dailydatewithgod

Recognizing our ability to choose where we focus our attention and thus our lives is a gift of autonomy.  As I grew in my relationship with God my relationship to my thoughts and feelings deepened.  Perhaps it is in part learning not to take myself so seriously.  More fundamentally, however, it is the space between the thought or feeling and the action.  On our daily dates I learned to notice and accept the various thoughts and feelings as indications of where my attention was focused at the moment.  When all I was doing was sitting with them, there was nothing to fix or make go away or conclude as right or wrong.  I noticed that when I breathed through them they would often leave and another one would come up.  I could then choose whether or not to hold on to them.  The autonomy allows me to bring God into every thought and every feeling and choose whether or not to jump on the bandwagon.  I do this very imperfectly but it is a muscle that grows stronger with the breath.  The moment of pause cultivated on our daily prayer and meditation dates has shown me the power of living autonomously from things I thought I was a victim of.  In the autonomous breath I can notice that I feel anxious and not claim that I am anxious. I can recognize feeling something without being it.

Most of us know our familial roots to some extent.  We identify as belonging to specific family groups, cultures, races, historical backgrounds.  We label ourselves by the characteristics of our cultures. Even our mannerisms and personality styles are attributed to these familial lines of heritage.  Our greatest heritage is of God.  Yet we struggle with identifying the familiar faculties we embody that are like God. When we engage in relationship with God and begin to notice the ways in which she is present in our lives our familiarity grows.  We notice how he moves in and through us in the same way that our human family does.  Our familiarity with our culture or family comes from the amount of time we spend in the presence of those people.  God invites us to get to know and claim our familiarity with her by doing the same.  He lets us know he is ready to be with us as much as possible and is delighted to do so.  It is up to us to accept the invitation one moment at a time.

Our encounters with the divine in ourselves and others brings us to our home space.  When we recognize the home connection with share with others all other labels and separations between us begin to fall.  We are then more likely to open our hearts to receiving the message others have to share.  We can be witnesses to the good brought into our lives within our home space because it is the dwelling of God. The presence of love means we are home. Being the presence of love for other people gives us the opportunity to bring home to them.  The idea of a home space can be a troubling label for some people but the home of God opens our hearts and thus our minds to a new experience. If we are willing to put aside for a moment our original experiences of home and open ourselves us to a new home we will walk into a new reality. God’s version of home is one that knows no bounds, has no conditions and flows endlessly in and our of our own hearts.

In the moments of inner turmoil the hardest battle become that of our own minds.  God encourages us to reach out so we do not have to carry the burden of our angst alone.  Yet when we are faced with the churning and uncomfortable elements of ourselves and our reaction to life the last we think is that someone else would want anything to do with us. We push people away and we try to muddle through closing off our hearts.  God senses the division we have with our sense of who we truly are at our core and waits patiently for our return to reality.  A reality that holds the presence of our love and innocence as our true selves and nothing else.  It is a battle of the mind and the heart and all the heart wants is to extend a hand of warmth.  Yet our tightened breath makes it harder for the blood to reach our brain.  So God gently does anything possible to draw us to our hearts and take a deep breath.  The inspiration of the breath gives us a wiggle space to release the angst just enough to be open to another possibility.  God reminds us that even our angst can be used to bring us back to the space of our breath which connects us to our heart giving it more strength to reach our mind.

We are an extension of God.  God leads and we follow like an outpouring of the heart of the universe.  We follow God’s lead because it is what is marked on our hearts.  We are designed for the outpouring of love and compassion in the moments we are in.  This is what we are called to be.  It has taken me a long time to understand that my life is determined by who I am being in it than what I am doing.  The doing feeds from the being. When we are on our dates in the morning I get to practice very little doing and much more being.  I am acutely aware of how much of that can be in contradiction with the rest of my day.  In a world that values us as human doings more than human beings it can almost seem counterintuitive.  I think our intuition does know the space of our hearts that are expressed in the outpouring of being.  I just became numb and deaf to the voice of my heart.  It hurt too much for a long time to listen because I had grown accustomed to the layers I placed out of a need for protection around my heart.  God slowly and patiently has provided the safe space to let go of those layers little by little and invite me into a more vibrant way of being one moment at a time.

