dailydatewithgod

The beauty of love is that it is life-giving.  It allows for life to ebb and flow.  For the spontaneous nature that lies within us to grow and flourish.  To be connected to the spontaneous flow I turn to structure and ritual.  It is as though two seemingly opposite concepts enwrap each other to create the greatest connection.  How is it that by having a structured prayer and meditation time every day at the same time created a throughout the day connection to a love that is way beyond a specific time and space?  A love that allows me freedom to be and do, to see life as beautiful and to walk in gratitude for each breath that I get.   Perhaps because by incorporating those two seemingly opposite end of the spectrum elements I am embracing the very duality of life.  A retreat I went on a few years ago was given by a spiritual gentleman who was recovering from cancer.  He talked about us defining our goals and dreams in all areas of life.  When we got to the spiritual dreams he said his goal was to more fully embrace the duality of life.  At that point in my spiritual journey, I had begun to recognize that acceptance of duality was necessary to peace of mind.  Within each of us exists light and darkness.  Every day we witness light and darkness–literally.  One flows into the other like waves of the ocean.  I can only guess that because the great Creator saw it necessary for light and darkness to exist within one day that they have a purpose in my life as well.  This means that I do not have to bemoan the darkness but be open to it as part of the great human experience.  Also, I can trust that light will also follow.  It is always darkest before the dawn, but the dawn always comes.  Maybe that is why overcast mornings can be a downer when I have an excitement and expectation of the morning light.  This duality of nature which I am fully a part of applies to my relationships as well.  I have only found peace with loving others when I accept that they are both darkness and light.  Those whom I have felt the most injured by did so from a place of their darkness (the same which is potential in me if I don’t make it a point to connect with my light), but it is not who they are.  As a child, I saw only one thing, but as an adult I can see the duality.  This is why “negative” or “dark” experiences do not need to be run from because if I see them through, the brightness of dawn will come.  Connecting with my Love (God) is important so I don’t get lost in the darkness or start believing that it is who I am–especially when the nights are long.  It is during those times that I need the structure of that connection, to do it even when I don’t feel it.  It is what keeps me hanging on until the light comes.  My prayer for you today is that you have the courage to connect with the Creator of light and darkness and see your experiences of duality do not destroy you but allow you to be whole and a part of all creation. Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

When I really get down to it there are two constants in my life.  God and me.  God is everywhere and in everything.  I am always with me.  No matter how much I try to escape myself–wherever I go, there I am. ;).  So, even if it is not what I want, it is what I am to be.  The beauty of both being prevalent in every moment of my life is that I am never alone.  With both me and God always being present I am not limited by my own perspective and experiences.  I have this power that is greater than me to connect with, to come home to in my heart, to be opened and loved by.  God never leaves me, even when I want to leave me.  The Creator is never truly separated from his/her creation.  When we create something out of ourselves a piece of us is always with it. So even in those moments when I feel separate from God or disconnected, I can be reassured that it is not true because it is not possible. God’s light and love always prevails. I often think of it  as a flame that burns within my heart.  Sometimes it is turned down really low, just a flicker, but that doesn’t mean it is not there.  I may need to connect with someone else whose light is a little brighter.  They can show me how they keep their flame going, they can use their light to help me see my way back to mine.  We are all connected, it only appears that we are separate and different. The same beloved Creator who designed me, also designed you and with the same amount of love.  When I believe the lie that we are not connected I am not allowing that light within me to shine as brightly as possible.  I love what Marianne Williamson said, “as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”  By letting my light shine I become a representation of the prevailing presence of God.  My prayer for you today is that you may connect to the light of all light that resides in your heart and let it shine. Someone somewhere today needs to see the light of God that is alive in you.  That someone may be you.  Will you prevail?  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

