dailydatewithgod

Sometimes I feel like I am walking around in opposite day. Some of you may remember a game we used to play at kids where we would declare that it was opposite day. I am not sure how much thought if any there was put into it as I recall it was mostly about being contradictory in everything that we said and did. There was something fun about saying one thing and doing the complete opposite or saying and doing things you would not normally do. In the adult world, in general, a mismatch between words and actions is a lack of integrity and someone who is acting in a completely opposite manner than normal is having an off day. Integrity is a highly valued character trait in my book and I have worked intentionally to create a life as a person of integrity. Another angle on this idea, however, is from the lens of polarity. It is a known fact of physical science that we live in a world of polarity. When kids play opposite day they are experimenting in those polarities. As adults, we lose sight of the value of this kind of play. What would it be like to hold a completely opposite opinion of someone or something? What could happen if we decided to believe the opposite version of a story we create about a given person or situation in our day? Understandably, it would be uncomfortable. Only uncomfortable because we have gotten so used to our lens and our perspective that we have forgotten the complete opposite is always in existence. Instead of assuming it is wrong or bad, if we chose to play in the polarity of it, we might discover more of what it is about. God encourages us to learn and grow and play because it is the purpose of being alive. Finding creative ways to exist in the polarity of life is only confrontational to us if we have forgotten what the point of life is all about. Choosing a creative approach instead of a fearful approach to polarity will open the eyes of our minds and hearts to another side that we have left out of the full picture of life.

We can endeavor to move forward whether we believe we have what it takes to get there or not. The simplicity of taking action creates the necessary propulsion. The very nature of taking action of any kind gets us into motion. It how we use that action and what we allow to drive it that brings us to the end result. We can be propelled by our mind’s ideas, our heart’s intention, or our body’s needs. Most of the time it is a combination of them all. God encourages us to play an active role in generating intentional propulsion to create a life reflecting the truth of who we are. It means learning to notice how our mind works, understanding the functions of our body and identifying the inner landscape of our hearts. We are whole people and while we often allow the propulsion to move us based on defaulted systems, we can at any moment take creative control. I can allow my mind’s stories about why this situation is happening at work and why I am irritated all the while propelling my heart into a closed and hovered space prompting my body to slouch and my energy to recede. Most likely I will until I decide it would be a more creative use of my energy to notice that what is happening is for my learning and not because life is out to make things difficult for me. One thing about living a life soberly is there is no one left to blame and because of my daily dates with God, I learned there is not much point in blame. It may be handy but not fruitful. All it seems to garner is the propulsion of more victimhood. I played that role for a long time because it was the default one. When I woke up and reconnected with my heart, I began to form a picture of a life that propelled me into a realm of understanding and acceptance. The gift is a willingness to see when I have managed to propel myself back into that mode and turning on my creativity which shows me how to use the propulsion of my very being how to get up and out.

If there is one thing I have learned more in the last year is the value of tenderness and mercy. Both when it comes to others and myself I find that I am best able to practice clemency when I step out of the context and notice the process I am in. The subject matter, the situation at hand or the story I am making up in my head as to why something is happening surprisingly is of little interest to my heart. When I pause, take a breath and step back to take in all of what is going on the lens of my heart can step in. It is easy for me to get caught up in my head about what is supposed to be happening but after many years of trying my best, I cannot fight reality. At any given moment I am where I am. Regardless of what I think about it, it is where I am. No amount of shoulding on myself or the situation ever changed it. The lens of clemency my heart shows me in the moments where my head wants to show me what is not okay about what is makes it easier to breathe. We have all found ourselves in moments facing things we never thought would happen or reacting in a way outside of our comfort zone. The heart’s creative level of clemency in those very times is indispensable. It is the space of tenderness that is foreign to the mind right up until the message of clemency reaches up from our hearts and casts the light of mercy and allows it to fall gently upon the scene. It is hard to believe the road to access the clemency within our hearts begins with a simple breath.

One of the ways that we keep growing as human beings are through new experiences. When we come across something that does not fit our template of known information or experience our brain has to find a way to either incorporate it or disregard it. However, the longer we live the more things are simply absorbed into the known or close enough to qualify as a known category that we do not experience as a novelty. God invites us to practice interrupting our default mode of categorization and creating novelty. When we pause and take a breath, we can look at someone or something again. We can ask ourselves, what is here that I have not seen before. We have the capacity before walking into a conversation with a familiar person to remind ourselves to listen more than we speak or let go of whatever fixed ideas we might have about the conversation’s outcome. Doing this opens up the eyes of our hearts to show us something our fixed mind may be blind to. We can grow from an interaction we might be dreading. We can be surprised by all the novelty that surrounds us when we allow ourselves to be creative with the familiar.

