dailydatewithgod

When we notice the presence of something in our lives whether it is a person, a thing, or an experience, we are taking note of its form.  The assess its impact we will need to move beyond its form into meaning.  The distinction is important because we often confuse the two.  We think noticing the form gives it meaning.  But the meaning is not inherent in the form.  There may be accepted meanings about the form, but that does not mean the form itself means anything at all. Our power comes in the space between noticing the form and making meaning out of it.  Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% what you do with it (i.e.-what we make it mean).  My body has no specific meaning until I place meaning on it.  By itself it is simply a physical form on which I have placed a name and a personality.  How many forms of things do we have in our lives upon which we never take a second look.  The cabinet door or the steering wheel in a car.  We notice the form that works on a hinge to open and close or the round shape that is placed on the driver’s side of the car, but we don’t make meaning out of the shape or the placement of it.  So how do we determine which forms have certain meanings?  Can we change the meanings?  Why does what I think of the form determine its meaning?  What happens when we think differently of a form tomorrow?  The idea is to open ourselves up to embracing the pause between form and meaning about anything in our lives.  We do not find ourselves in painful circumstances because we notice the form of our body.  We find ourselves in painful circumstances when we decide that the physical form of our body makes us more important that someone else whom we do not notice.  God invites us to take a step back from the meaning and begin by noticing the forms.  This leaves us room to possibly change the meanings and thus see the form in a new way.

One of my all time favorite songs is “I Still Haven’t Found What I Am Looking For” by U2.  I think our hearts are designed to search for love and our souls are designed to search for freedom.  Our minds are designed to search for information, yet sometimes it seems that mine searches for fear potential.  I have often described my brain as one of those beachcomber machines that search below the sand for metal instead my brain is searching for what is wrong here.  Our minds are designed to keep us alive, thank God!  Because of this it defaults to an operation based on noticing what could potentially cause us harm. This is a very good thing. However, given how we are less often faced with death the way our ancestors were it seems to be an overactive mechanism. The power of mindfulness and meditation is shifting the focus of your brain when it does not need to be focused on death prevention.  No matter how much you train your brain, we will not be able to remove the survival mechanism.  At least scientists have not yet figured it out.  Again, more good news.  During my daily prayer and meditation dates with God I have the freedom and opportunity to bring my survival focused brain spitting out a million things to be afraid of to check in with my heart.  I can take a deep breath and ask if part of what my mind is searching for aligns with a search for love. I can also ask God what she would be searching for in this situation as he guides me through the breath into my heart space.  Sometimes I find myself asking God if there is anything to be searching for at all or if it is just a matter of seeing things differently. After years of practice, I find I am more easily inclined to search for what is going well as well as being aware of what is going wrong in any given situation. This allows for more breath and a taste of the peace and freedom of which my soul shows up searching for.

My prayer for us is the willingness to take what our mind is searching for and see if it matches up with the searching of our hearts and souls today.

 The eyes through which we see the world create our understanding of the world. However our eyes do not perceive like a camera. Everything the comes in through our eyes gets filtered through our brain. Each image immediately comes in and is assessed based on the information in our brain. Does it look familiar? Do we have a name for it? The last time we saw it what happened? What category does this fall in? Do we need to let any other system in the body know what has been seen? Our minds automatically formats the information in such a way that we actually aren’t seeing what is outside of us. We are seeing what our mind is creating based on information already present in our brains.  You may have heard or read the saying attributed to Anais Nin and others, “We do not see things as they are but as we are.” Many years ago, I learned two simple prayers, “God how do you see this?” or “God help me to see this differently.” They have become my go to mostly when I am distressed by what I am seeing. Yet I am aware of their power to open my eyes to what I am really seeing whether it distresses me or not. I cannot know all of what is possibly present for me because I have so many preconceived ideas about what I am looking at. My daily prayer and meditation time with God has opened my mind to the idea of multiple possibilities beyond my own thinking. Our date time has opened my heart to want to see more of the world through its lens and embrace God’s seeing more fully.