We live in such a beautiful world and such an exciting change.  New things are happening all around us.  Ideas are free-flowing across world lines of communication.  People have more avenues of self-expression, and the speed at which we are called to adapt to the next thing seems to be increasing.  It can be hard in the midst of all this to maintain our focus.  It has made me grateful that I have established some quiet time for me and God each day.  It matters little if it is a time of great insight or profound connection.  To me the consistency of stillness is what keeps me grounded.  It allows me to create focus for my day.  I don’t get up and float across my apartment when I am done, but I start off my day connecting with what really matters.  It is funny that what started out as a simple act to save my life has become a daily practice that cannot imagine living without.  Yet, even with all of that, I can be thrown about during the course of my day.  There is much to get done and many things that demand my attention.  I cannot count on time that I spent at the beginning of my day to always carry me through.  With each choice and crossroads I find it helpful to pause and connect with myself and with God and ask which direction to go in.  I have found by committing to that time of stillness in the morning it is much easier to pause when needed.  It is easy to be overly influenced by all the things demanding out attention.  They all seem so enticing and urgent.  For me they must pass a litmus test.  Will engaging in this bring me closer to God and to who I really am or further away?  Then at the end of the day when I stop and reflect, I can ask myself, did I stick close to Him?  Did I do his work well?  Did I focus on how God wanted me to be of service today?  It is not a real day unless I acknowledge both the ways I stayed focused and did not.  It is not meant to condemn myself but a gratitude for a loving God that no matter how I did that day.  I believe in a God that approves a million false starts.  My prayer for you today is that you have the courage to pause when you are feeling tossed about by life.  In that pause then ask God, is this where you want my focus to be today?  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I think I mentioned before that I can be hard-headed and it is humbling to admit that I can be close-minded too.  It is not as thought I set out to be that way but my mind will get fixed on how its going to be (programming) and it takes a concerted effort to be open to the possibility that it will be different from what I imagine.  As I live life more fully each day I see the possibilities are endless and my finite mind simply cannot come up with all the possible outcomes.  It is really just a way of restricting and controlling how I live.  You see if I already know how it is going to turn out, that is a reason to not fully show up.  Then I can lay low.  My goal up until about 10 years ago was survival.  I was looking to keep things level–my mind would have been happy to just go on automatic pilot but my body was screaming at me–we can’t do this anymore its killing us.  Not to mention that my spirit was weeping.  So when I woke up and I am not sure what it is exactly that caused me to wake up, I realized that my goal of being level was equivalent to being flatlined in my heart.  When your heart measures flatline you are dead.  When I trust the process of life, the ups and downs, and open up the mind to see that I do not know the outcome, life becomes a dance.  The true irony in all of this is that I have been a dancer my whole life as well.  It is an expression of my spirit–deep down, my body and my heart long to flow to a rhythm designed by something greater than me. In order to be open-minded and not treat my head like a fortune-teller, I need to see things as God sees things.  God’s grand design encompasses things I never could have imagined.  The one thing I do know is that my life does not look like I thought it would look like when I would day-dream as a kid, but because of my relationship with God, my heart feels the way I thought I would feel.  That is what being open-minded means for me–connecting with my heart and my spirit.  That connection to something greater than me opens the doors to infinite possibilities.  My prayer for you today is if you are experiencing any close-mindedness about a person or a situation or a feeling, that you are granted the gift of seeing it through God’s eyes.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I have been known to be hard-headed at times, not open to understanding or seeing things a different way.  I presume I am not alone in this.  Sometimes my mind just grasps on to an idea or belief and will not let go.  I am grateful that my heart has the capacity to be soft.  For me, I need God to intervene to create the connection between the hard-headed brain and the soft heart.  It is in that coming together that my spirit overrides everything and God moves in and through me.  The key for me is to be aware of when I need my spirit to bridge the gap.  What I love about it is that it doesn’t make one better or wrong, it simply creates a space of wholeness within me.  Yesterday I came across a situation that my mind could not wrap its head around.  It was an expectation I had of someone’s behavior and when that expectation was not met it triggered some old story in me which made me angry.  I know it was an old story because my energy level about the situation was disproportionate to what was happening.  In facing it and the people involved I clearly needed God to intervene because being soft-hearted was not going to come from me.  So I asked God to step in.  How do I know that God stepped in?  Because I was able to let go of, just a little, the need for that person to understand where I was coming from.  I was able to see my part was that I had unmet expectations that I had created.  Did it all get tied up in a nice pink bow at the end? Nope.  Was I still left with disconcerting feelings and a let down?  Yep.  But I knew where to take the conversation–within.  I knew that I needed God’s help to shape how I was seeing things.  At the very least, it was a reminder to be kind not only to that person but to myself.  To let go of the harsh judgment. Phew!  I am so grateful that I am given these opportunities to show me how to function in an authentic way.  I still am not clear about why (understanding is the boobie prize) it happened, but if I am learning the lesson the reasons why are not so important.  Do you have times when your head is wedded to an idea and it seems as though the line to your heart is miles away?  My prayer for you today is that you trust that within you is the softest heart of all–and it is only a request away.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

