dailydatewithgod

On my daily dates with God, I have experienced the compassion and grace of being willing to go into the dark spaces. The parts of myself that I was ashamed of or did not want anyone to know about.  Carrying them around for years in my heart and mind became a weight (almost literally) I could no longer sustain. Learning to face the truth of myself in recovery has been painful at times. Sometimes the greatest pain has come from realizing that my adaptive style of self-hatred and being really hard on myself are not effective tools for reconnecting with the truth of who I am.  When we realize something we do regularly does not work there is a sense of loss and confusion.  In part, this comes from the fact that it served us in some way for a time.  God invites us to look at the alliances of our self-defeating patterns.  We see them as faults and want to get rid of them.  God sees them for what they are.  Adaptive thoughts or behaviors aimed at getting our needs met and continuing to live the best we can.  God is everpresent to the light of life that dwells within us and knows while the expression of the alliance to life may have become counterproductive its alliance is true none the same. As we begin to see this in ourselves we recognize it in others.  It is something I need to be reminded of both for myself and others.  If I focus on the alliance I have compassion.  If I focus on the expression I have contempt.  Thus far compassion has engendered more change in myself than contempt could even attempt.

With the world in a tizzy, it is easy to see how we might want to just pull the covers over our heads and close off our hearts. I certainly have thought about it as my alarm went off in the morning and I find myself saying “I can do this!” as I get ready for work.  Some days it is no small feat to get of bed, go for a walk and then drive to work at the hospital.  For some, it might be the thought of spending another long day in close quarters with the same people.  And still others about taking care of a loved one who is not well.  We all have our various struggles, too many to name here.  God invites us in moments of uncertainty, grief, stress, and frustration to find shelter in our hearts.  One thing I know, it is my heart that gives me the courage to show up.  We think the solution is to put a barrier around our hearts and shelter it. However, It is our hearts themselves which shelters us from believing all the fears that run through our minds.  It is in our hearts where the courage to be present in our lives, no matter the challenges.  Our hearts by their courage are the shelter we need to not forget the truth of who we are in a world that is telling us to hunker down and be scared.  Sometimes the most profound thing we can do is take a deep breath. Simple but easy to forget.  Our breath connects us to the shelter of our hearts which encompasses the courage we need to take the next indicated step.

I could say that I have no idea what it is like to experience analysis paralysis but alas that would be a lie.  I think most of us have some familiarity with the way our brains are wired to investigate and understand.  How many times do we catch ourselves saying, “I wish I could wrap my head around it, or once I get my head wrapped around it, I can move forward.”  Like all elements of ourselves, there are darker and lighter shades of expression. Our minds have this seemingly endless capacity to find a million rabbit holes to travel down.  It is good to investigate, review, and even survey what we are being asked to make a decision about.  Given that everything we act on starts with a decision it makes sense to think before we act.  However, we are not simply minds with bodies attached.  We are a complex system that gives and receives information and takes action on many levels.  Relying simply on the inspection authored by the mind leaves open the possibility that the actions we choose are not the fullest expression of ourselves or even the truth of who we are.  God invites us to bring along the inspection of our hearts.  Our hearts have a sensitivity that our minds do not have.  Our hearts can wrap themselves around things our mind could spend our whole lives inspecting and still not get any answers.  By inviting our heart’s inspection into the picture as we move to action we practice strengthening the interconnection of our hearts and minds and acting from a whole and powerful place.

When we orient our intentions with our actions we are in an alignment phase that empowers us to move coherently through the world. Since none of us are perfect most of the time it is a kind of dance in out of coherence with ourselves and our lives.  God invites us to open up the experience we are in and expose it to the phase of our hearts that never changes.  There is light and life force always operating within ourselves which can courageously work to bring our various phases into alignment.  When we are scattered in mind and being we can pause and take a deep breath. The breath brings our focus to our hearts which awakens the energy needed to help us become aware of which phase is not in alignment with our truth in the moment.  It looks like pausing and taking a deep breath and choosing to step away or ask a question or not react.  All of these actions if we are honest with ourselves are in alignment with where we are in the moment we feel out of alignment. Even more expansive is how our hearts know to connect with the mind and the body to remind them how to bring ourselves to a place of peace.  Many spiritual teachers have spoken of how the peace we seek lies within ourselves.  Trusting in this message beings with a breath.

When I think of how we are programmed to function as human beings it is not hard to get caught up in the idea that we are robots of some sort.  On some level that almost sounds easier especially when it comes to reprogramming some of our inborn behaviors.  We have various reflexes set up to enable us to survive for which I am most grateful.  Other adaptive reflexes come from the programming set up at a young age which is entirely context-based.  However, because of the state of our mind and the part of the growth in which they occurred our system did put a stop in place to account for the context.  In other words, when we are reflexively reacting to something in our current environment which in any way mirrors or is similar to a past context our brain kicks in and runs the program already in place.  Gratefully, there are also mechanisms of new growth so that new reflexes can be set up but they take time to become established.  The best way to initiate the process is to introduce our hearts through our breath into the mix.  When we consciously pause and breathe we awaken our heart and change the vibration around our heart to move at a pace we want versus the automatic reflex which likely has our heart ramped up. From the pause and deeper slower breath, we can detach ourselves from the old context and how it is overlaying the current situation.  It is a skill that takes practice.  God designed our hearts to be involved in this process not only because it physically then feeds the rest of our system but it has the courage and the compassion to keep practicing.

There is a lot of conversation around the idea of truth and how to verify what is true and what is not.  Do we go with scientific proof?  Do we believe authorities?  Do we have to see it with our own ideas to believe it?  Can we really verify with our own faculties what is true and what is not?  I do not have any answers to these questions.  On my daily dates with God, I learned what I can do is tune in to my own heart.  All I really have is the moment I am in. I can make the best choice available to me as to what is true by connecting to the truth of who I am. The verification I am seeking comes as a joint effort of the whole of me. Something may seem to verify the truth with my eyes but my gut tells me there is something I am not seeing.  I may feel a sense of truth in my body but I need my mind to verify and give language to it.  All angles of truth however must be brought through the lens of my heart before a true verification can occur.  Through the lens of my heart, there is room for compassion and forgiveness of myself and others.  The heart knows how to bring balance to all elements of verification and hold the space of things unknown when no verification is possible.  Within our hearts is the grace to know that sometimes we must make choices before verification is possible and in those moments we draw from the verification present from our Creator which often defies our very understanding of verification.

I am fascinated with how sound works and our relationship to it as human beings.  It is why I love music of all kinds.  It is why we as human beings are drawn to the sound of those whom we know and love.  Vibration is what captures our mind and body together.  To me, the recognition of vibration is the recognition of ourselves.  Our hearts vibrate energy throughout our bodies.  Our breath kick starts the vibration of the heart.  Various waves of energy vibrate in and through us and the entire universe.  Is it any wonder that we recognize certain vibes?  Life seems magical when we let go of the artifices and labels of particular vibrations and allow ourselves to notice how the connect or disconnect from the vibration of our own hearts.  Vibration is how we determine resonance.  A relationship is about creating a coherent resonance.  God encourages us to know the resonant vibration within our own selves on all levels before we can know how we resonate with the vibration of people and things outside ourselves.

Most of our lives we work hard to achieve and make something of our lives.  It is part of the human spirit to grow and evolve.  Being alive means showing up for opportunities to grow and change.  We think it would be nice if those chances of growth and experiences of change were easier but that is not always the case.  I have noticed a certain default expectation in myself and others that if we must grow through difficulty then there will be a reward upon arrival.   We place importance on reaching the end or goal so that we can either sigh of relief or reap the rewards.  We tend to expect the reward to be external.  What if the real reward is the internal shift that is taking place throughout the process of growth and change?  We get so focused on the completion that we lose sight of the joy of the rewards along the path.  God invites us to notice the reward of the path as well as the end goal.  If we figure that the end goal of life is death (as no one that I know of has lived forever), then are we all aiming for the most rewarding funeral box or urn?  Tuning into our hearts to reap the reward of growing in love and we navigate our way through the ups and downs keeps us connected to the beauty of life.  The reward of a next breath is the life force needed to take the next step.  The reward of the ping we get in our hearts when we look at someone we love in the eye.  The reward of the feeling of fascination we experience when we see something we have never seen before.  All of these are rewards that have no badges, diplomas, or money attached to them. God invites us to marvel in the reward of being alive.

I have noticed how much meaning there is around the language of difficult conversations.  We use words like conflict to describe the uncomfortable or unfamiliar and in essence, there is a conflict between where we are and where we want to be.  The conflict is based on the idea that someone else needs to see things as we do. Given our inclination to figure it out and at least in Western culture convince ourselves the best way through is how we are thinking about it.  There is a great bit of truth to this.  Changing our thinking changes our lives.   To this end, we read more, use more words, attempt to be convinced, or be convincing to others. All of this is about getting access to change through our minds alone.  However, to the degree to which we identify ourselves with our idea, the harder it is to change it.  We are very wedded to our identity. God invites us to look at attempting to access change through our hearts. The view of ourselves in our hearts is holistic.  Our hearts contain knowledge of us as a multilevel expression of life.  It encompasses God’s knowing of us which is much more than our identities and our ideas. The access to change through our hearts makes room for acceptance of where we are in the moment.  When we access change through our hearts, there is room to learn and grow because it is the truth of who we are.  Access through the heart to create change means we will not be threatened by identity changing through any opportunity for growth no matter what shape it takes.

Based on what we know about our physical growth and changes on a physical level as human beings it is fair to say that when we see babies we know roughly how they will change shape and size as they grow.  Yet each one is distinct and tends to do so based on the genetic characteristics of one’s parents.  The blooming of one’s heart and mind is another matter. Certain patterns are laid down in the first seven years of life.  It is also clear that through neuroplasticity we can make changes to those patterns as we grow.  The piece we often lose sight of is how much power we have over the blooming of our hearts and minds.  It may seem as though we must resign ourselves to those templates set down at an early age but anyone who has learned to overcome a habit can tell you, it is possible.  The distinction comes in owning the choice over our blooming.  Setting forth an intention to make the blooming of our heart in an open and love learning direction is ours to make.  Choosing to focus the blooming of our minds to work in conjunction with the growth of our hearts is also possible.  God invites us to find the courageous energy in our hearts to move through the potential discomfort that makes come from blooming. Life offers us many chances and it is up to us to use them for our blooming or not.