Guiding Thought

Knowing yourself as Peace fortifies your inner awareness of the unity within. Through gratitude for the Life You Are, connect with harmony. Through harmony, Be restored and strengthened, and thus be able to carry your Inner Peace to all of life’s activity surrounding you.

Reflection

Sometimes I think these Guiding Thoughts were designed to piss me off and frustrate me. Here’s what I mean: this Guiding Thought begins with something that feels nearly impossible for me, where I’m at. If I Knew how to Know myself as Peace, I wouldn’t be doing this Journey, would I? I wouldn’t need it. I would Know myself as Peace. Yet. There it is, asking me to do the very thing I came here to learn to do.

OK. Breathe.

I basically skimmed past the whole first sentence every time I read the Guiding Thought today, grumbling.

I got a bit more on-board with the second sentence, mostly because I’ve been practicing this very thing for several weeks now. I’ve made it a daily practice–and as many times throughout the day as I can remember–to take a moment and say something like, “Thank you God, for the Life I am; thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the love and light of the world.”

Thus, I can vouch for the second sentence: gratitude for Life does give me an understanding of the greater interconnectedness of All, which brings me a desire for harmony with All.

But then…but then!

The final sentence seemed to piss me off again. Here’s why: Why does the Guiding Thought end with telling me how to accomplish the very thing I feel like I cannot accomplish in the first sentence? Wouldn’t the Guiding Thought make a whole lot more sense if it read this way:

Through gratitude for the Life You Are, connect with harmony. Through harmony, Be restored and strengthened, and thus be able to carry your Inner Peace to all of life’s activity surrounding you. Knowing yourself as Peace fortifies your inner awareness of the unity within.

This way makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it? It tells you what to do right off the bat: Be grateful. Connect with Harmony. Easy, no problem! Then it tells you the benefit of connecting with Harmony–restoration and strength, and ability to carry Inner Peace to all activity. Then it ends with the Knowing, which seems to follow a lot more logically from the how to, and the benefits.

But NO. It does not lead me in a logical way. It throws me into the deep end, then tells me what I need to do once I’m in the deep end. Argh!

I am still breathing, don’t worry.

Here’s the thing: This is really very hilarious. I mean, listen to me! I haven’t ranted like this in a while, and all it took was an out-of-place sentence. All the while, I am watching myself be so bothered by the logic of the Guiding Thought, by editorial improvements for the Guiding Thought.

It’s great! You see what has come up here? All of this amorphous anger and frustration directed at a little sentence. It has nothing to do with the sentence! You know how I know? Because it’s just a sentence. Sometimes when things come up “opposed to” something so ridiculous as a little sentence, I can identify it as energy that needs to be released.

When it’s a safe place, like in front of a key board, I can have fun releasing it, by ranting. There are lots of safe ways to release energies like anger and frustration. Scream. Run. Talk it out. Dance! Hit a ball against a wall. Trampoline. Lots of things!

It’s when these small energies don’t get released that they build…and build…and build…and become unrecognizable and out of control…and turn into violence.

I am sad about the violence, all the unnecessary violence. Please. Rant about the small things, then laugh because you are ranting at such a small thing. Get your family and friends to rant and laugh with you. Let it go while it’s small. Release the energy before it has a chance to get so big it turns to violence.

Love each other. Love yourself. Be well.