dailydatewithgod

When we make decision it is powerful.  Our hearts push out the tenacious energy needed to stick to what we know to be true down to our bones.  Sometimes when we find ourselves faltering it is because either we did not wholeheartedly make a decision or we made a resolution instead of a decision.  The tenacity required to sustain a commitment is what carries us through when we begin to doubt.  We wonder if it is worth it. We don’t feel into it anymore.  We question if we are really meant to do what we set out to do or be. If we are longing to embrace the truth of who we are being in alignment with how we show up, tenacity is required.  Who we are at our core is not some carbon copy of others.  We are not meant to follow a pattern so we look and act like everyone else.  We are designed to be messengers of love. The particular expression of love meant to come through us is not always going to look like it does for others or what is considered to be acceptable.  God does not ask us how we are loving like expected.  God asks us if we are loving from who we are.  We are given guidelines through spiritual paths and religious practices but love expressed in the moment is what counts.  The tenacity to be the love in the moment takes courage and cannot be expressed except by those present in that particular moment.

I resisted using a GPS system on my phone while driving for a long time. I am the gal with the AAA maps in my car and the Thomas Guide book for Southern California because I was going to figure out what direction was best and how to get there.  Those however, do not provide traffic updates or alternatives that are not easy to see especially while actually driving.  There is a certain surrender in being given direction to follow that is both freeing and frightening.  Do I really know where my GPS is telling me to go?  Is the directions I am being given really saving me time?  My GPS cannot seriously expect me to make a left turn here during rush hour?!  There is no way . . . and then there is.  Taking direction is welcomed in some areas of my life but not in others.  Usually my resistance to direction whether from God, an inner inkling, another person, or my GPS system is due to fear.  Fear of where following it will take me and if I will be safe.  Yet there are times when I will catch myself blindly following the direction of someone or something else without a thought on my part.  Somewhere in there is a balance.  Our heart carries within it the direction of the core of who we are designed to be.  Within our hearts are the directions to love.  When we pause and check in with our hearts anything we are receiving from outside, we will know which direction to follow in that moment.  The best direction much to my chagrin is usually one that comes a step at a time.  My head wants to know where I will end up but my heart is right here, right now.  It is my heart that knows when it is a good idea to take the path of love that leads me to make turns I didn’t know I could and see places I have never been or to go ahead and take the freeway because it is the highway we are all on.

There are all kinds of things we react to in life.  Most of what we do is automatically react.  It requires a level of mindfulness and presence to choose to act in a situation.  Many hours of our day we don’t actually need this skill but when we do we are so used to operating out of reaction it feels foreign to us to not do just react.  The choice to allow something to spur us to something else is a choice we can make.  God encourages us to notice what is automatically spurring us to action and how we might want to make different choices.  When we pause, take a breath, check in with our heart we might make a different choice.  We may not.  Recognizing and claiming our capability to choose what is spurring our actions in life may seem overwhelming at first.  With practice and on my daily prayer and meditation dates with God I see the benefits of claiming my ability to choose.  Instead of the responsibility feeling like a burden it is freeing.  With time I have come to see that others ideas, behaviors, or experiences cannot spur me to anything I do not choose to be spurred by.  Therefore, no one else is to blame.  Which means I can change if I want. I cannot change what is outside of me. Connecting with my own heart and balancing the spurring of my mind is a step into freedom with each breath I take.

No matter how much of a self-starter or go-getter we are sometimes we just need a boost.  We need people and a way to remind ourselves of how powerful we are.  Those who know us and love us are usually more than willing if we ask to lift us up.  Especially if they know how much we need it.  The key is the vulnerability to ask for what we need.  It takes courage to ask for secours.  It take a moment to humbly recognize we cannot do it on our own all the time.  The beauty of the human design is we can begin the process with ourselves.  If we pause and take a breath, it is the beginning of secours.  The very breath we take to be honest with ourselves about what is going on.  The breath we must take as we choose to humble ourselves and ask for back up.  In the breath which is within us is the opportunity to create secours as we garner further determine what kind of assistance we need.  God designed us to begin to cultivate what we need within ourselves.  Not so we can do it all on our own.  So we can have the courage to engage with others.  Our breath is the opening portal to secours.  On my daily date with God I am given the secours I need to remember throughout the day that God does not leave me when our daily prayer and meditation time ends by starting with my breath.  In turn it gives me the courage to be the secours for someone else I cross on my path in the coming day.

