dailydatewithgod

The fourth step in the 12 step way of living is an inventory.  Just like a shopkeeper takes stock of what he or she has in their store, the recovering addict takes a look at what he or she has in stock in their mind.  Particular attention is made to looking at it through the lens of relationships with others.  The idea is to get a clear sense of how he or she has been operating prior to surrendering their drug substance of choice.  From there a pattern emerges of the tactical equipment that has been used regularly to handle those relationships with self, others, and God. The equipment is known as defects of character. An equal part of the recovery path is to also take stock of the effective kinds of character.  The ones that were operating when the addict was not inclined to use.   Knowledge of the equipment that we turn to guide us through our lives and assessing which pieces add to our peace of mind and effectiveness versus those that take away is vital if the addict wants to move forward in life without needing the substance to numb out.  12 steps are referred to as a way to live life in rough going.  I think we would be hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t experiencing life in rough going right now. Taking the time to figure out which equipment is going to enable us to move the rough patches without destroying ourselves might be a good idea if we want to see the other side of it.  The equipment is not just in our minds but in our hearts. When we are at our wit’s end with the defective equipment in our minds and the effective equipment it is not easily accessible, God encourages us to slow down and tap into the equipment of our hearts.  There is a storehouse of equipment within us that has not been battered by the rough going because nothing we experience in life can remove the imprint of God from our hearts.  Taking stock of the heart’s equipment may sound painstaking and rough going on its own especially if we have allowed a bunch of mind equipment to get piled on top of it.  My daily dates with God showed me how to pause and clear my way to reach the equipment of my heart especially for the times when my mind’s equipment was on automatic pilot.  Learning to clear the path to reach the equipment of my heart is not always easy but it is the ticket to freedom I have searched for my whole life.

Living in a city known for its endless parking lots we call highways one sees a lot of cars up close.  It is evident in the design of a car that it has certain curves and grooves which come together at a certain point to create something functional.  Then, of course, there are the grooves we call dents and dings that will cause the insurance company to raise your rate.  Those grooves are not part of the original design but can give a car a unique character.  The same goes for the grooves in our own bodies.  Some are present in the design of being human. Others are ones that we create with lived experience. We call them wrinkles, lines, breaks, and bruises.  Living in Western culture the dominating thinking is that we all want to look as young as possible.  We value the smooth groove of a young body versus the bumpy or lumpy one of an adult body.  What we do not see with our eyes when we look at the grooves life has helped us shape throughout bodies is the character it represents.  The wisdom that comes from moving through the process of obtaining those grooves is what makes us interesting, quirky, and with some stories to tell.  Our hearts know the value of the groove in our bodies because it carries the oxygen of life through it.  Our hearts hear the message of the woman whose grooves on her face alone tell the story of her words of wisdom.  Our hearts feel the warm laughter that resonates loud through the pudgy body of our funny uncle. God invites us to welcome the grooves that have built on the inherent ones in our human design as a sign of the beauty through which our hearts can reach each other without being stopped by our mind’s eyes ideas of what is the right groove to dance to.

We all know what we are like when we are operating at our best.  We feel like we are in the flow of life.  It is a time when we are void of it we want to get back to you. If you are anything like me I default to thinking I am to blame when I step out of a time of flow.  Slowly through my daily dates with God, I am willing to take into consideration a different possibility.  Perhaps being in the flow of life means that it goes in and out. There are times of consolation and times of desolation.  Neither of those means we are void of anything in the least or acting in bad character just different.  In a world of duality, we understand things through their contradictions and paradoxes.  It seems as though it is unfortunate that they come through pain and discomfort but consider that the dawn is breathtaking because it arises out of the darkest time of night.  We do a lot of consideration in our mind which is important.  We are designed to contemplate and meditate on our lives.  It is what makes us distant from all the other animals.  God encourages us to bring our hearts into the picture when it comes to consideration.  When we take a breath and open up the heart resonance we widen the consideration arena.  Our minds’ contemplative power is increased through what the heart is willing to consider.  The whole of who we are can show up and play a role in the consideration process allowing the whole truth of who we are to engage in the flow of contemplation.

We are easily fooled by what we see not because we are fools but because our eyes only tell us part of the picture.  Most humans rely heavily on their sense of sight which makes sense.  There is a reason why in ancient times blindness was considered to be a curse.  There is a reason when we are alarmed at a change in our ability to see either temporarily or as an effect of harm to our eyes. Maybe it comes from the inherent if not direct knowledge discovered by neuroscience that our eyeballs are actual physical pieces of our brain outside our skull.  God encourages us to take things a step further.  What our eyes give us is an offering of information.  What we do in our minds translates what we are actually seeing and gives it meaning.  When we learn to take responsibility for the meaning we create we can appreciate and value the offering that our eyes or any part of our sensory system gives us.  In our willingness and courage to own what we do with the various kinds of offerings our senses pick upon, we see the gift we are being given all the time.  Our perspective on how our lives are orchestrating themselves is placed back within our personal sovereignty is not the fault or caused by the outside stimulation with our senses pick up on.

What seems to be unaware of all the kinds of conversations we have going on at once.  There are direct ones with other people. There are indirect ones with other people. Plus the dialogue we have with institutions or things.  What drives all of it is the inner conversation.  Not just the chatter we hear bantering about in our minds that we all pretend is not happening while the other conversations are happening.  Also, the ones that are occurring beneath the level of thought.  There is a heart conversation, a body conversation, and an energy conversation.  God encourages us to become fluent in the languages of all the elements of who we are so we can notice the conversations happening in our very being.  We like to think we have a handle on the conversations with others or often think we know how they are going to go before they happen.  The reality is we are projecting the inner conversations.  The kind of outer conversations we have with others is a mirror of the inner conversation we are having with ourselves.  Taking time to pause and notice our inner conversations is our key to creating outer conversations that we walk into with an open mind and an open heart.  God invites us to learn what being in a relationship with others is through conversation by getting to know who we are through our inner conversations.

