dailydatewithgod

We like to think we are sure of what we are seeing or experiencing.  We can be sure of what we are seeing or experiencing, we just cannot be sure it is all of what is contained in the experience.  We perceive with our senses from the direction we are sensing things only.  We are not aware of all of what something contains.  It is humbling to admit we can never have the full picture but it is also a relief. Essentially it allows us to know we have no place to judge a person, place, or thing as a whole because we cannot perceive it’s whole.  Being present to all something or someone contains requires us to reach for the hand of God and ask for guidance.  We can look within ourselves to notice what our perception is telling us about ourselves based on what we are judging or reacting to in someone or something else.  The fact of what something or someone contains as a whole is outside our perspective frees us to experience all of life as lessons on how to get to know us.  We use big expressions like confirmation bias and predilection but ultimately we are humbly admitting we can never know all of what a person, place or thing contains all on our own.  God invites us to get to know all of what is contained in our own hearts day by day, breath by breath.

There is a reason why sparkly elements catch our eye.  We see crystals as dazzling and unique and are drawn in by how they play with the light.  The process of crystallization itself is rather daunting.  It is the opposite of dazzling and eye-catching.  It is a process of purification.  It is a breaking apart after the introduction of heat.  The size of a crystal depends on the rate of cooling.  We go through a personal process of crystallization at many times in our lives.  The process of transformation, the breakdown of the solid known, the separation, and emergence of beauty is often not what it seems.  Engaging our hearts as we are crystallizing is often the slow cooling.  We think we want a quick cooling, so we can feel better, so we can get out of the intensity.  However, the timing of the crystallization is often not up to us.  We may think we have moved through something but our heart needs more time to cool.  God invites us to be patient with ourselves and others so we may crystallize our transformation into one of beauty. On my daily dates with God, I have learned to trust my heart’s timing in my life the same way I trust it’s timing in my breath.  It is not easy for my mind to go along for the ride of my heart but the more I center myself within the energy of my heart the more the flow of connection reaches my mind as well.  Besides, am I in a hurry to the time when my heart stops altogether?  I want my heart to be the space where the light plays just like a crystal does so it becomes the light of life within me.

The beautiful thing about the universal system of which we inhabit is that in addition to the literal nature experience of new beginnings it is inherent for all living things.  We think of dawn as the start of a new day. There is hope, there is the promise, there is unknown, there is a possibility, there is freshness, there is a new light, there is a new breath to live in the dawning.  It is part of a circular process that comes after the darkness.  One of my favorite sayings was written by Bill Wilson and is conveyed by many great minds over time, “It is darkest before the dawn.”  The very moment we are inclined to be swallowed up by the harshness or the hopelessness of life there is the dawning of a new day.  Just when we have lost all light, there is a new day’s light.  Dawning does not just happen to the day.  Dawning happens in and through us.  Every time we take a breath there is a dawning of new oxygen into our system. Each new possibility is a dawning. A new insight is a dawning. A sense of hope is a dawning.  We can experience dawning in our mind, heart, soul, and body.  They are inherent in the living of life.  If we start to believe the darkness is all there is then we might stop looking for the light.  God gives us hope through the cycling of life. It gives us the willingness to hold on to our hearts when it gets the darkest.

We were all designed with a particular blueprint. Most of us are familiar with the idea of a genetic blueprint from our parents.  Being rather helpless beings at a very young age, we also have the blueprint of ideas and behavior from all who play a role in raising us.  The prototype, however, was formed long before any of those elements were laid on our schematic.  The deepest blueprint is based on the prototype set up by God.  God’s prototype is love. The love prototype comes to life and awakens in us through various forms as we live day-to-day.  Living from the main prototype moves and breathes within us.  It is never changed by the experiences of the outside world even though it seems that way.  We might think we are modeled from elements other than love because we have experienced things other than love in our lives.  We may even not grasp the depth and breadth of the love prototype present within us because we have pushed away from the call to connect within ourselves. We fear what we perceive as the darkness within us and shy away from venturing inward.  We cannot imagine love is our prototype.  We look to the life we have lived modeled off of other prototypes and think those are us.  God prompts us through each breath to take a closer look at the true prototype of our lives.  We may have ample evidence of the contrary but what we see and what God sees are often two different things.

