dailydatewithgod

The gift of this life is that there is so much to it and yet it is so simple.  We are multifaceted and layers of energy and limitless beings.  That is all captured in a physical body and a brain mind.  But truly our spirit is so much more than our physical space that we inhabit on this planet.  There is a reason that spiritual experiences often feel like out-of-body experiences.  They are out-of-body because they connect us with the greater energy network of which we are an integral part.  So no matter what is going on, there is always something somewhere to be glad about.  Gratitude is the portal to aligning our thinking and being with God and with the love from which we were created.  It is the quickest route back to a place of acceptance and recognition of our nature and the truth of those around us, even those who hurt, confuse, betray, and irritate us.  Gratitude keeps us in the now. When we pause with our breath to acknowledge something that we are grateful for we shift our thinking from focusing just on the physical reality and extend ourselves outside our bodies and minds.  My prayer for us today is that we take one of our breaths and use it as a reminder to focus on something to be glad about and make use of the power of gratitude to realign ourselves with love (God).  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Forgiveness is letting go of the idea that the past should have been different. It is the ultimate level of acceptance that allows our hearts to become whole and supple again.  There are many people who I have learned how to forgive over the years and every time I realized that it was only my own heart and spirit that were hindered when I was in a state of non-forgiving.  It has been my experience that like most things spiritual, forgiveness is a process.  I had to learn to be patient and loving with myself in the process of letting go little by little.  Some things my ego just wanted to hold on to for mere familiarity, if nothing else.  It was only when I put my hand in God’s and trusted that the vision God had for my heart did not include any chains on it.  Forgiveness is about giving.  Giving one’s heart the opportunity to be fully open to the power of love.  It is choosing that the circumstances will no longer determine my capacity to love.  It is recognizing that my heart is for giving away love not keeping it from others and myself.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to the power of forgiveness in the smallest form so that we can experience the heart lift that comes from turning our heart to God to be freed of our chains of expectation.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Each day that we awaken with a new breath to take God renews his promise. God reminds us that we are given life and should we choose to accept this mission a full day of possibility lies ahead of us.  When we take in that breath and make those first steps, we are choosing how to take that gift of life and spend it.  God will not make the choices for us but God can be there, if we invite him, to walk the steps that are in front of us with each new moment, each new breath.  In the beginning we may be uncertain and rely on others to point out what to choose, where to go, what to say.  But growing into maturity means owning our own choices and making our own decisions.  We are not victims of circumstance, we are co-creators of our lives.  We can choose to create from an awareness or a default program, the choice is ours.  God supports us and sees us for our greatest potential no matter what we choose.  That is because God is Love.  God will not see us for our mistakes as more than the essence of who we are.  But with God’s help we can choose to stand in the light and be who we truly are with courage.  It is not the world that renews its promise of life, it is God.  God invites us to play an active role in that renewal.  My prayer for us today is that we recognize the many ways that God shows us throughout the day that over and over again, we are chosen.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience.  Our hearts and spirits manifest in a sometimes non-physical manner in order to provide the physical experience that our soul has called us to return us to the knowledge of our wholeness.  Our ego spends a lot of time and energy invested in the story of our separateness and brokenness. and much of the world supports this same theory.  Just pick up any magazine or listen to a conversation while standing in line somewhere–it is often about what is wrong with fill-in-the-blank.  This is part of our survival mechanism.  Our brains look for what is wrong to avoid impending danger.  When we lived in caves and whether or not we lived or died was a day-to-day event, this makes sense.  However, most of the threats to our survival don’t actually threaten us on a life or death level today.  If we are willing to recognize that we are in existence on a plane in which the All Powerful is in charge and nothing that happens can undo what God has created, then everything that happens is an opportunity to grow in love.  A lesson to return us to the memory of the knowledge of our true spirit, our oneness with God, our oneness with love.  If we are relating it on a strictly physical level then it is about the content.  My prayer for us today is that with each breath we connect with our spirit and thus the Great Spirit and remember who we are and why we are here in this moment. Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

The profoundness of sound is amazing!  I have always been an aficionado of music.  All kinds.  As a dancer I have learned to appreciate the subtleties of the nuances of music that are built into the design of how it flows.  I do not play any instruments nor do I sing (at least not on key unless I have trained my voice) but the ability to move with music is something I know that comes from God.  I am moved by music and music moves through me.  It is as though I can sense the life force in the vibration of the sound waves.  I know that studies have been done that show how music can shift our moods and even enhance brain activity. The auditory cortex processes sound in our brain but music has been shown to activate memory, emotional, and other sections of the brain.  The beauty of life is that music does not just exist in literal form of songs and chords, it is in all of life.  Everything has a rhythm, everything has a sound wave that can be combined with something and thus we experience the soundtrack of our lives.  In the film August Rush, the character Wizard says, ” You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.”  My prayer for us today is that we be open to listening to the music all around us and breathe in how it connects us to God and all living beings.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

A couple of days ago the season of Lent started.  In the Catholic Christian tradition this is a simpler time of pulling away some of the excesses and taking some time to quietly spend with God.  People will often give things up, or take on things like prayer practices or service of some kind.  There are some days of fasting and abstinence from certain foods, churches everywhere will have stations of the cross activities or extra meditation sessions.  Again this is all designed to draw us closer to the heart of God.  Some might begrudge Lent as the dark time or the time when things are not fun.  But what could be more fun that a time dedicated to drawing closer in our hearts to the one who loves us more than anything?  What could be more joyous than stripping away the extra layers of our ego identity to draw closer to the Great Creator who wants us to know the Love that we are and were created from?  It is a time to rest closely in the experience and the knowledge of our hearts that God is who God says He is and we need not work so hard.  My prayer for us today is that we recognize a time in our day when we can rest in the heart knowledge of the love that we are and take a deep breath.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

In our mind’s eyes resides an understanding that what we are seeing with our physical eyes is not all there is.  It is as though the spirit communicates itself even through out thick skull.  The reality of our Creator is that what is now is all there is.  We like to hang out in the conversation of shoulds and wants.  It is called fighting reality.  When we get caught up in this cycle we find ourselves restless, irritable, and discontent because we are in a space of lack of acceptance.  If I am aligned with God and God’s love for me, then I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and I am taken care of no matter what happens. This for me has been the maturity of my faith in God.  I am no longer looking for God to swoop in and rescue me (most of the time) from my current circumstances.  I only expect to not be experiencing them on my own.  I long to be shown where love is in this and what I can learn from it.  When I am not worried about my safety or protecting my heart, I can be open to being the messenger of love that is needed in the right here and now.  Acceptance is not always easy for me.  Sometimes I have to start smaller by accepting that I don’t accept whatever it is.  That buys me some time, so to speak, to get reconnected with who I truly am. Then I remember that what is happening outside of me does not change who I am from the inside out.  The only reality I need to be conscious of is that God is in charge and God loves me.  My prayer for us today is that we look to what we can accept about reality or accept that we don’t accept it and seek God.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

There is a time of sound, there is a time of silence just like there is a time to inhale and a time to exhale.  The exhale is not less important , both are equally important even though they serve different functions.  In times of silence we can experience the beauty of the in between.  In a results oriented world this is often not valued but I have learned to look beyond the world’s expectations.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t fall under the spell of thinking that world the has to offer is all there is, I just spend a little less time in that frame of mind.  Spending time with God, a part of which is in silence, each day has taught me that all that I seek from a world full of sound actually resides in my own heart.  In a time of silence I am able to notice and become better acquainted with that heart.  My prayer for us today is that we ask God for the courage to be with silence for just a moment this day and each day so that we can become familiar with what God loves about us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

When life is lived simply there is a clarity that exists.  There is a sense of peace and balance that envelopes one when they are clear on who they are and what their role is.  God is always clear and unwavering in knowing who God is.  When we are aligned with how God sees us we experience the freedom of being.  There is no one to please, nothing to fix, and no place to be but the moment.  Clarity is truth and it surpasses the physical experience because it is much more than that.  Some people talk about it as knowing one’s purpose in the world.  There are many ways to describe it but the space of being is one that is not easily shaken.  For so much of my life I thought I had to prove my existence, explain my behavior, and give justifications.  My mind was full of reasons and excuses that I thought for sure I needed to have ready because you were going to question me.  And to question me made me uncomfortable because it put me in touch with the fact that I questioned me all the time.  What I now understand is that God never asked me to explain myself.  God knows exactly who I am and why I am here because it is part of His design.  I am invited to take a look at things when I am off the mark.  Usually the explanation is that I lost sight of my purpose, or forgot that the purpose was love, or that love would be the answer in that particular situation.  Time with God brings that clarity because I am aligning myself with the truth of who I am from my Creator’s eyes.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to getting in touch with that clarity (God) and experiencing the peace of everything else falling away.  Make it a great one! Peace~Colleen

God is magnificent and All That Is. Being in All and through All, God does not need to show up and make lots of noise.  God can be discovered in and through everything that we think, experience, feel, and create.  God is never to hard to find if love is what we are looking for.  This gentleness of being allows for the miraculous to occur effortlessly.  God’s answer to our troubles is always rest in me.  God brings a gentle reminder of who we truly are in the midst of the chaos of our lives.  God does not bang us over the head with it because God never stops recognizing and acknowledging that which God created.  We are the ones who forget and need to be reminded.  Being banged on the head seems to cause more forgetfulness than be gently whispered to in the ear.  We think because the world makes lots of noise in getting things done that God must work the same way.  But that would be making God only human.  My prayer for us today is that we be willing to look for an experience of gentle reminders of who we are out coming out from the loud noise of our human experience today and see the face of God.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen