History of Eden Journal and a Vision for the Future

Today I want to share a little history of Eden Journal and a vision for the future.

Before Eden Journal got started I spent some time brainstorming a name for the blog.  I knew that the name would be important, but I didn’t want to be tied into something too specific.  I had an idea of what I wanted to blog about, but I wanted some room to shift focus without having to change the name of the blog.

In the Beginning

I’m big on using my intuition, and during a brainstorming session, and in the time that followed, the word Eden kept coming to the front of my mind.  I didn’t have a good reason for using that word, other than it’s what felt right.  My impression of Eden is that of a paradise, a happy place full of leafy green plants, grassy fields, cool spring fed streams, and washed in the warm glow of the sun.  It is a happy thought for me, and I settled on that as part of the name.  The term Eden is also flexible enough to be used in a variety of contexts.

I was certain that Eden was a good name, but it needed a second term to accompany it.  Something equally as flexible, but having some authority.  I combined some brainstorming with a domain name search to figure out what worked and what was available with a dot com domain.  As you know, I settled on the word Journal.  It seemed to fit since I hoped to journal some of my life lessons to share with my readers.  The term journal was also flexible enough to fit if I chose to change direction a bit, as it’s a common term for a news site, newspaper, or periodical.

The crafting of the name Eden Journal was a combination of intuition, common sense, brainstorming, and dot com domain name searching.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure why that was the right name.  It felt right though, so I went with it.

Planning

Before I launched Eden Journal on October 1, 2009, I wrote a full month worth of posts and sketched out about three months worth of topic ideas.  I wanted to make sure that I would be able to create enough content to keep this going, and also have some backlog in case ideas dried up.  My initial focus was on the life lessons I have learned.  I figured I’ve had enough time to accumulate a number of lessons, and I had quite a few worth sharing.

I also liked the personal development arena and planned to focus posts on this area.  I have always felt it was a slightly blurry focus.  Personal Development is a good fit, but it doesn’t seem complete.  Not everything I wanted to write about fit in personal development.  I mean in a way it did, but not in the way many people look at personal development.

Personal Development – Yes and No

I often like to dig a little deeper and look a little wider.  I like to offer questions that I may not have the answers to.  I like to look beyond our physical world.  I don’t write out lists of things to make your life better or talk much about productivity, self-help, or lifehacks.

Many personal development blogs are very successful because they give people the quick fix for little problems.  Just look at the front page at Yahoo or MSN, and you’ll likely see some articles that offer quick fixes.  Outside of blogging, you can look at any magazine rack and see a wealth of quick fixes.

Many of these quick fix personal development posts take the form of lists.  List posts are extremely popular among readers.  Dumb Little Man is the king of these quick fix list posts with titles like Eight ways to make good use of your spare minutes online or 7 pieces of wisdom from Socrates.  While interesting to read, I don’t find much value there.  I’m not bashing Dumb Little Man, as I quite enjoy reading that blog and have even guest posted there with a post about “My Experiment to Break Free from TV.”    As a reader I like to skim these lists, but as a writer I loathe them.  They are just not in line with what I feel I should be offering on Eden Journal.

Gaining Clarity of Direction

After blogging for ten months now, I am beginning to gain some clarity.  I’ve been searching for this clarity for a while, and it’s taken its sweet time to appear.  I suppose this is natural being that I had to test the waters and get a feel for the types of writing that I enjoy.  I like the personal development field, but I dislike quick fix personal development.  I prefer posts with deeper meaning that more closely mirror my own quest for knowledge.  I like writing posts that make me think, that make me pause to consider the big picture, and that help me search within myself for the answers.

My own quest for knowledge leads me to blogs where people speak from their own experiences or their own quests and then share what they’ve learned.  The types of posts that I resonate with most are from blogs like Raptitude, Worlds Strongest Librarian, Why Not Start Now, Soulful Body & Mind, and Alien Ghost.   These blogs don’t give us all the answers, but they give us lots of information to ponder, and often share some of their opinions or views.  These are personal development blogs that dig deeper.  I hope my blog is in the same arena as these I mentioned, it’s hard for me to tell from the inside looking out.  I could use some outside eyes help me, so let me know what you think in the comments and what other blogs you feel mine resembles or resonates with.

