In order to function well in life we need to be able to filter through all the information coming at us all the time. Our brains do the majority of the bulk work with such ease we do not even realize how much has already been put aside. It is only when we stop to notice trends and commonalities about what is in our attention do we think to ask about what we have automatically placed on the side. It takes a good amount of self-reflection to be willing to see what we are not seeing. Being able to consciously put aside our inclinations based on the filters which have been grooved into our brains takes conscious persistent effort. We are asking our minds to wake up and take a look at something it is used to looking past. It feels unfamiliar and our minds interpret unfamiliar as uncomfortable. As human beings whose goal is survival, a lack of comfort would be tantamount to possible death. In other words, we will want to avoid it. So we come up with excuses and make up stories to justify sticking to what we know and unconsciously keeping the filters in place. On my daily date with God through the discipline of showing up for prayer and meditation no matter what, I have learned to be in discomfort. It may sound counter-intuitive but our inner knowing calls us to stretch our minds and be at peace with discomfort so our hearts can grow. The more willing we are to open our eyes and put aside our filters, the more visible love becomes.
Be About Limiting!
Most of the limits we have in our lives come from our thinking about what is possible. God is all about possibilities and does not perceive the same limits we do. God can see further, deeper, and more wholly the big picture of what can be than what is within our capacity to see. Just because we see limits does not mean they cannot be surpassed. Us limiting ourselves is because we are relying only our on own capabilities. Me keeping off 160 plus pounds and living at a healthy body weight for 15 years, not possible. Me being present in the lives of my family members without compromising the truth of who I am, not possible. Me looking at a man who is looking at me and not feeling responsible, not possible. Even things I did not think were possible even six months ago in terms of how I interact with people or sense an aliveness in my heart are now happening. I had done my best to walk through all of those things but came up against what I believed were limits. I only saw limits and had no sense of how it could all come about. I did the only thing I learned in recovery to do. I turned to God with each limiting belief. “God how do you see this? Does this still ring true for me? I trust all things are possible for you and you are not hindered by the limiting beliefs I have. I surrender my heart and mind to you today. Show me what to do, tell me what to say and use me as you will.” It is the willingness to let go and trust that while we may not know how it is possible, God knows it is possible. Limiting becomes a sign post to me of where I need God to show me what is beyond my limiting ideas and return to the truth of who I am according to God.
My prayer for us is the willingness to take a closer look at our limiting beliefs and ask God if God sees those beliefs aligned with the truth of who we are today.
Be About Timing!
I often wonder about God’s sense of timing. If nothing else in my life is a confirmation that God thinks differently than I do, it is in regards to timing. Why is it when the things we think want to happen and don’t, in retrospect are grateful they didn’t? Or how come I become inpatient about how long the process of finding a job I resonate with that uses more of my talents after searching for a long time seems like it wont happen just shows up and the process is seamless? And while it is not what I thought it was going to be it is the first time in a long time where I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I suppose I chalk it up to the mysterious elements of God and the universe that the cheeky phrase, all is exactly as it should be in this moment, seems to be true. God’s sense of timing has elements of peace and freedom that are not present when it comes to my sense of timing. Timing for me is often exacting, pressure filled, and with the fear that time will run out. In those moments I sense the support of God behind me giving me the breath space to pause and notice that it is not the timing that is stressing me out. It is what I am telling myself about the timing of my life that is causing me suffering. As a woman in my 40s who is not yet married or a mother and envisioned that as part of her life for a long time, surrendering to God’s timing and plan is something I have to do continuously. Whatever the elements are that I long to experience about those situations I trust are desires in my heart for a reason. Being willing to surrender to the timing and the manifestation only comes because I trust God to know my heart even better than I do.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice what stresses us about the timing of things in our lives and ask God how God sees the timing of lived experiences in our lives today.
Be About Binding!
