dailydatewithgod

Have you ever been struck in your heart in such a way that you lose your breath?  It is as though your whole system internally comes to attention.  Your eyes are opened, your mind is silenced, and there is a felt sense of presence in the moment devoid of any past or future.  When you are enveloped by this overwhelming experience you do not feel as though you are going to be blown over because there is a steadiness which has you anchored in stillness. I remember feeling this way when I went to Yosemite for the first time.  I remember it was a quick trip there that had not gone as planned and on top of everything else, I had a mild migraine.  Whether it was because I was too stubborn or I just knew it was too important to pass up, I made my way down the long and winding road to the valley of the Yosemite. I was walking around with my mouth open. I kept stopping and just staring at the magnificence present in the huge landscapes of mountains and trees.  The color was so bright and definitive, it was as though I could feel the lifeblood of the nature I was grateful enough to in the presence of.   I kept saying thank you out loud to God and asked why I felt called to go and see this place at that moment despite the less than ideal position I was in.  In a very quiet moment, I heard God whisper that he wanted me to see one of his other beautiful creations.  I knew at that moment she was letting me know he saw me as one of his beautiful creations and one as majestic and overwhelmingly beautiful as Yosemite.  I was humbled to say the least. Reflecting back on it now it brings tears to my eyes.  We forget how much God values all of her creations.  We sometimes go our whole lives believing only what we or other humans think of us and our surroundings.  We are the bellowing of God’s creation.  We are the bellowing of love shown through beauty.    We are the bellowing that resounds through our hearts. We know it when we find ourselves faced with beauty.  We know it when we get still enough to hear it.  We know it when we tune in with our hearts.  Whatever words, ideas, people, experiences, or beliefs we have which bellow the presence of God brings us into an alignment where we remember we, like all of God’s creation, are love made manifest.  I became attuned to the bellowing of God’s presence in the world and in myself the morning I had my first of my daily dates with God.  I learned all I need to get started is my breath.  It is the gateway to receive the bellowing message of God’s presence in our lives as God is, not necessarily as we expect God to be.

If you have ever attempted to go a whole day without complaining you might know something about how alarming it is to realize just how easy it is to complain about things.  Sometimes I think we do it so often because we do not know how else to express ourselves.  It sounds too emotional to admit we are hurt by something or someone.  It seems too dramatic to be disappointed by an experience.  It is these chagrins that can motivate us to think we are expressing ourselves when we complain.  We give people and experiences lots of power and when we are chagrin it is because we realize just how much power we have given them.  Why else would we feel vexed?  Why else would we feel humiliated?  We are chagrin because we witness the fallibility of life.  We tell ourselves we should know better or that we should not have put ourselves in such a situation or let ourselves put our hopes in that person.  It is easier to just complain about them or it than own the chagrin.  It is why complaining does not accomplish anything other than saying something. Why not take a chance and speak from the heart?  God has shown me the first way to walk through a moment of chagrin is to admit how I feel to myself.  I may or may not need to voice it to anyone else, but I need to own it for myself.  My heart calls me to speak its truth so I can hear it and allow it to resonate and move through me.  Only by allowing the chagrin to move through me can I get a clear idea of what, if anything, to do next.  It may seem easier to complain but it is like giving lip service to our feelings. We don’t need our hearts to do it.  Given the depth of a chagrin don’t we owe ourselves at least the opportunity to resonate with depth what we have experienced truthfully?

Sometimes the only reason we are suffering is that we forget there are other options.  Our mind is always busy providing us with up to the minute information as to our status, or rather what we think about what the current moment.  Other times, it is busy telling us what could have been or what might have been.  The beauty of the constant stream of information is we have plenty of choices when it comes to which ones to attach ourselves.  We can get stuck in believing the only option we have is to go with is what our mind has automatically concluded.  Instead of going with our own head we could engage with others and see what they think or what they might do if they were provided with the same information.  Instead of believing our mind outright, we can question it and the meaning it has assigned to something or someone.  Instead of jumping on to the thought which seems to keep playing over and over in our head like it is broken record, we can take a breath and remove it from the turntable.  Instead of taking things at first thought, we can try out other ones.  Instead of assuming we have all the information needed to take the next step, we can seek out additional information or locate the source of the information we have.  All of the insteads are easily preceded by the taking of a breath. The magical element of taking a breath is in its invitation for the heart to come online and if we want, provide another perspective.  Instead of going only with our minds, we can check in with our hearts, our bodies, our spirit and see what alternatives are out there.  We underestimate the number of insteads provided by our breath multiple times in a day.