One of the fundamental elements of a mindfulness practice is in honing the ability to observe.  We mindlessly observe things all day long.  Our eyes never stop.  Our senses never cease taking in information.  Some observations become more consistent.  Others are fleeting.  It is the ones we find ourselves observing over and over again that we pay attention to.  The Buddhists and others teach of non-reactive observations or what is sometimes called being the silent observer.  One of the purposes ideas is to get to a place where you have no reaction to what you are observing, especially something you normally react to.  Another idea is to find yourself wondering who is doing the observing.  We create space when we pause within moments of observation where we can choose what to do if anything with what we are observing.  Everything is a choice.  We may not choose what our eyes fall upon what we do choose whether our attention stays on it.  We can observe with curiosity, contempt, or question what we are observing.  It is not the observation that is the difficulty.  It is what we make what we are observing mean.  It is easy to think our observations are the full picture because it is all we have in the moment.  Judging by how many court cases have been overturned that relied upon eye-witness testimony, one might be reluctant enough to make us rethink the validity of our observations.  Like all things it is an opportunity to check the eyes in our head with the eyes of our hearts. Before our minds run out the door with meaning attached to an observation, we can pause, take a breath, and check in with the observations happening in other areas of awareness.

Sometimes we are not aware of what our life is trying to tell us.  We get stuck in literal physical experience and forget there are all kinds of underlying experiences happening.  Energy is fluid and it moves in waves.  If we are seeing life as solid objects only, it is easy to miss them.  It is kind of like air which is present all the time.   It is always there but we often do not notice it until it is strong enough to move something physically. As we go through the day there are indications of energy that is not seen by the eyes.  We are much more apt to say we sense it emotionally or spiritually.  We feel as though there are indications of something beyond what we are seeing that is happening.  For some reason because it lacks a physical indication we do not give it credit.  Energy is energy.  We are so wedded to what our physical eyes can see that we rely on them entirely.  What about the eyes of our heart?  What about all the other faculties of awareness God has given us?  If we can hear it or feel it is it any less valuable of an indication?  If we begin by paying attention to indications in whatever form they present themselves, we can expand the view of our lives.  God invites us to utilize all the faculties we have at our disposal so as to experience the profound possibilities in any given moment.  On my daily date with God I do not see God but I know God is present.  In building a relationship one day at a time I have enough indications of the existence of God to satisfy the eyes of my heart whether or not I can see God with my eyes.  Even so, when I remember we are all made in the image and likeness of God and there are indications of God’s creativity all throughout existence, how can I help but see God everywhere?

It is kind of funny how we can seemingly know other people better than we know ourselves.  It is part of how we create relationship when we pay attention to others.  We design an interconnection aside from one that is inherent to show we belong together. Some of our connections with others come without our consent such as family, culture, gender, or skin color. When you add those elements to how we show ourselves to the world we are believed to be more suited to certain a particular job, type of people we hang around, our likes and dislikes, our beliefs and ideas and more.  Sometimes these are correct.  Our ultimate suitability is what is in alignment with our hearts.  Based on the power of love and light residing in all of us, there is no real justification for many of the divisions that exist among different groups.  The suitability of our hearts however does not ask for exclusivity.  Much of the outside elements we are connected to have requirements and conditions.  This does not mean our hearts say everyone need have the same access to our sacredness or knowledge of us.  However, our hearts do honor the presence of others no matter their connections or personal style.  God encourages us to create environments in our lives to support the growth of love and light in the world.  It begins by pausing, connecting with our hearts and listening to what our hearts tell us is suitable while quieting the determinations of the outside world for suitability.

