Happy Round 2! Thank you for being here. I wish for you waterfalls of Divine Flow, beautiful insights, and Joy on the Journey! With this round, the pronouns change to “you” (see this page for detailed explanation).

 Guiding Thought

Love is your natural state; In Love you remember who you truly are. Remember your holiness, your innocence, and your infinity.  Love enlightens your mind and lifts your heart. Be buoyant and expansive! Be aware of your Self as Infinite Love, unbounded and free, thoroughly loving and lovable.

 Reflection

I always tell myself things like, “If you were not very focused today, let it be OK. Sometimes not being focused is a way of integrating the material. Just be aware, focus as best you can, and continue!”

Today—when I really need to take my own advice—I feel like telling myself to shove it. I was not very focused today. Let me rephrase that:  was not at all focused today.

Trying to be fair to myself, I reminded myself that my mind has not been able to focus all day; my meditation was affected this morning, and my general state today has been very ungrounded. This was not, however, very helpful.

I am an air sign, so maybe that’s what’s going on today? Mercury is going retrograde today, maybe that’s what’s going on? Maybe the stress of this past week is catching up to me, now that I am home, and in a relaxed state?

Whatever it was, I feel very frustrated about my inability to be present in the here and now with the Journey today.

It was weird. I know where I was—I was in the future, with thoughts about 2018’s Journey’s floating around in my head…why???

I was aware of where I was, aware that I was not present, but I felt completely unmotivated to reign in my mind. I was enjoying being not present. What’s that about?

Let me be clear: I did contemplate the Guiding Thought for 6 whole minutes. I stuck with it. But it was similar to when you are reading and you’re either really tired or really bored and you have to re-read a sentence several times before you know what you’re reading. There was just nothing that stuck, nothing that I recognized. In fact, it was only after 5 minutes that I thought to myself, “You! OMG, we are in round 2…”

There was no part of my mind that soaked up any part of the Guiding Thought that I am aware of.

And this makes me sad.

I have been really really happy and excited about doing this Journey. It has felt so right, even with (or, maybe, especially with) the “chaos” of stress going on.

I feel like I want to criticize myself, be upset at myself, be disappointed in myself, since I did such a “bad” job today.

But, you know what. Judge nothing.

Thank God again and again that judge nothing is the motto for this Journey.

Since I brought that up, let me just mention: I’ve been thinking about what words I can use instead of “judge nothing”. You see, despite the intention of eliminating judgement, the words “judge nothing” none the less have judgement as the focal point: in order to think “judge nothing”, I first must think, “judge”.

There are several options behind idea “judge nothing”. First, it can mean “I don’t know what this means, so I don’t know the context or all the myriad factors involved in it, so I will remain neutral about the implications of what I think this means.” Second, it can mean, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Or it can mean, “Everything impermanent dissolves eventually into Love; this is transient; Love knows only Itself.” Or (even more metaphysically): “All is Equal in Love; Love is All; All is Love; this is equal to that, which is equal to Love.”

I have not found the right words to replace “judge nothing”. But I do, now, consider these other meanings as I remind myself to “judge nothing”.

…As i went to post this, I found:

One of my friends-on-the path, a woman who shares really nifty insights about some of how the cosmic-astrological movements and energies affect us here on earth, just posted this. Here is just the first paragraph (Yay, Synchronicity! Yay, reassurance! Yay, it’s not just me!):

A quick note for any who, like myself, have had a harder time of it since this specific phase activated on August 3, 2017. It’s okay if this hurts, if you feel like you’re not doing such a “great job” of it all, if you feel alone in what you and only you are currently experiencing. We all are in our own unique ways and I want everyone to realize that it’s okay to not look, feel, sound and occasionally act like a golden movie star super model rock god whose got it all together at the moment. That’s old lower frequency distorted BS consciousness so shake it off and keep evolving and Embodying.

Full article here.