dailydatewithgod

There is an elemental reality based on fear which many of us find ourselves operating from whether we intend to or not. It is an instinctual process built within us to save our lives. Fear is not a bad thing.  We need it to survive on all levels.  It is not about getting rid of it, but noticing its role as a sentinel we have in place to keep an eye out and keep us safe.  Sometimes we become so accustomed to the presence of the sentinel we do not realize we do not need it in certain areas anymore.  As we use fear as an opportunity to be in keen awareness and garner some courage to move through something, we find there is no need for a sentinel at the door of our hearts, our minds, or our bodies as we once thought.  When we are exploring anything unfamiliar whether it is physical, emotional, or intellectual territory the mere fact of unfamiliarity will bring up fear.  Fear narrows our focus so we can attend to what may potentially harm us.  When we pause and take a breath after noticing the fear, we realize it is not going to actually end our lives.  With reassessment, we can determine the need for fear to behave as a sentinel.  We learn how to have an uncomfortable conversation with a loved one by walking through the unfamiliarity of speaking up for ourselves.  We take a chance at seeing how much farther we can run or hold the yoga pose than we thought we could by pushing past the voice in our head which is telling us what our body can and can’t handle comfortably. We listen with some discomfort to someone who has a different perspective on an idea about which we are convinced we are right to see if there are any points worth considering.  With each of these actions, we give the sentinel of fear permission to slip away.  The unfamiliar which garnered the fear is no longer present because of our actions.  The actions provide evidence of no longer needing a sentinel of fear in that particular area of our lives.  We can say thank you for your service of standing guard over my heart, body, or mind, your services are no longer needed.

Our template for survival comes with a side effect.  We are constantly on the outlook for what could upset the construct of our survival.  Our brains are wired to keep us alive. This is a good thing.  The downside is we tend to focus easily on the negative because it holds within it the potential to end our existence. It sounds dramatic but life and death are a reality.  In the early years of human existence however, the threats to survival were more striking like the potential to run into animals that would kill us or the scarcity of food in winter.  Today our world is constructed differently.  At least for those of us who live in cultures where industry and technology thrive. Our mind’s inclination to focus on the negative becomes more about perspective, interpretation, and potential death to our identity.  We fall for the construct that familiar is safe and the unfamiliar feels uncomfortable and could be threatening.  Growth comes through discomfort but if we are afraid of the unfamiliar then we are reluctant to grow.  Yet growth and change are inevitable.  This creates a certain calamity of experience.  In this calamitous space, we can develop additional awareness aside from that of our brain that is focusing only on survival.  We can acknowledge the brain wanting to keep us breathing and activate the openness of the heart which engages other sensors by which to measure the experience as an actual or imagined threat.  Pausing to breathe which activates the heart to attention gives us a moment before defaulting to an automatic reaction.  It is a simple way to activate additional possibilities aside from the negative inclinations.  In the moments of pause, we can connect to an opening to another layer of options.  It is not woo woo to activate our hearts in the conversation, it is a step towards wholeness.  It is an activation which involves being present, connected, and agents in our own lives.  We can honor our baseline desire to live by bringing ourselves fully into the experience and engaging with our whole selves.

The value of our lives is not about how often things go as expected or the ways in which life allows us to be the labels we have placed on ourselves. The value of our lives is about the texture of our experiences.  To what degree did we spend our lives aware of the character, the feel, the nature, the balance, and the composition of our day today?  It is easy to go along without the awareness of what comes alive around us and take it for granted. We can become numb to the texture because we rely on our eyes to feed all the information to us and we expect to see the same things.  It is kind of comical that it is the moments when things do not go as we planned or expected which then irritates us are the very time we become acutely aware of the texture of life. The moments in awareness of texture can be used to our advantage.  We can default into irritation and discontent or we can embrace the opportunity to revel in the texture we are experiencing.  I know I can go into frustration and irritation just as quickly as anyone else.  The switch that brings me into an appreciation of texture is by asking God, “How do you see this?”  “Is there something here trying to get my attention about life?” In the questions, I am drawn back to my heart where the texture of life becomes pungent and alive.

