dailydatewithgod

When we have a sense of clarity in our minds we feel more at ease.  There is something satisfying to the mind about knowing what or for what purpose something is.  When an experience is pellucid we know what to do with it, how to interpret it and how to move forward. Unfortunately, most of life is not transparent.  In fact, we are simultaneously grateful and suspicious of transparent people and situations. Pellucidness makes it seem too easy. We like to complicate things.  We have a sense of satisfaction when we are able to figure out what is really going on.  Yet we do not like it when people or situations are not what they appear to be as though we are being played a fool.  It is a wonder we allow ourselves to make peace with reality with all the shenanigans we create in our minds.  Finding a space of pellucidness with our hearts is what can bring our mind into alignment.  If we are transparent within ourselves we at least know where we stand.  We know who we are and what we can and cannot do.  It is a lifetime of discovery to get to a space of peace with the truth of who we are but the more pellucid we can be, the more honest we can be, and the smoother the path.  It is not easy to face the parts of ourselves we do not like, yet the more we allow them to surface, the more we know from which we are operating.  The pellucidness of our dark side enables us to invite our heart to see it for what it really is, a side lacking a true sense of love and belonging.  This is why on my daily dates, God does not up and run when I make room for my darker sides.  God stays with me when I feel intense anger, when I am full of self-loathing, or just don’t think anything has changed.  God show me how not to abandon myself when my shadows become pellucid. God invites all of us to be pellucid with our shadows so we can show them the power of love.

I have experienced a lot of mixed messages about desire, wanting, yearning.  While it is an inherently human experience in Western culture it is often mixed in with the various messages about sexuality.  Yet what we hanker for is in all areas of our lives.  In learning to be human it is helpful to look at what we experience outside of the labels and judgments we have placed on various experiences.  Often what happens is before we allow ourselves to be with an idea, experience, or even person we preface it with the judgments and labels.  These are given to us by authority figures, family, society, media and so on.  We do not even realize we are doing it. The labels and judgments are so attached to whatever it is we cannot separate it.  When I have my daily dates with God, I learn to observe and be curious.  What might my hankers be telling me about what is in my heart or my head?  What messages are my hankers guiding me to learn about myself?  How might my hankers teach me more about love? Hankers are neither right or wrong as at their origin they are thoughts and feelings. There is a reason we are capable of having and feeling.  I am pretty sure God did not equip us with things that are not useful.  It is not about ridding ourselves of our hankers.  It is about being with them, seeing what is underneath them, and using them for the greater good of ourselves and others.

I am not someone who typically goes easy on herself.  I have been told more than once that I am harder on myself than others.  I have ideas as to where that comes from but at this point, it doesn’t even matter.  It is something I work on giving over to God all the time.  It is not inherently bad to make sure you are on top of things or not letting yourself get away with slacking in life, but taken to the extreme it is hard to breathe.  Not breathing is not being alive. Making room for some ease and self-compassion is one of the daily lessons God works with me on.  Looking for the cinches in my life which are evidence of my moving forward and living more from the heart are what I learn to keep my eyes on.  It is not about being without messiness or mistakes.  It is about seeing them and choosing to do differently next time.  I look at the situations in my life that I handle with so much ease they are a cinch and require very little thought.  The cinches where my connection to my heart is what is guiding me.  My mind sees it as a cinch because it does not require a lot of thought.  This does not necessarily mean one is not present, it is more about what energy one is present with.  When my heart opens and guides my vision, it is a cinch to remember what I like about someone.  When my heart is in the driver’s seat, it is a cinch to let it go when my ego is bruised by an interaction with someone who was not in his or her heart.  If I reflect at the end of day on the number of cinches of the heart I experienced, I can see how much I have opened and grown into being more of the truth of who I am.  Cinches are the little whispers of evidence in my life that there is a reason to continue to practice ease and compassion for myself and others.

It is a funny thing when we begin to differentiate between what we have inherited and what we have newly adopted in our lives.  Physically we know the difference between an inherited heirloom and a brand new item given as a gift from a family member.  We may look at the heirloom and find nothing of value in it other than the matter of it being passed down generation after generation.  It is old, worn, out-dated and falling apart.  But we hold on to it because it is an heirloom.  Usually, it is seen as something with great value but again that is contextual.  Some heirlooms we readily agree with their value.  We see how they are valuable in today’s world, how we can still make use of them, acknowledge how they represent something of more than physical value to our family, and so on.  Do we have the same discernment when it comes to our ideas and beliefs?  Are we able to distinguish between present day gifts and heirlooms of thinking?  How readily do we operate with the ideas and beliefs that are considered precious by our ancestor’s but do not apply today?  Much like the story of the ham of which there are many variations.  Zig Ziglar’s is one:

It feels safe to operate within boundaries.  We like lines on the road, signs which tell us which direction to go, and consequences for not following or understanding them.  The difficulty these days is there are so many guides we are given in so many areas of life, it is hard to know which, if any, to follow.  How do I know which guidance will get me where I am supposed to or want to go?  How will I know as I follow a particular guide that it is moving me forward instead of backwards?  We look to people, ideas, institutions, and beliefs to be the guides in our lives.  Surely, one of those must have the answer for us.  If not, maybe the stars can be our guides.  Why do things seem to work for others when they follow a particular guide and not for me?  We search so much outside of ourselves to find the answers we are seeking.  It seems only rational on some level, that someone or something else knows how to guide us.  God is calling on us to pause for a minute.  Stop once in a while and check in with ourselves.  Is the guidance we are receiving for us or the people who are giving it?  What is the purpose of the guidance?  Does it correlate with the guide we have within ourselves?  Being in recovery and spiritual circles one often hears the question, how do I know I am doing God’s will?  I have found I can’t completely say for certain.  I am not sure I am supposed to be able to know exactly how God is guiding me from moment to moment.  What I can do is show up. What I can do is move in the direction that most seems to resonate with the power within my heart.  We are all gifted with the connection to all of creation and life itself within us.  Our first task is to get to know it.  To get to know the truth of the guide within us.  Many of us spent a lot of time pilling ideas, people, wounds, and unloving experiences on top of the truth of our hearts.  We need to show up, look at the build-up and trust that beneath it is the guide we want and need to connect with.

One of the super powers we forget to use more often is noticing. Not just seeing, but noticing.  Looking past what is obvious and pay close attention to what is happening at any given moment.  Noticing heightens our observation level allowing us to take in a full picture and experience the moment outside our defaulted boundaries.  Within noticing we are able to pick up on distinctions.  As we hone our skill of noticing we can make the distinction between what is happening and any meaning we are attaching to it. Our reaction to an experience comes from the distinction of what we are making something mean.  What is happening is just what is happening.  What we are noticing, is what we are noticing.  None of it has any meaning. Practicing this allows us to pick up on the pattern of distinctions we make in our meaning.  It is easy to not pick up on the distinction of what we are making something mean and just assume how we are experiencing something is exactly what it is but we lose out.  Our distinctions of meaning give us an indication of what we are called to play with in this life.  If I stop to notice, I pick up on how when one coworker provides an update on her project, I make the distinction that she is speaking defensively.  I can stop and look at why I label her language as defensive on her use of words versus another coworkers update.  Do I make the same distinction when reading her emails?  Do I make the same distinction with others but only on this particular project or all projects?  We find we can question our distinctions to provide indications of how we are thinking and feeling about a particular person or experience.  Stopping to notice these internal distinctions enables us to respond versus reacting to what we are noticing.

We have this illusion that we do not change must as human beings or we aren’t going to change once we reach a certain age.  We have fixed ideas about life, we have labeled ourselves as a particular personality type, and we find ourselves bothered when things outside of us change unexpectedly.  Yet everything about life changes.  The question then becomes do we actively allow ourselves to shift and grow with life or do we fight it?  Some areas of our lives we embrace it depending on the cultural context.  In the western world, aging is seen as a negative change while in other cultures it is a shift into a wise sage.  I am not sure I am looking forward to having more wrinkly skin, but the shift I have seen into a more balanced perspective on life I have appreciated as I have aged.  I made a drastic shift when I got into recovery and have become more open to shifts occurring in all areas of my life so they are more in alignment with the truth of who I am at my core.  When we are present in the moment we may find the call to shift our perspective and let go of the preconceived notion we carried into it.  A willingness to shift asks us to trust the process and the presence of life.  Shifting calls upon us to be open to how we can be changed by life.  Shifting utilizes the capacity of an open heart as well as an open mind.  Shifting is being in the flow of life instead of insisting on things going our way.  Our minds are more resistant to the idea of shifting anything about ourselves but our hearts know the power of being open to being touched by life.

There is a description written into many plays and scripts as a scene ends after the last line it will say: “Fade to black.”  It means the picture slowly goes black or the stage lights are moment by moment disappearing because it is the end of the play or scene.  It has this finality to it that one cannot turn away from.  One cannot turn away because it happens so slowly it is like we hold on until the very end. When the fade becomes completely black we blink because we want to make sure there isn’t anything more we can see.  There is no explosive end.  In our day to day lives, we do not typically experience this kind of fading.  We turn out the lights when we go to bed.  Our phone and computer screens turn black when we turn them off.  The idea however of fading to black is that the end happens slowly.  When we fade the lights in from our eyes or in our heart we slowly lose the ability to see what is happening and it gives the sense of a disappearance.  The reality is that things change over time.  Sometimes they happen so slowly we do not notice the fading from one phase to another.  We pick up on the more drastic changes.  Sometimes we fall asleep to what is happening right before our eyes because it is fading but still lingering.  Our hearts often pick up on the subtlety of fading in a way our eyes cannot.  We sense the energy draining or the lack of enthusiasm in an experience.  It can tell us something about how present we are to a situation or a person or ourselves.

As someone who spent many years trying to protect her heart from ever being hurt again, it has been a slow road to come to terms with my understanding of love.  It is not something I have a full understanding of but I do acknowledge its ethereal and multifaceted nature.  There is a space in my being between my heart and mind which sits comfortably with the acceptance of God as love.  As I open myself up more and more to the many faces and experiences of God being present in life, the more I have flexibility and forgiveness around the sometimes convoluted understanding of what love is.  I have always been a fan of the song by Foreigner which shares what I think we all long for–to know what love is.  It is a calling from our hearts. It is unfortunate and fortunate that we use the same word to describe our like of chocolate and someone for whom we would willingly sacrifice our lives. My guess is those from whom we have learned love are just as confused by its meaning.  We are all really just doing the best we can.  We are all doing the best we can to meet the truth of who we are. Given we have been created by and out of love it is about coming home.  My best from moment to moment is to accept how love shows up in me, others, and the amazingly convoluted world we inhabit despite my expectations.

How many of us find ourselves in situations or people from which or whom we would like to escape?  How often have we wanted to escape the chatter going on in our own minds?  What would happen if instead of following that instinct into action (not including times when we are in physical harm, of course) we paused to take a closer look?  What might we discover about what we would like to escape that we can actually learn something from?  What if there are other options besides escape?  What if our desire to escape is happening because we are meant to look beneath the surface and find a gem? On some level, it is easy to check out, get discouraged, listen to our negative thinking and abandon ship.  But what if our minds’ ideas about the best course of action which does not coincide with our heart’s call to step into escape and explore?  When we take the time to pause and notice what our minds are telling us about what is happening we can verify the truth of the mind’s story. Getting quiet allows us the space to open our hearts to connect to something deeper.  Our desire for escape often times derives from our imaginings of the worst case scenario.  We do this so automatically we forge to question it.  It takes patience and awareness to listen to the whispering call of escape as a call to adventure.  What might we learn about the nature of life and love if we stay still when we want to escape instead of jumping into action?