Choosing to love is an act of courage.  We like the big grand gestures but the irony of the courageous choice to love is in its ordinariness.  Yes there are big displays of love which we adore.  The engagement and wedding, Valentine’s Day celebrations, mother’s giving birth, a father rescuing his child from falling off whatever he or she crawled up on, noble peace prizes, and so on.  Most of how love shows up as an opportunity to act in courage is in the everyday.  It is the choice to smile at the person who bumps into you on the ordinary street.  The choice to say thank you to ordinary check out clerk at the grocery store.  The choice to send a card wishing your Aunt a happy birthday.  Choosing to laugh off the person who cuts you off in traffic.  The action of telling someone they are welcome when they say thank you to you.  The choice to compliment the woman in the elevator who has a nice smile.  The decision to tell yourself you are okay after you experience a set back.  These ordinary moments which can take us off course or cause us to question the truth of our being are the moments when fear can take hold.  If instead we choose to act in love despite the fear we are build our muscle of courage.  Perhaps the ordinary  moments are the practice for showing up in loving courage in the bigger moments.  Perhaps the ordinary moments are the ones that matter most because they are the ones happening in the moment we are in.

When I first stepped into the recovery rooms for my obesity and sugar addiction I heard people saying the most peculiar thing.  “I Am enough. I do enough. There is enough.”  I had never heard such a thing.  I could not even wrap my head around the idea.  How is that possible?  Don’t you know there is so much more I need to do and be to be acceptable.  I had no inkling how incredibly hard I drove myself.  It was such an inherent part of my narrative to judge and criticize myself so ridiculously hard that I had no idea there was another way.  It is an agreement I made with myself at a very young age.  Little by little over the years this belief about myself has chipped away.  My daily dates with God helped me to begin to see that who I am is enough because no matter what God shows up every day.  I have experienced a softening  of my heart with time.  Patience and progress of the process is the road I am on.  Even today many years later I am witnessing the falling away of other areas in my life where I am mistakenly driven by the idea that I do not do enough.  It shows up in subtle ways like another book to read, workshop to attend, process to undertake, and so on.  God is showing me and I am opening my eyes to see that living in light means accepting the darkness not trying to dispel it.  I can be a hero and walk through my own darkness but it is not my job to destroy the polarity of the universe.

Cats are funny creatures.  One of the ways they show love is by clawing at something.  Whether its your arm or the couch they use their claws, potentially harmful to whomever is on the receiving end to demonstrate affection.  It would be one thing if the claws only came out when they were fighting but many a cat I have held would claw on to me for dear life to show me how much he or she cared.  Perhaps it is the demonstration of an animal love versus a spiritual love.  Don’t get me wrong, I think animals are capable of many kinds of love.  Nature, interestingly has built-in this way of clinching at something to show a connection.  Even children when they latch on to you.  Is it because they are afraid of letting go or because they are claiming ownership to what they know is safe? The real question is how does clinching show up in our lives as adults?  What sense of love and safety do we grasp at?  And do we clinch it because we are afraid of letting go or because we want to show the world where our heart lies?  A further question is do we get used to clinching and forget it is good to let go or acknowledge there are times when we will need to let go.  I attended a funeral the other day and the man who died was clearly loved.  I did not know the man but I know his eldest son.  Just before the burial at the end of the funeral service the family gathered around the man lying peacefully in the coffin.  The we closely knit to each other and you could hear them crying.  But it was the gut wrenching crying and sobbing coming from his wife of many years that seem to catch in the throats of all those who were witnessing. It was as though the clinching to the love of this man had all of us by the throat.  I can’t imagine walking through life that closely with someone for so many years only to realize that one day he would no longer be there.  I would be clawing like a cat claiming my stake on the life of such a man.  How do we go from clinching to our reality whatever it may be to show our connection to it yet recognize by letting go that it is not who we are?  Our heart knows the way and more than anything our heart knows when to hold and when to let go.  The more we know our hearts the more we can rely on the core of who we are to determine if now is the time to clinch or the time to release.