dailydatewithgod

A common term getting thrown around a lot is busyness.  How are you? Busy.  What have you been up to?  I’ve been busy.  It seems to have lost its meaning.  What are we busy with?  What is our busyness about?  Does it mean we have lots of business or our time is filled with things?  What are we filling ourselves with during our time?  Is it people?  Is it ideas?  Is it distractions?  When we pause to take a look at what fulfills is does it match with what we are using to fill the time in our day?  Do we look back at our day and think of how much of our time was filled with things that meant something to us or how much of our checklist we completed?  Our words tell us a lot about how we see our lives.  I started to get exacerbated by the term busy and would catch myself every time I defaulted by saying it.  Instead I would acknowledge that I have a full life.  It is a simple but genuine gesture I felt called to by my heart to move myself away from focusing on the doing of my life into the being of my life.  Our hearts call us to notice if what we are filling our lives with and determine if it is in alignment with the fulfillment of our true purpose.  Not in some grand way but in the simple moments of every day.  Are we filling our time by utilizing the little moments of our day to fill it with love?  Do we capitalize on the chance to interact with other human beings and see them?  Maybe even a smile at someone on the street or in the car next to us?  What kinds of small actions of the heart can we fill our lives and the lives of others that enables us to share our being with one another?

We each have individual gifts and talents.  If we allow ourselves to explore them we increase our capability and enhance our opportunity to be of service and make an impact on the world in a way that only we can.  Sometimes we are discouraged because others do not understand or do not think we are capable. Our faculties, however, may present themselves in ways no one fully understands.  Maybe the package of the gift does not look like a gift. Does it light us up?  Does engaging in a particular faculty make our heart grow stronger?  When we practice using our gifts do we gift others?  Are we challenged to understand ourselves in others in a more compassionate way when we cultivate our crafts?  These are the questions God encourages us to ask as we open our eyes to the faculties within us and explore how far we can take them.  Instead of measuring them by the understanding and acceptance of others, we can use our hearts as a gage.  We know intuitively if a particular faculty brings life to our being.  More than just provide a quick hit like some kind of drug it spans beyond the specific time we spend doing it. Maybe our particular faculties do not look like gifts until we explore how we can use them fully. If we hide our faculties because we fear what others will think or allow the wrapping of the gifts to be our only marker for its worth, what eyes are we relying upon to help us know the truth?

In general the thoughts about smoke are not positive. Smoking is bad for you.  Being surrounded by smoke at any time is not a good place to be.  With all the fires in the LA area right now it is a surreal experience being outside.  The air is smokey and while I have experienced being much closer to the fires in the past, this feels different.  In the past I was in an area where the wind was stronger and there was a lot of ash falling around like snow. It had an apocalyptic nature to it. Gratefully, I have never been so close to the fire as to fear for my safety, I have known many who have and who lost everything, I can only imagine how hard that is.  My heart and prayer go out to all who are experiencing that right now.  Smoke is a signal.  A signal of fire. That is the positive side of it.  It can serve as a warning.  Smoke is also used in religious ceremony and the way in which it travels has an ethereal nature to it.  Smoke is also connected to cleansing, spiritual cleansing.  I have burned sage and moved the smoke around a particular place before praying and meditating.  Like most things in life, nothing is entirely good or entirely bad.  It is the message that is being sent or interpreted that makes the distinction.  The smoke of our lives can be whatever we are using to cloud ourselves from our reality or keep ourselves from fully breathing in.  The smoke of our lives can be a signal of something we need to take a look at. The smoke of our lives can also be the opportunity to prepare ourselves to be in a space of communion with God.  It is up to us to determine what it means for us in any given moment..

We get to choose what we concern ourselves with.  It is up to us what we allow to take up space in our minds.  We are presented with options, some from outside and some from within our own head.  We can consider the presentation and choose how much attention we give it.  The power is ours.  If we find ourselves unable to let go of letting it concern us we can call for back up.  God is this regarding what you want me to give my attention to?  Call a friend or write things down so they simply don’t take the opportunity to drive us mad.  When we decide what something is regarding, we make the decision of what kind of power and attention we will give it. If we conclude it is connected to something we have experienced with pain in the past we put the attention of pain on it.  If we decide it is regarding something pleasurable in the past, we give it the perception and attention of possible pleasure.  Our interpretation of placing regard provides us with the avenue through which to perceive our reality.  We can do it alone or we can find out how others regard it. God, what is this regarding to you?

We all come to times in our lives when we are faced with which direction to take.  There is a junction we find ourselves facing on our path.  In that moment we can choose one path over the other.  There may or may not be a clear sense of where either one is going but it is clear we need to make a decision.  Potentially we could come back to the junction and choose again but there is no certainty in that either.  Most roads then lead to other junctures.  It is clear that life is evolving.  Our universe shows us that every day.  We are a full and complete part of the universal system so we are evolving too. This means the places in our lives that are joined will bring us to the places where they will diverge.  I think often of the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. In it he speaks of a junction in his life.  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . .I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.” Is it possible it made all the difference because he chose it.   Even if a path is well-worn and traveled by many, because we have not traveled it we will see it with different eyes.  We will be presented with further junctures and be asked to choose again.  Our individual experience will determine how traveled it will become.  We can choose at these junctures to make the experience our own. Nothing says we have to embrace the juncture the way others have.  Our very nature as individuals means we can take the same path at the same juncture and because of our differing perception, we will see the path differently.  In fact, we will contextualize the paths we meet at the juncture differently. It is about the process of embracing the junctures as opportunities to try out something new.  Each juncture can be a gift or a curse depending on our approach. God encourages us to see the junctures as a chance to take a moment and assess if the path we are currently on is serving our heart and if we want the next path to take the same trajectory.  I used to think it was about the choice of path.  More and more I realize it is about me taking the moment to pause and connect with my heart when I reach a juncture in my normal day-to-day experience.  Even our breath is a chance to pause and connect to our hearts which is what all junctures are ultimately about.

There is tremendous freedom when we choose to explore what life has to offer versus simply go by what we have been told.  We suddenly have room to breathe. Opting to be liberated from the incessant need to be right makes room for peace.  In fact whatever elements are holding us back from being able to express our true nature are the things that stand in the way of the truest expression of ourselves from our heart.  If we are not advocating for the power of our hearts we are in bondage to whatever is popular we will continue to simply react to life.  Responding requires first liberating our hearts of the elements that do not match it.  There is a resonance, a vibrational energy, allowing us to intuitively connect to the frequency of our power. In order to connect to it we must be able to quiet the chatter of our mind long enough.  Liberating ourselves from the constructs created by our minds even if for a few minutes will provide that space.  There we can hear more clearly the vibrant expressions of God.  By liberating ourselves from our beliefs about God we can be open to seeing and perceiving God in new ways. Many of us grew up influenced by particular religious or faith practices.  We may have been told what God is like.  Because our parents are God-like to us as children, we may have assigned God the qualities good or bad of our parents.  Yet God is something beyond our understanding.  By liberating ourselves from our given constructs of God, we will notice a shift in our experience of God and we might just be surprised.

We can all too easily forget that we play a part in our minds and hearts.  We are not simply beings reacting to everything.  We are the authors of our life story.  We get to choose which characters get the most lines and the strongest roles in each scene.  Not because we are directing them but when it comes to the narrative of the story, we are the voice of the narrator.  God invites us to look at what we are authorizing as influential stories and people in our lives.  When others share about their lives whether written or spoken it is always done from their perspective. We are the same.  Whether the story has a good or bad ending depends on what we are authorizing.  The power of a particular person and their role in a given situation has to be authorized by us before it goes to print.  Having a good or a bad day depends on whether we are authorizing a negative or a positive mindset.  Having hope or despair is contingent on what view we authorize of our past experiences.  As Victor Frank so aptly put it ,  “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

As someone who is drawn to writing, which probably does not come as any surprise if you notice that I write these blog posts daily. I am encouraged by how such a simple form of expression allows me to access my heart.  Writing does come from the head.  I think thoughts and then I type or write them out.  Writing is about using one’s body to give life to an expression of ourselves in a descriptive way.  It is not always easy to know what to say or how to say it.  But if we get caught up in whether or not someone will understand the expression of our hearts, we have lost the point.  Writing enables us to take some of the jumbled thoughts in our heads we are trying to figure out and see them concretely.  Just emptying the mind a little at a time creates more space for us to connect to our hearts.  Some of the noise goes down and we can get in touch with the internal compass that is guiding our pen.  Many great leaders and spiritual teachers have shared their thoughts and ideas through writing.  We benefit when we get to experience someone else’s perspective through the written word.  Someone had to write out the scriptural texts we reference to create an understanding of God. But the most important element of writing is how we get to see ourselves.  Not all writing is necessary to share, but giving ourselves the opportunity to release the thoughts from our head can provide a window for some peace of mind is priceless.  Only when we have some peace of mind can we connect to what our hearts are telling us.

Sometimes the path ahead is clear.  It looks like a straight line that will lead us from one point to another.  Yet the moment we step on the path we find the winding curves we did not see ahead of time.  It is as though the road adapts and changes as we set forth upon it.  It can be disconcerting if we chose to walk the path because we thought we knew where it led.  In my life those are the kinds of paths I thought I was taking.  It feels safer to think we know where things are going.  It makes it worth taking a risk and putting time and energy to getting to what we have determined will produce the end result we want.  Yet life does not operate in this way.  There is a flow and a movement that creates a winding path with corners and curves seeming to take us off track.  What if the winding part is the most important part?  Being in the space of not quite knowing where things are going allows us to let go into the flow and just be.  We are not human doings who are only designed to go from one point to another.  Our hearts and our spirits calls us to embrace the winding nature of life and let go and trust we have what we need to survive.  The winding parts are the encounters we did not foresee, the people who seem to be in our way, and the character building opportunities to see things from a different angle.  God encourages us to trust we have not been abandoned on the winding parts of the path but have a unique opportunity to find God within the truth of who we are when what we see with our eyes is not all of what is there for us to experience.

To live life we need courage.  Courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to go ahead anyway.  Courage comes from the heart in meaning and in energy.  To develop courage we are asked to use the muscle of our hearts.  We walk through life faced with many different circumstances and experiences.  Some we struggle with, others come easy.  All of them we are handling in the way we know how.  Human beings do what they know.  Unless we are open to learning different ways we live by our defaults.  This is not a good or bad thing, it is just the reality.  If we want to handle life differently, if we want to grow our courage, we have to step out of our default programming.  We need to be willing to stretch ourselves and be uncomfortable.  Learning to live and breathe through moments of discomfort or unfamiliarity which breeds fear by its nature, requires us to rely on our hearts.  God instilled in us the ability to handle all that we are presented with in life.  Handling it may mean asking for help.  Handling it may mean we are successful on the first attempt. Handling it may mean admitting we do not have what it takes and we do not know what to do.  Our hearts which give us the power to handle it from where we are in the moment does not judge us.  Our minds tell us we are handling things poorly.  Our minds look for ways to get out of handling the discomfort and default back to what it knows as normal.  God encourages us to lean and breathe into our hearts for handling all we are given in life. Our hearts know intuitively how and when to engage the mind without judgment so as to create a cooperative experience of handling this moment.