In my advocacy for the movement to abolish the death penalty in California and ultimately the United States, I see how easy it is for us to label people and their mistakes. We lock people up and throw away their humanity. I believe people should own up to their mistakes and face the consequences. I just do not understand how us inflicting death on others is anything more than being bound by our hatred. I get it the feelings of anger. As an incest survivor I have faced many dark thoughts about my father. I learned after a while, however, that my anger and dark thoughts did nothing to him. It was when I decided I no longer wanted to be bound by my feelings of anger that God was able to show me how to soften my heart. It does not make what he did okay but I am not responsible for keeping him bound because it binds me to anger. We all have our own forms of depriving ourselves of freedom. We think our binding keeps us safe or protects of from further harm. Unfortunately we are not able to keep it from binding our hearts from love. We are the ones who suffer when we allow ourselves to be deprived of the freedom of love. Each person has their own process and I believe what it says in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for all things under heaven. I believe we have to move through phases of the spiritual lessons that walk the path from recognizing what is binding our hearts to desiring freedom of love within us more than the binding. God wants our hearts to be free to love and anything big or small that our hearts God is willing to help us let go of.
My prayer for us is the courage to look and just notice what is binding our hearts and keeping love at bay today.
Be About Exchanging!
We fear experiencing loss. Yet everything in the way the universe is set up speaks to the power and the truth of cycles. Part of that cycle is loss. So why do we fear something so inherent to our reality? We grasp on and identify with things, ideas, or visions. We take them on as part of ourselves and so the thought of losing them means we will lose our selves. Sounds pretty scary to me. As someone who lost touch with herself because it was not safe to believe myself at an early age, I understand what its like to find something to identify with and want to hold on to it. I gravitated towards anything that made me feel remotely safe. I became the religious girl, the reliable girl, the funny girl, and the intelligent girl. I also became the fat girl, the I never tell you what I am really thinking girl, and the everything is fine girl. As I have grown closer to God on our daily dates I recognize those definitions of myself as layers on top of the truth of who I am. My fear of losing them would not actually cause me to lose myself. In the space of God’s love it became safe to let go and exchange those definitions of myself to reveal more of the truth of who I am and have always been at my core. Exchanging my perception of myself has given me room to let go of the definitions of myself that no longer serve to reveal the truth of who I am.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice what it is about ourselves we might consider exchanging for the opportunity to live and share the truth of who we are in God today.
Be About Anger!
It is hard to imagine how something as irritating as frustration could be a useful tool. In being open to how God see’s things I find I am willing to take a second or third look at an experience or idea I have held for a long time. My experience around feelings in general as I was growing up were not pleasant. The “bad” feelings, that is. Anger is one in particular that sent up red flags. Most women are socialized to not feel anger let alone express it. As a kid even into my early teen years I used to throw temper tantrums mostly in my bedroom. I had no idea what to do with all the anger inside of me. And one day I decided I was tired of what I felt like was wearing my heart on my sleeve and I closed off. I developed a highly sarcastic attitude which I later came to see as nice people’s anger. Years later I would find myself diagnosed with clinical depression and would take medication which helped. Basically I was turned off from my feelings and the only thing I felt was numb. My response to being asked how I was feeling was either “fine” or “hungry” (at least the response in my head). Living in recovery and not eating over things brings the feelings front and center. To live as a sober person required some new tools for handling the ups and downs of feelings. It is a process I presume will continue for the rest of my life. Even years after not numbing out with food, as I dove deeper to heal the incest wounds, I discovered greater depths of anger and pain. I never thought I would say that I look forward to feeling but I do. God and all those around me who have shown me what it means to be a healthy human being, helped me to see that to feel is to know I am alive. Feelings are not facts but they do serve as indicators of a deeper awareness. I have learned to channel my anger in healthy ways. I am no longer hurting myself or unintentionally hurting others by my attitude and distance. I don’t shy away from riding the wave of the feeling and allowing it to flow through me. I now see when I am feeling angry versus feeling I am angry. By default then I can feel frustrated, irritated, or pissed off and not think I am a bad person who needs to shut it down. God gave us all our feelings and when I am overwhelmed by them instead of throwing a tantrum I can take a breath, connect to my heart and give them to God. Show me how you want me to use this? How do you see my feelings of anger?
My prayer for us is the courage to explore our feelings, whether we have labeled them good or bad, as the indicators of being alive and check with God if there is more we are to learn from them today.
Be About Humaneness!