God sustains us in body, mind, and spirit.  The nourishment provided is always available to us if we are willing to receive it.  We know how to prepare and consume the food needed as fuel for our body.  We trust that we are educating our minds through learning new information.  We take time to live in between in the moments of the undone and unseen and leave space for our souls to breathe.  What makes us think these are the things providing nourishment in our lives?  God invites us to engage him in the process of determining the things outside of the obvious that provides nourishment.  She also encourages us to look within to find what we already have providing nourishment.  Our intentions and perspectives have a tremendous impact on the quality of the nourishment from outside of ourselves as well as the nourishment within.   What do we allow to grow and flourish within us and does it match with what comes from outside of us? When we pay attention to how we see the various kinds of nourishment we are impacted to a greater or lesser extent by that which we intend to ingest and that we do not.  We cannot prevent things from impacting us but we can decide what elements of it can nourish our souls.

God created us full of possibility.  The opportunities for our lives has no boundary.  We get stuck because we can only see so far.  We are confined by the limits of our imagination.  Our imagination can grow if we allow ourselves the chance to stop editing it while it wanders.  While we may engage our imagination in the process of life, we quickly talk it down from our mind because of our perceived limits. We need assistance to step outside our boundaries of what is possible.  We need a willing partner to  assist us in letting ourselves wonder just for the sake of wondering.  It is not about living in some fantasy land.  We can be fully grounded in reality and still create space for imagination.  God’s assistance is given to us in the capability to question.   Questioning our thinking is the first step to expanding our horizons.  A spiritual teacher of mine once pointed out that Jesus often asked questions.  If Jesus is the embodiment of the Almighty, why would he ask questions?  The questions were not for him, they were for his followers.  He was assisting them in dealing with situations by inviting them to step outside of what they thought they already knew was possible.  We can engage our imagination and open up to what is possible if we utilize God’s assistance and question what we think we know.  I struggle with using my imagination as I grew up believing it had to have the right answer.  And then God comes to my assistance and asks, “Is it a struggle or just unfamiliar?“

One gift of the wisdom God places within us our ability to turn back to it over and over again.  Because it is inherent within us we do not have to seek outside of ourselves to find it.  We need only return to the space within our hearts where it originates.  Returning over and over again provides the twists and turns in our dance of life.  Unless we are enlightened masters, we are not going to maintain the stasis of movement from the wisdom of our hearts.  I am grateful that I do remember I have a choice.  God is generous enough to provide little hints and clues when I veer off course and forget how to connect to my wisdom.  It shows up in the form of annoying situations or people, disappointments, kind people, a gusty wind, a random occurrence  strong emotions, and moments of laughter.  No situation lacks the capability to return me to the wisdom of my heart if I let it.  The returning may come because I  am disconnected from wisdom of my heart or an invitation to express gratitude for the presence of  peace it brings me and those around me.

A valuable outcome of my daily prayer and mediation practice where God and I meet for our dates is the pause button.  Not something occurring on our date specifically but a growth of learning to breathe and create space that I am able to take into my day.  Just as I make time to connect at the beginning of my day with the Eternal Source of life and love when I pause and take a breath I reinitiate the experience.  I am allowing for consideration of my heart by taking the pause. I have instinctively found myself drawing my hand to my heart drawing my attention there an allowing understanding to speak from within me.  The pause engages my attention to what I want to be taken into consideration as I make a decision.  God has taught me the presence of God and therefore love in all things.  When I am not aware of it I know it is because I have not gotten to a place of considering with my heart.  The more pauses I take, the more my heart engages in all areas of my life.  Whether to say hello to someone, finish one more thing before I leave, buy something, flirt with someone, turn left or right, or take more time on our date.  It does not matter the decision.  The more consideration I give to the view of my heart, the more whole and complete my life is.

The Great Giver bestows upon us a love without boundaries.  Within this experience of love from which we were created, we have the opportunity to embrace the fullness of life.  God is the way God is because of who God is.  God does not withhold love or keep us from the truth of who we are because of what we have done or not done. This is the essence of Grace.  It is freely given because it is how God operates.  It is one of the most profound lessons I have learned on my daily dates with God.  God shows up as the fullness of love each morning.  Sometimes it takes a gargantuan amount of effort to stay present on our dates. I want to go back to bed. I can’t seem to stay awake my mind is spinning or worrying about some future possibility.  God has taught me to bring all that on our date and gently he shows me how to hand it over to him.  She will gladly take what I bring and infuse it with a love I have never seen. The gift of acceptance is the grace which is of God and can only be received if I am open to it.  This grace which He bestows upon us is not deserved it simply is the way she operates.  It removes the scales from our eyes and empowers the connection to the eyes of the heart.