We have times when we need to withdraw a bit.  We need space and perhaps some silence where we can gather ourselves. Having a haven to go to as a physical place is something I treasure living in a big city.  I love being near all the excitement and goings-on. As an introvert, I garner energy through alone time so I need a haven to be able to show up for all that is going on.  I look for various places and spaces as well as create my own that serves as a haven for my mind, body, and soul.  My daily date with God has become my internal haven where I focus my attention on the first part of my day.  This way I am more likely to go into my day as the me I believe I am meant to be.  The more technology intercedes within all areas of our lives, the more I want to experience the haven of God’s attention before getting interrupted by all the buzzing and beeping.  It is not easy to carve out havens either externally or internally unless we are intentional about it.  It can often become one of those to-do list items that keep getting bumped to the bottom.  Or we want to set up the perfect haven and do not embark in the process of creating it until we have everything just so.  In my experience that is never going to happen.  The beauty of our design is God created a haven within us that we have access to anytime we pause and notice our breath.  It puts us in a connection with the rhythm of our hearts.  With the haven of our breath, which by no accident I am sure, we need to engage in multiple times each day we are invited to create a space of presence within ourselves.  God seeks to introduce us through our breath to the haven God knows exists in our hearts.

The system of blood moving through our bodies carrying oxygen to our cells and allowing us to live is known as circulation.  Not only does it define the flow but the word itself means to move circularly.  The pattern of functioning means blood is always circling back to the heart.  Yet each of these blood cells has within it a nucleus known as the brain of the cell.  Aside from its task of transport, what energetic signature might be circulating through your body?  If you are carrying within you feelings and thoughts that impact your heart, those messages get carried to the whole of your body.  Our blood to and from our heart is moving within the physical body with the energetic signature of our emotional and mental body.  Knowing we cannot block experiences and ideas from affecting us it would be mindful of us to process what we are dealing with so we can continue circulating that which gives life.  It does not mean never to be upset or down. It does not mean always be happy.  It means allow for the flow of life to flow through us.   Allowing all of life’s experiences to flow through our hearts means it can aid us in flowing with life without getting too attached to thoughts or feelings or pushing them down or making them wrong.  If we notice them and allow ourselves to experience them fully by circulating them through our being, we can expand our awareness of what it means to live fully.  If we invite our hearts to do what they do in circulating life through us, we may find ourselves more open to all of what is possible instead of shutting things down out of fear.  This is a step by step process, at least for me.  Before I got into recovery my willingness and capacity to handle feelings was limited to feeling uncomfortable, making myself wrong for having them or blaming myself for being too sensitive, and stuffing things down.  There was no interest or capacity to allow the circulating nature of my heart to engage.  I was too busy trying to keep my heart safe by keeping it under lock and key.  On my daily date with God, I have bit by bit opened myself up to the circulating power of the heart to allow for what is to come and go.  I can trust if my heart seems to recirculate the same thoughts and feelings, something is inviting me to take a closer look. I can trust the circulating of my heart because I am not alone with it. God is always in my heart with me.

I remember as a kid my sister and I were in the kitchen and we managed to create this blob substance from flour, water, and food coloring.  I remember it was all over our hands and we walked around trying to convince people to be scared of the green blob that had overtaken and disfigured our hands.  It was absolutely ridiculous but this concoction made up of simple materials became what seemed like endless entertainment.  That is until we had to clean it up.  We were brought back to the reality of it being water and flour.  When it hardened onto our skin and the table surface we created it on, it was actually rather laborious to clean up. It was still worth it just to see the neighborhood kids freak out. Kids are free to create concoctions all the time and they do.  There is a freedom there to make things out of whatever materials they have at the present moment.  We do this all the time in our heads.  It is shelved under the heading of creativity when we are tasked with it at work or in an improvisation class.  Most of the concoctions we create are only in our minds and we forget they are made up.  We create meaning out of what someone says to us.  We design a story of reasoning from little details obtained from our limited perspective. The difference between these kinds of concoctions and those created in play or discovery is we do not see it as our mind playing.  We see our concoctions as real.  We believe our concoctions.  We create them so quickly and do not question them as real or not. We take it so far as to be dismayed and deny the validity of other evidence when we find out our concoctions are not real.  When we are provided with more details from other people and sources instead of taking them into consideration we defend our concoctions.  This is when we know they have hardened.  Concoctions are our imagination at work and an important part of who we are.  The question is, how many of them have hardened into beliefs about ourselves and others based only on our limited perspective?

Everything seems to scream go, just do it, keep going, move forward, and so on.  What happens when we come across an obstacle?   Or we find ourselves not able to just do it?  We conclude the obstacle is outside of us. It is something or someone impeding our ability to do the very thing we want to do.  What if the deeper question became, what is the hinder inside of me that looks like an obstacle outside of me?  Isn’t this what differentiates the people who let the obstacles outside of them stop them versus those who plow forward despite the resistance?  What do they do with their internal hinders?  Are they able to apply the same principles to their hinders in all areas of their lives or just some?  Is there a message contained in the hinders?  When we attune ourselves within we can explore the hinders without judgment.  All things, even obstacles can be our teachers if we let them.  What if the hinders tell us more about what we really think or feel than the obstacle it looks like outside of us?  We may think we are certain in our minds that we want to move forward.  Does our heart want to move forward?  Do we mute the hinders because we do not want to face the truth of where we are concerning the movement in our lives?  It might call us to dismantle some of what we think of ourselves or what we think others believe about us.  God invites us to use the hinders to take what we have decided in our minds and align it with our hearts.  To do so we need to take time to quiet the noise of the outside world as I have learned to do on my daily date with God.  In the quiet, we can engender patience to listen closely to the hinders and what they are speaking to us from the truth of who we are.

Life is full of many possibilities and experiences and we may not have even gotten out of bed yet.  Both within us and outside of us exists potential and movement in multiple directions.  Sometimes we feel we are steering the ship of our lives.  Other times we feel as though life is steering us.  God has shown me on our daily dates that even in the moments when I feel as though life is directing me on a course I can steer where my focus and intention lies.  I can steer the energy of my heart which alters the view I have of whatever I perceive as directing my experience.  The reality is nothing outside of me can steer me away from me unless I choose to let it.  No matter how many times in my life I may have not had any control and been an actual victim of someone else’s behavior or of circumstance, it does not strip me of the capacity to use it to steer my life in a direction that works for me.  I did not choose to be a victim of incest.  No one asks for this.  But it happened and I can choose to steer the trajectory of my healing and reconnecting with the truth of who I am if I choose.  We all have had experiences, good and bad when we did not have a say, many of those happened as children.  When we experience any form of that as an adult and have not made peace with that experience as a child, we will approach the adult experience with a child perspective. God has shown me in more ways than one that as an adult I can look to my heart to steer my reaction, my feelings, my thoughts, and my choices each time something comes up for me that relates to my experience as a child.  I am no longer a victim. When I look to my heart to take the helm, I am steering the ship of my life by connecting with the truth of who I am at the core of my being.

Living in Southern California can lead one to take for granted good weather. I know I am guilty of it.  Originally being from New York, I learned early on how extreme weather can be and how wide and broad the seasonal changes can be. Aside from remembering to dress in layers at certain times of the year, there is not a lot of lifestyle adjustment that needs to occur when other parts of the world are experiencing snow, rain, or super intense heat.  I am super grateful for the weather out here and it is a big factor in my choice to stay living here for almost 20 years.  By surrounding myself with a pleasant physical environment does much to add to my peace of mind.  Although one’s surroundings cannot do everything. I have had days when I was in such a funk in my head or dealing with some intense situations that I could care less that it is beautiful outside.  I have even had times when I found myself pissed off that my outside surroundings were so beautiful since I felt anything but that inside.  I can also experience disappointment when it is cloudy for too long.  Awareness of one’s surroundings has as much to do with what we are surrounding ourselves with inside as what we see outside. Actually, what I surround my internal experience indirectly affects the eyes through which I view my external surroundings.  Taking the time to reflect on gratitude, to spend time on my daily dates with God where I pay attention to my internal surroundings provides the gauge needed to know my interpretation inclination.  Then when I notice a particular reaction to my external surroundings such as weather, people, experiences, ideas, and so on, I can connect to my inner surroundings and choose how to proceed.  If I take the time to build internal surroundings of gratitude, space for my heart to breath, the power of noticing the external without creating a story around it, the power of noticing my internal thoughts without believing them and allowing the eyes of God to define me (i.e.-get to know the truth of who I am), the more external surroundings change.