We expend a fair amount of energy keeping ourselves hidden. We learn from those around us which elements are considered okay and we highlight those. We become masters at keeping the unacceptable parts of ourselves hidden. The difficulty in living this way is we fool ourselves into thinking we are actually able to be hidden. Energy is constantly moving.  All of our being is energy from our thoughts to our cells. It is what moves the planets, grows the flowers, and causes our bodies to function. Science has shown us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes. We mistakenly think we can actually suppress parts of ourselves but they seep out and find a way to not be hidden. We notice it when we find ourselves acting in a way that surprises ourselves, when we can’t seem to move past an experience, or find ourselves reacting to parts of our lives as though we are in the past. The illusion gets dispelled when we see others not able to keep their unacceptable parts hidden.  Instead of recognizing what happens to others as something possible for all of us we label them and hold them in contempt. The hidden parts of ourselves are just elements that want to be loved and accepted as much as the rest of us. We have labeled them as unacceptable according to what or whom?  According to the comfort of others? Is it perhaps just as true that the hidden parts of ourselves are labeled as bad and wrong because the first person who gave them the negative label just didn’t know what to do with it in themselves? They did not know their own heart contained the courage to walk into the hidden spaces and find the light which lives within it. What if we choose a different lens from the one we are told by others is what is true? What if we decided to believe in the courage of our hearts? God has shown me on our daily dates that love energy in my heart contains more power than I can imagine and it can show me the way to find the acceptable in the hidden parts of me. God created all of us, even the parts we want to hide. God placed love in the hidden too.

The funny thing about the celebration of All Hallo’s Eve is the length we go to create all kinds of things to scare us. I am not sure the evening a holiday designed to recognize the sacred spirits became synonymous with fright.  Perhaps we are magnifying our collective horror stemming from the unknown about death and what happens when we die.  The irony is we do not need to create things or situations outside of ourselves to spook us. There are plenty of them inside of us. We all live with our own internal spooks. They are the things that scare us from diving deeper within. The spooks are the stories we tell ourselves about how the only things that make sense or matters are elements we can experience or prove are present in the world with one of our five senses. We get spooked about exploring something that cannot be proven or explained. We get spooked when we realize we are the one common denominator in all our experiences. We get spooked when we are still and feel like we need to do something. We get spooked when we don’t have the answers. God invites us to step up close to our spooks with curiosity. We can explore what they are trying to tell us. The spooks are simply the guards of protection we designed often as children so we could figure out a way to keep going.  They are the quintessential boogeyman. The spooks no longer have to scare us unless we choose to let them. If we venture into our heart by walking through the spooks we will experience a reservoir of love which was hidden from view. It was designed in us from the time of our creation.  Within our hearts, we find the courage needed to face any other spooks that come across our path both internally and externally.

I used to think life was all about the one. The one thing, the one time, the one idea, the one person, the one opportunity, the one moment, the one experience, the one look, the one action, the one story, the one modality, or the one philosophy.  Once I nailed down or encountered the one in any of the areas of my life I would be set.  I would either never have to have that conversation, do that thing, date another person, or believe anything else.  Somehow the one whatever would free me to be okay and not need anything again.  I am not sure what I thought would happen if I encountered the one.  It seemed to coincide with the lasts and perfects of life. Between the three of them, I am not sure what I thought would happen afterward.  None of them are sustainable as long as I still have breaths to breathe. I did not really think about sustainable.  Maybe it was too many cartoons with ever after in the end or TV shows with everything tidied up in a nice bow at the end of the show.  It matters little where this perspective came from, only that it is not doable for a whole lifetime.  I did not conceive that life was about learning yet I knew I loved to learn and have always been very curious.   I also did not get that life was about encountering an assortment of ideas, experiences, people, conversations, and ways of seeing the world.  Yes, there are moments of perfection, there are plenty of lasts, and time when we encounter the one thing.  Yet, something in our heart calls us to be open to the variety of life. It is the assortment of all these things (the ones, the perfects, and the lasts) which make up a life.  The deeper question is, who am I being during those ones, perfects, and lasts? Am I breathing through them and savoring them or looking ahead for the next one? Life’s endless variety is beauty made manifest through us. When I look back on my life I will be curious to see if I was open to the assortment life had to offer or if I passed things by because they were not the one I expected.

There is a relief when we get to call things out for what they are.  It takes too much effort and energy to always dance around subjects or set things up just so.  Perhaps it is because I am originally from NY where people are known for being straightforward, but I revel in the moments when I can call a spade a spade.  Maybe it is more of what Jesus meant when he said, the truth will set you free.  Even Shakespeare encouraged us to be true to ourselves.  Sometimes that requires us to be explicit.  These days the term is most often associated with sex acts or nudity being clearly depicted but that is only one element of it.  Even so, we can’t deny that we all have sex at some point and we are all naked under our clothes.  On my daily dates with God, I have learned how with compassion to be explicit with myself about myself.  I have certainly spent a large portion of my life living in denial and I trust I was for the length of time I needed to be.  After many years of my daily dates and building a trust that no matter who I am or what I may or may not have done, God does not love me any less, I am willing to be explicit with myself.  The power of my heart which is open and willing to learn does not run from seeing what is going on underneath.  Instead of falling for the illusion that what I am feeling or thinking is caused by someone or something outside of me, I am free to see the clear evidence of what my part is in the perspective I am holding.  It sounds devastating or in some cases shocking to be explicit with oneself but it is freeing.  If I can’t be explicit with me and learn to accept all of me, how can I expect it of anyone else?  Plus if I a not willing to be explicit with myself, I will never get to know the core truth of who I am and my capacity as a human being. The clarity to see what the courage of my heart can face, learn from, and engage with others comes from being explicit with me.