I was relatively young when I started using the expression “Random!” when things outside the ordinary would occur.  Certainly within the definition of the word it was an easy catch phrase to indicate that whatever I was experiencing was something that defied any rational explanation. I like things that make sense.  I like for their to be an answer to the question, especially a right answer.  It makes me feel safe. As a mixture of maturity and sobriety I have come to understand that so many things defy rational explanation.  I am in acceptance most of the time that not everything is going to make sense and there is not going to be a right answer. Some things are just random.  It reminds me to embrace the mystery of life, be surprised by life, and just relax.  As long as I know where my true safety lies, I can be open to the randomness.  Designs are unsymmetrical, certain paths are crooked, and there are all kinds of pattern which do not match.  As I build and strengthen my relationship with God, I am willing to open myself to the beauty of randomness, of the other, of the outside the box perception.  The openness allows my eyes to shift and see it may not be random at all.  Maybe it is all as it is supposed to be. Life would be very boring if there were no randomness.  We would laugh less, have less to inquire about, and become shut in by our expectations of order. We would default to only relying on our intellect because it would have the answer to everything.  Sounds kind of bland and lifeless.

We write TO DO lists to check off.  We have a check list in our mind of what is considered appropriate in certain situations. We design check lists for flying a plane and performing surgery.  We formulate a must have check list for our partners.  We live in a government that works from a system of checks and balances.  We even give Santa Claus a list of children so none are forgotten. There are multiple areas of life which function by checking on them.  It allows us to create a sense of accomplishment.  Our brains thrive on getting the task done and checking it off the list.  We get a hit of dopamine when put a check mark next to the item. But what about our spiritual lives?  Do we have a way of checking on it?  Do we have a check list for God?  Does God measure up to it?  How often do we check in with ourselves, our body, our thinking?  We can mobilize our brain’s system of thriving off of checks by putting it towards empowering avenues.  How might we approach the difficult situation at work if we first stopped to check in with ourselves about how we felt about it?  Would we respond differently if we first checked in with where in our body we noticed the tension when we read the text or email message?  Might we enlist God’s help to remind us to breathe if we were checking on where God is in that moment of our lives?  My daily date with God, my devoted time of prayer and meditation, is a checking in with God and myself.  Before I go out into my day, checking on what my mind, body, and heart are aligned with allows me to be more effective, compassionate, curious, and it reminds me to breathe. If I cannot check off the breathing part of my being, no other kind of check list will help. 😉

Being aware of how things function goes a long way in understanding what makes them work.  Our respiratory and circulatory systems have an operation.  They also have a system in our body of working in operation with one another.  Both are valuable on their own, but in order for our whole body to function they must have an operation with each other.  Strange as it may seem we as human beings also work as an operation. An awareness of our own internal mind operation gives us a clue into what drives us to be in action. The operation of the mind is multifaceted and dependent upon so many outside influence.  It can seem daunting to even begin to take a look under the hood.  If we desire to operate more efficiently and effectively in our own lives taking a look is necessary.  We get to be our own mechanic.  When I think about this, I feel like that.  When I feel like this, I think about that.  What I am thinking about right now is causing me to move in this way, treat someone this way or choose one thing over another.  God invites us to look at the operation of our hearts, minds, and bodies as a unifying experience.  No matter how much we think we can, we cannot separate our mind, heart, and body from influencing one another.  The question is, do we wish to make the best use of the relationship foundation God has laid in our creation or do we want to be at the mercy of it?  We may need to spend some time focusing on one area of operation more than another but as we grow wholly, we can embrace their collaborative function and begin to operate from all three in harmony. Engaging the development of all three is what God invites me to do on our dates every morning.  I may show up in the operation of my mind, body, or heart predominantly but she prompts me to ask what my heart or body’s  experience of my mind is right now.  He wants us all to know the value of each individual operation and the power of aligning the three to be present as the gifts we are to the world.

We have this relationship with our mind.  We are constantly engaging cognitively with life even when we are unaware of it. The myriad of thoughts running through our mind are the filters through which our body processes our reality.  There is no way we can be aware of all of our thoughts, it would overwhelm us.  The way to start is by paying attention to the reappearing ones.  If you spend any time in silence you quickly become aware of your thoughts.  It can be like having a radio station on 24-7 in between your ears.  I’ll never forget the day I was in my car and I reached over to turn the radio off and realized it was not on. The radio I wanted to turn off was the one in my head.  The thoughts it was running were on what I call the KFCK station.  (insert expletive FM station).  Does that one ever play in your head?  I was giving myself a hard time about something I said to someone else and was replaying in mind all the while coming up with multiple scenarios of how I could have done something different.  Each option was getting tossed aside as not good enough for the DJ. Because God does not quickly run to shut off the KFCK station, I am able to play it on our date.  God invites me to breathe into the thoughts spewing from the DJ as though it does not apply to me.  God shows me how to place my hand on my heart and listen from there to what is not being said.  She wants me to see the painful thoughts are just a way of letting me know there is some hurt and pain.  The thoughts cannot do anything besides provide an indication of how I am feeling.  Once I settle into my heart space there is room for spirit through the breath to embrace the hurt and pain and find a path of healing. God has taught me the value of paying attention to these thoughts without judgment and ask them, as though a child, “Why have you come today?  What are you here to teach me?” Then there is room for love to grow in me and from me.

We draw more from our imagination than we realize.  Our brains have a particular relationship with images that it does not have with words or numbers.  Images that are not yet defined create and atmosphere of mystery and get our mind moving.  We long to have meaning about everything.  It our logical brains sense of safety to have an understanding of everything.  When we open ourselves up to being in the mystery there are multiple possibilities of meaning.  Words and numbers have a set meaning and definition that our brains default to so we often look past them and go straight to what we already know.  With images there is an opening to stretch or configure new meanings.  It gives our spirit a place to play.  It gives our heart a time to reflect.  It can even give our minds a time of reprieve. Einstein is credited with saying “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  A strong statement for a man who was and is valued for his knowledge.  God invites us to play in the space of images to incorporate the balance of heart and spirit into our reality. Scientific studies have shown that images imprint on our minds and inform our experience.  Just imagining is the equivalent of experiencing something to our minds. Perhaps God’s invitation is to invite balance and possibilities beyond what our logic can design.

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of something and wondered how you got there?  You were sure you were following a specific path or trajectory and then you wake up to realize you are in a different space than you intended.  Circumstances did not work out the way you had planned, and you are now in the midst of facing things and making decisions you did not foresee.  I think we all experience in many areas of our lives.  Our life is not what we plan, it is who we are being as it happens.  I believe God who created us sees beyond what we can see.  God does not have a small plan for our lives.  God wants our souls to be able to rejoice at the whispered reminder we are alive today.  God wants our hearts to be tickled by the vast possibilities of love built into a feather.  God desires us to come to a clear recognition that we are loved beyond what our being can encompass.  God wants us in the midst of his reality.  She invites us to open the eyes of our hearts when we find ourselves in these places we did not foresee for ourselves and ask, “God what do you see for me here than I am not seeing?”  When life is going along just fine we do not often stop and ask God for his sight.  When we feel in sync with the flow of life we do not wonder if she is seeing it the same way because we are in the midst of it.  Alignment with God brings a peace and a satisfaction that is beyond explanation and when we are in the midst of it, even the bumps and difficulties seem a little less drastic.

As a child I learned early on not to question certain realities lest I find out I was to blame.  I feared the truth I had created in my head that it was my fault.  As an incest survivor I was facing a situation in which my father was not taking responsibility. I believe he was reliving his own trauma and could not take responsibility. All children, no matter the specific circumstances take on the responsibility when the adults around them do not. Children are open souls and generously take on the responsibility because to not do so would create an unsurvivable reality. How would I live and be taken care of if the people I am dependent upon are responsible for my lack of safety and security? It would be maddening. Because as human beings we learn to adapt and repeated ideas become beliefs I spent a lot of my life taking responsibility for things that were not mine to take. As God guides me on our date to ask about some of these repeated ideas I have cemented in my mind through the lens of my heart, I am transformed. I get to re-evaluate the ideas, see their purpose at the time, thank them, and choose to release them.  My heart is freed and my mind is unburdened.  My eyes will cry and my chest will exhale as I step into a new reality alive with new ideas one day at a time.  This is the process of asking my heart what will enable me to live in the light of God’s love.