dailydatewithgod

Do you ever have those moments when you feel like we have been thrown around by life?  When it seems like life is out to wear you down?  This weariness afflicts us from time to time. In the end, there is a balance but while life is in progress you may feel on the wrong end of the seesaw in the playground of life. Better yet, you may feel like you are holding up the seesaw for its installation. The weariness of life can feel defeating especially if we do not know how to move through it and get to the upside.  It is not as though there is a clear set of directions as each experience is not exactly the same, but it begins by knowing where our center is.  Our awareness of our center on a physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic level gives us a place to move from.  We do not have to believe the message we may be sending ourselves about what it means to be weary. We can use the weariness as a signal of where we need to re-calibrate ourselves.  Maybe there is some letting go that needs to happen on a mental or emotional level.  Perhaps we need to take on something on a physical level.  Our spiritual heart center may require attention.  Rest assured, not all answers will come immediately but they will come. It helps to start with the simple act of a breath.  A breath that awakens our heart center which is connected to all the other centers of our being.  It begins the conversation within ourselves to determine how best to connect back to the strength we need to garner to become centered in the truth of who we are. From there we may get thoughts that create decisions that start our bodies moving and our emotions come online.  Before we know it the simple act of breathing has engaged all centers through the heart and we are energetically awakened.  Being awake starts the dissipation of the weariness and we can let go of the story we may have created around what the weariness means about us.

In a culture where we pride ourselves on our individuality, we run from the very idea of dependence.  Yet if we are honest with ourselves we realize the very individual freedom which we describe as independence is actually more like interdependence.  Multiple systems operating simultaneously to enable other systems to operate independently.  Everything has an origin.  Nothing came from nothing.  Even when we think of galaxies emerging out of darkness, that is what they did. Darkness or dark matter is a thing.  The greater question is what is our heart dependent upon?  Obviously, on a physical level, it does not operate on its own.  If we want it to operate effectively it will need certain elements present.  Without oxygen-rich blood to pump through, the heart will stop.  Our breath has an interplay of dependence with the heart.  If we do not take in oxygen it will not be in our blood to travel to our body.  Our heart needs our breath.  Our breath is the manifestation of spirit.  It is why it is called respiration. It is the re-spiriting of the body.  So physically we see the dependence of the heart on the breath and it is mirrored energetically and emotionally.  If we want to take a closer look at what is allowing our heart to thrive and grow, we must ask ourselves how much we are involving Spirit upon which it is dependent.

Everything has a beginning.  Often times we are so in the throws of doing what we normally do we do not even know the source of our behavior or our words.  We say and do things automatically not realizing how much comes from who we truly are versus what we are simply used to.  It is only when our system of things we are automatically doing and saying either break down or begin to create friction in our lives do we take a closer look.  Sometimes it is so dramatic we have to take a complete turn away from the automatic behaviors.  We hold on to them because of their familiarity and assume they are quintessential to who we are without realizing they have nothing to do with us. God invites us, often subtly to pause once in a while and take note.  We can ask ourselves, what is the source of that behavior? Where does that expression come from?  Is it true to the source of who I am or is it just something with which I am familiar?  Most importantly, we can ask: is the way I am being in alignment with the source of my life from which I draw the truth of who I am?

