These posting threads are my comments as I read through Iyanla Vanzant’s book “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up”
I highly encourage you read the “40 Days and 40 Nights Towards Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth” for yourself 🙂
Links to commentaries:
Honor Yourself with Conservation
kemeticstudiesblog 
With day one, opens Phase One – Honor the Divine.
But day one’s focus is “Honor the Divine with…TRUTH”
Here are my takes:
1. TRUTH is Divine
2. Divine is Eternal (the same everyday)
3. As long as you have time, time is on your side to create/re-create and make your life what You want it to be.
4. Living in fear is the ultimate punishment.
5. Blessings come by way of choice.
OK, that’s what I gleaned from Day-1…send your pearls as you feel led.
Peace, Justice, Harmony
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Day Two’s focus is “Honor the Divine with…TRUST”
Here is my take:
We can avoid a lot of heartbreak and heartache if we trust people’s divine essence (soul) … NOT putting all Our trust in people.
What I “overstand” is if we can identify the true (divine) essence of people, we can love them for only who they are…and not what we expect or want them to be.
True freedom comes with sovereignty to be who you were created to be (by the Divine)…and when we tap into our divine spirituality; we honor everyone’s divine autonomy to truly be who they are.
So that, we are safe in trusting the freed essence of the person, because once you accept them for who they truly are, they don’t fail to be who you love them to be.
Yep, liking this stuff, what about you?
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Day 3 – Honor the Divine with…Prayer
1. To commune or communicate with the Divine is to cleanse our consciousness. Our prayers are a way of releasing sincerity about something…and if we truly Trust the Divine…we can let our concerns go.
2. We should have a goal of aligning our mind, body and spirit; therefore creating balance.
3. Once we are at a healthy level of balance, we inter-stand the answers to our prayers.
4. However, prayer is also acknowledgement the Divine has already provided everything we need.
Prayer = communication, alignment, balance, acknowledgement!
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Day 4 – Honor the Divine with…Meditation
I inter-stand meditating is quieting the physical consciousness mind to hear the Divine. It also provides protection for our life-force.
Some awesome aspects to doing meditation are:
-do nothing
-know nothing
-ask nothing
-look for nothing
-float in a sea of darkness and let go
-reflect on the beginning of you
I fully agree to be activated, we must first be idle…and once we “plug-in”, we find new power.
“In stillness there is knowing”
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Day 5 – Honor the Divine with…Willingness
I inter-stand that “Peace is the Energy of the Divine…”
Compared to chaos and interuptive activity; I agree cooperation comes from the willingness to be receptive.
Let Peace Energize YOU 🙂
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Day 6 – Honor the Divine with…Creativity
To Create is to bring something not visible on a conscious plane (maybe a dream) to the physical visible.
I love how she explains that God didn’t create everything. Instead, God left some things for the creation to create 🙂
Therefore, one of our purposes as hue-mans is to be CREATIVE.
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Day 7 – Honor the Divine with…PEACEFULNESS
If you want peace, you must be peace. There is no reason to expect anything otherwise if we are not at ease and unbalanced.
So, in a tough situation…it may be very well we must first bring the peace, and then stay there internally until our external environment becomes peaceful. This probably includes welcoming others in our lives to join in “bringing peace.”
Immediately, it may be hard to change our individual essence if we are not normally a peace; however, we can commit to reacting in a peaceful manner to situations that we would “normally” not be at peace with.
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Day 8 – Honor the Divine with…SIMPLICITY
Simplicity can be defined as:
-Uncomplicated
-in Basic Form
-Highest Form of Sophistication
-Free of Judgement and Perception
-Willingness
-Truth
-Free of Obstacles to grow
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Phase II of the book focuses on “Honor Yourself”
One aspect I’m embracing is…we must honor ourselves by not allowing any other thing to dishonor us. And, the best way to prevent something from dishonoring you is to dismiss it from the heart.
Day 9 – Honor Yourself with… AWARENESS
In this day’s reading I “inter-stand” that becoming aware of my weaknesses is sometimes the first step to turning it into a strength. When I see patterns of bad results, I must accept the common actor in the situation is Me. This good use of awareness allows me to make self-driven change to break those patterns.
Special Note: By isolating ourselves, we Do Not allow ourselves to grow outwardly.
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Day 10 – Honor Yourself with… ACCEPTANCE
On this day I learned that mostly we don’t accept our bad behavior because it is a signal we must do something to change. Or, we resist acceptance because we don’t want to change.
However, acceptance is a “right-of-passage”…and this passage WILL get us through the next gate (trial, opportunity, move-on).
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Day 11 – Honor Yourself with… AFFIRMATION
Just in case anyone is wondering…if you woke up this morning, it is because you have a very important purpose to fulfill. So, KNOW you are very important and have purpose to do good to yourself, your community, the earth and contribute light to the universe.
Something else to embrace is…a part of our purpose is to Affirm the Truth. Affirmation is a commitment to the Truth.
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Day 12 – Honor Yourself with…CHOICE
To choose is both Divine Opportunity and our birthright. Yes, everyone has a right to choose; not to choose; or give their choice to someone else.
Maturity is the willingness to accept the consequences of our choices.
Being afraid to choose is driven by fear and not healthy. But rather we should stay focused and not feel forced, be courageous without confusion when making choices.
I’ve decided the best choice for me is to keep myself open to make more choices.
Special Note: “Silence is a choice not to choose” – Iyanla Vanzant
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Day 14 – Honor Yourself with….FREEDOM
(Day 13 Honor Yourself with…CONSERVATION has its own post)
Freedom is a state of mind (unlike money, a husband, dream house or vacation).
Freedom is not being controlled by anything; but rather “stuff” can take our freedom.
We are Divine, created to be who we are; where we are; doing what we were created to do.
The Universe needs Me to be Free to be Me because I contribute to the Divine Universe…to do otherwise is conflicting and wasteful.
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Day 15 – Honor Yourself with…FUN
God is happy when you are happy.
Make sure to play everyday.
Be creative enough to make life into a game…smile and wink.
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Day 16 – Honor Yourself with…SURRENDER
When ugly emotions appear —> send them far away into space…and go on with life.
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