It is hard to imagine how something as irritating as frustration could be a useful tool. In being open to how God see’s things I find I am willing to take a second or third look at an experience or idea I have held for a long time. My experience around feelings in general as I was growing up were not pleasant. The “bad” feelings, that is. Anger is one in particular that sent up red flags. Most women are socialized to not feel anger let alone express it. As a kid even into my early teen years I used to throw temper tantrums mostly in my bedroom. I had no idea what to do with all the anger inside of me. And one day I decided I was tired of what I felt like was wearing my heart on my sleeve and I closed off. I developed a highly sarcastic attitude which I later came to see as nice people’s anger. Years later I would find myself diagnosed with clinical depression and would take medication which helped. Basically I was turned off from my feelings and the only thing I felt was numb. My response to being asked how I was feeling was either “fine” or “hungry” (at least the response in my head). Living in recovery and not eating over things brings the feelings front and center. To live as a sober person required some new tools for handling the ups and downs of feelings. It is a process I presume will continue for the rest of my life. Even years after not numbing out with food, as I dove deeper to heal the incest wounds, I discovered greater depths of anger and pain. I never thought I would say that I look forward to feeling but I do. God and all those around me who have shown me what it means to be a healthy human being, helped me to see that to feel is to know I am alive. Feelings are not facts but they do serve as indicators of a deeper awareness. I have learned to channel my anger in healthy ways. I am no longer hurting myself or unintentionally hurting others by my attitude and distance. I don’t shy away from riding the wave of the feeling and allowing it to flow through me. I now see when I am feeling angry versus feeling I am angry. By default then I can feel frustrated, irritated, or pissed off and not think I am a bad person who needs to shut it down. God gave us all our feelings and when I am overwhelmed by them instead of throwing a tantrum I can take a breath, connect to my heart and give them to God. Show me how you want me to use this? How do you see my feelings of anger?
Be About Humaneness!
For all the strife and conflict we have with other human beings it is clear that what lies at the cord of the disconnect is the forgetting of who we are. As humans when we are focused on the problems, the conflict, essentially the differences, we lose sight of who others are and who we are. The very term humane is synonymous with benevolent, cordial, democratic, merciful, tolerant, gentle, gracious, friendly, approachable, and forgiving. God encourage us to remember by returning to our own hearts. When we pause and connect into the heart, our vision becomes more fully embodied. We notice on a very basic level the people we are labeling as others have a heart too. They have a heart because they are human. How do we know how to treat a human? By being humane. Our minds become very attached to the outer exterior around the heart and it is easy to be fooled into thinking someone else has no heart. In fact, it is sometimes the descriptor we use when describing someone who behaves or thinks in a manner different from our own. The problem is we lose our own heart if we continue to focus on what we believe to be their lack of one. It is not easy and as much as I may want to make the person on the road who cut me off or the co-worker who did not complete their part of the project the enemy, it is simply not true. Our friends and enemies are made up of the same stuff as us. It is a stretch of our own hearts and our capacity for humaneness calling upon us to reconnect as God designed us to do. It whispers us in the stillness of our spirits and beckons us to give each other another look from the eyes of the heart.
My prayer for us is the humility to acknowledge that when we lose sight of the hearts of others and label them as less than human we are losing touch with our own hearts and our humaneness today.
Be About Reinstating!
Often there is one political candidate who captivates voters with the idea of going back to the way things used to be. The way of life we had before the difficulties began. Aside from the propensity of our minds to filter out and only remember the good parts of the past, it is actually not possible to go back. We think we can reinstate the physical experience of the past because it was better than now. It sounds romantic and easy. We are drawn to that. Given we live in an ever-expanding universe it is counter-intuitive to think going back is the best option. Maybe the reason things fell apart is because they outlived their time, not because we messed up or got lazy. We may have reached a point where we got as much as we could from the way things were. What makes us think reinstating things that worked before is what is needed to face what we are facing today? If we are paying attention we can draw on our state of being. Maybe who we were before the difficulties began is the element we feel we are missing. This does not require us to reinstate the circumstances. It calls for an awareness of who we are. When we were thriving and strong before we got knocked around comes from the core of who we are. We just came up against experiences for which we lacked preparation and got off track. God invites us to reinstate our state of being into the new situation. When we return to our hearts and garner the power within us we see ourselves facing today and the future and become more than we are now. We grow from the difficulties because our capacity of character grows not because circumstances keep repeating themselves. Renewing our confidence in our internal state of being is the kind of reinstating God sees us embodying.
