God opens the door wide for us to enter. God is waiting with excitement and bated breath for our request to enter into relationship. It is the greatest joy of our Creator that we want to be in alignment with our greatest purpose which is to love. It is in this relationship that we live out our purpose. The difficulty that we face sometimes is that we get caught up in the world’s view of our purpose or we think we are supposed to live as others do or as we perceive others want us to. It is only by developing that time and presence with our Creator that we can reconnect with our true purpose. My prayer for us today is that we be open to finding out what God’s view of our purpose is just for today. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Framing!
Things only mean what we make them mean. There is often a group acceptance of a particular meaning of a particular event, but it is still a meaning that we create and agree to. This applies to life events, words and ways of thinking and seeing. We have such brilliant minds that we make meaning out of nothing. Things happen all day long and we attach meaning–words, ideas, value to them. This builds our perspective. How we frame or build meaning around something feeds into our ego’s story. This is why we often feel like we are going through something we have already been through. Our ego likes to replay the same story over and over. It is comfortable doing so and does not require us to be present. Easy peasy, right? Until going along with the story causes too much pain. Then we wake up. My prayer for us today is that we first be willing to look at the build of our lives and ask God is that what you make it mean? Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Wholeheartedness!
Each day that we wake up, open our eyes and take a breath we have entered into an agreement. God says, “Okay, Good Morning Sunshine, here is my gift to you for today.” It is then up to us what we do with that gift. Sometimes it can seem overwhelming to enter into a new day especially if it is filled with a list of “to-dos”. God is more interested in who we are going to be than what we accomplish. Our lives our lived in our actions but it is the intention, the presence, and the way of being behind our actions that carries our energy through the day. Many people are familiar with the description of love from the Christian scripture of St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind . . .” However just before that portion of the letter, he explains to the community that if he does great things, has great knowledge, faith, etc. but does not have love he is clashing gong or a clanging symbol; “I am nothing”. Then he goes on to describe what real love is and when we look closely we notice that many of those characteristics are often beyond us. Paul encourages his leaders to redefine their understanding of love. We all know what the expectation is, we all know what it looks like and we can fake it but true love comes from connecting with in us to the Source of All Love. Loving with our whole self is what we are called to do and our actions can either lead us in that direction or away from it. Being patient and kind are ways of acting in love that connect us with the Creator of love. We can do them because they are the “right thing to do” or we can do them with our whole heart and be them. My prayer for us today is that we be open to practicing love by being what it is that we are doing in love. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Need!
One of the keys to letting go has to do with a willingness to recognize that while we are whole beings, there is a certain lack. There is an emptiness, a missing inside our hearts and spirits. St. Augustine referred to it as a burning in our hearts that could not be satisfied until it was satisfied in God. When we get quiet we often experience it. It is the very thing that keeps people from slowing down and getting in touch with themselves. It can be alarming when we first recognize it. If we look around at the world and our experience we notice that so much of the messages we get are that we are lacking. I think there is a common spiritual knowledge of this but the world often mistakes it to mean that it must come from outside of ourselves. So we pursue the job, the relationship, the house, the car, and or the latest gadget in some vain attempt to fill this sense of lack. Those things work for a time but then when they no longer work we need something else. We are designed to be in longing for closeness to the One who Created us body and spirit. However, there are no substitutes, at least not long-lasting ones, for God. At the end of the day we cannot bring any of those “things” with us, but we always have within our hearts, within our souls all that we need. If we are willing to sit with the realization that we are not fully whole until we are reconnected and get past the world’s view of “needing” something more, we can be open to allowing God into that space and filling it beyond our wildest imaginations. My prayer for us today is that we be open to acknowledging our need for God and how God will respond to our invitation to come a little closer. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Love!
In the Christian scriptures there is the story of when Jesus is asked which is the most important commandment. In the Jewish tradition there are ten and Jesus responds by saying that the first commandment, also known as the Shema is “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.” and then the second most important commandment is “Love you neighbor as yourself.” Growing up knowing of those two commandments, I often thought, about how we do the second one and that is exactly the problem. We do love one another as we love ourselves. We seem to lack a love of self. It is not a self-esteem issue. I think it is an issue of not putting the first commandment first. If we truly loved God with all of our being then we would see ourselves and everyone else through God’s eyes and love of neighbor would simply flow out of us. So, if I am feeling anything less than love for my neighbor then I need to go back and look at how I am practicing the first commandment, not look at how I can get better at the second one. First things first. My prayer for us today is that we look at how willing we are to love God with our whole being above all. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Union!
Do you ever feel scattered or torn? Do you ever wish that there was more alignment in your life spiritually, emotionally, physically, philosophically? I think we long for connectedness to ourself and to our purpose. The difficulty comes when we let ourselves be swayed easily by temptations, discomfort and how to get out of it. Union with in ourselves means a pause and checking in with our spirit (our internal guide) to see if this matched with us and our higher good. It means not just reacting to situations and circumstances based on programming from our childhood. This is where the power of connection with God comes in. God will always be there to remind us of who we really are and that we are aligned with Him when we want to be. You may have heard, “Thy will be done.” I also like, “May Thy will and my will be one.” I know that if I make the effort to let go of my idea of how this should go and am open to aligning myself to the Greater will of goodness, then I can be at peace with myself and with the world. My prayer for us today is that we have the courage to stop and pause and connect with our true Alignment. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Crossing!
We come to many different crossroads in our lives, even in our days. Times when we are faced with deciding how to proceed. These moments can bring about fear over making the right decision, a desire to avoid the decision all-together, hopelessness that there is a right direction to go in, etc. While these crossroads are opportunities for change, we still carry around a general human uncertainty when it comes to change. The best we can do is make a decision and accept our decision as the best we can do. We can turn to God and ask for direction, but keep moving. The beauty of life enfolding awaits us and I know that I have often simply wanted certainty. I want a sense of certainty because I think that whatever decision I make will determine whether or not I am okay. When I remember that I am loved and therefore I am okay, there is no failure, there is only learning. My prayer for us today is that we be willing to take that next step and cross into whatever is next, trusting that our Creator knows who we are and that no decision we make can change that. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Doggedness!
God never stops pursuing our hearts! God cannot because that would be asking God to be something other than what God is. God is love and created from love and we are the result of that creation. To let us go would be to let go of the expression of God’s nature. We are the result of an overwhelming desire to spread a love so overflowing that it would sink the world. So each day God gives us a new breath and an opportunities (usually many) to connect with that very source from which we were created. There are birds that sing of it, poets that write of it, lovers that speak of it, and hearts that our changed by it. One of the reasons that we cannot fathom the infinite pursuance of us by God is that we look from a limited perspective of our human mind. We give up on us way before God would even think of giving up. My prayer for us today is that we be open to believing that God persistently demonstrates love for us long after we have given up on love or given up on God. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Awareness!
Life holds endless possibilities and opportunities! If we are open and awake to them. I am not speaking of everything is perfect and there is a soundtrack playing in the background or nothing “bad” every happens. I am talking about real possibilities and opportunities. Possibilities of growth and understanding of true compassion. Opportunities to learn from every person who comes in our path and every situation we are experiencing. I am speaking of the insight that God is with us all the time and wants to show us who we are through every moment and every reaction we have to what is happening in our world. God wants to show us how much love we are capable of and that love is at the very core of who we are. When we are experiencing anything less than that it is an invitation to grow. It doesn’t mean we are bad or wrong or evil. It simply means we have lost our way. God is more than happy to show us the way back, but it requires trust in the process. My prayer for us today is that we be thankful for the awareness of the experiences we are gifted with to lead us back to love, no matter what kind of package they come in. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
Be in Evaluation!
We can spend our whole lives running from God or what we perceive as God. We can push the notion or idea of something greater than ourselves as foolishness and dependence. We can blame institutions of faith or religious people as being the cause of more destruction and separation than love and therefore conclude that there is no point to them. We have that choice and there is nothing right or wrong with any of those choices. It is simply a question of whether or not it works for us. If carrying an idea of contempt and dissatisfaction with the way anyone else lives their lives brings me peace, then I will most likely keep doing it. If believing that I am it and there is nothing greater than my mind and my thinking allows me to live fully in the true essence of who I am then I will most likely keep doing it. The reality is that we as human being simply do not do things that don’t work for us. We may be motivated by outside influences but if it is not something that resonates on some level inside of us then it will not stick. If we are not getting something out of it, even some twisting of whatever it is, we will not continue to do it. The other reality that I have experienced is that there comes a day when every idea has its due. Meaning, at some point in my life if I am to continue growing and changing (which is happening regardless of whether I want it to or not), I will need to re-evaluate the thoughts (which repeated, become beliefs) that I have taken in during the course of my life. Most of them will outlive their usefulness and I will need to check in and see if it really is still working for me. The difficulty lies in our resistance to the questioning. We fear letting go (no matter how painful holding on to an old ideas has become). We may end up realizing that the belief still works for us, but it is the willingness to look at it as it applies today. Does carrying the belief that there is nothing greater than me still allowing me to live freely and usefully in this world? Does blaming or judging others instead of looking at my own life create more love in my heart? In my relationship with God, I have found that when I fear looking at an old idea (especially when I am willing to look before it gets too painful), God is my constancy. I can know in my heart of hearts that whatever conclusion I come to will not change that I am love because I was created for love. My ego which is attached to the idea cannot wrap its head around this concept so if I am willing to let go for a moment and see my life from the perspective of love then I can let go, regrasp or move on from any idea or belief. My prayer for us today is that we be open to believing that Creator who created us from scratch is much more than any idea or belief that we may hold about anyone or anything including ourselves. Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen
dailydatewithgod 