dailydatewithgod

We tend to operate under the misconceived notion that because we do not think we are affected by something we are not. Given our mind’s propensity to already be on guard for what we knowingly perceive as potentially survival threatening concerns, we would be overloaded. The thing is so many effects of life are registered elsewhere. It is the ones that when we engage in the conversation with our mind about it, it is puzzling so we push it aside. Unless we have the awareness to acknowledge the effects that circumvent our cognitive understanding we can talk ourselves out of it. Taken to the other extreme we can believe we are affected on a deeper level than we are by everything. God invites us to recognize how we are designed. We are picking up on signals and we have a response to them. Most of those responses are automatic and we do not have to think about them. It is a brilliant design so we do not go into cognitive overload. When we experience things we cannot make sense of in our minds our nervous system will take over. Then there are times when no one around us or people whom we hold in authority cannot validate the effects we are experiencing because it is different from them. All of these factors combine to create a dynamic of how we interpret and put meaning in our minds to the various effects of what it means to be alive. Many of us have spent a fair amount of time talking ourselves out of the reality of an effect because there was no one to help us register it. When those patterns are made automatic we may find ourselves reacting to the effect of something as though it is affecting us more than it is in this moment. Our reaction is based on the reality of the past. Any time we have caught ourselves saying we swore we would not do that again or act like so and so, we are at the effect of some unrecognized effects. I am guilty of all those things and on my daily dates with God as I became aware of which effects I was handling as though I was affected by them at a different time, I learned to be in the life I am living today. Part of maturity is allowing ourselves the space to pause and connect to determine what effects of life are affecting us and then decide how to handle it. Making room to process the effects we are affected by and differentiating them from past experiences is what allows us to be with whatever we are affected by from a place of truth rather than the default mode. It is step by step, sometimes inch by inch work but its effects are the joys of getting to experience life as it is happening right now. It is this skill that allows me to approach the effects of life from a place of curiosity instead of fear.