Enlightenment

My new vision of clarity is leading more to a path of enlightenment.  I’ve mentioned enlightenment in several posts, and after reading a post on The Jungle of Life, I realized that the topic of (or the quest for) enlightenment is more in line with many of the posts I have written.  I don’t want to just be tied to making our physical worlds better; I want to reach beyond the physical to explore other realms.  I want to touch on things like self healing, the law of attraction, manifesting abundance, intuition, psychic experiences, religion, past lives, and opening our minds to all the possibilities.  After a great deal of thought, I feel like my topics resonate more with a focus on the quest for enlightenment within the broader field of personal development.

With this realization I am shifting more towards this Quest for Enlightenment.  The shift may be more mental for me as the writer than for you as the reader, since many of my posts have already related to this topic.  In any case, I needed to find clarity, and for now this clarity is leading me down a path of enlightenment.  I’m defining my subject area as Personal Development with a focus on Enlightenment.

Humans Lying Dormant

I have often felt that as humans we lie dormant, submersed in the physical, and paying little attention to this non-physical world to which we are also tied.  I dislike being unable to discuss intuition in public without people shutting down the conversation or quickly changing topics.  And if you think intuition is difficult to discuss, try past lives or out of body experiences.

I once had a conversation with a friend whom I thought to be rather open minded.  He was into some new age stuff and practiced yoga.  I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I think it was on past lives or remote viewing.  We didn’t get far in that conversation and I could sense that he wasn’t ready to accept such possibilities.

I think that a great many people aren’t ready to accept possibilities beyond their realm of understanding.  Many people just refuse to accept the possibility that we don’t know more than we do know, and that we are part of a non physical world that meshes with our physical world.  On the flip side, I think there is a segment of our Earthly population that is ready to consider and discuss all the possibilities that surround our life on this planet as well as all that lies beyond.  I enjoy discussing the possibilities, not only to develop our person, but to develop our minds and our souls.  I want these people, who are open to new possibilities, to come here and find a comfortable environment to read, learn, and discuss.

What’s Changing?

I hope this new clarity will help me bring more great content to the masses through Eden Journal.  Current readers need not worry, if you like what’s here you’ll see more of the same.  The content won’t change a lot, but will be more focused.    The post schedule will continue to be a couple of times a week, with me writing on days that I’m inspired to do so.  My hope is that a clarity of vision will help me generate more great content and attract like minded readers.

Enlightenment in Eden

This new clarity brings me back to the beginning.  Back to Eden.  I had a thought that Adam and Eve weren’t merely seeking knowledge in the Garden of Eden, but were actually seeking enlightenment.  It seems to me that knowledge in and of itself can be readily found.  It’s found through experience.  The knowledge of good and evil would have come to them through the encounter with Mr. Snake.  The knowledge of nudity would have come had they met others that were clothed.  They would not need to partake of the fruit to learn of this.  They were seeking to know all that God knows.  This isn’t mere knowledge, it is enlightenment.  (This is my own interpretation, and may not be the same as the biblical story.)

New Logo to Celebrate a Focus on Enlightenment

And so we’ve come full circle.  I have found some clarity, and I may have found the reason behind my intuition leading me to Eden.  To celebrate this clarity of enlightenment in personal development I am introducing a new logo.  This new logo contains a book to illustrate knowledge and learning, a tree to illustrate life, and the enso circle to illustrate enlightenment.  It all comes together as a call to action to Quest for Knowledge, Learn Life’s Lessons, and to Seek Enlightenment Every Day.  Clarity has served me well in the past, and I hope it does so again now.  Let me know what you think in the comments section.  I’d like to hear your thoughts on my slight shift in direction towards enlightenment, about the new logo, and about what other blogs you think resonate with Eden Journal.

Thank You

I’d like to thank a few people that contributed to the new Logo.  Marci Brinker for the overall design, Lori for creating this beautiful example of an enso circle, and Lance for allowing me use of this enso, one that he also uses in his logo.  I appreciate the efforts and contributions of each of you.

I’d also like to give a big huge thank you to my readers.  I hope I’ve brought you content that you enjoy and that makes you think.  I’d love it if you could help spread the word.  Now that I have clarified my focus, I want to bring in a lot more readers.  I want to help usher in a new awareness of the world we live in and of the worlds we are still learning of.  I want more people in this world to understand that we are more than just meat popsicles, that we are part of this physical world and also a much larger non-physical world.  So please share a link to EdenJournal.com with all your friends.

Please take a minute to subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already.  I don’t want you missing any of the fun!

Tagged as: Clarity, Enlightenment, History