Awake in the Starlight

The second mental exercise in Step 1 of IIH is to hold a thought in your mind. I was asked today for suggestions regarding thoughts to hold in one's mind when practicing this exercise. Here's a thought I like to use. "I am a mirror reflecting the perfect, infinite, and unconditional love of God."  If you are ever angry at someone and wish to get a grip on yourself, it's helpful to remember the assertion contained in this thought and to experience its validity by centering yourself and sensing the deeper and higher part of yourself that is indeed a mirror reflecting the perfect, infinite, and unconditional love of God. 

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the movie Annihilation, directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac.  I saw Annihilation yesterday. I usually go see any film with Natalie Portman in it shortly after it comes out, but since my life has been so hectic lately, it was a while before I finally got around to watching this one. If you've watched it, you're probably curious about how I interpreted the ending. I'll make another post later this week about what I think happened at the end, but that's not what I want to talk about in this post. In this post, I just want to note some of the things running through my mind as I reflect back on the movie as a whole. I do think there are many magical themes throughout this book. One of them is transformation. I wrote a book about self-transformation. As you can guess, self-transformation, and the transformation of people in gen...