dailydatewithgod

As we head into the end of the calendar year there is lots of discussion about what a rough year it has been individually and on a global level.  Since this is the only pandemic I have experienced in my lifetime I do not know the course of these things.  I only know based on the experiences in my life that most things do not follow the same kind of calendar that is on my computer. I am all for the hope that things will change and move in a better direction as we head into a new year.  This time of year as we head into a new season (in the northern hemisphere it is winter) we recognize we are at the cusp of a potential fresh start.  There are thoughts of what to let go of and what to carry with us into the new season or calendar year.  I can’t say I am for the idea of the pandemic continuing but I somehow think it will not resolve itself overnight.  In recovery, I learned and practice to the best of my ability the philosophy of One Day At A Time.  In truth, it is all we have.  The reality is each day we stand at the cusp of stepping into a new experience.  We know it will hold change and possibility and some of the same as the day before.  We get to choose at the cusp how we want to be with whatever shows up. It is the same as we close one year and enter another.  The cusp is simply a demarkation reminding us of our power to choose and create our experience whether it is a moment, a day, or a year.  I do not know what will come with 2021 but as I stand at the cusp of it I pause and reflect on who I have shown myself to be in 2020.  I want to bring what I have learned about love with me and use it as fuel to make choices in 2021.  I will ask God to help me let go of my ways of being that have pushed love away in 2020 and the courage to embrace the humility that comes with a desire to love more fully.  The cusp of a new year is an opportunity to reflect and remind ourselves we stand at choice every moment of our lives especially the ones that cannot be measured by the time clock.

In a world where we are seized with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), it seems inconceivable that there are certain things we might choose to waive. It becomes a question of are we participating because something is available to us or because it is something we want to be available for. Just because we can participate does not mean it is for us. When we experience FOMO it serves as an opportunity to evaluate what the fear is really about. Most of the time our fears are not what they seem. By utilizing our capacity for mindful observation and curiosity, we can consider waiving our participation and see what surfaces. So often we rush to get rid of the fear that comes up instead of looking to the man behind the curtain, so to speak. We so quickly jump in and participate because we take the fear at face value. Knowing we have the option to waive our participation gives us the pause to determine whether or not we might actually want to wave goodbye to the experience. God encourages us to remember that whatever thinking and feelings are present in our reactions, they are indications of an energy fluctuation. Our level of energy fluctuation tells us something about ourselves. It is why life is about the process, not the content. We can waive the content but make use of the process by pausing to connect within and remember we are not slaves to our fears.

We tend to operate under the misconceived notion that because we do not think we are affected by something we are not. Given our mind’s propensity to already be on guard for what we knowingly perceive as potentially survival threatening concerns, we would be overloaded. The thing is so many effects of life are registered elsewhere. It is the ones that when we engage in the conversation with our mind about it, it is puzzling so we push it aside. Unless we have the awareness to acknowledge the effects that circumvent our cognitive understanding we can talk ourselves out of it. Taken to the other extreme we can believe we are affected on a deeper level than we are by everything. God invites us to recognize how we are designed. We are picking up on signals and we have a response to them. Most of those responses are automatic and we do not have to think about them. It is a brilliant design so we do not go into cognitive overload. When we experience things we cannot make sense of in our minds our nervous system will take over. Then there are times when no one around us or people whom we hold in authority cannot validate the effects we are experiencing because it is different from them. All of these factors combine to create a dynamic of how we interpret and put meaning in our minds to the various effects of what it means to be alive. Many of us have spent a fair amount of time talking ourselves out of the reality of an effect because there was no one to help us register it. When those patterns are made automatic we may find ourselves reacting to the effect of something as though it is affecting us more than it is in this moment. Our reaction is based on the reality of the past. Any time we have caught ourselves saying we swore we would not do that again or act like so and so, we are at the effect of some unrecognized effects. I am guilty of all those things and on my daily dates with God as I became aware of which effects I was handling as though I was affected by them at a different time, I learned to be in the life I am living today. Part of maturity is allowing ourselves the space to pause and connect to determine what effects of life are affecting us and then decide how to handle it. Making room to process the effects we are affected by and differentiating them from past experiences is what allows us to be with whatever we are affected by from a place of truth rather than the default mode. It is step by step, sometimes inch by inch work but its effects are the joys of getting to experience life as it is happening right now. It is this skill that allows me to approach the effects of life from a place of curiosity instead of fear.

I used to think that I would know that I was victorious in some endeavor because others would notice and acknowledge me. I have come to realize that what simply another way of me seeking approval from others. The real triumph is when I become aware of overcoming or growing through something. It is less like a parade and more like a bump in energy from within when I notice a change in my thinking and behavior. The grand triumph is simply an accumulation of many little victories, mostly unnoticed, along the way. Going through a stressful day without turning it into a reason to count all the ways I messed up is a triumph. When I refrain from reacting and decided to take a deep breath is a triumph. When I find the story in my head wants to go on and on about how I can’t do it and I counter by listing for myself all the things I am doing, it is a triumph. When my head hits the pillow and I did not spend my day driving around for my next sugar hit, it is a triumph. When I can feel all there is to feel and know I am not defined by it or have to act from it, it is a triumph. We are so much more than what we think, feel, and do. God invites us to pause and notice how we are being at any given moment and when we do it is a triumph. It may sound impersonal and distant, but on the contrary, it opens up the space of our hearts which holds the knowledge of the truth of who we are and what we are capable of outside of what our mind is chattering about. Life is wacky, messy, beautiful, alarming, challenging, and a catalyst for us to discover who we are outside of our stories and the stories of others. Each day is different if we let it surprise us and the triumph for me today will be the number of times I remembered not to take myself so seriously.

It may sound strange to think of yourself as your own science experiment but that is so much of what living is all about. We set out with some set understandings of how things (meaning we as human beings) operate in the reality of the world as it is generally accepted. From there we learn through trial and error what adds to our livelihood and what deters us from it. Because we are each our own person as much as we are the typical human animal, we both experience and express ourselves in unique ways. We are all created to be a messenger of God’s love. How we do that correlates to the gifts we are given, what we are drawn to, and what makes us come alive. Only when we experiment with what is provided to us and then chart our own course we will truly know the correlation of what enables us to come alive. Life’s twists and turns especially the ones which cause us to veer away from the expected or standard are how we learn who we truly are. The correlation between being good rule followers and being normal and being the fullest expression of ourselves may not exist. We start with what is accepted and known. We learn and grow by experimenting with coloring outside the lines and engaging in the unexpected. It is the very process of life that invites us to determine our own correlations between what increases our capacity and capability to be the truth of who we are what does not.

There used to be this commercial of a woman who in the middle of a stressful situation would picture herself in a bubble bath and say “Calgon, take me away!” We can all relate to the wish to sometimes be plucked magically from someplace we do not want to be and placed somewhere we do. We tend to associate the circumstances with the cause of our distress. The only problem with that is on any given day we may find ourselves in a similar situation and feel like we can handle it, no Calgon needed. Our interpretation of what is happening is caused by our state of mind. When I feel like I do not have the resources to handle an experience, I will look for some kind of rescue. I have never been partial to baths per se but I can see the appeal of being surrounded by warmth and sweet-smelling scents. The sweet was my rescue of choice for many many years. The reality is I did not have the tools I needed to face life effectively. The spiritual path of the 12 steps contained the tools needed to face life on life’s terms as they say in the recovery world. On my daily dates with God as I began to see the truth of who I am, I realized the futility of looking for rescue at all. Sure, there are moments when I think if only God could rescue me from this. I get stuck thinking I do not have what is needed to handle the situation. The distinction is I do not turn to food or flagellating myself with negative self-talk anymore. I recognize my desire to be rescued and take a deep breath. I reconnect to the power of my heart which has the wisdom and the courage to face what is in front of me to face. By pausing and using my breath to awaken my heart, there is a space between thinking a rescue will make everything alright and noticing what it truly is I want to be rescued from. Is it really the situation or is it my thinking about the situation? In the space of my heart is the wisdom to notice if I am actually in the present moment. Most of the time I am not seeking rescue from this moment but from a time in the past where something similar did not turn out well and I am using that to forecast a future that will not go well. Or I am doing the bad forecasting without any past evidence. When I breathe I can more clearly see that if I do not have what is needed, I do not need to be rescued, but maybe need some support. Maybe what is called for is reinforcement, not rescue.

As human beings, we are very adaptive.  It is essential for our survival that we know how to flex around the realities of life.  It is so interesting the degree to which we become fixed in our minds.  When we are in the mode of adaptation, we can make adjustments as we go.  The moment the adaptation becomes an adaptive way of being, we are less flexible.  It is why the interplay between the heart and mind is so essential.  Our hearts are in a fluid mode of adaptation because to become fixed would mean we stop breathing and allowing the energy of life to flow through us.  When we use the power of adaptation in our minds to notice what has made our hearts increase or decrease their variability, we are using the systems of our being in an interrelated fashion to be in the flow of life.  The observation becomes the vehicle through which we use our system of adaptation for our benefit instead of being used by it. We respond to life rather than react to it. God invites us to acknowledge the power of adaptation as something we can use to keep ourselves present in the flow of witnessing the beauty of reality as it is happening.

It seems that the process of maturing into adulthood requires one to find their voice.  Whether it was implied or there were explicit experiences, most children learn quickly that there are limits to their self-expression.  Early on we gather information by watching adults about what it is okay to speak up about and what is not.  It is how we learn to function in our family and society.  There is no right or wrong to this, it makes sense that there are structures and acceptable ways of behaving to belong. On one hand, this means we participate in tacit approval.  On the other hand, it means there are likely tacit elements of who we are which are not voiced or expressed.  God invites us to listen in to the tacit and discover a part of ourselves.  Perhaps we took the need to be silent and slapped on the meaning that what we had within us to express was wrong or bad.  Perhaps we took the tacit agreement to drive ourselves by the need to continually seek the approval of others and thus sacrificed part of ourselves.  Perhaps because of the tacit agreement, we convinced ourselves we did not actually think and feel the way we did.  Whatever form it took, it is not too late to invite those elements to come forward.  They may not need to be expressed to the outside world, but our hearts long to hear the tacit come to life through the recognition of its role in the whole of who we are.  The tacit if given voice in our hearts to ourselves means it no longer has to fester in the shadows. Making peace with what has been tacit is part of the process of maturing.  Maturing from someone who simply follows the rules of society and family and someone who knows through the whole of who they which tacit agreements of society and family are in alignment with them and can be expressed with integrity.

It is almost incomprehensible the degree to which we are often the cause of our own suffering. In my experience, my suffering is less related to actual physical or emotional pain and more connected to the meaning and story I create out of what I am experiencing. It is not as though any of us set out to create stories and meaning that will cause suffering. We simply fall prey to the machinations of our minds automation and forget to keep it in check. Based on our need to survive our minds will create any construct which ensures our survival. As long as the system is still operating, survival will sign off on it. Given the number of potential obstacles to survival, our minds are on guard for anything that has a hint of threat. God encourages us to use the system of our heart and breath to take it down a notch. Using our breath to bring our minds into a state of awareness is what can chip away at the perceived immediacy of a threat. When it comes to the distinction between something that is actually happening and our perception of that happening as being a threat we need the energy of our hearts to have the courage to face the reality. Rest assured if we are in a real place of threat, our bodies will jump into action. If upon reflection we recognize that the action is not warranted we can notice that we are reacting to a perceived threat that is not actually present in the moment we are reacting. Maybe it is from the past or maybe it is from a projected future. The notch we are invited to use to bring us back to the present moment is our breath. It seems too simple but in actuality, it is a game-changing notch towards responding authentically to reality. I am not sure about you, but whenever I fight reality, I lose. There are may be many notches needed to slowly deescalate from reacting but it starts with our breath and introducing our heart’s energy into the equation. It is the notch that allows us to open up a deep relationship with the spirit of life that moves in and out of us all the time.

We easily get swept away by what we see. We figure if we are seeing it, it is all there is to see. We lose sight of the fact that what we see or what we think we see is based on what filters we have. We do not intentionally blind ourselves but it is inevitable. Often times what we are seeing is merely an insinuation of what is happening. We are only getting a hint of the full picture. We cannot see all things from all angles. We cannot know all the ingredients seen and unseen that are mixed into what is showing itself to us in this moment. The subtlety involved in what we see from moment to moment flies in the face of what we often determine is a fact. A defeatist way to approach this would to not put any value on what we see. God encourages us to pay attention to the insinuation before us by noticing what it creates within us. What ideas are conjured up in our minds because of the insinuation? What feelings are moving in our bodies because of the insinuation? Are our hearts beating fast or slow? Do we find the insinuation causes us to tighten our breath and have more ease? There is no specific value to an insinuation, only the story we create around it based not on what our eyes are seeing but on what the whole of us is making out of being present with it. There is value in what we see, there is greater value in what the insinuation showing us about what is happening within us.