For all the strife and conflict we have with other human beings it is clear that what lies at the cord of the disconnect is the forgetting of who we are. As humans when we are focused on the problems, the conflict, essentially the differences, we lose sight of who others are and who we are. The very term humane is synonymous with benevolent, cordial, democratic, merciful, tolerant, gentle, gracious, friendly, approachable, and forgiving. God encourage us to remember by returning to our own hearts. When we pause and connect into the heart, our vision becomes more fully embodied. We notice on a very basic level the people we are labeling as others have a heart too. They have a heart because they are human. How do we know how to treat a human? By being humane. Our minds become very attached to the outer exterior around the heart and it is easy to be fooled into thinking someone else has no heart. In fact, it is sometimes the descriptor we use when describing someone who behaves or thinks in a manner different from our own. The problem is we lose our own heart if we continue to focus on what we believe to be their lack of one. It is not easy and as much as I may want to make the person on the road who cut me off or the co-worker who did not complete their part of the project the enemy, it is simply not true. Our friends and enemies are made up of the same stuff as us. It is a stretch of our own hearts and our capacity for humaneness calling upon us to reconnect as God designed us to do. It whispers us in the stillness of our spirits and beckons us to give each other another look from the eyes of the heart.
My prayer for us is the humility to acknowledge that when we lose sight of the hearts of others and label them as less than human we are losing touch with our own hearts and our humaneness today.
Be About Reinstating!
Often there is one political candidate who captivates voters with the idea of going back to the way things used to be. The way of life we had before the difficulties began. Aside from the propensity of our minds to filter out and only remember the good parts of the past, it is actually not possible to go back. We think we can reinstate the physical experience of the past because it was better than now. It sounds romantic and easy. We are drawn to that. Given we live in an ever-expanding universe it is counter-intuitive to think going back is the best option. Maybe the reason things fell apart is because they outlived their time, not because we messed up or got lazy. We may have reached a point where we got as much as we could from the way things were. What makes us think reinstating things that worked before is what is needed to face what we are facing today? If we are paying attention we can draw on our state of being. Maybe who we were before the difficulties began is the element we feel we are missing. This does not require us to reinstate the circumstances. It calls for an awareness of who we are. When we were thriving and strong before we got knocked around comes from the core of who we are. We just came up against experiences for which we lacked preparation and got off track. God invites us to reinstate our state of being into the new situation. When we return to our hearts and garner the power within us we see ourselves facing today and the future and become more than we are now. We grow from the difficulties because our capacity of character grows not because circumstances keep repeating themselves. Renewing our confidence in our internal state of being is the kind of reinstating God sees us embodying.
My prayer for us is to not get taken in by the romantic nostalgia of past times and accept God’s invitation to reinstating our connection to the truth and power of who we are and always will be no matter what we are called on to walk through today.
Be About Missing!
We all experience FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) from time to time. I have heard that spending a lot of time on Facebook can up the anti on this condition but I do not believe it has been studied scientifically. It hits us at the fear of losing things. I learned in recovery that there are basically two fears that can drive us. The fear of not getting what we want or losing what we have. When we anticipate missing out on something it can hit us hard. It may start the story we have that we are not enough or we don’t belong because we are missing out. Yet the very idea that we are missing anything we need essential to what makes us whole is ridiculous in God’s eyes. God would not design us with missing elements. The notion of missing has more to do with what we have disconnected from within. When we return our attention to our hearts and sit deep within in quiet we can eradicate any notion of missing anything. Basing who we are on outside appearances and circumstances will always provide evidence of something missing because there is not constancy of comparison. God is always certain of our wholeness and our connection to everything we ever need in our hearts.
My prayer for us is the courage to take a closer look at our FOMO and investigate if what we think we are missing might actually already be present in our hearts today.
Be About Excavating!
Sometimes it seems like walking a spiritual path as one faces the spaces of darkness within there is something even deeper going on. It is as though the process itself is asking one to unearth everything he or she knows about themselves and take a look. No wonder it seems so daunting and painful. If excavating is what we imagine it means to live a spiritual life or walk a spiritual path I can see why most people would rather just keep their dark sides buried. I am not sure if the life I had built for myself did not crumble to pieces and fall apart that I would have sought a spiritual solution. Being asked to wake up by life and take a look at the darkness I was running from was not easy. But as God has shown me on our dates each day, it is simple. Just like an archaeologist excavates a site by picking one section at a time, I do not need to tackle it all at once. Plus I have a team of people who are working with me. Excavating becomes enlightening and exploratory instead of fearful and daunting.
dailydatewithgod 