dailydatewithgod

We are all aware to some degree the standard or accepted way of viewing things.  It is the unwritten cultural agreements that we are born into and adopt without much thought.  It is only when we encounter other groups or cultures who see things and behave differently when presented with the same situation.  My father would refer to it by the toothpaste argument.  He said that when a man and woman get married and are living together for the first time they find themselves arguing over the right way to squeeze the toothpaste (from the bottom, or any place on the tube).  I came across similar situations with my first set of roommates when we realized we all had different ways of indicating what was our food versus communal food. I thought I was going to have to start looking for a new place to live given the level of upset on her face. Similarly, we have a cultural agreement on what is considered an achievement. It usually looks like stuff in American culture.  Whether that stuff is a job title, letters after your name, admission to a particular university, a car, and so on.  It is measured by the outer ways indicating one has arrived.  Arrived at what I am not always sure because right behind it is another layer of achievement one is expected to meet.  God invites us to look into what achievement means as it reflects the truth of who we are at our core.  It is not about devaluing the outside view of achievement but equally valuing our internal sense of achievement.  A level of achievement that can be reflected in a given moment and does not need many years to get to.  A level of achievement signifying a growth layer for ourselves that others may not understand. A level of achievement that makes space for the fact that who we are at this moment allows for a different level of achievement then who we were yesterday or when in a different moment.

I wonder sometimes if the firm structure of the skull around our brain is symbolic of our hard-headedness versus the more open bone structure of the ribs around our hearts. I recognize our skull is made up of several pieces of bone held together and it is more flexible than it might appear to be.  I suppose the real question is, do we have more pliability in our minds or our hearts? The ever-changing nature of life means we need flexibility in all our systems.  How that adjustability manifests is of course different.  God encourages us to use the natures of our mind and hearts to create pliability which enables us to both be rooted in the unchanging nature of the truth of who we are while flexing in and through how that shows up at the moment.  A tree would not be a tree if it did not stand upright while being connected to its roots so it can grow strong.  At the same time, it needs to be able to sway in the wind and withstand various temperatures to go through its life cycle and be alive.  Learning how to create workable pliability of who we are at our core and respond to the situation at hand as it is.  Our particular life has something to offer each situation and it may be something different than what we have offered previously. This does not mean we are so pliable we have no backbone. It means we know how to be in the flow of life and respond authentically to the truth of who we are at our core. When we have no sense of our own roots, we do not know who or how to be in any given situation.  We start to think we are supposed to respond based on some formula of this is how everyone does it.  We lose true pliability by not being intimately familiar with who we are and who God designed us to be.

Much of life has order and the illusion of certainty.  There is a certain level of safety that comes from order and routine. Trust me I like order and I function well within it.  A side effect of the structures that we put in place through which to operate is not having to think so much about every little decision. We can easily find ourselves musing incessantly about the little stuff.  With such an occupied mind there is no room to experience the daydream effect of musing.  Like most things in life, there is not just one side to something. Musing can be something we do with intent and focus.  It can also be something that happens when we let go a bit and allow our mind to wander. It will be off traveling through random trails and when that happens, there is space for insight from our hearts or even our bodies.  Of course, all of this is filtered through our nervous system so it seems like we think it all through.  We recognize this kind of musing when it is a sense or almost a whisper of a concept or inkling.  It is the reason the muses of ancient Greece were these ethereal goddesses who believed to gift people with inspiration.  God invites us to allow the musings of the whole of who we are to be accepted.  We may not choose to act on them but judging them as better or worse than something we intentionally think up disconnects us from the whole of life. Why deprive ourselves of our interconnectedness to the universe by believing the musing of our minds that is literal and intentional is the only kind of value.

The body language used by humans to demonstrate honor seems to be present across various cultures.  Typically it consists of a bow or lowering of one’s head to indicate that whoever or whatever is being honored is of greater value than the person bending.  There is a correlating experience when it comes to the opening of one’s heart.   We see that when people are in awe, praying, or pausing to take in something that has touched them, they physically touch their hearts.  We touch our hearts to indicate honor of the power of the heart.  It seems to be a default awareness of honor in our hearts.  When we are caught by surprise or find ourselves emotionally touched we touch our hearts. God encourages us to honor ourselves for allowing something to affect our hearts.  It is part of our design for our hearts to be affected by our internal and external world.  When we touch our hearts physically we allow others to know something about us at that moment.  Given the unspoken nature by which it happens, it becomes a quiet and subtle communication between all kinds of people in the same way we know what honor outside of ourselves looks like.

The finished product looks like one thing.  It appears as a whole.  Yet anything whole is comprised of multiple parts.  If we choose to see only the whole we miss out on all the elements present in the whole.  This applies to all of life.  The fusion of elements is what makes up the whole of life.  We are far more interconnected and blended than we are aware of.  When we take into account our fusion we can operate on a more holistic level.  Recognizing the amalgamation of reality does not mean we are broken.  The reality of fusion as a universal principle is about valuing each part of the mixture and the unique flavor that its ingredient provides to the whole.  God encourages us to recognize our fusion as a human being with all our experiences, sensations, memories, ideas, feelings, and so on.  When we are responding to life we may be doing so from one part of the blend that is us.  An awareness of the element as well as the whole gives us insight into how we can steer the trajectory of our response so it is in resonance with the whole of who we are.  When a particular element of the fusion is out of balance it creates a lack of coalescence in us and hinders our ability to respond from the truth of who we are. It is not about being in perfect fusion.  It is about the recognition that sometimes we need to check the mixture and note what is of higher concentration at the moment.