On some level, it seems unfortunate that it is only when we face adversity or challenge do we get a sense of who we are. It only seems that way because it appears paradoxical. Why couldn’t we the whole spectrum of ourselves through an internal lens of awareness? Who says we don’t? Who says that it is not in fact that internal awareness which moves us to walk into and face those very challenges? As far as I can tell if there is nothing else true about life it is that it is meant to be lived. All of it. Not just the good or fun stuff. The hard stuff, the ugly, the frightening stuff, and so much more. As someone who was busy numbing out the pain of life for many years, it seemed as though life was something to get through. Early on it got wonky and I was hurt profoundly. In my child’s mind, I took that to mean I best be on guard and there was little room for anything else. Thankfully, the spirit of life within me would not listen to my mind as the sole authority. Underneath the bruising breathed a heart that was untarnished by life’s circumstances. Every now and then it would sneak out and catch me by surprise. The surprises served as evidence that perhaps there was more to life than I could conceive in my own mind. Within each of us lies a strength supported by the universal imperative of life to keep going. It uses the energy of our hearts to propel us forward in the very challenging moments we think we can’t go on. I remember times when I wanted it all to just end and quickly, yet there I was still breathing. What is that? I could not deny that clearly, my heart contained a level of creative thinking about the purpose of life which laid outside my mind’s eye. When I was most broken down and found myself in recovery. It was a moment of reckoning with the fact that I could not continue on with what I was doing and had no idea what other options there were. Thankfully in the rooms of 12 steps, I found a community of people with like-minded hearts. People who could show me based on their experience what they had done when despite their best efforts their hearts kept pumping and moving forward to face whatever challenges and joys would lie ahead. God invites each of us to tap into the creative strength of our hearts when our minds appear to be tapped out of ideas on how to take the next indicated step. It just takes one breath to shift our mind’s eye to an awareness of the presence of our hearts which hold the key.

It is not until we step into action that we can fully know which things challenge us. Sure there are challenging ideas and we can know or sense something that may be difficult but we do not actually know until we attempt it. When the ideas are put into action we need to step into them with our full being.  We are involved as a body, mind, and soul.  Our whole nervous system is on board, or at least we determine how much of our whole system is involved. There are times when we take action on something we think will be easy or familiar only to discover there is internal resistance.  Part of who we are on some level finds whatever we are involved in as challenging. When we notice the resistance we may back down and not even realize it is happening.  We get distracted, we are not willing to schedule the time needed to make sure it is completed, we feel sleepy, or we forget altogether.  We manage to take the energy needed to face whatever it is within us that is asking us to pay attention by leaning on outside circumstances to create excuses.  This is not because we are weak people or defiant, or cowardly. It is because we have yet to discover the truth of who we are at our core.  We have the courage within us to face whatever it is.  We just get surprised by what fear or resistance looks like because we imagine it to make sense all the time.  We compare ourselves to others and think we need to justify what is coming up for us.  God invites us to notice what kinds of challenges are calling on the creativity and courage of our hearts to show up to our lives.  It does not matter that it is the same or different for others.  It is about the process, not the content.  When we notice others showing up courageously in their lives, we can trust that we have that same capacity (process) within ourselves.

The good news is no wrapping paper or bows are required. The good news is we are much more generous than we realize. When it comes to giving we are only limited by our mind’s idea of what qualifies as a gift. It may seem silly or an overstepping of a boundary, but gifts are regularly exchanged one moment to the next. The moment we are in is a gift, that is why it is called the present. What we say to others is a gift. What we hear from others is a gift. What we learn is a gift. What we teach is a gift. What we notice is a gift. What we don’t see is a gift. God invites us to expand our creative understanding of what qualifies as a gift. Our very being is a gift given to us by the essence of life itself. Every moment that we exchange energy a gift is given and received. The question is what kinds of gifts are we giving and receiving? The deeper question is what kinds of gifts do we want to be giving and receiving? We all have had the experience of getting a gift (the kind with wrapping paper and a bow) that we did not want. At that moment, we can choose to accept or reject it. Perhaps we chose to accept the gift of the intention of the person who gave it to us but not keep the actual item. Or perhaps we kept the actual item but dismissed the intention of the person who gave it to us. The same occurs in gifts that do not contain wrapping paper. This morning on my walk, I received the gift of light given by the sun and marveled in it as it lit my path through the neighborhood. When I came to work I gave a coworker the gift of my attention when I paused to receive his answer to my question about how he was doing. I could have chosen to withhold the gift of my attention and give myself the gift of getting my self-composure before engaging with others. The continual presence and exchange of gifts that happen are astounding. All gifts ask of us are the willingness to open the eyes of our hearts and view their presence through the lens of our hearts.

One of the more frustrating entanglements encountered in human relations is around the concept of sight. How often do we find ourselves baffled either by what someone else is either seeing that we are not or we are seeing that they are not? How many times do we find ourselves not able to sight something we know we have seen? How frequently do we hear the colloquialism that we would not have seen something even if it punched us in the face? It can be the angle from which we are looking or the lens through which we are perceiving that blocks our sight. The fascinating layers of understanding around the idea of sight don’t even touch on the physical elements composed of what it means to actually see something. Then add into the equation that we equate seeing with understanding. Moving from sight to comprehension can be a big leap. Some of my common prayers are: “God how do you see this? God, what am I not seeing? God, show me where my sight is blocked in this situation? God, if this (fill-in-the-blank) is not in your sights for me, show me what is. God, I can see this with my eyes but the sight of my heart is having a hard time allowing it to be true or real. Sometimes all we need is a willingness to extend the range of our vision. From there we can pick up the sights we are not seeing or not willing to see. It is humbling to acknowledge where our sight is blocked because we are only looking with our eyes. God invites us to keep in our sights what is in the range of our hearts. The sight from the heart is not about the physical act of seeing, it is about the recognition of the vibrational quality of something both outside and within us. Developing the attunement in our hearts allows us to hold space for what we and those with whom we interact can and cannot see. The sight of our hearts becomes an invitation to open up to the creative interactions called for in our relationships with others and ourselves.

An enumerable number of people have shared the following sentiment about courage:  “Courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to go forward anyway.”  I find it curious that one of the most common phrases in the bible which is compromised of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is about fear:  “Be Not Afraid”, “Fear Not”, etc.  It also repeats that we are not given a spirit of fear.  So why would we be able to fear?   Clearly, it is not useless otherwise it would not be a built-in element of who we are as human beings. While this will most likely be on the top of my list of questions for God, until or if I get an answer we must all contend with how to approach fear.  Like most things, making it bad or wrong or trying to get rid of it have proved futile, at least for me.  God calls us first to recognize when we have taken the element of fear and used it to color our perspective.  In my experience, anything that takes precedent in my mindset besides love will ultimately not go well. We are designed to be the beacon of God’s message of the presence of love in the world.  How can we do that if we are circling the drain overwhelmed by fears?  And yet there are many things to be worried, fearful, or anxious about in the world so it cannot be about pretending.  God invites me on our daily dates to look at fear through the lens of courage.  Courage comes from the heart.  It is about strengthening our connection to the love which is always present within us.  When my mind is occupied by thoughts of fear I can notice that I have disconnected the pipeline to my heart.  Sometimes the most courageous thing I can do is just own up to what I am fearing.  “God, this fear is looping through my mind and I am convinced no amount of love from any source can stand up to it, help.”  From the space of honesty and humility, we can put our fears in the line of sight of courage and marshal whatever resources necessary to allow our eyes to be opened up to the courageous power of love that is alive within us.

If your mind is anything like mine, you can spend hours trying to figure things out. It is an essential part of who we are to want to make sense of ourselves and the world. It brings a sense of peace to feel like we know and understand. It can be unsettling when we are left to figure things out but it is what drives us to keep moving forward. Often there are experiences where we find ourselves still lost even after hours and hours of figuring. It is in those frustrating moments when we must humbly admit we are at a loss. The potential for a level of frustration to cause a sense of defeat or hopelessness is real. God invites us in those moments when we recognize no amount of figuring out is going to serve us any longer that perhaps it is an invitation for configuration. What looks like a moment to give up is simply an opportunity to bring in other elements of ourselves that we have left out of the figuring. What if we bring the problem to our hearts? What if we ask someone else what in us they think will help us figure it out? When we get frustrated by our lack of figuring that enables a solution is only smoke and mirrors over our spirit’s desire to bring more of the full configuration of our whole selves to the table. All it takes is a moment to pause, take a deep breath, and look up from the narrow-focused road of figuring it out. The creative capacity within us is endless and will lead us to open up to the configurations within ourselves when we step outside the limits of what our mind can figure out. The configuration of our heart will give us the courage to face whatever roadblocks our mind puts up including the stories about how it is time to give up. The configuration of our spirit will lead us to find the light of life in nooks and crannies we never knew existed within us. God knows we are beings meant for growth and most of our growth comes when we embark on a different configuration to figure out what is in front of us that is calling us to show up as the truth of who we are in this moment.