dailydatewithgod

Mark Twain is attributed as saying, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”  I think I prefer Seneca the Younger’s version as he does not mince words when he stated, “There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is in your expecting evil before it arrives.” Regardless of who actually said it best, most would concede its truth. The point is, we human beings do a lot of forecasting in fear not realizing that we are setting ourselves up to be spooked in the present.  Perhaps it is easier to make up bugaboos about the future than courageously sit with the reality that we just don’t know.  On one level our bugaboos are quite humorous.  I have often wondered if my mind intended me to be a screenwriter.  I mean the fear scenes can be so elaborate and pull me in like no others.  When I pause and take a deep breath and reflect on them as bugaboos I can remember to laugh at myself.  In the deeper breath which comes from the laughter, my heart opens up a bit more.  Then the lens of love has a way to connect to my mind and bring me back to the present moment where there are no bugaboos.  I am able to see with a level of gentleness which did not exist before the smile and laughter that I may just be having a moment of uncertainty and my mind decided to conjure up a bugaboo to be helpful.  My eyes open and allow me to recognize my hands and feet being in the physical space I am in.  The bugaboo creates a domino effect to get me back to my center.  Who knew that a bugaboo would be the boo I needed to bump open my heart?

There are many rites of passage that occur in our lives that we discard as not important because they do not fit into the acceptable or commonly acknowledge elements of initiation.  We know the standard ones such as certain ages or things like marriage or accolades of sorts.  Each day however we experience a level of initiation within ourselves.  Each breath is an initiation into a new moment.  We awaken our hearts and alert our minds that we are ready to keep going.  It is a default in our system and it happens so many times throughout the day.  it is only when we are deprived of the breath do we realize we are being initiated into a different experience.  What would it look like to use the initiation of our breath intentionally? What might we set a new trajectory for in our lives if we utilize the automatic feature of our breath to awaken the spirit of life that is present within us?  How might it color our day if we paused to recognize whatever we are experiencing at the moment has an opportunity to shift when we use our breath to initiate a course change.  We have the capacity to initiate a new focus, to stop what we are currently doing and evaluate it, or even simply move our body.  These kinds of initiations do not need to show up on anyone else’s radar.  They are not dependent upon outside value.  We can utilize our own system to create an initiation into the kind of life we want and feel called in our hearts to live one breath at a time.

As we are experiencing things there is an inner dialogue going on which colors the way we perceive the experience.  We tend to underestimate the presence of our state of mind when it comes to interpreting for ourselves or others what we think is happening. God invites us to hone our attention to both our state of mind and heart. Both impact our perception so automatically that we take them for granted.  It is why it is valuable to have multiple people involved in creating something or making decisions, especially if those decisions or creations will impact others.  Learning to notice what our state of mind and heart are is critical in our interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. God encourages us to know the makeup of our own mind and heart so we can see the signs of the expression of our internal states.  We may not be able to tell in a given moment what our state of mind or heart is but it will be evidenced in our behaviors.  Anyone who has ever lived with another human being knows what it is like to find out something they never knew about themselves because the person sharing their space doesn’t like their behavior.  More kindly there is also a way in which those we are close to, know how to flex around us because they can determine by our behavior what our state of mind and heart are even if we can’t articulate it. When we pay attention to our internal state of mind and heart we develop the capacity for self-compassion and empathy towards others.

The reason the idea of being in the moment is so powerful is that it is the only place we actually are.  We think because we can ruminate on the past and envision the future that it gives us some kind of hold on it.  But the reality we cannot reach past the horizon of the day or moment we are in.  It is tempting to ride the mind’s rollercoaster to the past or future especially when the moment we are in is one we would rather not be in.  On my daily dates with God, I get the opportunity to practice being where I am in the moment.  God encourages us to cultivate our attunement to the now because it is the one place where we can meet the truth of God and of who we are at our core.  We get anxious about the future or the past and what happened and lose sight of the fact that those horizons are either no longer here or outside our purview.  If we want to do something to adjust what happened in the past or set a different course for the future, it will happen within the horizon we are in now. We cannot reach back and redo something, although time travel has always fascinated me and I would jump at the chance. The now is the one space we can be physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and energetically at the same time.   With all our faculties right here, right now, we can create.  We are most empowered in the now moment.  So often we get spun up into where our mind can and does go that we spread ourselves too thin.  We do not have the energetic capacity to face what is right now because we are playing outside the horizon of our very being.  The good news about the now moment is if it is one would rather not be in, we need to take a beat and it will pass.  Not every now moment is going to be all good or all bad, and none will last.  Taking time to absorb the beauty of all that lies within the horizon of now is a gift we may not want to miss.

I am not sure how the idea of whether or not someone can consider themselves creative got pigeonholed into only belonging to those who are artists.  The very fact that we are alive means we are creative. Our very being is a creation.  The way we live our lives is a development of that original creation.  It may look sometimes like a pile of dung and nowhere near a painting.  There are times in our life when the sound of our lives is more like nails on a chalkboard than an Emmy winning song.  In the moments when the reality of a concept lives outside the definition of our minds is precisely when God encourages us to connect with our hearts to reach into the reality of our creativity.  Our hearts which move the flow of life through us live out the experience of creativity.  Each breath, each flow of blood, each cell awakened to a new moment is creating the energy to show up for our lives.  When we think of ourselves as not creative because the smile we extend to someone does not create a magical connection we limit the witness to the life essence of what creativity is.  Our lives are not simply a measurement of results.  Our lives are creativity in motion. We are the embodiment of a live painting and the rhythm of the song of life.

It can be difficult to imagine how trying times are actually a hidden opportunity for enhancement. When we are in the throes of dealing with a difficult situation or person we are focused usually on getting it over with as soon as possible.  I don’t’ know about you but I can go into what I call the “just gotta get through” mode.  I know how to hunker down and make it through difficulty.  I have done it before and I can do it again. And yes, nothing lasts, and everything changes but seriously!  Who is built to live through uncertainty after uncertainty?  Who in their right mind is focusing on how to do so could be an enhancement to their life?  Not me.  Yet what God is constantly speaking into my heart as we continue to be in this uncertain and unclear state of affairs is “keep your eyes on me”.  It is an expression I have heard God share with me many many times throughout my life.  When the world is inviting me at every moment to look here, there, and everywhere God’s message is a different one.  Whatever our understanding is of the energy that is not limited to only our understanding is it is where we can find the peace we seek when all seems lost.  Learning to connect and reconnect is part of the dance with the divine.  Just as we breathe in and out we actually exist within uncertainty more than we realize.  Part of the beauty of the breath is in exploring the degree to which we can use it.  Perhaps it is not until there is a worldwide focus on the importance of our breathing, do we find ourselves open to learning what we can control and what we cannot at our basic force of life. We may not have a say in the first breath or the last breath of our lives, but we control how the ones in between go.  I am brought back to God’s message to focus.  In the attention to my breath, I can steady my mood, wake myself up, reignite my interest and focus, and so much more.  Maybe we are all being invited to breathe into the difficulty, awaken our hearts and discover the enhancement awaiting us in between our first and last breaths.

Working in the medical field, I learned the importance of the scope of practice.  The scope determines the boundaries in which one can practice medicine according to their level of licensure.  A nurse’s scope of practice is more limited than a doctor’s. A cardiologist has a different scope of medical practice than an endocrinologist. On a personal level, we ascribe scopes to people in our lives.  Our family exists within this scope, our and colleagues in another.  The scope of the relationship may be similar but each has different boundaries. People’s relationship to their scope is largely an agreed-upon matter among each culture.  Some elements of the scope are across all cultures.  God invites us to get to know the scope we work with when it comes to our relationship with all of the elements compromised in what we call the self. The scope of the heart is seen as different than the scope of the mind.  The scope of the body is different than the scope of the spirit.  To conduct oneself as a whole being, we need to find a way for these scopes to interact.  Knowing when and where it might be time to cross-scope can be the difference between surviving and thriving. As we become aware of the default scopes established in the basic human makeup, we can learn to explore the scopes we can create to be more fully present to our own lives.  We can notice when we involve the scope of our hearts with the scope of our bodies we are more likely to treat ourselves well.  When we involved the scope of our mind with the scope of our spirit we determine what it means logistically to bring our spiritual nature to something before that moment seen as solely intellectual.

