I missed yesterday–please accept my apologies. I have never, since I started, actually missed a day–we’ve had technical difficulties, or human error, but never just outright missed a day (suffice to say yesterday was a very unusual day–practically, logistically, physically, and emotionally). When I started doing 40-day consciousness journeys, I had a “rule” that if I missed a day, I had to start over from the beginning, in order to make it through 40 consecutive days. I would actually encourage you to do that; there is a build-up of momentum that happens through each consecutive day, and if you miss a day, the momentum dissipates. For today, for this Journey, however, I’m going to just keep going.

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Guiding Thought

I allow myself to connect with my pure Inner Divine Heart of Oneness. I am aware of the expression of the Divine Heart through me, as me. I connect with my heart, and am aware of embodying its pure Love intention for All.  I am filled with Joy as I embrace my heart’s Love.

Reflection

Some days it takes courage just to face the day. Some days it feels like the sheath between my emotions and the outside world is a fine membrane, which could tear at any time, and the emotion would spill out uncontrollably.

I was thinking this is how the term “thick skinned” came about. When people have felt the membrane’s fragility, they “patch it”, so to say, adding a thickness or hardness over top of the emotion, so that the emotion doesn’t just spill out.

I’m ok with my emotional fragility most of the time, and I am fortunate to be friends with my tears, so that when (if) they come, they are the gentle vehicle for the emotion to spill. It has taken me a long time to be safe with my tears, and even longer to be this fragile around other people–I do not hide the emotion, it is probably written on my face, but it’s not like people pay that much attention, or that I am walking around sobbing. I just feel vulnerable and fragile; that does not mean I am vulnerable or fragile.

I prefer this to being thick-skinned. Even when I don’t know exactly what the emotion is, or why I am feeling it, I prefer this. My theory is that something is surfacing: I will be through this soon enough, and what has surfaced will be out of me! That to me is preferable to plugging it up, and leaving it there to multiply.

No, I don’t mind the emotion so much. But sometimes there is an accompanying feeling of doubt, uncertainty, and weakness. I say “accompanying”, because I can tell that I would not be feeling these secondary emotions, if I weren’t feeling the primary ones.

It’s the secondary emotions that seem to “bother” me more than just the overall feeling of vulnerability and fragility. I think this is because the secondary emotions are a result of my brain trying to interpret the primary emotions. If I could stay secluded, breathing, taking a bath, sitting with fire, allowing the amorphous primary emotions to be felt and released, then I don’t think I would even have the secondary emotions. I would simply experience the primary emotions as a healing-release, or energetic movement.

But instead, when I am living my life “as usual”, my brain is engaged. It begins telling me those emotions mean I am weak, or unworthy, or incompetent, or guilty. “No”, I tell my brain. “These are just emotions; they do not mean what you say they mean”. But this is hard; there are parts of me that still believe my brain. There are still emotions that–deep down–I associate with, even though I know they are not true at my deepest levels.

This is when doing a mental spiritual practice, like these Journeys, becomes very difficult for me.

That part of my brain which is interpreting my feelings as weak, unworthy, incompetent, or guilty is very much at odds with the part of my brain that is telling me of Love, that is connecting me to my heart.

This is when I begin to wonder how I could ever be worthy of succeeding in spiritual goals? How am I strong enough to do anything that is as enormous as working toward unification with the Divine, with Knowing Eternal Peace, with expressing Infinite Abundance, with Oneness with ALL? Who am I to even attempt this? How do I go about it? Why should I even try?

It’s times like this when spiritual effort feels meaningless; it feels like there is no progress, only futility.

But I know

and I Know that I Know

that it is exactly these times when any bit of spiritual effort is exactly what is necessary to releasing and advancing.

Any bit of effort that I make on behalf of my spiritual progress will be used to obliterate the obstacles, and my Divine Helpers will add their assistance to my effort. It’s up to me to make the first effort, and to keep myself moving in the right direction.