“Love is flowing like a river, flowing out of you and me.”  I have no idea when I learned that song as a kid, it sounds like something from CCD school when I was very young.  What a simple idea.  If I am in the flow of life, love flows in and out of me effortlessly.  I forget that love is something to be a part of, something to participate in.  It is where I come from and where I am going.  Love is the be all and end all.  When I try to force it and make it happen or put restraints on it, then I am obstructing the flow. Obstruction ultimately leads to death.  For the last 24 hours I have had this heart monitor on my body and I am fascinated to know what it shows about how my blood flows. I am always curious as to how things work but it is beautiful to think that this machine can know how I am in the flow of life.  The reality is that the flow of life and love is happening all the time whether I am aware of it or not, just like our own hearts.  It is as though God designed it so that it continues and it is not dependent upon us.  God simply extends the invitation to be in the flow of life and love.  I have spent many a time fighting the flow–wanting to make things go a certain way or hoping against hope that things would not have natural consequences.  I have yet to be successful in this.  But my ego is certain that I can assert control here.  The only reason it wants to assert control is because it is afraid.  Being in the flow is much more peaceful but it requires a trust that I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.  Can I trust enough in the grand design of the creator that in the flow is where I am supposed to be? For today, I can.  Tomorrow might be another story, but I am not there yet, so I will focus on the choice of being in the flow today.  What is one way you can be in the flow (with God) today?  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

I know that I get caught in thinking that it’s all about me. I focus on what I can get out of life and how I am being treated and what will happen to me, etc.  The challenge (and I say challenge versus problem because it is not a problem, but a challenge to my ego) is that while it is important to take care of myself, it is very limiting to focus only on me.  In fact, to do so limits my experiences in life and my joys.  The longer I live this path of being truly present in my own life (versus the one where I was just dying a slow death), the more I realize it is about being of service to others.  Now this is not service to justify my taking up space on this planet.  This is not service so that I will get approval and kudos from those around me.  And most importantly this is not service so that I am okay in God’s eyes.  I am already okay in God’s eyes.  In fact, I am better than okay.  I am a beautiful and inspiring creation. I was created (as were you) out of and for infinite love!  When I am connected to that, my life inspires others.  When I can authentically claim my birthright, my soul’s purpose and share that with others it moves us all to a greater space and experience of life.  When I think about what inspires me about others, it comes from witnessing their authenticity.  Not the fake–look at how great I am and what I have accomplished.  I mean the people who truly share who they are and what they are dealing with and how they despite all circumstances hold true that there is something greater at play.  They motivate me to the same in my own life.  We all know those people, both in the public eye and in our personal lives.  We are called to be and do the same. To show up and face our life today with all its circumstances–good and bad, right and wrong.  As we face the challenges of today and don’t get sucked into how it is not how “we want it to be” but rather how these opportunities are molding us to be drawn ever closer to our true spirit and our kinship with God, we motivate those around us to do the same.  This is why we are here. I can’t tell you the number of times when I was going through something challenging and a friend of mine listened and then shared with me that she had dealt with something similar and came out the other side.  That gives me hope!  I am sure that when she was going through that she didn’t think it would be to the benefit of anyone else–but it is.  My prayer for you today is that when you are faced with challenges, you have the courage to stop and connect with God, ask for help to get through it and be shown how the experience can benefit (inspire/motivate) others.  Trust me when I tell you that it makes it that much more worth it.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

