Bullet Journal Your Spiritual Growth

For several years, bullet journals have been all the rage. Invented by Ryder Carroll, a bullet journal is a cross between a day planner, to-do-list, diary and sketchpad. But as Linda M. Potter explains in the November 2019 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine, the bullet journal is a tool for “navigating a path for intentional living — one that identifies and focuses on what is meaningful in your life and eliminating what is not.”

Potter admits that, like many people, she was a reluctant journal keeper. When she decided to finally give it a try, she found that she would keep a journal “as though my life (at least the quality of it) depends on it. Because, actually, it does,” she writes.

Potter suggests there’s just one rule for keeping a bullet journal: Every part of it must be handwritten. No computer entries allowed. She says, “Writing by hand is a mindfulness exercise — it draws us into the present moment and keeps us engaged.”

She offers a step-by-step guide to creating a bullet journal, with the advice to experiment with different formats, different collections and create ways to record entries. “Use your imagination,” she advises. “Write down the simple things and the hard things. Be honest and vulnerable.”

Centers for Spiritual Living

Introduces 2020 Spiritual Journal

As part of a spiritual philosophy whose mantra is “change your thinking, change your life,” you know the critical need to capture your private thoughts, your gratitude lists, your ideas for reinventing your reality. To assist you in that journey, Centers for Spiritual Living introduces an at-a-glance calendar for 2020, complete with CSL monthly and weekly themes spelled out, quotes for each week that offer inspiration and prompts for contemplation, and a two-page weekly format where you can gather your notes on weekly talks, your personal reflections and your goals.

Graphic artist and editor Holli Sharp brings her sensitivity and creativity to the endeavor, resulting in a colorful wire-bound journal you can take with you anywhere. For example, next November’s monthly theme is “Living as Compassionate Conduits,” and the theme for the first week is “Divine Authority to Choose.” For that week, Sharp chose a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson to remind us that “once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

See samples of the journal’s format and pages at www.ScienceofMind.com or purchase your copy at https://shop.csl.org.

Tell Us What You Think

The CSL leadership team and editorial team that creates Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine each month understand our sacred responsibility to honor the work of Dr. Ernest Holmes and to engage our readers with content that meets your needs. To that end, we want to know what you read first each month when your magazine arrives, what you love best, what you could do without and where you’d like to see the magazine expand.

During the month of November, we invite all our readers to complete the reader survey posted at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6D3ZNQW. All responses are completely anonymous, and we hope our readers will join us in thoughtful consideration of what we do, what we should do and what we should not.

The survey is available through November 30. Once the results are tabulated, we will share information with our readers in the March 2020 issue of the magazine. And we will continue to strive to offer you a magazine that honors our spiritual practices and principles.

A Holmes Reader on Change: Be Definite

—by Ernest Holmes

No greater good can come to you than to know that the Power already within you is the power to live, the power to create — not only to create for yourself but for others; the power to do good; the power to heal; the power to prosper. You are to realize that the Power within you is a Divine Authority; It is a dispenser of the Divine Gifts. It is a giver of life, of joy. It proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven, the harmony of the soul and the unity of all beings.

You must begin to contemplate this Power within you as answering your every need, supplying your every want, fulfilling your every wish; and you must believe that It does this immediately, right now, not tomorrow but today, because the Law of this Power within you knows no time. Therefore, when your word directs the law within you, it must always direct It for today.

You must give conscious direction to this Law and you must definitely expect It to respond. You must believe. There must be no doubt in your consciousness, for the Power, Presence and Law are one and the same thing, and the creative imagination of your own thought is the dictator of your destiny.

— Excerpted from A Holmes Reader on Change, as republished in the November 2019 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine.