dailydatewithgod

Asking a human being to be non-judgmental is like ask a wolf not to be drawn to meat.  It is within us to judge.  It is not a bad thing in and of itself.  It is when we use our judgments against ourselves and others that we get into trouble.  It is when we let those judgments determine our behavior without questioning them first that we experience difficulty.  Judgments, after all, are just thoughts about someone or something.  We also have thoughts about the temperature and the cereal we have for breakfast.  The thoughts do not have any more power  than what actions we take based on them.  Most spiritual teachers over the centuries have tried to lead us to recognize that the judgments we hold towards other people are futile.  The example that Jesus of Nazareth gave in the first century was that if someone with a wooden plank pointing out the splinter in his friends’ eye.  When we look at it that way, we see the absurdity.  Outside of the situation, we recognize that if I had a wooden plank in my eye, I should take care of that before I worry about a splinter in someone else’s eye.  The reality of life is that we all have wooden planks.  Yet, we don’t see them, so we don’t realize that the vision through which we are seeing others is tainted by  the blocked vision we have.  The point being that no matter what insight we have on life, we cannot truly see what is best for anyone else.  We can share our experience of the wooden plank in our eye that might assist our friend with their splinter, but we may not know the best course of action for their splinter removal.  So where does that leave us?  It leaves us to take care of our own plank that only God can remove and not worry about the splinter in our friends’, family, co-workers, spouses eyes.  Maybe they need to be blinded by something today.  If I believe that God is truly the God of all, then when they are ready, God will be God for them too.  My prayer for you today is that you be willing to accept the splinters that you see because you recognize the familiar wooden material that is blocking your vision too.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Sometimes I think that God tries really hard to convey to us how special we are to Him.  He points out in many ways that we are part of the  grand design and we matter.  But our heads are full of doubt because we base our worth on what the world around us tells us–our family, our culture, our tv, etc.  The only way I have found to see and hear God’s message is to take time away from all those outside things and spend time in the silence.  However, upon first doing this, I was confronted by all those thoughts and ideas in my head about myself and my world.  To be honest, it was really loud for having a time of silence.  It was only because I had committed to someone else that I would make a practice of it every day that eventually my mind began to quiet down.  And slowly, I began to look forward to that time with God to just be.  When I walk into our date each morning, I am sometimes able to quiet my mind, and sometimes not.  Somewhere along the way I realized that just showing up was half the battle.  I could easily sleep a little longer or be more “productive” doing something else.  Why would I want to spend time just “being”?  I mean I am a human doing, not a human being, right?  LOL!  The end result of this time is not usually during the actual time, it is the eyes through which I now see the world through the course of my day.  There are people who speak of exquisite experiences during meditation.  I have had a few here and there, but the gift I get through my date time with God every morning is a new set of eyes which allow me to marvel at the world I live and breathe in each day.  I never noticed the subtleties of nature or the beauty of people’s faces on the train.  I never recognized the gifts of a fresh breath of air or the strength it takes my body to climb stairs.  All these little things are showing me the ways that God marvels at everything about us and this world.  My prayer for you today is to accept the invitation to a date with God, whatever that date looks like for you.  And remember, that first dates don’t always tell the whole story, sometimes its the second or fourth one that lets you know this one might be worth some more time.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

You ever have a day where you are going along, everything seems to be going fine and then out of nowhere you get hit with a situation that knocks you off your seat?  It is the kind of situation that you describe yourself as having a good day until . . . We seem to carry around this notion that life is supposed to be smooth and easy and when something challenges or confronts us it means that something is wrong.  I know I always used to subscribe to that same belief.  But it is the situations that confront our identity, our personality, our idea of how things are “supposed” to be that are the gifts. They just come in different packages.  These confrontations are not bad things, they are simply opportunities for greatness in the making.  What good is it to be patient and understanding if you are only able to do so when people respond in kind? The real patience and understanding comes when the last person I want to deal with walks through my office door five minutes before I plan to leave for the day.  Only then will I have an opportunity to demonstrate real patience and understanding.  Does that mean I drop everything and cater to them?  Not necessarily.  It is not a one size, one reaction to all situations kind of world.  If we are living in this moment, then it is about how I am going to handle this situation in this moment with God’s help.  My prayer for you today is that you may have the presence of mind to see the things that confront you as opportunities to connect with God and practice your inner spirit strength.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

