Copyright Tam Black 2018 Designed for susanwithpearls.com
Guiding Thought
Extend the Love that you are, for that is all you truly are. As you learn to be aware, to understand and to Know your own will as Love, and make choices according to that will, your life experiences become worthy of you. Expressing your Self that is wholly Love and United with All is the only choice that is worthwhile. It is the only thing that brings you satisfaction, the only choice that allows you to experience your Self—the Love that you are. Your-my-our- freedom depends on your right choices, depends on you to choose what is worthy and what is not; it depends on you, depends on me, depends on us.
Reflection
Worth–feeling worthy–seems so far to be one of those issues, or emotions, or psychological states that I cannot yet look at directly. There are lots of threads crossing, weaving, tying to each other that need to be gently pulled, untied, and disentangled. I am too focused on the threads to understand how they work together (or not) and combine for my worthiness.
One thread is called prosperity or abundance. It represents the worth I am able to bring from within to without, how my financial situation reflects how I feel about what I am worth.
One thread is called esteem. It represents what I respect and admire about myself–what I like about myself, those qualities that I enjoy expressing, and that I feel bring me the respect and admiration of others.
One thread is called value. This thread represents deeper qualities than esteem, but still qualities that I like about myself. These qualities are those qualities upon which esteem is built: what do I value in myself, and in the world? What do I care about most deeply?
One thread is called self-image. This thread represents how I think the world sees me, and how I see myself. What am I able to do? What can skills and talents and personality traits do I have? What am I good at? How much do I like myself?
All of these make up worth and worthiness. Each one is pretty huge of itself, which is probably why I am not quite ready to address worth head on.
What that means, or what it feels like, is that I am looking at worth only through peripheral vision, or a side-glance. Abundance, esteem, value, or self-image “issues” are going on in my center focus. At least that’s what it feels like. However, even in my center focus, these “issues” are still hard to look at, to deal with. So, I feel like my sub-conscious has been doing the heavy lifting for me, and that I’ve just kind of been “hovering” and un-involved.
I feel good that I have just written about this. At least I am at a level of awareness about what’s going on. This makes me want to get a bit more involved.
We bring our awareness to our hearts and resonate with their love. Naturally and easily our heart-love radiates through us. Love is present now—rippling in to the future, releasing the past.
-Play the Guiding Thought here (loops automatically). Journey of the Heart audio created by Brad Vanlandingham for Susanwithpearls-
Sharing
Questions: How can we deepen and expand our relationship with our beautiful, blissful hearts? How can we give our love, our wisdom, our compassion more openly and freely? How can we know our hearts of love, as ourselves?
Answer: We bring our awareness to our hearts and resonate with their love. Naturally and easily our heart-love radiates through us. Love is present now—rippling in to the future, releasing the past.
In other words: you do it by doing it.
During Journey of Worth, the very first Guiding Thought starts out this way: I have forgotten my Self. I have forgotten who I am. I have forgotten that I am 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.
This came to mind today, as I realized the simplicity of the answer to my questions, the answer to letting go of my frustration and aggravation of yesterday.
When I forget myself, I feel sorry for myself. I become aggravated. Simple things seem difficult. Everything that I know, or at least that I have known, seems distant, remote…unknown.
…and I know this.
Why is it, that when I am so aware of being held captive by false ideas–even when I know it–I can’t get out of it?
you do it by doing it.
But there are times, it seems, that I don’t want to do it, that I want to remain enmeshed, bogged down, and in the dark. Rationally, I would say, “no, I don’t want this”…but I remain in it, I don’t get myself out of it, which indicates that I want to be in it, because if I know, and do not do it (i.e. don’t get out of it), then either I don’t know, or I am choosing the situation I am in, choosing my “plight”, my confusion, my aggravation (see yesterday’s post).
If I am choosing the situation I am in and the situation is one of aggravation or frustration, and I know I could get out of it, why don’t I? This line of inquiry has lead me to begin to think about self-esteem.
Why do people stay in “unhealthy”, “negative” situations when they know better? It seems to me, the answer is really no different for a person in an abusive situation, than for someone seeking enlightenment–it all boils down to self-esteem, self-worth; the “levels” are just very different. Once a person decides (really decides) to have self-worth, any situation that trammels on that new level of self-esteem is no longer viable, it can be easily discarded. The goal is to increase self-worth, increase self-esteem so that situations that do not support higher self-esteem can be left behind, while new situations that validate a new level of self-esteem can be cultivated.
My heart-love establishes my inner-peace. Solidly grounded in my own inner-peace, I approach all of life with love, compassion, and wisdom. I live as my Self, shining with the beauty of the Love I AM.
-Play the Guiding Thought here (loops automatically). Journey of the Heart audio created by Brad Vanlandingham for Susanwithpearls-
Sharing
What do I feel, and what do I want to feel? Who am I, and who do I want to be? Who (or what) am I becoming? What is the highest version of myself right now?
Love, peace, compassion, wisdom are who I am. When I feel assured of this, when I am able to recognize these qualities as my natural state, when I know myself as these qualities, there’s no problem.
But if my esteem is low, if I doubt, if I lose confidence, then my mind and emotions feel conflict.
Part of becoming is integrating the qualities of Love into yourself so thoroughly that there’s never any doubt, loss of confidence, or low esteem. The Love really is just who you are.
Solidly grounded.
In A Course in Miracles, there is the concept of denying the denial of Truth. Too often, what we deny are our qualities of Love, peace, wisdom, and compassion. Too often, we affirm guilt, powerlessness, fear. These things are the denial of the Love we are, the Truth of our Selves. Using denial to deny those things that deny the Truth of ourselves is correct use of denial.
Stop denying your self of Love, and start denying your self of fear.
We have a lot of practice denying our highest Self, and living with doubt, no confidence, or low self-esteem.
Enough!
Solidly ground yourself in the Love and Peace you are. Don’t let anyone shake you.
Now in round 4, we come full circle and return to “you” as the subject, and repeat the Guiding Thought with “I”, “me”, and “mine”. Notice how (or if) your perception of “me,” “I”, “mine” changes ever so slightly, since you have incorporated “you” and “we” into your perception yourself; I know I notice how my self-perception changes. Now that you have reached out to others to support their Journey in the second and third rounds, the words “I”, “me” and “mine” become infused with all perspectives—“we”, “s/he”, and “you”—perhaps you will now begin to see yourself as more connected with others. In claiming abundance for yourself, now your consciousness is also attuned to claiming it for others. You will “see” others attaining their abundance with you.
Allow your mind to link to Guiding Thoughts from other days, as you go through the one for the day. These Guiding Thoughts are designed to build on each other, to carry over into each other, and to interlace, building your awareness and understanding slowly as you repeat the practice. Let this process happen naturally and organically.
Copyright Tam Black 2015 Designed for susanwithpearls.com
Guiding Thought
Divine Love-Light is the Source of All. It is all good, all God. This Source is always seeking expression through me. My awareness of my personal identity as this Source provides me with infinite fulfillment and prosperity.
Sharing
I’m having two issues today. These both are things I work on regularly (though they don’t come up as frequently as they have in the past); these are both “core” issues for me. Though they have loosened their grip considerably in the past few years, I think there are still threads holding on, things I still need to pull up and out. These things come up, I work through some aspect; the issue dissipates, and comes up again at another time, for me to work on a different aspect. The first issue has to do with self-esteem, the second has to do with worth: I don’t love myself enough; nothing I do is good enough (not worth anything).
I have a saying: Everything is a God-issue.
What that means is, for example in this case: I am feeling low self-esteem (which means low self-love), and I am feeling “worth-less.” These feelings have come up because I am working on abundance (which is directly tied to self-love and worth). I could look at this and think that my issues are about abundance—that is the logical association. But, while these issues have come up around abundance, they are really about God, really about my relationship to/with God, my relationship with myself, in relation to God, my relationship with abundance in relation to God, my relationship with everyone and everything in relation to God. If I want to look at these issues as purely and as clearly as I can, I must look at them as God-issues, not as abundance or money, or worth issues. What do I need to correct/heal/change in myself, in my relationship to/with God?
Of course, the correction, or solution, is to look to God to figure it out. This is why everything is a God-issue, because everything is corrected or solved through turning to God. The thing itself is actually not an issue; it just becomes one because in that moment of “having an issue,” I’ve forgotten God. When I remember God, the issue disappears. (Note: if the issue does not disappear…I haven’t truly remembered God).
This works with anger or hostility; it works with feeling un-cared for and unloved; it works with grief and guilt; it works if you are feeling picked on, let down, unheard, defeated, self-punishing, deserted, bothered, burdened…I know, because this is how I figured out Everything is a God-issue.
I suggested in the “Welcome to Round Four!” above, beginning to connect the Guiding Thoughts together, to see how your consciousness evolves from one to the next, how they each build on and inform the other. I’m going to do that here, now, because I see a connection. Only, my connection is with the Journey of Worth (once you do several Journeys, you too, will begin to see how all the Guiding Thoughts interconnect).
I was just talking about how issues arise when God is forgotten, and the first Guiding Thought from A Journey of Worth popped into my head:
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.
(See the Sharing section for Journey of Worth: Day 01, here)
It is really a huge thing for me to remember my worth in Love especially on days of low self-esteem, or feeling worth-less. Today I am working on remembering, because it’s only when I remember that this part of today’s Guiding Thought fits: “My awareness of my personal identity as this Source.”
If I have forgotten my Self, then I’ve closed my consciousness to the Light of Truth, and shut the door to flow of Divine Love in me, through me, as me. I can only experience the Love I can recognize, the love I can remember.
In a way, I feel like this is a stumbling day, a day that I have been set back on my Journey… because….what is this? How many times do I have to remember to remember before I stop forgetting?
SusanWithPearls 