dailydatewithgod

Have you ever encountered a person who walked in the room and the whole room lit up? How about a time when an idea hit you and it is as though your brain just had the lights turned on?  Then there is the relief that comes when we turn on the lights in a dark room so we can find what we are looking for. The brilliance of light in our lives cannot be understated.  According to some scientific studies regions where there is less light exposure have higher incidents of suicide.  There is a reason why our planet gathers its energy from the sun and sees fit to makes its connection to it by constantly rotating around it.  The luminosity in our lives comes not just from the physical presence of light but the energetic light of love God cultivated within ourselves.  We may think we are dark and messed up.  We may believe what someone else told us at some point about how unworthy we are to take up space on this planet.  But the luminosity within ourselves is needed via our presence in this world.  Why else would God have created us?  Who are we to argue with the Creator who designed the whole of the universe?  How can we think we know better than the designer who somehow set in place the capability of the earth to rotate around the sun?  God invites us to notice how our lives would begin to shift if we recognized the luminosity present within ourselves which we are designed to bring to life in a way only we can.  By accepting God’s invitation each time we take a breath to notice the luminosity within us, we can awaken ourselves to how it might be the very thing needed to illuminate the moment we are in for ourselves and others. How might our lives look if we rotated them around the energetic luminosity of our hearts?

There was a time in my life when a request would be made of me and I thought I had to respond yes or no right away.  I felt responsible for giving an answer, even if I did not yet know.  It seemed to be part of the same structure of my life where I felt I had to know things I did not know.  I wanted to be the one people had no problems with.  I wanted to be approved of and if you were waiting on me to have an answer, you might be disappointed.  Unfortunately, it would backfire on me because I would say yes too quickly and then realize I committed to something I did not want to be committed to.  Then came the white lies to squirm out of it or running the risk of really disappointing the other person by not being able to follow through.  Strangely I did not hold the same standard for others when I made requests of them.  I saw others take time to consider their options, ask to get back to me, or let me know when they would be able to provide an answer.  These are things I learned in recovery.  It is what gets reinforced on my daily dates with God.  It is flexing the pause button so when I need to be strong, the musculature is there. When I take the time to pause and consider my heart’s response to a request, I am more likely to provide a response connected to the truth of who I am.  My head will present an answer right away.  It takes courage and patience to utilize the tool of consideration.  However, when I enact the courage of my heart to consider the perspective of my heart, my head has to work much less to come up with ways to squirm out of something I may have misleadingly said I was willing to commit to.

There is much we can learn about how we conceptualize our world by listening to the words we use.  We say things in conversation which have multiple meanings.  We use words that describe things that out of context would make no sense.  We tell someone what they said sounds good. Depending on the context we mean either the sound is good or we understand and agree with what was said.  Either way our auditory facilities were used to achieve the conclusion stated.  Perhaps we both understood the actual sound and liked the sound vibrations of the words that came out of the person’s mouth.  I wonder if also we found what the person said to be sound?  Or did it make us feel sound upon hearing the words or the actual sound?  No wonder we rely on verbal tone and visual cues in conversation to understand what is being conveyed in conversation.  No wonder we think we are talking about the same thing when sometimes we are not.  When we look at our lives, what areas do we find soundness in?  It seems to be of importance to us to convey a healthiness, a solidity to our experience.  When we convey soundness in our living and our being, do we convey it in our words, our actions, our feelings, or all of it? If it is the truth of who we are we can hear it in our conversations.  Our hearts have an energy that extends outside our bodies and when we experience a soundness within the core of who we are we are sharing it with those around us.  If we are troubled in our hearts we will share that as well.  We like to think we only experience things on the physical level but that would be the same as thinking we are always having the same conversation and operate from the same concepts as someone else.  The most important thing is to find the level of soundness within ourselves so it is what lives and breathes in us at the level of God’s conception for us.