If we are truly willing to embrace life and create a new experience from our relationship with God, then we must have new definitions.  Things begin to take on a new meaning and yes it is so easy to fall back on our old programming, but that is the required effort to live a spiritual life.  If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.  It takes work.  Even Jesus said, that we have to take up our cross.  We think our cross is the problems we face.  I think our cross is how we think and feel about the “problems” we face.  The world is very clear about how it defines a win and how it defines a loss.  Anyone who watches a football game knows which team is winning and which team is not.  But what if the fact that the team that is losing is playing as a team in a way that haven’t done in years because they are really working as a team.  Isn’t that a win for them?  What if the marathon runner is doing their first marathon, isn’t that a win for them to complete the marathon, even if they don’t get first place?  When you go through your day today, the world may say you didn’t win at anything according to their standards.  But are those whose standards you really wish to measure your life?  My prayer for you today is that you have the courage to acknowledge where you are winning in your spirit and if you can’t see it then ask God to borrow his eyes.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I have learned a lot from looking at how nature functions and how things are in their original or purest form.  Our world is so much about better, faster, more sensationalized that the simplicity of the original design sometimes gets lost.  Take the design of the human body for instance.  I remember learning years ago about the stages of growth of a child in the womb begins with the formation of the brain and the spinal cord and then how all the nerves, etc. spread out from those places. In fact if we want to find out what is going on with our knees, we need to trace it back to the nerves that come from the brain stem because that is where the messages are being sent back and forth.  I learned that medical techniques such as chiropractic care are about keeping the spine aligned so that those messages have a clear pathway.  The more I learn about the structure and the make-up of the human body, the more I am amazed at the intricacy with which God designed each one of us.  Within our bodies is a system of healing, but it all goes back to how we are aligned.  The same idea applies spiritually.  If we keep the pathway clear between us and God then we can get the messages and the information that we need.  So our time with God is not about a spinal adjustment but about a heart and spirit clearing.  If our hearts are full of old hurts and ideas, then the channel is clogged. Each new day, each new breath gives us the opportunity to open up that channel and be more aligned with our greater purpose, with who God would have us be.  If we do not take that time to breath and to connect, we cannot be sure that the channels are clear.  The question then remains who or what is your heart/spirit chiropractor? I think that can be any spiritual path or person who helps us to see where we need some adjustments.  My prayer for you today is to be willing to ask God how you can become more aligned.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We live in a world full of outward signs.  In places like LA and NY the signs include the interactive and flashy kind that can distract you when you are driving.  😉 There are signs on church marquees, lights that blink on our car dashboards, email messages that we get, phone texts, calendar reminders, bulletins in the mail, announcements on the radio, commercials on TV and the Internet, bumper stickers, the list is endless. Over the years,  I have noticed that these signs have become more person specific, especially as things become more digital data driven. Given all that is coming at us all the time, it is hard to decipher which ones we pay attention to and take action on and which ones are just nice to know.  Typically we prioritize based on the most urgent.  However when everything seems to be importantly urgent, how do we pick?  Even more important, how can we in the midst of the clamor of all these signs decipher which ones resonate with our own hearts and spirits? At the end of the day the things of this world will only satisfy our spirits–our true selves to a limited extent.  By that I mean we have a responsibility to keep up the things that we own and are in charge of taking care of from our possessions to our bodies.  Speaking of bodies, we get signs from them as well.  When we don’t feel physically well, our body practically screams at us.  The interesting thing is that when we deprive our bodies of what they need, our perceptions of what is going on outside of us also change.  Anyone who has ever gone to work sick knows what I mean.  Our body does not create  billboard to inform us of what is going on but calls us to pay attention in an even more intelligent way.  How well do we pay attention to our nudging that comes from our bodies?  For a person who did not take care of her body for a long time due to various agreements and experiences of my past, it has been an awakening to listen and trust the intelligence of my spirit that speaks to me through my body.  Today I pay attention as best as possible to those nudges– a feeling in my gut, a tension in my jaw, a freeness in my breath.  As well as the practical ones of a tiredness in my eyes or  a tweak in my back.  I believe that our spirits speak to us through those nudgings of our body, as subtle as they are.  God created all the cells that operate in our body to create the whole of who we are, so why wouldn’t our spirits reside in each one of those cells the same way that our spirit resides in our hearts?  My prayer for you today is to notice the nudges that are calling for your attention and that you grant yourself the gift of stopping to listen.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