My daily dates with God have taught me that I have a disproportionate relationship with time.  Living in a world that measures seconds and milliseconds, values time as a marker of wisdom or decrepitness, it is easy to be both influenced and confused by what time is even about.  I am aware of its relativity because five minutes in the company of a friend seems to go by too fast but feels like an eternity when it is holding a single yoga pose.  The world tells us to value the years of a couple’s marriage but not the years they each spent being single. We value the moment the insight occurs but not the amount of process time it took to be open to the insight.  We perceive change as a moment in time and begrudge ourselves in the transformation process because we are not there yet. God has taught me that seeing time as the only important marker of value causes a misperception of reality. The alchemy of change is not measured by minutes or years.  It is the alchemy which takes seemingly insignificant moments of time and creates something new.  Measuring change in our lives solely through a mind that measures time in numbers causes us to lose out on valuing the whole of life.

We often do not know where we might find the answers we are seeking until we stop grappling with them.  It is fun to watch a dog with a bone in part because I realize I am like that with areas of my life.  I focus on something and figure out how to get my mind around it.  The bright side of this is known as persistence, the dark side is known as stubbornness.  We all have things we wrestle with in life. We default to believing that if we can just get our minds wrapped around it and grab hold of it, we will be victorious. We will not have to be befuddled by it again should it show up.  God invites us to notice who we are being in our grappling.  How are we carrying ourselves?  What are we believing about the presence of mystery in our lives? What are we telling ourselves about ourselves as a result of having something to grapple.  When we remember who we are at our core, we come to the understanding that it is not what we are grappling with that defines us.  In fact, the opportunity to grapple with something gives us an insight into who we are and how we show up in the world.  Grappling with mystery and wanting to know is part of life.  There is no point until we are no longer present in this world, at which there will not be something to grapple with.  The courage to remember the truth of who we are and how we specifically are being called to do the grappling will enable us to face anything no matter how baffling.

How we live our life is based on who we believe ourselves to be.  We incorporate the various identities and from the conglomeration of them, we take action in the world.  Some of our action is based on what we have learned about what it means to be one of the others who also hold that identity and some are based on how we have shaped the identity to make sense for us.  As someone who identifies as a female, I learned to watch other females and got a sense of what is expected in my behavior.  The same goes for my identity as an American, a daughter, a worker in healthcare, a healthy person, and so on.  Each of these identities is essentially labels I have internalized on some level and based on my behavior one could determine how I identify myself.  It drives my habits which reinforce my identity. God invites us to consider the identity of our hearts.  Who do we know ourselves to be through the lens of our hearts?  Taking time to explore this influences the nuances of how we live out the character of our identity.  Having access to the perspective of our hearts allows us to determine the energetic movement of what it means to be a woman, a man, a worker, an American, a husband, a reporter, and whatever other labels of identification we accept. Becoming familiar with the identity of our hearts gives us the guidance we need when choosing how to authentically be who we believe our sovereign selves to be from the truth of who we are in and out of the labels we wear.

We are mostly not aware of it but our nervous system is constantly scanning our internal and external environment.  We are taking in information and processing it at a tremendously fast rate.  Most of it is outside of our awareness because the amount would overload our consciousness.  Much of it comes with the design of being a human animal and our past lived experience.  It is what facilitates the ease through which we walk through life knowing without consciously knowing what to do and how to do it.  We notice the distinction when we are learning something new because it requires additional energy.  We also become aware of the scanning when a threat pops up on our radar.  Our various systems alert us to the threat or possible threat and directly send energy to parts of our body to deal with the threat.  Unneeded physical systems will slow or shut down so all possible energy can be used to their utmost.  It makes me think of when a Star Trek captain orders all power to phasers or shields when they are under attack.  Our nervous system does the same. Post real or perceived threat there is a time for our system to restore itself.  God invites us during the time of restoration and to involve reflection of the heart.  With practice, we can invite the heart to scan our system.  Often times there are additional layers of effect from a possible threat that we are not going to perceive in our minds.  Our hearts add a layer to learning to understand ourselves as well as the world around us.  We no longer live in a world where it is just about being relieved that we survived because in most cases the threats are not life or death.  Most of the time they are simple human interactions with others that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable.  Bring in the heart to scan for how it has learned more about the presence of love in even the most unloving of circumstances guides us to a deeper knowing of who we are all called here to be.

We all have a knack for allowing something to replay in our heads.  It is as though our minds are convinced that if we ruminate long enough it will cycle itself through and we will find the resolution to stop the rumination we are seeking by ruminating. I suppose that is like hoping that banging our head against a surface will result in the removal of the headache. More often than not it is the break of the rumination that enables us to find what we are seeking.  Getting our bodies to move or do something different which redirects our attention is what I have found works.  I sometimes like to think of it as the point at which my mind tires of the rumination, sends it to my heart out of surrender or in some cases defeat, the heart then prompts a breath which interrupts the ruminating.  Upon interruption, there is a pause to choose another option.  In the times when I am stubborn, I will continue the rumination.  When I open and surrendered to the heart’s suggestion to move my attention I do something else. Within our system is a process by which we can involve our whole selves in the process of rumination.  Left to just one of our systems we are stuck with the same thoughts on replay, feelings of defeat, or showing in action that we are not going to be present with the process.  For the rumination to be more than just our life on repeat, we need to invite our whole self to the party.