dailydatewithgod

The western world has some clear expectations of what it means to be a success.  Every family and culture has a way of either directly or indirectly conveying the messages of what is acceptable and successful. Every where we turn there is yet another measurement that must be met to be considered successful.  Plus the notion that one is not successful is often defined as failure.  Where is the space for those who travel an unworn path?  Success in the world’s terms is based on what is known.  What if God has already deemed us successful?  What if the fact we are breathing means we are still here and therefore a success?  What if a day is spent not getting one item done on the to do list but many instances of looking people in the eye?  In our drive for success we have become so hyper-focused on outside circumstances as the measurement of success.  I like having degrees, job promotions, relationships, a nice car, and my opinions valued just as much as anyone.  The difficulty is that an outside measurement of success is very fleeting and highly dependent on context. Compared to someone living in rural India with no running water, I am hugely successful because I have a bathroom in my apartment.  Compared to someone living and owning a seven bedroom home on the Pacific coast I have failed to make my way out of my one bedroom rental in the San Fernando Valley.  Maybe our success is in our willingness to open our hearts a little bit more today than yesterday.  Perhaps we can acknowledge it is a successful day when despite feeling stressed and irritated because of lack of sleep we didn’t yell at anyone.  God’s view of success is growth and expansion of love.  God has complete expectation of success for all God’s creation because it is inherent in us to grow in love.  My simple prayer when I am stuck in the outer definitions of success or failure is “God, how do you see this?”

Our minds do this interesting thing where we project what we see.  It made be hard to imagine that what we are seeing is not in part our creation but just think about a time when you expected someone to behave a certain way and they behaved the opposite.  You may have found yourself responding the same way only to realize you were not actually responding to what they were doing in the present moment.  We are caught off-guard when someone smiles at us in the grocery store or there is a road blocked on our usual way to work and we have to find a different way.  In those moments we are being called into the present moment because the projection in our mind is of the past.  Last week in this grocery store no one looked at me and smiled and yesterday there were no problems getting to work.  Taking a different way is only a problem because it requires more brain power to be present.  It is as though the film in the movie theatre skipped a scene and now we are headed down a different path.  What if God was offering us a chance to learn from these experiences and choose our projections?  Perhaps it is an invitation to the unknown.  If we step away from our projections and step into God’s it would mean being present in the day and seeing the scenes unfold instead of going with the script we already know.  Imagine the number of new people we would meet even they are our friends and family because we don’t already know how they will behave.  Our minds create these projections as a safety factor so we will notice danger when it happens.  What if God is inviting us to trust that God keeps us safe, at our core we are never unsafe, and we can experiment with the projection of possibility.

It is easy for me to get stuck in thinking the solution to a problem or challenging situation is having the answer.  The longer I follow a spiritual path the more I realize the solution is in the inquiry.  It is the road I travel in my quest for a solution gathering pieces of information and interacting with others which teaches me what I need most.  I recognize it because when I come upon the solution it feels as though I knew it all along.  For some reason it was traveling the path of inquiry which allowed me to open up something within myself so I could hear the answer emerging from the quiet space within.  The heart does not speak as loudly as the mind.  God’s voice is the still small quiet one ever ready with the solution once our hearts have enough space to hold it with love.  In a world demanding reasons and explanations looking for the fastest way out of pain and suffering,  we leave little room for the inquiry.  With hindsight I am able to see the path of inquiry is exactly the solution needed to open my heart to experience the fullness of love.

I always found it curious how the Hebrew scriptures creation story tells us God rested on the 7th day. Why would God rest?  God is infinite power and potential and the very source of life.  I was never raised to take scripture literally but I do believe that all sacred scriptures use stories to convey messages of a way of being and thinking different from our human constructs.  I suppose I could take it the same way Orthodox Jews do and literally not do any kind of work on the 7th day.  But perhaps there is an even deeper message.  In this same story, God not only rested on the 7th day but also made a point of acknowledging goodness after each stage of creation.  The story says there was a break of night and then a new day brought time for more creation. It speaks of the ebb and flow inherent in all of nature including us.  The reasons we don’t rest in an accomplishment driven society is because we do not see its purpose when more can be created.  What if God was modeling the importance of rest not because it needed but because it allowed space for appreciation.  The rest time was a time of gratitude.  A chance to pause and look at all that was present and good in the day.  I don’t think God needed sleep out of exhaustion but rather wanted to allow space to revel in the beauty and intricacy of creation. God was showing us an essential part of creating is the restful time of appreciation that follows.

Our minds are a miraculous place of connections and imagination.  Within each neuron is a multitude of possibilities and creations.  The networks embedded in our minds is baffling.  Yet how many of us appreciate the awesome nature of what is going on inside of our heads?  Do our thoughts focus on it or merely on what we perceive about our outside world as a result of those connections?  God has designed us with mechanisms for health and vitality that flows from the systems maintained in our heads.  We are tasked with maintaining not only our physical health but also the perspective of our perception.  What thoughts do we let run wild inside our heads?  Do they build us up or break us down?  Most of us would not speak as poorly to a stranger as we do to ourselves.  God invites us to resonate with God’s thoughts which come from the core of who we are.  Perhaps it is not a matter of simply changing the thoughts inside our head but a chance to pause and connect the energy of our heart to influence our mind.  When we pause and breathe we get the chance to make the connection. Our breath is a fundamental factor in the functioning of our hearts and our minds.  The re-spiriting of life through respiration is our chance to direct and influence our thought life if we allow it.

I have heard many times that the most powerful prayer is Thank you.  I know my life began to change immeasurably for the better when I learned how to practice gratitude on a daily basis.  It is a leap of faith to be thankful for everything.  It calls upon us to have a trust in the ultimate plan and design of God.  It invites the opportunity for a greater vision beyond this moment all the while being focused on what one is grateful for in this moment.  It is a suspension of what is right and true according to the world and appreciating the delicate nature of life.  In any moment I can be thankful for the breath I am able to take which keeps me alive.  I can notice from that thought that I am grateful to be alive.  From there I can connect to being grateful for what my life looks like today versus 10 years ago.  I am then led into thankfulness for being able to have perspective and the ability to reflect on growth.  Next I find myself grateful that I am able to grow and learn from life.  The snowball element of thankfulness becomes a fuel to open our hearts and be evermore present to the profound simplicity of Thank you being another word for love.