Until we are pushed to our edge do we figure out our full capacity.   I have often thought if you want to know if you get along well with someone go on a road trip with them. When the madness ensues as it invariably does, you find out the character of each person involved.  Something about the constant time together coupled with the expectations and people adjusting to being out of their routine is a perfect mixture to break down the barriers we often keep up.  Our fierceness shows up when we let down our guard.  Sometimes it happens abruptly and other times there is a slow etching away of the guard.  When we bear witness to ourselves and others without the fortresses of who we are when everyone is watching, the fierceness that emerges encases a liveliness we do not often allow.  God invites us to know intimately the fierceness within ourselves.  Getting acquainted with the true nature of our liveliness when we are as some would say more wild is what allows us to tap into our fierce nature when we need or want to.  We spend so much energy trying to keep up with expectations of ourselves, others, and society as a whole it can be exhausting.  Tapping into our fierceness allows us to know the beauty of what happens when we don’t have it all together.  It is the same ferocity of life that caused us to scream when we emerged from our mother’s wombs.  It is the ferocity that alerts our minds when we are hurt emotionally and feel as though our hearts will break.  Breathing deeply and owning our fierceness puts us into resonance with the untamed beauty God has gifted us with as part of the collective livelihood that keeps the planet spinning.  I used to think I didn’t want to feel.  It was too hard, I numbed out.  The pain was unbearable.  When I stepped into recovery and began my daily dates with God I learned to open up to the fierceness of life living inside of me that I had become numb to.  We can feel fully and deeply if we are willing to be a bit wilder than is prescribed as normal.  Finding a way to tap into our fierceness allows us to be the unique beacon of light and love God created us to be.

It makes complete sense that we believe everything we think. It makes sense that we believe what we see in front of us is all of what is actually there.  It would be exhausting and highly energy consuming to have to question everything we think and everything we see.  Our window to the world is the one residing in our own house.  What we lose sight of is the concept that everyone else is also viewing life through the windows in their house.  If they lived down the street would we harass them for not seeing what is happening outside in our front yard?  If none of the windows in their house give them an angle from which to see it, how could they?  We spend a lot of time being baffled by other people’s perspective without acknowledging the fact that they are working with what they have.  Before we can make someone else wrong for only seeing what they can see through their windows, we might want to ask ourselves, when was the last time we did not limit our perspective through our own windows by stepping outside our house?  Yes, it takes additional energy and effort to look at life through more than the windows in our own house or step outside of our house and see the larger picture.  It is what our hearts are motivating us to do when the windows we have become too narrow of a lens for life.  When the windows we have become clouded and hard to see through because we have things going on inside our house, it will influence what we see when we look out the window. Our minds are certain we can see all we need from our own windows whether they are cloudy or clear because it is what is familiar.  When we step outside into the unfamiliar we feel uncomfortable.  Only when we find ourselves unable to sustain cooperative and accepting relationships with others and the world by looking at them through our own windows do we venture outward.  When our minds are willing to acquiesce to the limitations of our own windows do we become willing to start by cleaning them up and determining if we need to step outside our house to take in the fuller picture.  It takes courage to notice and do our part to clean up the windows through which we see life. It takes greater courage to humbly acknowledge that we are missing out on the fuller picture of life by only looking at it through the windows in our own house.

The purpose of creating a proper setting in a film or on stage is to help the audience create a context of understanding for the interaction that is to take place.  What transfers from the witnessing of the interaction does not often include the setting as it is either implied or a generally accepted cultural norm.  The funny thing about our own lives is how in our minds we take something that happens in a particular setting and attach ideas to it without the setting.   In other words, something happens and we code it in our minds with particular thoughts and feelings. We do not encode the setting.  So then the next time we find ourselves thinking or feeling similarly even if the setting does not fit we wire off a similar response.  It is the brain’s way of being efficient.  If enough of the setting is there, we will draw upon our previous experience.  This formula while highly efficient at conserving energy and surviving through a situation, causes us to actually be reacting to something from the past.  Since our mind is busy pulling up past records and quickly reacting, we do not have to be fully present to the current setting.  One of the simple elements I learned from my daily dates with god is to find a way to presence myself in the current setting.  I can look at my hands or feet and notice where I actually am at this moment.  I can look around who is there with me and what the environment around me is.  When I take in the full set of the present moment, there is enough of a pause created before I react. In the pause to assess the setting of this moment, I can choose how to respond instead of reacting from the past.