If we are willing to be honest with ourselves we can admit there are times when our criterion is a little off.  We find ourselves engaged in experiences or with people with whom we feel we do not belong because we misjudged our place in the situation.  Perhaps we saw ourselves as being something we are not.  Perhaps we were afraid to speak up and say what is true for us out of fear of offending someone else.  Perhaps we wanted so much to belong we figured we could withstand the discomfort of not being with the criterion of our heart.  What does it mean to allow our hearts to be the basis of criterion when it comes to living our lives?  Do we carry judgment that to do so would be unrealistic?  Do we think we will be all on our own?  If we make an effort to connect with the truth of who we are within ourselves how can we really be existing within a criterion that brings us anything but peace?  Maybe until it is uncomfortable enough going against the criterion of our hearts are we willing to do the opposite.

In the season of cooler weather I am mindful of the experience of the lack of heat.  There is a reason why we associate warmer temperatures with comfort.  The word warmth is one used to describe more than temperature.  In science class we learn there is no such thing as cold, there is only lack of heat.  Heat is the measurement of energy.  So in our daily lives we can measure what kind of energy we are putting into something by its level of warmth.  In our interactions, we have the option to be cold and shut off or warm and inviting.  We think it may be easier to be cold towards someone but that is because it does not require as much energy.  If we are focused on survival, we do not have extra energy to extend to others.  Extending warmth requires energy but it is energy we can get connected to if we make the attempt. The presence of love in our hearts fuels our energy if we let it.  God continually invites us to cultivate the energy within our deepest and truest self.  Our minds may try to tell us that we don’t have time or the energy to be kind and extend warmth but our hearts have a different story.

We make a multitude of decisions in the course of a day or even an hour.  Most of them we do not recognize as decisions because we do not believe we are making decisions.  We tell ourselves we have to do something, it needs to get done, or we do not have a say in the matter.  None of these are true.  We always have a choice.  We may not like the choice but we still have it.  Except for dying just about everything else we have some choice in the matter.  The real question is what is sanctioning our choice?  Is it our head or our heart or both? Is it us or something or someone we are giving the power to choose for us?  It can be difficult to decipher whether our heads or our hearts sanction the decisions.  Mostly they are made by both but may be more head than heart or vice versa.  We like to think we are so logical that our heart does not get involved but we underestimate the integrated design of our being.  The truer question is what state of presence are our hearts and heads in when they sanction the decisions we make.  In fact, where are they when it comes to getting us believe we are not making decisions.  The only way I know to stay in touch with what is sanctioning the decisions in my life is to get quiet.  I also watch my language.  Anytime I find myself saying I have to do something and it catches in my ear, I stop and reflect on what or why I have chosen to give my sanctioning power over to an expectation.  Is it an expectation that is of value in my heart or in my mind?  Is it sanctioned because I am more concerned with who I look like to someone else or because my soul is calling on me to step up and I am not sure I can do it?  So much goes into what we sanction in our lives. God encourages us to make a practice of pausing, notice what is sanctioning our decisions, and ask if we are beholden only to our best selves, would we still sanction the same choice?

Stopping to take a closer look at our lives is something we do not do until we experience a disturbance.  “No news is good news“ and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” are expressions we have heard before. Life has a way of getting our attention when things seem to fall apart.  When our world view is disrupted we sit up and take notice.  Pain and discomfort can be great motivators. Sometimes in an effort to move through the discomfort we take on the stance of getting rid of the current arrangement.  We rationalize that because it did not sustain through the disruption, it must be flawed.  If we are looking at the rubble of relationships and frayed edges that are just about to break off entirely, it may be a good idea to chuck the whole deal.  More often than not there are indications before the major disturbance that something is not working in the arrangement of our lives.  It is as quiet as a whispering wind coming through one or two small experiences that show us some flaws in the arrangement.  But we push it aside as merely an anomaly or being the fault of something outside of ourselves and move forward.  What if we took those opportunities to take a closer look at the arrangement in our lives when queued subtly by life?  What if all that is being asked of us is to make adjustments to the arrangement by incorporating some perspective from our hearts?  It can take a great deal of courage to adjust an arrangement than get rid of it all together.  What if in our hurry to get through the discomfort of change, we rush to make the existing arrangement all wrong when it is not?  Isn’t this what we do with people and ideas we have deemed as others?  What if the arrangement is a part of who we are that only wants to know of the love dwelling in our hearts?  Maybe we are being asked to bring love to a part of the arrangement of ourselves that has never received it.

When we find ourselves around people or things we like we describe our state of being differently than when we are around things or people we don’t like.  Our state of being is often described as being in the flow, a good fit, feeling at home with ourselves and things just come easily.  The state of being is one we enjoy being in.  It is one where we generate instead of lose energy.  So why would we bother to approach something the opposite of that?  What benefit could come from approaching an unlikable person or unlikely experience?  What could we possibly learn from being in a state of discontent, lack of flow, feeling like a foreigner and difficulty?  Why would anyone want to approach such a state of being?  Perhaps a different question might be, why wouldn’t we go nearer to experiences and people who see the world differently?  Why would we not approach a circumstance we have never faced before and discover resources we did not know we had?  We are naturally inclined to approach things similar to ourselves.  It comes from our inherent design of belonging meaning survival.  It makes sense. Yet most of what we dare not approach has nothing to do with what is on the outside.  It is the feelings and inner reality that surfaces as a result of our approach we are not interested in.  (To be clear, I am not advocating to put yourself in a life threatening or dangerous situation.) But what if our hearts could show us a door to love by being willing to approach the seemingly unpleasant states of being within us?  Maybe what appears like an outside experience is really more of an inside one.  Maybe God is disguised as someone we would not imagine God to be to awaken the courage of our hearts so we can approach with greater power the experiences within us calling for love.

Our minds want to move to a solution usually as quickly as possible.  It is inherent to our survival that we have a way to move forward.  To stay to long in perplexity can cause us to feel anxious and unsettled.  We find great pride in having the answer and knowing which step to take.  There is nothing wrong with either of those.  From a purely survival perspective it makes sense.  But we are at a point in our evolution where our survival is not the kind of question in our minds it used to be.  With some exception most human beings do not need to fear having their basic needs met.  Which means those of us who have that luxury to not be so burdened by the need to meet our survival needs can learn to discipline our minds to see differently.  We can entertain the experiences of perplexity to get at some of the deeper questions of our soul.  This requires some re-wiring in our brains.  At first we will balk and want to squirm out of it, but if we commit to practice sitting in the perplexity without running away at the first sign of discomfort or the making of a story in our minds about how we are a loser because we do not have an answer, we may find ourselves opened up to new understandings we may not have otherwise allowed to be revealed to us.  It is like contemplating the idea of our hearts being more than just a pump for blood.  It is being willing to see the multifaceted nature of our bodies as more than just a physical vehicle but a clue as to how the universe operates.  There is a flow, interaction between various systems, interacting with bodies outside of itself, it take in and gets rid of various kinds of energy, and so on. By making room for perplexity we are not a walking advertisement for cluelessness but a distinctive possibility of things which are more than we may have imagined.

There are many facets of ourselves that we come to know on our walk of life.  Some aspects we have with us from the beginning, others we take on as we go through life.  Some aspects we acquire by choice, others we take on because we sense it is what is considered normal or expected.  We can get caught up in demonstrating those aspects of ourselves which fit neatly into the tapestry of our lives and they become dominant and shape our personality.  The real question is, are those the aspects of our heart we want to live through?  Or are they the aspects we know will get us the approval we need to feel like we belong?  It is not wrong to want to belong, it is in our inherent nature of survival.  But if we are refraining from allowing aspects of ourselves driven from our hearts to be seen, who is it that is belonging?  Over and over again on my daily dates with God, I hear God asking me to keep my eyes on him.  When I am inclined to not share an aspect of my heart because I fear it will be rejected or there is no place for it, God reminds me she wants nothing more than the aspects of myself which are cultivated in my heart to be shared whether or not they are accepted by others.  God accepts them.  Those who are open to the heart aspects of themselves will see its genuine expression of the heart.  It can be risky but it is part of this game called life to allow the aspects of our hearts to be seen and shared with ourselves and others so God can be known.