, Truth’s Journey, program. But within the group I had been talking about journalling and writing about our members fears and thoughts and well pretty much about everything that makes them, well THEM! Over the next few weeks, I will be blogging about the Truth’s Journey and I hope you come back every week to follow along. Who knows, you might even join in and find out what your TRUTH’S are.
Truth’s Journey
All right, I’ve been talking around it, but now I’m about to lay out a path to using this process, and we’re going to go step by step through the stages of the Truth’s Journey. I’ll take side trips from time to time, but it’s going to be here. Before I begin, understand that this is not some kind of cookie-cutter pattern. The ten steps of the Truth’s Journey are like the 88 keys of a piano. You don’t play each of them every time with equal emphasis. But by understanding what each step represents, it is easy to decide how and when to use them.
Keep a journal, in which you record the events and emotions of the day. Ask yourself how the dominant patterns of the day relate to the stage of the Truth’s Journey we are discussing.
Let’s get going!
1) You are confronted with a challenge
What is your steady-state existence? What do you want? What do you NEED? (And only in a fairly evolved person will these two be the same.) What is the gap between want and need? Have you accepted responsibility for your existence? We must know, there is no more excuse for blaming society, parents, or anything else. These things may be problematic, but EVERYONE has a painful history. Life doesn’t care. Either you use these things as motivations, or you are swept into the Vortex of diminished expectations and results and impact on those you love. When you wear your dysfunction and pain like a badge of honor, people stop listening.
And this is where your journal comes in. Truth be told? I don’t care if you’re not a writer. That’s an excuse not to reach out to the world. Keep a journal anyway. Write in it every day, and quickly. After a few months, start reading back through it. If you’ve written enough, the truth will begin to emerge: it is hard to sustain a lie, even an existential lie. Note that this blog functions as my journal.
Note how close I come to blaming social politics for disappointments in my life. DAMNED close. I manage to skirt it, most of the time, but it is clear I have damage there, and it’s my responsibility to heal it. Yes, there are social problems. No, it makes no difference. Either I will parent my emotions, write my thoughts, strengthen my body, and be an adult human being, or I will be a child-blaming fate for my pain. Someone has to be a grown-up, or we are all in grave danger. I choose to be one of the adults, regardless of the price in honesty.
If you’re honest, your journal will be your best source of understanding the human condition. As you go through it, think of the different steps of the Truth’s Journey, and how it applies to your life on that particular day. What have you failed to take full responsibility for? Are you still blaming parents/society? Have you accepted responsibility for your physical body, career, and relationships? Are they healthy? (And you can generally tell if they are healthy by asking yourself if you would want your own children to live that way)
The challenge is to master your life, to be a free, autonomous, fully alive and awakened adult male or female of the species. Do you, or do you not accept the challenge? Anyone who does, regardless of where they are on the path, is my brother or sister. Period.
What do you need to move forward? Begin to pay the price. What do you need to grow to the next level? Your story will be this very challenge.