I am not sure what it is about waiting that seems so painful.  I am clear it is a perception as it is not the actual experience of waiting that causes discomfort.  It is the jumping jacks that go on in my mind while I am waiting.  Experiencing an interval is a natural phenomenon.  Somehow when it takes place in a day to day context it seems unnatural.  We look for the shortest line to stand in.  We try to find the fastest route so we do not wait in traffic. We get fast shipping so we don’t have to wait for the items we have ordered.  We bemoan the processes of life that take a while to occur because we do not want to wait around for them to manifest.  All of this speaks to the resistance of being.  Our minds are constantly telling us life has somehow stopped because we are waiting and we fear at a core level not being in the flow of life.  But the idea of waiting meaning life has somehow stopped is our misperception.  The moment we are in right now is not okay.  There is something wrong with waiting.  Strangely, I often find God telling me to wait.  God does not often use the term wait.  I have experienced the sense of “not yet” from God.  God will point to the myriad of things happening at the moment while I am waiting for something that is calling for my presence.  In God’s mind, there is no such thing as waiting, there is only life.  It is always in motion.  I choose to focus on thing or experience that has not happened yet.  I suppose in many ways God waits for us to clue into the fact that at this moment there is nothing to wait for because we are exactly where we are supposed to be. This is a hard one for me, especially when I am wanting something other than what is. Whatever it is we want to come to will happen when it happens and not a moment too soon.  Stepping out of the construct of waiting means trusting in what is right here, right now.  Our hearts speak this language well as they do one beat at a time.  Our hearts may experience longing but it is not waiting. Our hearts allow us to be in the longing as its own experience.

We have an interesting relationship with time.  We act as though it is fixed the way we measure it with numbers but our experience of it is not so fixed.  Time is relative and according to Einstein so is space.  There is a strong relationship between the two because often our understanding of space and time is as one unit.  It is hard for us to gauge exactly how to experience time because we view it mostly in comparison to something else.  We talk about how time passes as if it is a thing.  We say we wish we had more of it as if we could possess it.  We see it fly by like a bird or move slowly like a pot waiting to boil.  We speak of waiting in time or speeding it up as if we control it.  We use the concept of time to convey our ideas and experiences of what it means to be living and breathing in this world. We see time in a clock or on a stopwatch in terms of numbers but it is not numbers that pass it is our life experience.  The deeper question is how much of our life experience is about the time it takes for something to happen or what it means to be in the moment.  We forget the value of the moment we are in because we are busy searching for and worrying about what comes next.  So much so that we are not in the moment we are in, we are in the next moment.  The funny thing is no matter how much we worry, get excited, or think about the next thing, it is still the next thing.  Looking back on our lives how many nexts would we want to trade for nows.  I try and remember that when I catch myself pushing to get to the next thing or thinking about the next event.

Sometimes we are not aware of how much things matter to us until we no longer have them.  Sometimes we do not know what we think or feel about something until we are agitated.  Unfortunately, when we experience agitation our first maneuver is to try and get rid of it.  We do not like feeling uncomfortable.  We do not like to have to think about something which is for all intents and purposed yelling at us to pay attention. It is easy to understand that we summarily choose to get rid of the agitation.  We assume it is the thing or person needing to go away in order for us to get comfortable and return to an experience of calm.  While it makes sense from a survival perspective, most of what we experience as agitations are rarely something which would impede our survival.  Our minds interpret the discomfort as a threat to our survival but the fact that we are agitated actually says more about our state of mind that what is actually happening.  And if we are really honest with ourselves if we always just get rid of agitations, there may not be many things left in our life. You know what I am talking about if you have ever had one of those days when everything seems to get under your skin.  Besides, there is a big difference between being agitated versus being in danger. Our reaction may be similarly automatic but here is where the power of the pause comes in to play.  If we can take a breath and notice the state of agitation we are in.  In the next breath, we can notice what seems to be causing the agitation. On the third breath, we can notice the degree of agitation.  All of these practices of noticing when we pause bring us closer to not just reacting.  The pause takes us into the realm of learning.  Maybe there is something inside of me trying to get my attention and it is doing so by causing me to feel agitated. If I rush into reaction and get rid of the agitation I may lose what it is here to teach me about my experience, about my thinking, about my heart, about myself.  Life can be our greatest gift if we pause when agitated and allow some breathing room between stimulus and response.  We can move from being someone who reacts to someone who responds to life, all of life.

There are so many wonderful things and experiences in this world it is hard not to want to partake of them all.  There are also many not so wonderful things and experiences of this world that it is hard not to try and keep from facing.  The funny part about all of this is depending on who you are, where you are, the context in which something occurs this can be the same thing.  How is it that one person’s joy is another’s misery?  How is it one person’s junk is another person’s treasure?  It boils down to how we identify ourselves, how we perceive ourselves, and what we make it mean that we are experiencing what we are experiencing.  There is this funny little experiment we can do to get another perspective. We can remove ourselves from the equation.  How might I view this experience if it were not me involved in it?  How might it be different if I removed the judgment about what was happening?  What could I learn from this if I experienced the removal of connection to the outcome of this experience?  How might my experience be enjoyable if I did a removal of the outcome?  In recovery, they talk about being able to live life on life’s terms.  Not my terms.  Not your terms.  Life’s terms.  When I look around at how life works, how the natural world functions, and remove myself from the equation, I see everything.   Everything comes and goes.  Everything is important at the moment and not important the next moment.  There is an ebb and flow that occurs for which I do not play a role.  When operating from a place of removal of my thinking about who I am and what I should or should not be experienced and just be, it is a whole different world.  Our minds are attached to who we think we are.  Our hearts invite us to play in the removal of our thinking and see what might be there for us to discover in life.  Then we can discover who we are being in our hearts one breath and at a time.

When you hear people’s stories about the turning points in their lives they are told in such a dramatic fashion.  The idea that one could experience a capstone without such a sharp turn does not seem likely.  The reality is most capstones while appearing to be a dramatic turning point began with a little niggling.  A sense or hint of something needing to change.  Often it is when we ignore them and they pile up that we awaken to the opportunity to make a turn. It is not a good or bad thing to wait for it to get loud enough. Pain is a great motivator.  The question remains how many of these were capstones of our heart before we recognized them in our mind.  Our hearts are much more sensitive to the energetic vibrations in our lives.  Our hearts do not have all the language to get through like our minds.  The appearance of dramatic capstones is what we witness with our eyes.  They are dramatic because they are a powerful accumulation of our heart’s whispers to turn and look at something new.

Have you ever wondered why colors are the colors they are? Or why it is we chose the letters to mean a color? I once saw a movie where a sighted kid was helping a blind kid learn what colors looked like based on feeling.  He took rocks and made them different temperatures.  Blue was cold. Red was hot. Green was room temperature. Greenery does have a way of bringing a neutrality to our experience.  The way being in nature grounds us is something we cannot avoid.  It reminds us we are a part of this earth.  Even the way we unknowingly interact with greenery through the exhale of carbon dioxide and how the greenery exhales oxygen.  It becomes this interplay between the two of us. We have a similar system, though it physically operates in different colors with the heart.  In the chakra color system in easter philosophy, the heart is the color of green.  Maybe those old wise ones were trying to tell us something. Maybe our heart operates energetically in green but we only see the blue and the red. If we spent time connecting with the idea of all we need to bring us home and center us was already within us, how might we live?

We live in such a loud world that when we encounter silence we tend to feel uncomfortable.  We think it is awkward when it happens during conversations with others.  We worry when it goes from loud to silent all of a sudden.  We run from the idea of experiencing it within ourselves. We bemoan it when we sense it from God or we give up on God when it happens.  Like most things, I have a mixed relationship with it.  Perhaps as an introvert who garners energy from her alone time I have found a place of peace with it and even chose it at times.  I know I appreciate it in contrast like when leaving a noisy room.  Most of what we call silent would actually be quiet.  So rarely are we around no sound.  I would describe my morning daily date with God as quiet which I love.  The silence I sometimes sense from God is not so easy to sit with.  When I feel I am not getting any sense of guidance from God, just like when a conversation with someone stops, I go into my head about what is wrong.  Did I do something?  What am I doing?  Maybe I need to be different.  What I am willing to do is notice what loud noises or stories my head latches onto when experiencing this kind of silence.  Maybe it is some room to breathe.  Maybe it is not about me.  Maybe it is an opportunity to go deeper. Gasp!  The kind of deeper invitation where you sense the darkness you may be wandering through because it is unknown territory.  It is in those moments where I ask God for the courage to remember even in the worst moments when I felt God was the most silent, I simply could not see the new ways God was showing up in my life. I have experienced abandonment of others, but never abandonment from God even when the silence screamed it in my head.