My prayer for us is to not get taken in by the romantic nostalgia of past times and accept God’s invitation to reinstating our connection to the truth and power of who we are and always will be no matter what we are called on to walk through today.
Be About Missing!
We all experience FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) from time to time. I have heard that spending a lot of time on Facebook can up the anti on this condition but I do not believe it has been studied scientifically. It hits us at the fear of losing things. I learned in recovery that there are basically two fears that can drive us. The fear of not getting what we want or losing what we have. When we anticipate missing out on something it can hit us hard. It may start the story we have that we are not enough or we don’t belong because we are missing out. Yet the very idea that we are missing anything we need essential to what makes us whole is ridiculous in God’s eyes. God would not design us with missing elements. The notion of missing has more to do with what we have disconnected from within. When we return our attention to our hearts and sit deep within in quiet we can eradicate any notion of missing anything. Basing who we are on outside appearances and circumstances will always provide evidence of something missing because there is not constancy of comparison. God is always certain of our wholeness and our connection to everything we ever need in our hearts.
My prayer for us is the courage to take a closer look at our FOMO and investigate if what we think we are missing might actually already be present in our hearts today.
Be About Excavating!
Sometimes it seems like walking a spiritual path as one faces the spaces of darkness within there is something even deeper going on. It is as though the process itself is asking one to unearth everything he or she knows about themselves and take a look. No wonder it seems so daunting and painful. If excavating is what we imagine it means to live a spiritual life or walk a spiritual path I can see why most people would rather just keep their dark sides buried. I am not sure if the life I had built for myself did not crumble to pieces and fall apart that I would have sought a spiritual solution. Being asked to wake up by life and take a look at the darkness I was running from was not easy. But as God has shown me on our dates each day, it is simple. Just like an archaeologist excavates a site by picking one section at a time, I do not need to tackle it all at once. Plus I have a team of people who are working with me. Excavating becomes enlightening and exploratory instead of fearful and daunting.
My prayer for us is the courage to begin excavating our darkness with the help of God and whomever else shows up on our path today.
Be About Translation!
As meaning making machines we conjure up all kinds of reasons for thing we do not actually know so the world makes sense. It is a harmless function of our minds unless we are basing our reasoning on false translations. I am not a language expert but I have been in the company of enough people speaking different languages and translation experiences to know a lot can get lost in the interaction. Translation is not isolated to languages. We each need to translate our thinking to each other. We believe others see things as we do but it is not true. How many times have we found ourselves wondering . . . it makes perfect sense to me, why wouldn’t it make sense to everyone else? Therein lies the dilemma of operating from the assumption of others seeing the same things we do. They may have two eyes but they have a different set up filters in their mind through which what they see creates meaning. In order to convey how I see things, I must translate not only the actual visualization but the meaning I attached to it. In some cases I may need to provide translation for the meaning as well. This can be challenging especially when we are entrenched in our perspective and do not realize the need for translation. If we are letting our translation of a situation be more important than the relationships we are in it is because we are certain our translations are the correct ones. I have been humbled more than once by my certainty and at the end of the day I am not sure it worked for me to not seek out a different translation. On my daily dates with God I find myself asking more and more for God to translate my understanding and grant me the courage to see it through God’s eyes. When things are translated through the language of love even if we have different translations we can still be with others in peace. Our egos are not wedded to being right. It is easier to breathe when love provides the translation.
My prayer for us is the courage to recognize when we are holding on to our translation of an experience and be willing to have God provide the translations today.
Be About Agility!
Sometimes we are not even aware of the ability of our minds to survive particular circumstances until we are faced with them. There are many automatic functions that our minds that create our agility. We make assessments and decisions about people and experiences even before we are consciously aware of them. This is essential to our survival. Some things simply cannot wait for us to have time to think them through and analyze in-depth. The down side of our agility is our reliance on it for everything. When we learn to pause and take a look at where we might be drawing conclusions too quickly we bring ourselves back to the present moment. Our automatic quick decisions are based on the past. On my daily dates with God where I am invited over and over again to pause, breathe, connect to my heart, and be in the moment, I am given the tools needed to live from the present. We need our automatic programming to work with agility when the situation calls for it. Because of our intelligent God-given design we can trust it will. Being able to discern the relevance of agility in any given situation is a learned skill. When we recognize we are not in a life threatening situation, we can step back from our agility and make room for our hearts. It becomes an invitation to see things with new eyes.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice when our agility is being used to position our automatic processes ahead of situation simply inviting us to be present of heart today.
Be About Facing!
For some reason our minds have this incredible capability to cause us to imagine possible futures. It is unique to humans and part of what differentiates us from other animals. Like most things it is a gift and a curse. It allows us to be creative and imagine great and beautiful things. It also affords us the opportunity to conjure up the worst case scenario. We all know the scenario telling us it will be terrible, we will mess up irreversibly, and it will be too hard. This causes us to be cautious before embarking on new things, turn up our awareness, and think things through before jumping in. Those are the positive elements. The down side is when we focus on the worst case scenario we can convince ourselves to never get started. We are reluctant to give things a try. Facing those fears seems like an impossible task. The funny part is the facing part is just that. It is a facade. What we are really facing is the outer layer. When we take a breath and despite our fear move in the direction of it, the facing of it fades away. How many times has the worst case scenario ever happened? I honestly cannot think of one time and if it did it must have not been as bad as I thought the worst case could be because I survived it. Having courage means being willing to connect with our heart when we take a breath before we move into action. Without fear there is no courage. Fear shows us we are about to realize for ourselves the power of our own hearts. We will see the facing of the experience, recognize the fear, take a breath, and move forward and see the fear fall away like the strands of a dandelion in the wind. Our first step is remembering God is here to draw our hand to our heart and remind us we can begin facing with just a breath.
My prayer for us is the willingness to see our fear as an impetus to connect to the power of our hearts where our courage lies so we can begin facing whatever it is we fear today.
Be About Withdrawing!
I think God gets quite a kick out of me and the way I think. Sometimes I am certain I can sense God playfully elbowing me and saying, “silly girl, what are you thinking?” I am God’s consultant on my life and am constantly providing input on how I think things should be going. I do not even charge a consultation fee, isn’t that nice of me? It sounds like a simple thing to withdraw from a situation and let go of expectations but it is not. Each of us is usually fairly certain we know what is the best thing to happen or experience. God seems to have different ideas. I think the best way to be good at my job is to do everything perfectly. God thinks it is to have as many learning experiences that open my heart in the process is the best way. What I experience in reality is what I see as God’s will. After years of trying to fight reality I finally learned the power of withdrawing. Not withdrawing from reality but withdrawing from the fight for things to go the way I want or expect. I am not sure where I got the idea that I know best but it creeps up still. When I lose sight of God as the one who sees all, knows all, and loves all, I think I need to step into manager mode. Unfortunately, manager mode can quickly escalate to drill sergeant mode and judge mode. Before I know it not only did my plan not succeed but I am an idiot for trying it and not knowing it would fail. If I am willing to withdraw my ideas of how things should go, I experience the presence of a power who knows more than me and welcomes whatever I might learn from any kind of trying, even trying my ideas. Withdrawing is not just about letting go of my ideas what should or should not happen in my life or the lives of others. It is about withdrawing from having to be the judge, juror, and executioner of reality. It allows for the process of life to flow and unfold revealing its beautiful lessons. Withdrawing my thinking is the most loving, gracious, powerful, and intelligent (sometimes being silly is a good place to start).
My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore what withdrawing our thinking from any given situation or experience might look like today.
Be About Sustaining!
Most of the discussion around spirituality seems to be centered on the explosive moments. The game changing experiences where we have a shift in consciousness. It is the result we are looking for in our meditation or the transcendent experience from a ceremony. These are all wonderful experiences stemming from a spiritual connection. God by nature is fabulous! Creation is magnificent and there is no reason to expect anything less. And yet, I find the mystery of the way God in the sustaining moments of a spiritual life. The times when showing up for the daily date with God in some quiet and focus on my breath is just there. I do not walk away feeling better or more peaceful but deep within me it touches upon my heart’s desire to connect. It is the living out of the desire that become the little aha which can be missed if I am looking for a big one. It reminds me of the writing of Thomas Merton often used as a prayer:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
