Welcome to the first day of contemplation! The goal for the day is to read and contemplate the Guiding Thought, then write your reflections, whatever comes up for you. Just let it flow.

Guiding Thought

I have forgotten my Self. I have forgotten who I am. I have forgotten that I was established in Love and by Love, which is infinite and eternal; therefore, my worth is infinite and eternal.

I seek to remember my Self. I choose to remember my Self.

I choose to remember who I am and my infinite worth in Love.

I choose to be aware, to understand, and to Know myself (my Self) as the Love I am.

I choose to share who I am with the world, giving my infinite worth, measured in infinite Love.

Reflection

The last line strikes me as odd, “measured in infinite Love”–as though infinite Love can be measured. If I were more in my head, I would go off on a tangent about this, spinning my wheels, letting my mind whisk me away from focusing on the Truth of the Guiding Thought. I can let this go, and get to what matters. I wasn’t always able to do this so quickly.

I want to argue with myself about the first line, “I have forgotten my Self”. I can feel a response snidely saying, “Nuh-UH”. I don’t want it to be true, that I’ve forgotten my Self.

But I can’t get beyond forgetting my Self until I’ve acknowledged that I have. That’s the whole point of this Guiding Thought.

I have to acknowledge everything–hurts, fears, wounds, abandonments, failures, guilts, shortcomings–that obstructs my Self, otherwise, there is no moving past them.

For many years, I did the the Orthodox morning prayers and I felt the same kind of resistance (“Nuh-UH”) to them. Throughout the prayers, the supplicant refers to him/herself as an “idler and sinner”, “unworthy”…from Psalm 50: “For I know mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil before Thee, that Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and prevail when Thou art judged. For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me”. (I love these prayers!)

It felt like such a heavy weight, and one that I did not want to believe. I don’t like thinking of myself as “an idler and a sinner”, just like I don’t like to think that I have forgotten my Self. But even then, doing those prayers, I understood that in order to be forgiven, one must acknowledge a need for it. It’s the forgiveness that matters, not the sin. The prayers are kind a blanket-request for being forgiven.

There were times when there were no specific things that I could identify as “sins”, and yet I would break down just asking for forgiveness, asking for release. It was as though deep down in my subconscious, there was something that resonated with some guilt/shame/sin.

Forgetting my Self is along those same lines. I don’t feel like I’ve forgotten my Self. But I am also not a saint, and don’t have a direct line 100% of the time in my consciousness to Everything Love, so I know that something is missing.

Acknowledging the forgetting is the first step to remembering.