Sometimes without intending to we find ourselves in situations or circumstances that we could not imagine were possible or conversely would not want to be experiencing.  This could be positive or negative experiences. With the positive ones, we consider ourselves lucky.  With the negative ones, we see ourselves as victims.  How might we view the circumstance differently if it became an opportunity to access a part of ourselves with which we are not in touch?  What if positive or negative the experience we are having is a chance to access a connection with ourselves we did not know was there?  What if it is a gift to access a part of our heart, mind, body, or soul?  Perhaps we are having the experience so we can access the knowledge of what it means for the different parts of ourselves to work together.  There are so many possibilities when it comes to the reasons for things to happen.  I know there are many times in my life when I wanted to escape an experience because it was horrible.  I was not in the frame of mind of asking myself what it might be giving me access to within myself.  Only with my daily dates with God have I begun to alter my perspective to one of learning.  How can this circumstance provide access to a way to connect with myself or others in love?  Is it possible I am experiencing this because God wants me to access my courage?  One thing I have learned is things are never what they seem.  I cannot know all of why things happen although I could go on and on trying to figure out the whys.  My daily dates with God have shown me the value of bringing myself to access my heart.  Doing so provides a broader, more loving perspective of whatever it is I am experiencing.

As we approach the experience of being able to move past circumstances there is a certain level of surrender that occurs.  We concede to how things turnout.  We acknowledge that hopefully we did the best we could given the circumstances and we are now being with the result.  The alternative is to fight how things turn out. Fighting reality is not my strong suit so I have little evidence of it being a good idea or fruitful in any way.  It does not mean things will not change or that we cannot make a different decision after the turnouts, but it does mean continually accepting this as they are.  How can we move forward without knowing where we are?  If we learn how to be with things as they turnout, we can then make an honest assessment about how we feel about it and what if anything to do next. The turnout gives us a chance to pause and be without trying to change anything. Turnouts can also be ways life takes us down a path we could not envision.  The beauty of my daily dates with God is the opportunity to be in the moment.  I get to practice the opening of a new day in a certain level of uncertainty greeted by the presence of love. We like to think we know how things are going to turn out, but how often have we been surprised?  How often do we allow ourselves to be surprised? How often do we allow ourselves to believe love will turnout no matter what.

As I was growing up I noticed a tendency I had to over-explain something or myself.  I was so concerned about what people might think about me I figured if they had more information they could make a better judgment.  My efforts to elucidate however were often met with greater confusion or simply disregarded.  We all have a need for love and approval.  It is inherent in us as far as I can tell.  I only recently feel after these years of daily dates with God that the concept of being worthy of God’s love simply because I am alive has begun to sink in.  It is one thing I do not need God to elucidate for me.  If nothing else I can chalk it up to the fact that God does not see things as I do.  God does not carry the judgments I have about myself.  God does not put conditions on love.  It would be like putting conditions on himself.  She would not be the being of love if it were to require elucidations. There are situations where elucidating is helpful but when it comes to elucidating so that it alters someone’s perspective of me, most of the time it is not.  People, strangely enough (are you picking up on the sarcasm here?), think whatever they want regardless of what I elucidate.  The peace I find in knowing the very being of love provides the love and approval I truly seek from my heart of hearts allows me to step away from the often exhausting task of needing to elucidate about myself or my actions. Despite my ingrained thinking I do not need to elucidate why I like one thing over another unless someone asks. I do not need to elucidate why I feel the way I feel in order to make the fact that I am experiencing a feeling okay. I may want to get further clarity if I find myself always feeling and reacting to something in a way that is not helpful for me, but the elucidation is not to make it okay to be human with feelings. The elucidation I seek in moments of truly needing to feel loved and accepted is much like how I see God described in one of my all-time favorite songs by Queensryche’s, Silent Lucidity:

. . . and despite the knee jerk reaction to explain why this song means so much to me, I choose not to elucidate. I trust God knows what it means to my heart when I hear it and that it will speak to you and elucidate whatever it is meant to when you read the lyrics or hear it for you.

We have a tendency to pride ourselves on our clarity and knowing. We value people who have high degrees and speak as though they know the answers.  We place importance on facts and less importance on opinions.  I wonder how many facts started out as opinions. We determined because we believe there is safety in certainty that to have a clear answer is better than a hodgepodge of information.  The mishmashes we exist in are making us uncomfortable because we are more interested in it looking like we have it all together rather than vulnerably revealing the jumbled way we feel most of the time.  The funny thing is even when we have the answer or follow along with the socially acceptable fact we come across a contradiction.  We are often faced with times when the supposed right answer is not the right one at the moment.  We fall back again to our mishmash of understanding and feel lost.  If we are the least bit inclined, as I am, to be hard on ourselves we figure we must have messed it up.  God invites us in the moments of a mishmash to ease the focus from our ego-driven mind to prove how right we are to our hearts where there is space to learn.  The mishmash experience is an opportunity if we allow it to be, for opening ourselves up to discovery.   If we remember to use our breath to engage the curiosity of our hearts it will travel to the mind and open the eyes in our head to see something new. A mishmash perspective is not a failed one.  We are not wrong for being a jumble of thought and wonder unless we deem ourselves as only worthy when we have the right answer.  A mishmash is an invitation to travel a little further with questions and curiosities as we open ourselves up to what the possible right answer is for the moment we are in.

It is easy to get caught up in what we are thinking and doing.  Our mind is nonstop chatter with ideas and opinions about everything from the color of the sky to the outfit someone is wearing.  We can choose which of those thoughts to adhere to.  Sometimes our minds go into a loop and we cannot seem to let go of a particular thought or idea.  It seems to keep coming around as though it is haunting us.  The way I have found to deal with such thoughts is to bring them to my heart.  When I pause, take a breath, and connect with my heart, I can look from a different angle.  A moment of breath provides the opportunity to stop and question what is behind the thought that keeps looping through my mind.  What is it that is adhering to this thought?  What might this thought be trying to communicate to me?  Our thoughts are sometimes like children which just keep repeating themselves in a desire to be heard.  We push them away or discount them, not realizing they are actually asking us to adhere to our hearts. We could view the looping as annoying and pointless and sometimes it may be, but what if each incident of looping was an opportunity to connect deeper and with our hearts?  What if our hearts were able to make effective use of our annoying mind by extending an invitation of adherence to love?

The capability and capacity to grow is an essential part of what makes us human.  We agree with this understanding based predominantly on physical and mental growth.  We also believe growth happens up to a point.  What we do not realize is we have the capacity to continue to learn as long as we choose to.  It is about our mindset.  We can enhance our capacity for learning by harnessing our intention to learn.  By harnessing our focus on a desire to learn from whatever comes our way we expand this capacity.  There need not be wasted interactions or experiences if we engage in harnessing the drivers which will lead to learning.  It may mean harnessing our choices so we do not find ourselves simply doing what is expected.  It may mean harnessing beliefs about ourselves which supports us as being learners.  It may mean harnessing individuals around us who are similarly focused.  All of these elements can be harnessed to support us in our desire.  We think of learning as solely an intellectual exercise but we are not just body parts.  We are impacted by and we digest life on multiple levels.  As far as I can tell none of us makes it out alive.  I am drawn to harnessing what I need to support the perspective that as long as I am here I am growing, hopefully in the direction of love.

Sometimes without realizing it, we give away our power.  Whether it is the ideas of others, beliefs based on a societal agreement of norms, or an experience we have had, we choose to bend our will to things outside of us.   The clout we assign to these things outside of us we determine is what has shaped us to this point and therefore are assigned the driver seat in our car.  But where does that end?  At what point is it okay to give our own thoughts and feelings clout?  God invites us to look at where we are relying on people or things outside of ourselves to determine the direction of our hearts.  Recognizing the clout we give to outside forces starts by acknowledging who or what we deem as important.  It does not mean all of those forces are given clout stronger than our own internal experiences. It means those are the areas we are inclined to give clout above that of our own.  The reality is no one or thing outside of us can know how we are experiencing it.  The clout we assign to these outside elements is actually a step in the direction towards getting to know ourselves.  The question to ask ourselves is, do I see within myself the same qualities I attribute to the clout I am giving this person, place or thing outside of me?  What can it tell me about the character of my own heart?  Being willing to look helps us determine if the clout can be assigned to us instead of something outside of us.