dailydatewithgod

The Grand Designer put in place the unlimited expression of love.  There is room for all manifestations of love. There is room for all of us as beings of love.  We do not lose out when one of us shines bright.  It gives us all permission to shine bright. We are not doing it wrong when we do not manifest love in the same way as someone else.  We are all of value.  We are all needed to cover the magnanimity of love.  God created such diversity so that all bases were covered.  This way there is not one corner of the earth where love does not exist.  Remember, God does not have eyes, ears, hands, feet.  We are God’s eyes, ears, hands and feet for one another.  Our grand purpose is to fulfill the message of love through our lives.  Our lives and experiences are different because love can be made manifest in any situation.  The diverse capacity of love cannot be hidden because God is within all.  We do not do anyone any favors when we compare ourselves to others thinking that their manifestation of love is better or less than ours.  We must stay focused on being the love that we are the way that we uniquely are.  This is our great service to God-to be the best version of our unique self and show the world that love exists everywhere.  My prayer for us today is that we not get sidetracked by comparing ourselves to others and stay focused on how we can be the love that we uniquely are.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God of all creation call us to carry the latest and the greatest message of love.  Fortunately the task for which we have been called to mission has not changed. It is the same one that is already imprinted on our hearts. We do not have to look very far to connect with the task to which we have been entrusted.  In the quiet space of our hearts it speaks loudly and clearly.  In the warmth of our spirits, a strong power is ignited.  Our job is to let go of the things that we have placed on top of our hearts so that we can easily and effortlessly connect with the power and the message.  It is a continual process because we live day-to-day and take on new stories and ideas that are not our true selves.  God can help us to be restored and upgraded to our truest selves if we invite God into the process.  God wants very much to relieve us of anything that is not our true essence but God will not come into our hearts uninvited.  The reason that I don’t invite God in for an upgrade is because I get caught up in the identification and forget that it is not my true self.  When God and I spend time together on our dates,  I am reminded of who I truly am and am given the chance to choose to let go of that which is not truly me.  It really is just that easy.  It is only my ego which has become attached and thinks it will die if I let go of the story.  God reminds me that I cannot be destroyed by a story one way or the other.  My true essence transcends any story and is always present even when God is the only one who can see it and bear witness to it.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to trust that God knows our truest self and even if any upgrade seems like a loss of the old, remember that it is a loss of the false, not the old.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God see all through the eyes of love because it is in every fiber of the being of God.  Consequently, there is constant possibility from God’s perspective.  Abundance and Connectedness is the reality of God’s world.  There is no lack, limitation or separation.  Those things only exist on the physical three-dimensional plane. When we forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, we buy into the ideas held strongly by our ego mind that it is all there is.  Having an ego is not the problem.  The problem is when we let the ego think it is all there is.  When we edge god out we lose out.  When we stay connected, when we remember who we truly are, we are in alignment with the constant possibility. It is this partnership with God that our hearts crave because it puts us in right relationship with ourselves and our world.  It is not about destroying our ego or being above our ego.  It is about placing our ego in the hands of God to show us how we are much more than just our ego. When I am in the thinking mode of separation, limitation or lack I know that I am not connected to God as fully as I can be.  I know now that all I need to do is reach my hand out and God is ready to grab hold and take me back on the magic carpet ride that is my fullness of life.  My prayer for us today is that we have the courage to notice without judgment when we have let our thinking be dominated by our ego (i.e.-focus on lack, limitation or separation) and reach yet again for God’s hand of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The Great Spirit of Life has endowed us with an unshaken foundation.  The Creator of All Creation designed us to make manifest the Glory of Love.  You, yes you, and I were given breath to be the living expression of All that God Is.  We are continually given breaths over and over (until we breathe our last one, of course). These breaths remind us that we are a life to love with, be in love with, and share love with.  When we get caught up in the physical world which seems to dominate our reality, we easily lose sight of the magnificent power that is in our breathing in and out.  Meditation, the focusing of the mind, starts by focusing on our breath.  There are a million different ways to meditate but undeniably those who make a practice of it share their experience of coming to awareness through their breath.  All of life begins with breathing, all of life ends with breathing.  Our lives are shaped by the breaths that make up the time in between.  I know that when I lived a life full of anxiousness, terror, and dread my breath was shallow and in some cases held.  In my dates with God as I began to trust in the graciousness of the gift of each of my breaths, I noticed I was better able to actually breathe and reap the benefits of a fresh breath into my life and my being.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to focusing on our breath long enough to say thank you to the one who created it.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The realm of God has only one side–LOVE. The back and forth, the in and out are all a design of nature so that we know both sides of the story.  Everything in our physical world mirrors these two sides.  This is how we know that God’s reality is different from ours.  God’s existence speaks and spreads nothing but one reality–LOVE.  This is beyond our mind’s comprehension.  But it is not beyond our experience.  When we draw closer to God we are able to witness the presence of LOVE even in the seemingly opposite of that.  In some of the toughest and darkest moments of my life, when I felt distant from God or drenched in self-hatred, self-pity, or I thought that I was a victim and would never escape; there within me still existed love.  I just didn’t know how to connect to it.  I had to first let go of the story that the outer experience was the truth of who I am.  I had to concede to the idea that maybe I wasn’t experiencing the full picture.  I had to be willing to act as though the spark of hope that somehow still breathed in my heart was bigger than I thought it was.  As they say in 12 step programs, I acted “as if”.  In so doing I slowly began to experience the fluctuations of hope in my heart in greater degrees.  Now when I have moments of self-hatred, victim-mentality, or self-pity I know that they will not last.I can grasp on to the hope that has an even greater hold on my heart and pulsates through my body when I connect more fully with God.  My prayer for us today is that we recognize that the fluctuations we experience need not be as drastic if we are willing to let go of them as our identity and rest in the hope of our hearts that speak God’s language of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God began the work of love made manifest through all of creation.  We are given the task of continuing that work through the living of our lives.  We are the continuance of the message of love.  We are the carriers of light and love and it is our mission to embody this fully so that the world may bear witness to the power of love. It is no small task, but we can be heartened by the fact that it is built within us.  We do not need to go outside of ourselves to find this purpose.  It is in our DNA.  We were designed by love, for love, in love to be love.  So how is it that we often don’t feel connected to this purpose?  We get lost sometimes in this world and allow other things to take precedence.  It happens so easily and so elusive sometimes that it isn’t until we are way off the path that we notice.  But it is in the noticing that we take the first step towards returning to the path of love which we are and were created.  The world will tell us to beat ourselves up for not noticing sooner or “wasting” time.  God, however (like the father of the prodigal son) will rejoice that we have come home and throw us a party.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to notice the areas of our lives where we have not continued on the path of love and ask God for the willingness to step back on the path.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

God is in all.  God is with all.  There is no place or space where God is not.  We can choose to see God present in each moment if we are willing to open our eyes.  If we are willing to let go of the mis-perception of reality created by our minds.  Most of the time we are not even present in the moment, we are simply reliving the past.  Our breath has the power to bring us back to the moment.  Right here, right now is where the eternal crosses the physical plane.  The present moment in all things is where God is.  If we want to spend more time with God, we can practice returning to our breath in the moment.  It is the simplest way to return ourselves to love.  We nourish our bodies, our minds and our souls with our breath.  God designed it in such a way that we cannot go long without needing to take in a new breath and let out the old.  Maybe God was trying to tell us something through this.  We cannot go long without needing to connect with Spirit (respiration–re-spiriting).  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to embrace the moment where God is by taking as many breaths as we can. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

