dailydatewithgod

Why is it we are often bothered by changes?  Biologically our brains are wired for the least amount of energy needed.  Survival is the prerogative.  A very good quality for which I am immensely thankful.  We do not realize how much energy thinking and being present takes.  When babies are little they sleep so much not because they rolled a lot that day but because their brain is actively working and learning with every little moment of breath.  When we are required to think, not just go on familiar patterns, our brain requires more energy.  This means we are being asked to use more energy and do some work.  Our brain does so much of just going on automatic pilot that there is a sense of it being bothered by having to wake up and be present.  When we take those thoughts into action we become upset. It sounds funny, but when we think about why we get upset at the delay in traffic or the change in weather,  it makes sense.  Are we really upset by them or is it just that our brains cannot engage us in another day of driving to work without knowing how we got there?  We might have to take a different route or contact someone for help.  Perhaps all these moments of upset are not about being upset but about waking up and using some more energy.  God invites us to engage the rest of our system to support the brain.  Our hearts look for ways to connect with others in these moments, our bodies respond by mirroring and taking on the feelings, and our souls awaken to the mystery of it all.  But if we are only in our head about how upsetting all of it is, we can never hear the voices of the rest of our experience.

One of my greatest fears is failing.  I am aware of how universal this fear is and how much it has actually contributed to the experience of failing. Fear of failure led to failing to try.  Failing to take a chance.  Failing to create something new.  Failing to explore.  Failing to question.  Failing to mess things up. Failing to ask for forgiveness.  Failing to let myself be human. My fear of failure led to me creating the very thing I was trying to avoid.  Thankfully I have learned to open myself up to the opportunity that lies on the other side of failure.  With some maturity and open eyes I see my attempt at trying to be perfect and always get it right is the one thing I have failed at most.  Failure does not mean abandonment.  Failure does not mean idiocy. Failure does not mean loneliness.  Failure does not mean hatred.  Failure does not mean no second chances.  On some level of my heart I get that the fact that I am breathing means I cannot fail. I always looked for a prescription that would erase all the darkness and defaulted nature I felt within.  God has shown me that making a mistake is not a failure.  It is an opportunity for further learning.  It is a chance to choose a different direction.  It is an opportunity to learn about myself and others.  Failure as I understood it is actually something that can bring me closer to others.  Who can relate to someone who is perfect?  Who wants to connect to someone who is perfect?  God is less interested in whether or not I misstep or in my eyes fail and more interested in what I do as a result of it.  As I have learned to demystify the fear of failure and embrace a little messiness knowing it is not who I am, I am free to breathe.

Especially at this time of the new year we reflect on where we might like the year to go.  Some set resolutions, others create goals, and some refuse to do any of it in protest.  I vacillate between the two options. A part of me resists because it seems like such an arbitrary distinction. Just because someone thousands of years ago decided that January 1st was the beginning of a new year, I am now supposed to evaluate the trajectory of my life for the next 365 days?  Where is that man in the toga now?  How many resolutions did he stick to?  I certainly know that habits create our lives.  Our habits are formed by actions stemming from our thinking and feeling.  I also believe strongly in the power of reflection and creation.  I just resist being told by every success mogul and magazine that it must be done now for the whole year.  Perhaps because of my experience in recovery, I have a slightly different take.  I bring it down a notch.  I do my best to be in the day I am in.  I start off my day on my date with God and hope the time of reflection and openness is enough to get me on the path where I can be of most use and therefore at peace with myself and others.  There are certainly things I would like to have or experience in my life but I know that they don’t happen with sweeping resolutions and goals.  The habits which build success are formed from the day-to-day actions. Those actions are an outgrowth of my thoughts and feelings.  Choosing to begin this day on my prayer and meditation date with God is the single most powerful choice I can make.  I started it not thinking I would do it for a whole year or even a whole week.  I started because I was willing to do it for the day.  I began with two minutes, it was a quicky!  Little by little and day by day I began to set aside more time until I found myself 15 years later not imagining beginning my day let alone a year any other way.  When the world is screaming at us to set our course for the year, maybe we can dial it back for ourselves.  Instead of asking what are my goals and intentions for this year  we could try out some different options: What am I willing to do with my day today?  What might God have in store for me today?  Am I willing to look for evidence of love today?