As human beings, it is in our nature to create meaning.  I am guessing there is some sort of fundamental purpose to our survival that comes from making meaning.  It explains how stories move us.  I often wonder if it is because meaning provides avenues for emotions.  It seems the longer I travel this path of life the more the role of emotions and their connective tissue seem to attribute to a sense of fullness when it comes to lived experience.  Maybe it is the e-motion, energy in motion aspect.  The meaning seems to provide a portal through which emotions can be channeled.  I often feel like I need an excuse or a reason to be experiencing an emotion, especially an intense one.  Yet sometimes it really just is energy in motion.  It is as though the meaning we place on emotions has both hindered and contributed to our ability to allow energy to move through us.  There are benefits and detriments from all the deciphering we do.  It is not that deciphering is good or bad, but it helps to be aware that whatever deciphering we are doing, it is through our particular lens of life.  We understand, discover, and interpret the meaning of anything through our individual minds.  There are some agreed-upon decipherments but even those at some point were accepted by us individually.  We get frustrated when we cannot decipher the meaning because we do not know how we feel about it if we determine we do not know what it means.  The idea that we do not have a feeling associated with something is either admired or thought to be not human.  The deeper question is whether the deciphering is stemming from our minds, our hearts, or both.  Are we simply digesting the information and replaying it in our telling of it to others void of emotion or are we laying on the emotion to convey our interpretation?  Intent plays a role as well as who we see ourselves to be.  God invites us to wonder how our deciphering would adjust the stories of our lives if we involved the mind and the heart equally in the interpretation?  If something which is causing us pain and restriction were to be deciphered through a different person’s lens, would it still be painful and restrictive?  What can we discover about ourselves and those around us when we opt to broaden and deepen our deciphering of life? Sometimes the simplest prayer I can say in any given circumstance is, God, how are you deciphering this? It is just another way of asking God, to show me God’s lens of my life in the present moment.

 Who we are and what we do is based on how we see ourselves. Fine-tuning our lives is less about changing the behaviors and the actions and more about looking at what beliefs are driving them.  The beliefs we embody we took on from circumstances and those around us who taught us through their behaviors at a young age are what need some dispelling.  Most of those circumstances do not exist today.  We are not children anymore. It may be painful to look at the ideas about ourselves that we think we cannot be who we are without, but doing so with the courage of our heart is a way to alleviate the burden we carry.  We have gotten so used to being with parts of who we are as a result of our beliefs which were simply passed down to us without question.  These beliefs are cultural, familial, societal, and run through every area of our lives.  If we are living from it, it is a belief about who we are.  God invites us to be open to dispelling our beliefs about ourselves that do not work for us.  If dispelling them means I can be at peace with who I am, I will walk through fire.  When I was deep in the throws of self-hatred and addiction, I had no clue that I could question what I thought about myself, let alone dispel them.  I was addicted to my thinking about me. On my daily dates with God, step by step I get the chance to stop, breathe and look at all sides of each of the ideas about myself and the world.  I get to ask if they work for me.  I have the opportunity to invite my heart to show me what it takes to dispel these ideas so I can make room for the truth of who I am at my core to emerge.  Dispelling beliefs about anything sounds messy and sometimes it is, but how much is freedom worth to you?

We do not often reflect on how useful our legs and back are.  That is until they stop functioning the way we have become accustomed. Together they provide us the opportunity to move and be in the world without bumping into others all the time.  Our legs move us forward and back and our back allows us to stand upright and see where we are going.  Our backs also provide the support we need to hold our space when we have moved or need to stay still.  The kind of backing design in our biological structure mirrors the kind of emotional backing we need for our hearts to grow and be open.  Just think of how one way we signify physically when we lack support.  We curve our shoulders as though to protect our hearts.  When we are exhausted emotionally or physically we slouch and do not stand upright with a strong back and open heart.  We can blame it on the lack of support from others.  But how much of the backing we need comes from within us?   When was the last time we acknowledged ourselves for showing up for our own lives?  Regardless of whether others approve can we provide our own backing?  Are we willing to trust the courage of our hearts to withstand the troubles and trials we will experience as we walk through life?  Have we taken time to know the depths of our own heart and its capacities? Do we see our hearts as backing us?  Or do we imagine ourselves as faint of heart and always in need of backing from others?  It is not to say that we will not experience backing from others, but knowing how to access it within us will cause us to stand tall and keep our hearts open.  We can allow our internal backing to convey the message of our strength of character and courage through the physical demonstration.  There are times when I want to slouch over and protect my heart.  I would swear there were times when I could not find an ounce of courage anywhere within my own heart.  God has taught me to start with my breath.  By physically opening myself up to the spirit (respiration) I can call upon the backing to connect to the courage within myself.  It may bring up feelings of everything but that which will back me, but then I am at a place to start.  Until I meet myself and my heart where I am, I cannot provide the backing I need at the moment I am in.