dailydatewithgod

We breathe in.  We breathe out.  There is day and then night, darkness and then light.  There is winter and then spring.  Nature, including our bodies, has within its design an active and a rest cycle.  Both are needed.  Our world spends most of the time focusing on the active part.  We get things done. We achieve goals.  We go out and make things and make things happen.  We are productive and therefore successful.  Yet catch anyone who did not get enough sleep and they can speak of how less productive they are able to be that day.  Rest is a necessary part of living.  We cannot simply keep going and being active.  Wrestling with the concept of rest has come to the forefront many times on my spiritual path.  I am so used to thinking of myself as a human doing that I easily forget I am a human being.  If I neglect to slow down once in a while I become robotic in nature and lack flexibility in mind, body, and spirit.  I suppose is part of the human struggle between the heart and the head.  Finding a place and space of rest for one’s mind is what allows for clarity and space to hear the messages of our heart and soul.  Rest is not always sleeping, it is the pausing, it is the letting go, it is the enjoyment, it is the relishing of life.  Just the other day, I was sitting outside eating lunch.  When I finished I continued to just sit there and enjoy the feeling of being outside before I rushed off to my next thing.  In that moment I saw a family pass by and share a special moment of recognition of the two mothers who were visiting as they were adorned with flowers.  It was so simple and yet so profound.  I notice a lot of these simple exchanges these days between people when I take the time to rest and be in the in between.  My daily prayer and meditation dates with God have taught me the power of resting in the moment, being present with myself and all that is happening in that moment.

We spend a large portion of our lives chasing after our goals.  We look for the thing or person or idea to obtain and when we have it we think we will be done.  The reality is we are so used to the chase that not long after getting what we want we are fixated on what we can chase after next.  What if we approached our spiritual life this way?  What doors might open up if we decided to chase our hearts?  What would our world view look like if we were chasing the presence of love in the moment?  It too would never be complete.  Maybe if we transposed our drive to chase after worldly ends to chasing after spiritual ends we would find beauty in the process.  Okay, messiness and anguish sometimes, but always as we make our way through, beauty.  It is our heart which speaks to us of the importance of the chasing being the process not the end goal.  It is the lessons we learn along the way, the acceptance we begin to practice, and the humility that arises from realizing we cannot control the outcome.  Some spiritual teachings would say not to work towards worldly goals or possessions as they ultimately will not provide what it is we are looking for.  I don’t think it means letting go of the chasing.  I think it is a call to re-frame it.  What if we utilized the chasing as a way to expand our hearts and minds in greater love?  What if the chasing brings us to a place of greater acceptance of others and ourselves?  In my experience, God uses everything for the good.  The good is about spiritual growth, about becoming more of our true selves as is already present in our hearts.  If we allow ourselves the chance to embrace the lessons of spirit in our chasing then we may receive fully all the gift of the process of a spiritual path.

Our bodies have these built-in ways of refreshing and renewing.  We notice it when we take a deep breath, stretch our bodies, cry tears, and rest our eyes.  The miraculous nature of these simple physical actions is they also are a cleansing for our spirit.  Within them is a pause when we calm our hearts and slow down for just a moment.  It gives spirit a chance to speak to us and bring us home to ourselves.  Our spirits long to be renewed by life and love.  When we surrender to the cleansing offered by our bodies we connect with ourselves and open up our hearts.  For me this is not apologizing for crying when I am touched by something or upset, not feeling weird about stretching outside of an exercise class or even just giving myself permission to stop and take a deep breath.  It seems silly when I look at it but those little ways in which I inadvertently make myself wrong for being a full human and spiritual being are like making my soul wrong.  God did not create a anything wrong in me or you.

My prayer for us is the courage to embrace the little cleansing and renewing properties of our humanness to create stronger connections to our spirit today.

When we use the faculty of choice in our lives we are acting from our true selves.  God gave us the capability to make decisions about how we want to see the world.  For a long time I thought I had no such faculty.  I viewed my life through the lens of a victim.  Yes, as a child I was the victim of incest, but I grew up.  There is nothing I can do to change that experience but I can use it to inform and build my faculty of choice.  I can continue to identify with that reality only or embrace the one I am in the present moment.  I can choose to accept God at her word when she tells me my true self was never harmed.  I have the faculty to believe when he whispers that even such a difficult circumstance can bring about the most trans formative experience.  My faculties include the ability to ask God, “Please help me see this differently,” when I am stuck in the myriad of difficulties of every day life and cannot see a way out.  The faculty of choice will never be taken from me as long as I am a child of God.  I may not always like my choices but they are within my power to make.

We live in a vibrant active world.  There are so many things going on, most of which we are not even aware of, but it can be overwhelming.  We have multiple senses operating simultaneously that pull in information and filter it.  Our brains are this magnificent machine assisting us in digesting the world in and outside of ourselves.  God calls us to moments of quietude where we can slow down and tune into our hearts.  On our daily prayer and meditation dates God and I spend quality time in quietude.  In the spaces of breath, the lack of movement of my body, and the resting of my attention on a focus to keep me present.  It is not a perfect scenario as sometimes my head is going a mile a minute about what I need to get done that day or what happened yesterday.  But I bring all of that and my heart into our date and present myself to my Creator exactly as I am.  In this space of quietude the first response I get from God is one of excitement.  God is always grateful that I showed up.  I downplay that importance and it has taken me a long time to be able to let that in.  It is so simple but if I was not willing to stay in the quietude no matter what I would never have been able to let that level of acceptance in.  It models for me how to greet the parts of myself I am not always glad to be made aware of or of others whom I rub elbows with on the path of life. The quietude becomes my teacher in the simplicity of creating space for love and light to be present in the moment.

The reality of love within you does not cease to exist simply because you are not aware of it.  No matter your understanding of God and the power of life and light, it is still fully present in full force within yourself. We are blinded by the vision of the world and look outside of ourselves for the love and the light.  God encourages us to take time in stillness to discover the light of love beaming from inside of ourselves.  What stops us is that we first encounter the dark and hardened layers we have placed on top of our hearts.  God is not dismayed by these because her vision allows her to always maintain the true vision of us.  We can engage God in helping us beam a light through the darkness if we are willing to ask.  Some feel unworthy to ask  or ashamed of what they have created.  God does not see unworthiness or shame.  He gladly steps up to help ignite the beam within us and illuminate the innocence we have buried deep within.  On my daily prayer and meditation dates I am reminded that God is always willing to help us ignite the beam of our hearts if we are willing to ask.

The power force of our lives is our breath. Unless we are breathing we will stop living. The miraculous element of our breath is its inherent nature. If you are alive, you are breathing even when you are not aware of it. Our ability to use this power force of life is in our conscious connection to it.  When we can use it to bring healing into our lives. Just think of the times you stopped and took a deep breath.  As you exhale your whole body begins to relax, tension in your muscles let go and you have a new freedom in your physical being. God designed life to be just that simple.  We can make time stop when we pause to take a breath. Any time we need to reconnect with our power we just take a deep breath, bring in new oxygen to our body and then release.

The flow of life moves in and through our whole being all the time. As long as we are breathing, we are engaged in the flux of life.  We have an opportunity to engage in the power of the flux when we choose to align ourselves with the force of life.  Often I find myself stuck and frustrated and it is invariably because I am fighting the natural flow of a situation or moment.  I have predetermined ideas about how something is supposed to go and I am wedded to my expectations.  My daily dates with God have given me the chance to surrender to the power of the flux of life.  There is little point in being so firm on my ideas of how God will show up in and through my life because my mind simply cannot come up with all the possibilities   Like most human beings I get stuck on the form.  This was not the day I wanted off of work because in my head it would be better to have tomorrow off.  By staying focused on the specifics I could potentially lose the value of having some free time.  Dealing the other people is challenging at times.  We all show up with our fixed ideas and they come into collision with one another.  The pause and breath I learn in my daily prayer and meditation time allows me to take a step back and see more of where others are coming from.  I can recognize that all is actually happening is two children of God attempting to interact with one another. When I remember to do that I am surrendering to the flux of life in the interchange of energy of love between two people.  God’s mind does not operate in fixed measures so the moment I find myself focusing only on the form and getting out of the flux, I can pause, take a breath, put my hand on my heart and ask God, “How do you see this?“

They are sparkling and expensive, treasured and admired. Gems invoke a sense of wonder and awe because they show us light in a magical way. Gems represent the gift of seeing things as God sees things.  She sees all of creation as a gem. He finds all that is sparkling and of great value. She sees how worthy all of life is and will always be. He never loses fascination with his work.  God wants us to experience the same gems sense of life. When we take a moment to pause, breathe in spirit, and connect with our hearts we can quickly align ourselves with the gem of our hearts. It is fascinating to notice how our heart is beating and keeping us alive without us doing anything. This is just the physical gem. Going deeper in a moment of meditation as I have learned to do on my daily dates with God allows me to connect with the energy flowing in and out of my heart.  In that space I can embrace the gems of my dark spaces and yours.

It takes courage to show up and choose life.  We are called by God to play in the game of life.  Sometimes we know or think we know the rules and other times we learn as we go.  It is our willingness to embark on the journey of the unknown path.  There are bound to be twists and turns, not to mention stops and starts we could not possibly anticipate no matter our plans. Our decision to trust ourselves as playing a valuable role in showing up in the moment planned or not is the point.  There was a time in my life when I would hold myself back from embarking on a journey because I could not see or believe in the destination.  I did not understand the point was to be on the journey, wherever it takes me. The times I willingly embarked physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually with my whole self is when I knew the least about the outcome.  All I knew was I felt so broken and any alternative had to be better. I had dug myself into a hole of misery and I needed my whole self to embark on the path out no matter where it took me.