When we look for ways to gather ourselves and bring ourselves together we don’t often think of patchwork as being the best option.  We think we need to take the threads we have and start over from the beginning.  We do not realize how powerful the stitches we use to mend ourselves to empower us to value all we have done and been through up to this point of needing some mending.  Being worn down and falling apart is not a sign of failure.  It is a sign of living fully.  Our minds might tell us that everything must be perfectly logical and lined up.  Yet the very heart of who we are speaks to the power of getting back up after falling down.  We can decide how much we value the stitches we need to mend ourselves.  Our hearts invite us to look at moments of being torn apart as an opportunity to notice where the threads were growing thin and calling out for mending without judgment.  Our hearts are interested in what enables us to grow whole and complete. While there are times when starting from scratch may be the best option but even then we do not need to toss aside the torn elements of ourselves.  We can honor them by using them as a template when implementing the stitches needed to make us whole.  Asking God to guide us using the courage and curiosity which lies at the truth of who we are to stitch ourselves into wholeness is only a request away.

When we are so accomplishment focused we can lose sight of how vital it is to be in the experience of everything that leads up to it.  It is easy to digest the idea that the steps which are specific markers are important. More foreign to us is the importance of the intervals along the path to where we are heading. The in-between times are moments when the whole of who we are can get connected.  It renews our energy to have a pause. In case it has gone unnoticed, as human beings, we are easily distractable.  How often along a particular path do we lose sight of where we are going or why we are going there.  The interval serves as a mechanism to refocus.  Maybe a part of us is not in alignment with where we are headed.  An interval is a moment to break and reassess if it still where we want to be going.  In a success-driven culture, anything besides a forward motion is often signifying weakness.  When we fall down, we get back up.  That is good and there is nothing wrong with moving forward and accomplishing things.  It is our drives that allow us to survive.  If we took the radical chance and began to value the intervals along our path, we might find the energetic gems they provide in getting us to where we want to go.  God invites us to see the intervals as the clarity points to keep us focused on the whole of our experience as we travel this path of life.

Part of the subtle beauty or madness depending on your perspective is our awareness.  So much of our reality as humans is easy to pick up on.  We can grasp it through our five senses and we can think about and play with it in our imagination.  Then there are the subtle elements of cognizance which we pick up on automatically but they do not register on a thinking level. Our cognizance of energetic reality flies below the radar of our immediate awareness.  It gets funneled through thoughts and ideas that occur to us about something seemingly intangible.  It is the cognizance of something we know but cannot explain how we know.  It is both elements of survival and our connection to the mystery of life. It is a cognizance that is inherently more simple than our minds can create with all the complex calculations and creations.  It is the cognizance of belonging to something bigger than the space we take up with our bodies.  It is the cognizance of understanding without words.  God invites us to play in this level of cognizance and see if we can let go into a space of unknown that is known and therefore without fear.

In the widening circle of experiences and exposures of life, we can find ourselves traversing a path we never imagined.  We wonder if we are simply lost or out of control.  When we get past the shock and remember that life is what happens when we are busy planning we set about facing it or running away. We start with what is familiar in terms of tactics and responses.  We see if they work just as they have elsewhere and sometimes they do.  The aphorisms of our lives prove their value when we see them being applied where we had not imagined they were needed.  God encourages us to notice which aphorisms can transcend our individual circumstances and speak the truth in resonance with the truth of who we are no matter what we are facing.  It is the aphorisms of our hearts that guide us into uncharted territory especially when it comes to how we are relating to others.  Remembering that if the aphorism is a universal truth, it will be true no matter to whom it applies.  Testing the aphorisms of our hearts in new contexts and conversations allows us to expand our awareness of how connected or disconnected we are from the whole of humanity.  The unexpected paths, therefore, serve us in broadening our lives to see how interconnected we are and how the illusion of our separateness is merely a story in our mind.

If we really knew all of what is of benefit to us we would not spend as much time resisting the things we resist.  I am not sure if it is a combination of us not really knowing what is best for us or that we do not appreciate the things that come to us easily.  I suppose like most things the why is irrelevant.  The reality is the perks we experience in life come about often from the most unlikely places.  I am not talking about the perks that only reach our eyes or the checkbox in our minds of what is good.  I am talking about the perks that pierce the space in our hearts which shape our character because the fruition they represent comes from facing the resistance based on their outside look.  Most of the time the perk that lays on the other side of the fear which pops up in front of it may look to not be worth it but it is not the perk itself, it is the process of facing the fear that is worth it.  A simple example for me was the first time I bought a new car all on my own.  Going through the fear of walking out of a dealership without falling for the tactics they tried to lay on me as some unsuspecting beautiful woman, taking the time to do the research on all angles, doing my own financial figures so I didn’t get talked into purchasing some overpriced full package from financing guru, and so on.  The perk wasn’t what it appeared to be. Yes, the car is nice and I enjoy driving it. Ten years later after some good wear and tear, I still get the perk of knowing I let the best of who I am show up in the whole process of obtaining the car.  The new car smell is long gone but I still take have the perk of knowing exactly what is needed to keep up its maintenance and go to a mechanic I can trust who is interested in treating me as a knowledgeable car owner.  The resistance showed up as not having the time to do my due diligence, asking a guy friend to talk to the dealer, or not countering with the 40 dollar difference in price at another dealership when agreeing on a final price. The perk of being able to drive out of the dealership with my head held high, almost through the moon roof (my favorite feature to this day 😉 )  God encourages us to notice the perks we are drawn to as an invitation to the process of character formed in walking through the resistance which surfaces just in front of the perk.