The ocean is made up of millions of drops of water. We don’t think much about how those drops add up to the whole.  Yet, the ocean would be missing some of its magnificence if it did not have all the drops of water it was meant to have.  The baseline ridges of the ocean create an outline for the flow of the water when the drops are working together.  Think of how much pleasure we derive from letting ourselves be held by the ocean or ride the waves.  Even when the moon pulls the tides, the ocean does not break apart into separate drops. We are all drops in each others lives and play a significant contribution.  How much is one drop of water worth to someone who is dying of thirst?  How many times during the course of the day is our presence that drop and the people we encounter the thirsty one?  If we can offer a drop of who we are to one another through the simple acknowledgment of the eyes or a smile, we can create an ocean of people who just might be able to work together for magnificence.  God designed us at our core to be in relationship and work with one another.  We are often too busy paying attention to how we do not seem to mesh well and lose sight of the fact that we all have a heart, a mind, and a soul.  We are not only our outside appearance.  By connecting with others in simple small ways we can be the profound difference between dying of thirst and quenching thirst.

Normally we want to avoid or stay away from things or people who irritate us.  Yet, dismissing them so easily could be at the cost of dismissing the lesson.  We have all had experiences where we find ourselves encountering the same situation or type of person.  The circumstances or setting may be different but we find what we are feeling to be the same.  Contrary to popular belief we are not surrounded by irritating people. This is where the seemingly harsh realization that the common factor in the situation is us.  It does not need to be harsh if we are open to welcoming in the lesson.  We are here to grow. I am certain God is about growth.  She is ready to support anything that will enable us to expand our experience and knowledge of the presence of love.  In some fairy tale land this sounds like rainbows, fairies, and flowers.  On planet earth this means seeing the difficulties and irritations for what they really are . . . portals to love in disguise.  Growing sometimes comes with pain.  Often it is not what is happening that causes pain, it is the resistance to looking at it.  I have done enough experimenting in my own life to know I cannot completely avoid things.  It is part of our evolutionary nature to grow and as God would see it, grow in love and light.  Embracing irritations can provide a portal to light where we have only witnessed darkness and God is ready to take our hand and guide us through our hearts to witness the power of love and light.  Irritations are an indication of  our inner discord which can be taken on with courage and allow us to live as the warriors of love we are called to be.

As a dancer the alignment of the body is where one’s consciousness needs to be.  It’s about how the body is aligned so as to take advantage of the aerodynamics of movement and to accentuate the beauty of body’s movement.  Our eyes are drawn to the lines created in different poses.  There is a reason why we pay attention when standing at attention.  Being in alignment makes sense to us in a fundamental way we don’t even have to consciously think about.  When our bodies are aligned they function better.  When our minds our aligned with the movement and processes of our body it is called flow.  When our hearts are aligned with our spirit it is called joy.  When our hearts, minds, and spirits are aligned it is called power. When our hearts and minds are aligned with God it is called miraculous.  When we are aligned with other human beings it is called peace.  Conversely when our body is not in alignment we are in pain, inflammation,  discomfort, or achy.  When our body is not in alignment with our minds and heart we are disgruntled, depressed, angry, frustrated, negative, or hopeless. When we are not in alignment with ourselves, with others and with God we experience pain, discomfort, frustration, anger, discord, violence, and suffering.  If we are to function well and thrive in this world we are called to pay attention to our alignment.  God is ready and willing to assist us with any adjustments needed.

My prayer for us is the willingness to pay attention to our alignment within ourselves, others, and God and know when to reach out for an adjustment today.

