By Jo Mooy
Many years ago, in the corner booth of a late-night diner, I learned that journaling is an alternative way for spirit, or the soul, to communicate directly with you.
Drive through any major road in New Jersey, and you’ll find a diner every few blocks. It’s the state with the highest number anywhere in the United States. Hearty breakfasts are served at any hour, as the diners stay open 24/7. Those breakfasts at 1 or 2 in the morning popped into my mind recently when I found an old journal that missed the big purge of dozens of other journals when I moved to Sarasota, FL.
In the 1970s, my first significant spiritual teacher was a Rosicrucian adept who held metaphysical classes in her home. I was her student for over three years, going to her home at night after work. By the end of the second year, all the other students drifted away to follow their own pursuits. I ended up the last and only student being taught by her and her close friend, who was the New Jersey Rosicrucian Lodge Master.
Classes with the two of them often moved to a diner in New Jersey. In a corner booth, in the wee hours of the morning, over omelets or homemade pies, they taught me the philosophies and mystical teachings of the Rosicrucian Order and of two other esoteric schools. Late one night, the Lodge Master predicted three “psychic” events would happen to me in rapid succession. He did not tell me what they were, but said I’d understand what they meant and would tie them together after all three happened.
He was the first person to tell me to start a journal. At the time, I thought a journal was a diary, but he explained it was beyond that. Writing in a diary was more mechanical, like recording your day’s events. Journaling, however, was an alternative way for spirit, or the soul, to communicate directly with you. It took you from the mechanical to the spiritual. The journals were to be handwritten, as the spiritual messages descend from the crown through the heart, down the arm to the pen carrying the information uninterrupted onto the page.
He suggested I take notes on our diner sessions and let them “sit for a while.” In time, greater insights would develop from those notes. He said I should pay great attention to those insights and record them in the journal without editing because those insights were elaborations on the teachings from the “true spirit that was actually teaching me.” I dutifully did as he suggested, filling 15 spiral notebooks in my time with them.
He was right in every case. The notetaking may have been mechanical, but the insights that came later elicited a much deeper spiritual understanding that was specific and unique to what I was learning. The three “psychic” events he predicted spontaneously occurred, two in meditation and one while driving my car to work. All three experiences would later become a springboard to my own metaphysical classes. I wrote in one of the diner Journals that my Rosicrucian adept teacher told me I would begin teaching at age 60. I was surprised when she said that, but it was exactly the year I began.
A life-changing event occurred 30 years after I studied with them. Attempting to erase all remnants of my previous life, I gathered up all the journals and books and took them to the town dump. As each notebook was dropped into the jaws of the giant garbage chewing arm, I released what had been. I figured I’d start over with fresh ideas and journals when I began my new life.
But somehow one journal survived by hiding itself behind some keeper books that were making the trek south. As the pages of the journal opened, there was that familiar smell of a diner in New Jersey. Reading the passages I could still “hear” the voices of the Rosicrucians. Their cadence, inflection, passion and humor were in the notes I’d taken.
Then an asterisked section caught my eye on the teachings of listening to your intuition: “I was going to CVS for a prescription, but something kept telling me—NO—take a shower first. I took the shower then called CVS. The phone kept ringing a long time. Finally someone answered the phone and asked if they could call me back. He said the store had been robbed at gunpoint 15 minutes earlier and someone had been shot. I would have been there at the same time.”
Someone once asked me if I regretted things in the past. I usually reply, “never.” But, rethinking that question after finding this journal, I regret not keeping the other 15 Journals from the diner in New Jersey. The books are gone, but their late-night teachings and the memories of my time with them are still here. They’re being written in new journals that have since replaced the old ones.
Jo Mooy has studied with many spiritual traditions over the past 40 years. The wide diversity of this training allows her to develop spiritual seminars and retreats that explore inspirational concepts, give purpose and guidance to students, and present esoteric teachings in an understandable manner. Along with Patricia Cockerill, she has guided the Women’s Meditation Circle since January 2006 where it has been honored for five years in a row as the “Favorite Meditation” group in Sarasota, FL, by Natural Awakenings Magazine. Teaching and using Sound as a retreat healing practice, Jo was certified as a Sound Healer through Jonathan Goldman’s Sound Healing Association. She writes and publishes a monthly internationally distributed e-newsletter called Spiritual Connections and is a staff writer for Spirit of Maat magazine in Sedona. For more information go to http://www.starsoundings.com or email jomooy@gmail.com.