Guiding Thought

Give today to Light. Feel the Light within pour forth; feel your radiance, your glow. See—with your inner eye—this light envelop and infuse all you encounter, all your words, and all your actions. Watch as others resonate with you, their light growing brighter in the sanctity of your own. To all beings and all situations today, offer only light, and learn, as you do, the Wholeness of your Self.

Reflection

I see how this Guiding Thought follows yesterday’s reflection! Here, let me re-write some of it so you can see what I am seeing (but first, maybe go back and read yesterday’s…).

Give today to You. Feel your Self within pour forth… Watch as others resonate with You, their light growing brighter in the sanctity of You. To all beings and all situations today, offer only You, and learn, as you do, the Wholeness of your Self.

The point is that there is no differentiation between you and Light. Or you and Love.

I’m fascinated with how often I can say, think, or read, “we are One” or “I am Love” or “I am One with the Ocean of bliss” or…any of the various phrases that encompass the totality of who I am, who we are…and still I don’t “have it”. I don’t have it fully. I am not asleep, but I am not yet awake.

It’s very similar (it seems to me) to being in that literal place of not asleep, but not yet awake. I am in that place a lot in the middle of the night, or before I wake up in the morning. I have conversations with God, I am taught things, I seem to have deeper understanding and clarity, I chant and pray… but then I (this body) wake up and I have a vague recollection of the conversations, the learning, but tangibly, it’s gone, like a memory from my childhood…I know it happened, but I have no sustained apprehension of the situation.

I am seeing this now through new eyes. Recently, I’ve been watching my learning process. I have been able to observe my growth, my evolution as it’s happening.

This is relatively a new thing, to be able to understand in the moment both what I am learning, and how it connects with, or has evolved out of a prior stage or phase. I used to just know “I am where I am supposed to be”, without understanding how anything about my life connected (I had many divergent and incongruous paths for the first 45 years or so of this life). I knew I was on the right path, but had no idea where it was leading, or how anything fit together.

Now, there are several aspects of my spiritual learning that I can follow, like a flow-chart or family tree, to see exactly each step of my learning process, and how one step lead me to the next step.

There are two things that are highlighted for me about this.

1. I now really understand the idea of clichés like, “you can’t run until you walk” or “you won’t learn algebra until you understand 2+2=4”. You can’t be ahead of your own learning process. You are where you are–and anything more advanced just won’t make sense, or you won’t be able to do it, or you’ll short-circuit yourself.
2. I now understand what I feel/experience when I short-circuit myself–when I try to advance too quickly, or to grasp a concept I am simply not ready for. It feels like my brain shuts down. It puts it’s hand over its eyes, holds out the other hand motioning “stop”, shakes its head, and says, “no, no, nooo, can’t do that yet”.

This is why I advocate the drip method, being a turtle, and baby steps. But I admit, I have really enjoyed this learning experience of overdoing it. I can now be aware of going too far, too fast. It wasn’t that bad. I’ve learned that “all I have to do” is back up, do something smaller, something that does not feel overwhelming, get acclimated to that, then continue forward.

I wonder if this is the first step of learning to push myself further faster? Oh, yes. This is going to be fun!

How soon is now, that I am the Light of my Self?