One of the fascinating things about our minds is its ability to see things that are not there.  We see things through the filter of our mind which pulls from past information and clouds the view through which we are witnessing.  Then there are the stories we create in our minds to add meaning to the picture which is why our account of what we are seeing is different from the person sitting next to us.  Essentially our minds are these tremendous movie producers.  To bring ourselves into the reality of what is happening we need to take away some of the excess.  All the other elements are not bad, but they are not real.  God encourages us to stay in reality and turn to him for the production.  We like to add the drama and the fantastical and it stays in our minds that way.  God wants us to be with the reality of what is happening so we can experience the truth of the simple beauty of our lives from moment to moment.  When we are with reality we are closer to love and light.  We approach life with an innocence of heart and pureness of spirit traveling faster than any fantastical story we can create.  The reality of love is powerful and piercing to our hearts and one we are not likely to be the same after experiencing.

Most of our day is not actually spent in the present moment because our minds keep us thinking.  When we are thinking we are not present with what is because we are in our heads.  This is not a bad thing but it is helpful to be aware of it, especially when it comes to our reactions to what is happening.  Life is not what happens to us, it is what we make it mean.  Our minds have this very efficient way of categorizing experiences  and then cataloging them.   When something happens we can go to that file and look for similar situations and know how to handle it.  We are reacting to something based on past experiences.  If we have any left over or residual feelings from those past experiences those show up in the file as well.  Have you ever found yourself having a disproportionate reaction to something?  You notice you have strong feelings of any kind when dealing with something you have never dealt with before.  Our minds allow us to feel capable to handle whatever comes our way because it is dedicated to our survival.  Yet we are not actually reacting or making meaning from the present situation.  Most of the time we are reacting to the past, to a similar situation, but not the current one.  The power of our life comes from noticing our reactions and meaning and pausing before we run with it.  Most mindful practices start by noticing what comes up when we get still.  It is the first step and a practice I learned from my daily dates with God. She showed me the power of noticing and not judging.  He welcomes all our reactions and meanings and invites us to notice them before using them to determine our action. It is a practice which I do very imperfectly.  Pausing and noticing are tools we can use to be in our lives the way God is in our life.

As human beings we are multidimensional.  We experience life on many levels.  We have multiple senses, multiple perspectives, and multiple options.  Embracing all these sides of ourselves provides the breathing space for life.  If we try to box ourselves into being just one way, expressing only one side of ourselves we become stifled.  Our inherent creativity calls to us to respond in the moment we are in.  At any given moment we may be more connected to one sense, perspective, option and therefore side of ourselves.  If we pause and come back to a situation at a later time we will see things from a different side and perhaps make different choices.  The environment and people we surround ourselves are providing feedback and insight through which to filter through all these sides of ourselves.  Yet all sides are an outgrowth of the core of who we are which is a child of God. God embraces and makes room for all sides of ourselves.  Do we do the same or do we hide some of who we are to ourselves and to the world?  One of the many gifts of my daily prayer and meditation dates with God is the willingness to show up exactly how I am in the moment and still be greeted with the same love and acceptance no matter what side of myself is more present. God sees the capacity for a fullness of life and creativity by allowing all sides of ourselves to be accepted.  I ask for the courage, patience, and tolerance to adopt the same perspective of myself and others. I learned a while back that the degree to which I am accepting others is an indicator of the level of acceptance I have of that side of myself.

My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore what it would be like to accept all sides of ourselves as God does today.

It’s amazing what we can learn when we recognize how little we actually know.  Why are little children so open to learning? It can’t be the stature of the individual. The times I am most open to learning is when I come from a place of curiosity.  There is little basis of comparison and so there is no down side to admitting how little or nothing I know about a given experience.  When I look at how often things that are similar in circumstance do not always end the same way for everyone, why do I think it will turn out the same way it does for me every time?  Perhaps I am only seeing a little piece of the outcome. What it looks like the same on the surface is only a little part of the picture.  Like the iceberg the Titanic crashed into.  On the surface was a little part of it, below the surface was the bulk of it.  God is willing to show me all I am open to seeing. It feels safer to play at the level of surface relying on the little I do know.  God invites me to take her hand and allow him to guide me in seeing the greater elements at play.  He wants me to experience life on all levels. While I may have little confidence in my ability to be present to the experience on multiple levels, God’s confidence in my heart is not as little.