God always IS!  God never goes away. God endures.  The apostle Paul wrote to the community in Ephesus to remind them that love endures all.  We sometimes have a hard time imagining this because as human beings we lack the discipline to hold on and endure through things that are uncomfortable. We want a solution, we want the fix, we want it to be over so we can back to things as they “normally” are.  But what if God demonstrates for us the power of endurance because it is a quality that we also possess?  Perhaps it is not about us being able to hold on and not abandon ourselves when things get really tough on our own.  God is the enduring one and we can ask for the courage to do as God does. We can acknowledge that we need this power that is greater than ourselves to remain in love.  It seems to me that so much of my recovery has been about not abandoning myself.  Because of many challenging experiences growing up, it was not safe to be in the moment.  But I am not there any more.  I am here now. I have learned to reclaim myself by modeling my behavior after a being that loves me beyond reason.  I am willing one moment at a time to stand with myself because God demonstrates to me over and over that no matter what happens, God would never want to be anywhere else but with me.  God’s endurance has shown me that I can hang on a little longer than I think is possible when I tap into the willingness to not do it on my own.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to take a chance on relying on the enduring nature of God’s love for us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is clear.  God does not waver.  God never goes down a different path.  God is always a stand for love and all it encompasses.  We can rely upon the firmness of God’s love.  Anything we encounter that stands in contradiction to love, crumbles at the face of God.  When we experience fear and uncertainty, we can stand firm in the shadow of God to keep up from being taken over by them.  Life will hand us a number of challenges. As far as I can tell, we are all here in this physical experience to walk through something that asks us to let go of our ego and embrace the love for which we were designed.  It is all part of the process.  We are not wrong for experiencing fear.  It comes with the territory and God knows that.  In the Hebrew and Christian scripture it says many times,  “Be Not Afraid . . . Do Not Fear . . .”  God knows it is part of our experience and so God firmly reminds us over and over again that we need not go along with it.  God does not admonish the experience it, it is expected. God, however is not daunted by it.  God doesn’t buy into the lies that fear tells us.  God knows the experiences we have of fear do not define us.  For me, it starts with noticing and accepting the presence of fear, not trying to run from it, squash it, make it wrong, or out do it.  Once I acknowledge it I can hand it over to God and say, What do you suggest I do with this? Please remove it or show me how it is useful in returning me to love. God firmly smiles and if I am readily giving it over to him, miraculously takes it from me and leads me back to love.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to take whatever it is that is not love in our experience and turn it over into God’s firm hands of love.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is in all.  There is always enough because God is enough.  In our limited mind’s eye we see limitation.  In God’s unlimited eye there is no limitation.  When we are focused on lack and thinking that one thing existing takes away from another’s existence, we have gotten off track from God.  We are living in dissatisfaction, discomfort, and dis-ease when we are off track.  We find ourselves beginning to think that life doesn’t work for us.  Some of us wonder what we did to cause this.  Perhaps we drive ourselves harder and faster to compensate for this lack that is living in our hearts.  We try valiantly to overcome the dissatisfaction of life in ourselves by painting over it and wearing a mask, all the while suffering on the inside.  I know when I was in the depths of my disease there was little satisfaction with life because it held no value. I didn’t really understand gratitude except as something that I thought about on Thanksgiving or maybe on a retreat.  I began to think that God saw me with the same dissatisfaction that I did and figured since I thought that, it must be true.  Only when I was at the bottom of this place of despair and lack of hope, when I had exhausted all my possibilities and could no longer fight the physical reality of my experience, did I become willing to approach things in a different way.  My path back into satisfaction began with the admission of defeat and the living of the 12 steps.  I had to face the reality that my thinking and being had become so dis-satisfactory that I weighed over 300 lbs and I was toking out on sugar like a heroine addict.  Strangely enough, admitting defeat almost 13 years ago and reaching out to God in a way I never had before has brought me to a place of freedom in mind, body and spirit that I never knew was possible.  Today I remember to reach for God-satisfaction and am not limited by my definitions of freedom and love.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to admit to ourselves the areas of our lives in which we see dissatisfaction and ask for God-satisfaction.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen