dailydatewithgod

When we bring interest, intention, attention and energy into an experience we are giving our whole selves to it.  We approach the opportunity with gusto.  We look to embrace it fully.  We do not hold back our hearts or allow our analytical mind to stop us from full participation.  This same gusto is the energy God uses to design creation. The fact that we possess it is evidence of where we come from.  The gusto within our hearts and every cell of our body is continually breathing the message of life.  Life which is created to embrace light and grow.  Our hearts remind us of our gusto when we remember to check within ourselves.  In the times we feel disconnected from life it is because we have lost connection to our hearts. We are given the makeup needed to choose life at every turn.  We sense the gusto of life when we choose to bring ourselves fully to any person, place or thing.  God has shown us through our hearts that we have what is needed to grow and be the messenger of light and love for which we were designed.  The gusto is the push needed when we do not feel it or have a million reasons to want to shut down and escape. It may seem like an easier option to not put forth intention, attention, and energy but those are the times we can turn to God and ask to be used.  What stands in the way for me are my ideas of how it should be or how I should be.  When I remember to check back in with my heart I see within myself the gusto needed to take the next step.  Life all happens one step at a time.  A gusto for life is within us at all times, sometimes we just need to be reminded when we forget who we are.  The experiences where we do not think we or the experience are capable of bringing or growing the light of love are the very times God is offering her hand to guide us back to our hearts.

Taking into consideration how much information we have coming at us we can be grateful at the interference run by our minds.  The interference filters out from our awareness all that we are familiar with and have a space for in our minds.  It pulls up the programming needed to handle the information and situations all in an effort to conserve energy and keep us alive. Clearly an invaluable system.  The down side of this effective interference so we can survive is the tendency to take life for granted.  We assume we know what is happening and what will happen because we are operating on past validated experiences.  We do not see the value of the face of our friend because we are familiar with it.  We could miss a particular nuance in it on a particular day because we do not stop to actually look at him or her.  Changes in ourselves can even go unnoticed because we don’t stop to pay attention to what is actually looking back at us in the mirror.  This is why we often have a different image of ourselves in our mind than the one we see in pictures of us.  So how do we appreciate the benefits of our mind’s interference while still being present in our lives?  On my daily dates with God I have learned the practice of daily gratitude seems to flip the switch.  Somehow by making note of all the seemingly obvious or trivial pieces of information about my reality and seeing them as something for which to be grateful, I notice them more often. I have a practice of writing a gratitude list each night before going to bed.  The challenge is to list things I have not listed yet.  Over time I realize I have a lot to be grateful for. I laugh when I see myself writing gratitude for fingernails, windows, or keyboards.  On any given day I do not even notice or feel my fingernails, realize I am looking through window or appreciate how my keyboard smoothly allows me to send communication through a computer. I do not notice until I pause to contemplate on all the myriad of things I may be taking for granted or not be aware of at all on any given day. I think today I will add my brain’s capability of interference of information coming in to keep me alive and alert to things that may impact my survival to my daily gratitude list.

We all have unique talents and abilities.  We all have particular likes and dislikes.  We get introduced to people, places, and things through experiences that lay outside our known sphere and we refine our likes and dislikes.  It may even cause us to initiate a willingness to be trained in a new skill. We have a physical body which determines our physical sphere.  We have an energetic sphere which extends outside our physical body. We operate from a limited sphere because we live in a limited reality.  God has a limitless sphere.  When we check in with ourselves about what we can control and what we cannot, it is helpful to think about our sphere of influence. There are many things we would like to be able to control which lie outside our domain.  There are people and experiences we do not want to take responsibility for allowing inside our sphere.  We sometimes find it easier to focus on what lies outside our sphere of influence than take responsibility for what lies within it.  We can distract ourselves by expending energy and exhausting ourselves with the things we cannot control.  We fall for the illusion of control by working so hard to bring within our sphere those things which will not fit.  Those are the very things we need God for.  God’s realm is limitless and is the power we need to effectively guide us so we can cultivate the power within our own sphere and use it effectively.  We can limit the excess energy used up by trying to effect things outside our sphere.  As a mentor of mine once put it, there are three kinds of business: mine, others, and God’s and the only one I need to concern myself with is mine.

A push in the right direction can be very helpful.  We get going on something and along the way we get distracted, lose interest, get frustrated, or face hurdles that are harder to overcome than we imagined.  While it is part of the process of being on a journey, those bumps can lead us to give up or abandon ourselves. We can fall prey to our negative thinking and jump to another path.  It is an option to change our minds or decide it is no longer a fit for us and time to embark on another path. What if it is our path and we just cannot on our own garner up the needed resources to keep going? If we are clear within our hearts as to the path we are on, boosts are needed to counteract the bumps.  Being open to how, when, and in what form the needed boosts will show is a God job.  Our focus is to keep ourselves in alignment with our hearts resonating in the energy of knowing as best as we can know anything that we are where we are supposed to be. When I have been open to the timing and type of boosts on my path I have been pleasantly surprised at the ways people show up and random circumstances occur.  Sometimes all we need is a little boosting perspective.  We are not looking for something or someone to rescue us from our path so it does not have to be grand and overly demonstrative to propel us in taking the next step on the path of our heart.  Boosts are often those little moments reminding us to not yet give up on ourselves, to trust our hearts, and to know we are not alone.

I get the concept of gentleness when it comes to physicality.  It makes sense, gentle versus callous surfaces are something you pick up when you touch it.  Gentleness of thinking is often synonymous with weakness and can be hard to distinguish.  I have come to understand my thinking as not gentle when I attach a physical word to my reaction.  If I find myself saying something to myself if when heard by another person speaking it to me my reaching would be “ouch!” I can grasp it.  The level of my gentleness of mind is directly correlated to the lower number of ouch statements towards myself.  We often think in order to move ourselves to a different state using callous words or strong definitive language is the best way.  If that was the case, wouldn’t more of us be wherever it is we think we should be that we aren’t in terms of our success?  Gentleness makes room for breath.  Gentleness has the power of the heart to move us but not force us.  There are times when we need the harsh and loud message as in the case of life or death situations.  Somehow I don’t think our personal goals or opportunities for habit change qualify as life or death.  If swerving my car to the right keeps me from hitting the person walking across the street I want to hear myself be guided that way right now and as loudly as possible.  Gently and quietly conveying the information may come too late.  But bashing my head in for hitting the snooze alarm again has ceased to keep me from doing it.  Choosing which tool of language to use to adjust our behavior means making room for the gentle perspective as well as the harsh one.  It comes down to what moves the courage of our hearts to action.  There are many theories out there as to what causes people to change and better their lives.  As someone who has lost a lot of weight and kept it off, someone who navigates effectively through the after effects of being incested as a child, and someone who daily attempts to be the best version of herself, I know if my heart is not moved, none of those things are possible.  My heart which is prompted to be engaged with each breath is the gauge through which I choose the gentle or the harsh tool for the moment I am in.

It seems like the way to go is to choose a path and follow it.  It sounds very logical.  Pick one, get on it, and travel it.  In our minds we imagine a straight line.  We see ourselves getting from point A to point B.  Think about it for a minute, if you close your eyes and imagine a path, it is usually straight. We do not envision the cross roads or the curves on the path.  Because we think we know where the path leads we focus on the destination.  We may recognize that certain things will cause us to go off course and they will, but we just get back on.  We don’t expect to have to take detours because the path is blocked. Sometimes the detours become their own path.  We find ourselves at a cross roads being asked to choose if we want to continue on the original path or the detour.  I feel like my life has been a series of detours.  It seems like anytime I come across an expectation that is not met, I am being asked to detour from it and make peace with reality.  The core of who I am is inviting me to widen my perspective of what life holds and what I have the courage to face. The detours lead me down pathways that are strangely familiar to my heart’s sense of capability. It is my mind which pushes to stay with the original idea of what is meant to be.  When do we surrender to the idea that the detour is now the path?  It is an individual decision.  The invitation from God is to bring our heart to mind when we make our choices on our paths.  The path is the destination and it is about who we are becoming as we travel the projected path or the detours.  All paths tell the story of our lives and usually God’s story for us is grander and more imagined then we have the capacity to hold in our mind.  God’s view of us sees the fullest capability of love existing within us at all times. Sometimes we have no idea the courage of which we are made until we find ourselves taking a detour we didn’t expect.  It is not about what the outside world thinks of our path or if it falls into the world’s measurement of success.  It is how we let the detours on our paths shape the character of our love.

The rate with which we assimilate information is directly correlated to the level of connection to the information we already possess.  Finding ourselves absorbed in something is an indication our connection to it on multiple levels.  Our hearts are a strong measurement of our level of engagement with life in general.  The things we cannot take our eyes away from or find ourselves paying attention to with intention indicate what has us absorbed.  Our hearts possess the truest experience of ourselves.  It is not simply about thoughts or feelings.  It is about something resonating with the core of who we are.  God designed us to pay attention, if we choose, to the guidance of our hearts by noticing our level of absorption.  It is more than just an idea whose time has come.  It is a lack of resistance to a concept or experience.  It is a willingness to get lost in our absorption because we sense it is already a part of us.  Some people describe this as the flow state, others as being in love.  Noticing what absorption experiences we have gives us some insight into the leanings of our hearts and inklings of our truth.  Sometimes we know exactly why we are absorbed in a situation or with a person.  Other times we have no idea.  It is not obsession.  It is a willingness to become one with and relax into the openness that occurs in our hearts when we do.

We each have our unique styles.  The ways we choose to approach life and all its circumstances provides is influenced by our perspective.  Our mode of handling interpersonal relationships is impacted by how we see ourselves in those relationships and what value we give them.  Our mode of working depends upon how we define ourselves as a worker.  We have various experiences adding up over time which impact our modes.  The question is, are we defaulting to using the same mode for every area of our lives?  Are the same modes we adopted as children the ones we are trying to make work as adults?  Usually we keep going until something breaks down.  Often we hold on to our modus operandi like a recipe for our favorite food.  We do not notice the impact of our mode until we taste the finish product and realize the ingredients have been tainted.  As humans our adaptations for survival are typically by the easiest means necessary so our brain does not need to use as much fuel.  It is a vital quality to insure we will remain alive. I am grateful for this and do not think it should change as I do not want to throw out the desire to live in the process of thriving.  However, stopping to look at what it is we are trying to survive in the present moment may call for different modes.  The ones we took on or developed as children may have worked well for situations in which we were dependent upon others for our basic needs.  If as adults that is no longer the case, perhaps it is time to adopt a different mode of interaction with ourselves and others.  We resist change because it is unfamiliar and lack of familiarity can breed fear. If we start by looking at our lives through the lens of our hearts we open up the opportunity for our heart to speak to us about its modes.  Growing and learning in leave require different modes of operation than simply making it through the day.  Maybe there is room for a combining of both kinds of modes.  Until we stop to engage our hearts by inquiring within we will simply operate in fear of potential unfamiliarity.  God has designed us to grow and thrive in the love of which we were created.  Seated at the core of ourselves are the modes through which we can operate to fulfill our design and it comes handily equipped with the level of courage needed to face our fears.

As a Star Wars fan I enjoy and see value in Yoda’s perspective on things.  He formulates his wisdom in quirky and forthright word plays which catch you off guard but most importantly catch you to stop and think.  One of his most well-known phrases is , “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” As someone inclined to the pitfalls of trying to be a perfectionist, I can use this to stop me in my tracks faster than you can spell Yoda.  There is actually great value in being willing to try especially if we are committed to doing it.  The attempts we make are action which moves us in the direction we are trying to go.  We may not know if it will get us there but if we are committed to moving, it is in fact the attempt which is the doing.  I think what he meant is do not just say you will, actually do.  Trying can sound like have a fail-safe in place to save face in case you fail. This is what most perfectionists try to create and can spend most of their action on the creation of the fail-safe leaving little energy for the attempt.  If our focus is on the value of the attempt however, the trying becomes the doing because it is in action not just words.  When we access the courage within our hearts we have the energy to make all kinds of attempts.  If the attempts are driven from the truth of who we are they will be successful in strengthening our connection with ourselves.  If our concern is being successful by outside standards then the world will only see us trying and perhaps failing.  The power of love within our hearts adds the intention of our attempts to grow into more fully realized messengers of God for which we have been designed.  Attempts of the heart are driven by the desire to be the truest expression of ourselves.  If in so doing we are seen by the outside world as failures, so be it.  No one besides me and God knows the depth and intention of my heart that leads me to attempt all kinds of things in my life.

There are many ideas and beliefs we hold of which we are not aware.  We may see the results of those beliefs in our actions without an awareness of what we are claiming is part of who we are.  We act from how we identify ourselves.  When we align ourselves with ideas and beliefs we incorporate them into our picture of ourselves.  Seeing the actions break down or become ineffective can generate the opportunity to take a closer looks at our claims.  God encourages us to slow down and take a closer look at the claims of our being and see if they match with our hearts.   It is easier to blame outside circumstances and others for the breakdowns.  It takes courage which comes from the power of the heart to look at what we are claiming is true for us that may no longer be our truth. We grow and evolve and if we want to represent the truest elements of ourselves we can start by looking at who or what we claim ourselves to be.  There may be fear or anger at the prospect of taking a closer look but it is a bunch of smoke and mirrors to keep the peace of our spirit at bay a little longer.  Our identities need not be threatened by looking at our claims when all we set out to do is take a look.