 Sometimes the simplest and most authentic prayer that I can say is “Thank you.”  If I truly believe that God can turn all things to the good and everything happens for a reason, then I can be thankful for whatever is happening. What I have to keep in check is my perspective.  It is my perspective (my meaning of what is happening) that decides if it is good or bad, right or wrong.  It takes a greater trust in the goodness of God to believe that I will be okay no matter what happens and to ask to see the situation or experience through God’s eyes.  My prayer for you today is in the moments that you want to complain or curse, you can pause and simply say “thank you God”.  I will do the same.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is our comfort.  Even when we don’t realize it we have a safe landing-place in our own hearts.  In the midst of this relatively (and I say relatively because it depends on my perspective) harsh world it is often times hard to know where we can seek our comfort.  We do it often in many things outside ourselves–other people, jobs, titles, food, drugs, etc.  Ultimately those things will work for a while but they do not last.  The beauty of the comfort of God is that it withstands all.  It is like shelter from a storm-a basement in a tornado.  We can go down there and hide while all the madness is happening outside. a safe space for us.  The difficulty for me is that I get caught up in thinking I have to do it all own my own.  My mind is sure that it can figure it out and we can clamp down and get it done.  We can survive this too! We got it, no need for assistance!  Meanwhile I am drained and irritated, and want nothing more than to escape.  My mind while brilliant, is not a soft landing spot.  It does better getting thrown into the middle of the mess and tearing its way through like the Tasmanian devil. Yet my heart longs for peace and comfort and my spirit is quietly whispering – “pause for a minute Colleen, just a minute . . . the answer is within you . . . connect to where you come from”  The funny part is that I forget that pausing is an action as well.  My mind tries sometimes to trick me into thinking that reaction is action.  I have found that most things I experience are not an emergency, but sometimes I am certain I have a whole firehouse staff in my head.  It is my heart and my connection to God that allows me the space to pause and then act instead of react to a situation.  I need assistance, but not from the fireman (no matter how cute they might be ;)) but from a benevolent God.  A Creator who sometimes shows up for me as this warm and loving old crinkly wise Native American woman whose smile extends from ear to ear.  She invites me into her teepee where I get to sit on her lap,  rest my head, and listen to the stories she has to tell me about all the things that she knows to be true about me.  My prayer for you today is that you have an opportunity to pause before reacting, to seek assistance from your heart (God) and rest in the knowledge of who you truly are.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Whether we realize it or not high energy drives us.  When we are passionate about something we are drawn into action.  When we notice this or feel this it is an indication of something.  Now I can be compelled or feel the urge to share love with someone or to tell them exactly what I think about them–it goes both ways. The important thing for me is to notice how it wakes me up. That when I experience something at such a high energy level it is like my body’s ways of saying–wake up sweetheart, this is something for you to learn from.  It is when I judge it as being right or wrong that I lose touch with the purpose of that emotion or high intensity.  When I “should” on myself and push it down I lose the lesson as well.  I believe that when we are compelled by a person or a situation, when we are reacting to it, it is important to stop and take notice.  It indicates that we are alive and are experiencing something.  During the darkest times of my life I was deadened. I had little reaction to anything, even now I sometimes have a delayed reaction to things.  That is okay, as long as I pay attention when I experience the reaction.  How I am reacting is an indication of where my thought process is.  It is not because of what is happening.  It is my thinking about the situation.  Whatever is going on is neither good nor bad, I attach a specific meaning to it.  And because my ego may be heavily involved, I attach meaning about me to the situation.  Again, neither good nor bad, just something to notice. The beauty of our thoughts is that they just keep coming, one right after another.  It is the ones that I attach to that will further my growth because they provide an opportunity to go deeper–to connect with myself and with God.  I am passionate about growing closer and closer to God–it sounds lovely doesn’t it?  But it is not some angelic or sainthood application, it is a desire to release all those things I am carrying mentally, physically, and emotionally that keep me separate from my true nature–who I am in God.  It is work, sometimes, but I have found it to be the most freeing.  I think that is what we are all here to do.  I think our souls/spirits-whatever you choose to call them are compelled to walk this journey.  I think that when we arrive here, out of our mother’s womb, there is a part of our spirit/soul that long to connect with the divine because it is who we are.  St. Augustine said it best when he said that “Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”  So why is it work?  Well, because in our human experience we take on meaning based on events and circumstances. This creates our programming, an  overlying blueprint, and we then go forward and react to life based on that overlying blueprint that was set in the first 6-7 years of our life (scientists have studied our brains and shown us this).  When we get to the age of reason (7), we are able to begin to question and then the game begins.  My prayer for you today is that you allow the part of you that is compelled to connect with God run free (even if for just five minutes), seek and you shall find and maybe you’ll have some fun in this game of life.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen