dailydatewithgod

One of the fundamental elements of a mindfulness practice is in honing the ability to observe.  We mindlessly observe things all day long.  Our eyes never stop.  Our senses never cease taking in information.  Some observations become more consistent.  Others are fleeting.  It is the ones we find ourselves observing over and over again that we pay attention to.  The Buddhists and others teach of non-reactive observations or what is sometimes called being the silent observer.  One of the purposes ideas is to get to a place where you have no reaction to what you are observing, especially something you normally react to.  Another idea is to find yourself wondering who is doing the observing.  We create space when we pause within moments of observation where we can choose what to do if anything with what we are observing.  Everything is a choice.  We may not choose what our eyes fall upon what we do choose whether our attention stays on it.  We can observe with curiosity, contempt, or question what we are observing.  It is not the observation that is the difficulty.  It is what we make what we are observing mean.  It is easy to think our observations are the full picture because it is all we have in the moment.  Judging by how many court cases have been overturned that relied upon eye-witness testimony, one might be reluctant enough to make us rethink the validity of our observations.  Like all things it is an opportunity to check the eyes in our head with the eyes of our hearts. Before our minds run out the door with meaning attached to an observation, we can pause, take a breath, and check in with the observations happening in other areas of awareness.

Sometimes we are not aware of what our life is trying to tell us.  We get stuck in literal physical experience and forget there are all kinds of underlying experiences happening.  Energy is fluid and it moves in waves.  If we are seeing life as solid objects only, it is easy to miss them.  It is kind of like air which is present all the time.   It is always there but we often do not notice it until it is strong enough to move something physically. As we go through the day there are indications of energy that is not seen by the eyes.  We are much more apt to say we sense it emotionally or spiritually.  We feel as though there are indications of something beyond what we are seeing that is happening.  For some reason because it lacks a physical indication we do not give it credit.  Energy is energy.  We are so wedded to what our physical eyes can see that we rely on them entirely.  What about the eyes of our heart?  What about all the other faculties of awareness God has given us?  If we can hear it or feel it is it any less valuable of an indication?  If we begin by paying attention to indications in whatever form they present themselves, we can expand the view of our lives.  God invites us to utilize all the faculties we have at our disposal so as to experience the profound possibilities in any given moment.  On my daily date with God I do not see God but I know God is present.  In building a relationship one day at a time I have enough indications of the existence of God to satisfy the eyes of my heart whether or not I can see God with my eyes.  Even so, when I remember we are all made in the image and likeness of God and there are indications of God’s creativity all throughout existence, how can I help but see God everywhere?

It is kind of funny how we can seemingly know other people better than we know ourselves.  It is part of how we create relationship when we pay attention to others.  We design an interconnection aside from one that is inherent to show we belong together. Some of our connections with others come without our consent such as family, culture, gender, or skin color. When you add those elements to how we show ourselves to the world we are believed to be more suited to certain a particular job, type of people we hang around, our likes and dislikes, our beliefs and ideas and more.  Sometimes these are correct.  Our ultimate suitability is what is in alignment with our hearts.  Based on the power of love and light residing in all of us, there is no real justification for many of the divisions that exist among different groups.  The suitability of our hearts however does not ask for exclusivity.  Much of the outside elements we are connected to have requirements and conditions.  This does not mean our hearts say everyone need have the same access to our sacredness or knowledge of us.  However, our hearts do honor the presence of others no matter their connections or personal style.  God encourages us to create environments in our lives to support the growth of love and light in the world.  It begins by pausing, connecting with our hearts and listening to what our hearts tell us is suitable while quieting the determinations of the outside world for suitability.

Choosing to love is an act of courage.  We like the big grand gestures but the irony of the courageous choice to love is in its ordinariness.  Yes there are big displays of love which we adore.  The engagement and wedding, Valentine’s Day celebrations, mother’s giving birth, a father rescuing his child from falling off whatever he or she crawled up on, noble peace prizes, and so on.  Most of how love shows up as an opportunity to act in courage is in the everyday.  It is the choice to smile at the person who bumps into you on the ordinary street.  The choice to say thank you to ordinary check out clerk at the grocery store.  The choice to send a card wishing your Aunt a happy birthday.  Choosing to laugh off the person who cuts you off in traffic.  The action of telling someone they are welcome when they say thank you to you.  The choice to compliment the woman in the elevator who has a nice smile.  The decision to tell yourself you are okay after you experience a set back.  These ordinary moments which can take us off course or cause us to question the truth of our being are the moments when fear can take hold.  If instead we choose to act in love despite the fear we are build our muscle of courage.  Perhaps the ordinary  moments are the practice for showing up in loving courage in the bigger moments.  Perhaps the ordinary moments are the ones that matter most because they are the ones happening in the moment we are in.

When I first stepped into the recovery rooms for my obesity and sugar addiction I heard people saying the most peculiar thing.  “I Am enough. I do enough. There is enough.”  I had never heard such a thing.  I could not even wrap my head around the idea.  How is that possible?  Don’t you know there is so much more I need to do and be to be acceptable.  I had no inkling how incredibly hard I drove myself.  It was such an inherent part of my narrative to judge and criticize myself so ridiculously hard that I had no idea there was another way.  It is an agreement I made with myself at a very young age.  Little by little over the years this belief about myself has chipped away.  My daily dates with God helped me to begin to see that who I am is enough because no matter what God shows up every day.  I have experienced a softening  of my heart with time.  Patience and progress of the process is the road I am on.  Even today many years later I am witnessing the falling away of other areas in my life where I am mistakenly driven by the idea that I do not do enough.  It shows up in subtle ways like another book to read, workshop to attend, process to undertake, and so on.  God is showing me and I am opening my eyes to see that living in light means accepting the darkness not trying to dispel it.  I can be a hero and walk through my own darkness but it is not my job to destroy the polarity of the universe.

Cats are funny creatures.  One of the ways they show love is by clawing at something.  Whether its your arm or the couch they use their claws, potentially harmful to whomever is on the receiving end to demonstrate affection.  It would be one thing if the claws only came out when they were fighting but many a cat I have held would claw on to me for dear life to show me how much he or she cared.  Perhaps it is the demonstration of an animal love versus a spiritual love.  Don’t get me wrong, I think animals are capable of many kinds of love.  Nature, interestingly has built-in this way of clinching at something to show a connection.  Even children when they latch on to you.  Is it because they are afraid of letting go or because they are claiming ownership to what they know is safe? The real question is how does clinching show up in our lives as adults?  What sense of love and safety do we grasp at?  And do we clinch it because we are afraid of letting go or because we want to show the world where our heart lies?  A further question is do we get used to clinching and forget it is good to let go or acknowledge there are times when we will need to let go.  I attended a funeral the other day and the man who died was clearly loved.  I did not know the man but I know his eldest son.  Just before the burial at the end of the funeral service the family gathered around the man lying peacefully in the coffin.  The we closely knit to each other and you could hear them crying.  But it was the gut wrenching crying and sobbing coming from his wife of many years that seem to catch in the throats of all those who were witnessing. It was as though the clinching to the love of this man had all of us by the throat.  I can’t imagine walking through life that closely with someone for so many years only to realize that one day he would no longer be there.  I would be clawing like a cat claiming my stake on the life of such a man.  How do we go from clinching to our reality whatever it may be to show our connection to it yet recognize by letting go that it is not who we are?  Our heart knows the way and more than anything our heart knows when to hold and when to let go.  The more we know our hearts the more we can rely on the core of who we are to determine if now is the time to clinch or the time to release.

Living in the United States I am acutely aware of the freedoms I have that others lack.  As a woman, as adult age citizen, and as someone who has agency in her own life there is a freedom to live and breathe that others do not have.  Yet it is amazing that within each of our own liberations we manage to imprison ourselves with our thinking.  If we do not take advantage of our freedoms it is not as though they get dispersed to others.  We have the choice with each breath to claim a stake in the liberation of our hearts and minds within any given situation.  There are plenty of experiences we will encounter in which we will feel like our freedom is lost.  Perhaps it is a matter of looking at it from a different angle.  Perhaps the circumstance we find ourselves in is the not physical manifestation of freedom we were expecting, but seeing it through the lens of our hearts provides a deeper sense of liberation.  I may not like my experiences as a child who survived some traumatic times, but I can recognize I have been liberated from the state of a child who had no agency.  When I experience flashbacks or deal with old patterned ways of being, I forget to liberate my mind and bring myself to the present.  When God helps me to ignite my breath and be where my feet are, I recognize that I have moved on. The eyes of my heart show me the strength and courage I have developed as a result of being an incest survivor.  My dogged attitude to find a way out of any kind of personal hell is a liberation that would not have come otherwise.  The liberation stemming from a willingness to see the gem within the coal alters my perception of freedom as a whole. It goes from something I have to something I can be present to in the moment if I choose.

One thing I have noticed over the years is God’s inclination to go with the simple.  We hear it spoken in sacred scriptures, we see it in nature, and we are aware of the power of simplicity, especially when it catches us off guard.  I have also noticed my inclination to complicate things.  Perhaps it is because God is in the moment and I am off in a million different directions.  Typically the first message I get from God is to pause and connect with my heart, with my breath, and be where my feet are. The simplicity of the moment allows us to get a reality check on the actual moment we are in so we know from where to proceed or if to proceed.  It is almost laughable the amount of times placing myself back in the moment and making sure my feet and my head are in the same place, simply solves the issue with which I am concerned.  If I get overwhelmed by all the things that need to happen to get where I am going, my breath, reminds me I can only do one thing at a time.  In recovery, they refer to it as taking the next indicated step.  Most of the time when I ask God for direction, I am not handed some grand plan.  I am whispered the next step. Then as it is with my breath, I pause with the next one and check in again.  Looking back those are the simplest, freest, and most powerful days  I have ever had.  The humility of letting go of how I want it all to turn out and the courage to be present in the moment and trust life to unfold as it will.

Have you ever thought about how much time and effort you put into covering up or keeping hidden the things that make you different?  There is a biological natural tendency to belong.  It is ingrained in us, however often we are given the message that we can only belong if we meet a certain criteria.  Somehow I do not think it is what God intended.  If that were the case, wouldn’t we all be exactly the same?  How boring would that be?  Very. Our quirkiness is what sets us apart.  Others might view our idiosyncrasies as less than but according to what or whom?  Is it because they are jealous that we are not working hard to hide parts of ourselves?  Is it because others are only able to see life through the lens of their automatic brain which immediately notices differences?  Is it because they do not want to be considered on the outside because of their association with us?  There are number of reasons why we and others chide ourselves for our idiosyncrasies.  God sees beauty in our idiosyncrasy and celebrates it.  God sees the creative force of love present in our idiosyncrasy and welcomes it.  God witnesses our idiosyncrasies and sees how we belong to the greater myriad of possibilities in the universe.  When I find myself heading down the road of self-judgment and self-criticism of my idiosyncrasies, I pause and lean on the one who’s got my back.  God how do you see my quirkiness? Widen the eyes of my heart so I am may fully embrace the expression of love you have given me to share with the world.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we do not know what to say.  We are afraid we will say the wrong thing or upset someone with what we say.  Typically this shows up when we are witnessing the vulnerability of another person.  It first and foremost puts us into resonance with our own vulnerability.  This can be unnerving and our mind starts doing jumping jacks because we have just stepped into the realm of embodied experience.  The opening of one’s heart that comes with vulnerable situations is not one that can be described well and it is different for all people involved.  When we step into the space of our heart, our mind is not in control and so words elude us.  We fight with ourselves because we fear the perceived loss of control and we say stuff to just fill the silence. Our mind jumps up with a standard list of responses and actions.  If we opt to be within brevity at those moments, we make room for our presence to hold the presence of another.  We allow our presence to be enough for ourselves when we are alone.  The ephemerality of words and actions in the presence of embodied heart-felt times is priceless.  It is contrary to the inclination of going, making, and doing.  Brevity is the opportunity for being to be enough.  In our hearts we know it is enough.