We human beings are funny!  At the same time that we struggle with being focused in the moment, we also get so focused only what is happening now that we lose perspective.  Nothing happens in an isolated moment. No one things determines the course of our lives.  Our lives are made up of a series of choices that impact our actions which creates our experience.  Those experiences often repeated, develop our habits which creates our character which shapes who we become and how we show up in the world.  God sees thing as part of a whole.  Perhaps it is because God created it all so the inclination is to focus not on an isolated incident but on how it plays out in the long run.  In case you haven’t figured out, bad stuff happens.  To everyone.  No one is excluded.  Yet, how many of us when something “bad” happens, think we are the only ones who have ever experienced it?  Probably all of us.  It is simply not true.  Just given the statistics of the number of the people in the world, the probability that you are the only who has ever had to deal with what you are dealing with are slim to none. In the end, it matters little what happens, what shapes us is how we deal with what happens.  We are in luck, we have within us the resources to handle whatever comes our way. As long as we don’t think we have to do it alone.  As long as we remember that God is right there and that he will place people in our path others to help us along. After all, they are a design in the panorama of our lives.  My prayer for you today is that you may have the courage to see past your own nose and take a look at the greater view–it really is beautiful.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

I am continually amazed by the intelligence and the design of the systems in place that are the basis of how our world works.  The more I read and grow and participate in life I see that it is designed with such craft and precision that it is hard not to be continually amazed.  While it might sound lacking in humility, I must acknowledge God as I did this morning on our date that I am impressed by what He has created.  There is such intelligence behind every detail of the design.  I am grateful that I am able to see it because it gives me a fresh appreciation for life.  I don’t know about you, but I need that.  It is so easy to go from day-to-day and get to the end of the week and wonder where it all went.  Somehow by having our time together, God and I have created a communication that transcends words and ideas and I am able to see with fresh eyes how life places experiences in my lap just for me to discover love in a new way.  It is easy to remember this when the lesson comes in a warm and safe package.  It is harder to remember this when it comes in an irritating and frustrating package, but both are my opportunity to grow in love.  Stretching and opening one’s heart is hard sometimes but when I fight it, it is my spirit that loses.  I am grateful that God is always there to show me that I am not alone.  I simply need to be open and expecting a fresh new way to see God present in my life. I learned a long time ago that when my heart is full of anger and self-loathing I cannot see things with a fresh perspective.  There are too many layers to get through.  It is not impossible, for nothing is impossible, it just requires effort on my part and a willingness to be humble enough to acknowledge that I need help.  It is our ego’s greatest feat to convince us that we are alone and need no one. The moment I am willing to let go of that story, God presents a lightness and love in a way I never imagined.  And in areas I never imagined God to show up.  My prayer for you today is that you be open to the freshness that is dancing in front of your nose and have the courage to let go of the blinders that are keeping you from seeing it. Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

It is amazing to me how a compliment from another person changes my mood and my perspective.  I have also noticed that when I compliment someone back and they receive it, I get the added experience of also a lift in my mood.  I even notice when I hold back and do not share something positive with another person either out of fear of their reaction or my own selfishness.  Yes, it is humbling to admit that I have not said something kind to someone for selfish reasons.  It is as though I have thought that there was some kind of limit on the amount of positive experiences that one could have.  There I go limiting God again.  The reality of the situation is whatever I am putting out there in the world, everyone gets to benefit from it – either positive or negative.  There is no limit except in my mind.  My encouraging another increases the amount of out loud spoken encouragement.  My role here is to be of service, to bring the goodness of who I am out into the open.  That inkling to share encouragement comes from my spirit and is fueled by something much more powerful than me–I am simply the vehicle.  My prayer for us today is that we look to where we can be encouraging to ourselves and to others and trust that the desire to do so comes from deep within our loving hearts and spirits (God).  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Life is not a spectator sport!  Life is a game that is played on the field.  If we want to discover life and what it has to offer then we need to get out of the stands and run onto the field.  It requires that we make mistakes.  In fact, life calls us to make all kinds of things.  When we are on the field we are playing the game and are part of a team. We must play our part.  How good of a team member would I make if I was playing someone else’s role?  It is a risk to play the game of life.  We are going to get fouled out, trip and scrape our knees, have to sit on the bench or be sidelined from time to time, but at least we can say we are in the game.  God calls us to be the best player we can be and we can trust Him to guide us in how to contribute to the whole of the experience. My prayer for you today is that you have the courage to be in the game of life in whatever area you are currently being the spectator.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen