dailydatewithgod

We are impacted by more than we realize.  Things are happening on an energetic level simultaneously with a cognitive, emotional, or physical level.  There is no such thing as having only a physical experience. If we are breathing we are inputting information through our nervous system and it happens without our awareness. Sometimes we experience a strike of sorts within our own system.  There is a breakdown or stopping in our functioning on a physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual level.  Sometimes it is clear to us what is causing the strike.  Not all strikes have a big impact and some accumulate over time.  It can feel like a hit to our system or like something just ended unceremoniously.  The shifts in our reality because of a strike get our attention.  We find we have to reorient ourselves and find a new way to work.  In those strike moments, we are invited to approach a solution from a different angle.  We may need to bring all the elements to the table to determine how to resolve the strike.  We may need to let go of whatever has struck itself out of our experience.  God invites us to balance the players present at the discussion on how to handle the strike.  We may think it is just about a change of mind, but not realize the heart has something that needs to be heard as well.  We may be convinced it is just a physical strike on the part of our hand but maybe our mind is trying to convey that it is not able to grasp something.  The beauty and subtlety of life encourage us to be present and explore what is possible when addressing any strike from all sides of the table.

Even with all the accepted truths and understandings in existence in the universe, the paradoxes still exist. It can range from disappointing or disheartening to outright betrayal when we come to grips with a paradox.  It is part of the maturity process.  We begin to investigate the accepted beliefs and so-called truths that seemed to have no opposite when we were growing up.  Often the first bump we have is when we realize things are not always what they seem.  Or we wake up to a fact that has multiple layers to it.  We feel a sense of safety from what we perceive as being solid and unbreakable.  Growing up is coming to terms with the paradoxes which make real for us the fragility of us and our lives.  Paradoxes are neither disheartening nor enlightening within themselves.  They are simply a reality of the duality in which we exist. Most spiritual concepts are simple in nature and it is what draws us to them.  Navigating how to adopt them and incorporate them into our lives is where the paradoxes show up.  Making peace with the presence of paradoxes as the nature of coming to know the truth of who we are at our core which contains no paradox is the dance of life.  One who has experienced the love of God finds no paradox in that.  How the experience then affects all other areas of his or her life in the little and grand moments is where paradox appears.  Knowing how to return to a space where no paradox exists is the invitation God extends to us.   It is up to us how often we accept the invitation.

There are so many elements of life that are not the way I would think they would be.  It does not make sense that we learn what our wherewithal is until we are pushed past what we think is our capacity.  It shows up every facet of living. There is often a disconnect between what we think and reality.  It is therefore helpful to have facts and figures so we can validate or invalidate what we have decided is true in our minds and what is actually true.  We acquiesce to the reality of wherewithal when it comes to elements outside ourselves and we refer to them as objective. It seems as though there is a reality inside our minds, shaped by our individual and sometimes shared perspective. Then there is a reality in the outside world.  When we make up our minds about our own wherewithal we do not know the truth of it until we somehow live the experience.  God encourages us to keep this in mind when it comes to our capacity for love. We do not know the means that exist within our hearts until we attempt to stretch ourselves past what we think.  It is the same principle I experience in yoga class when the whole time I am holding a pose my mind is telling me I do not have the strength to do it. The wherewithal that is designed in our hearts is learned in moments of courage.  The moments when we take a chance to resist what our heads tell us is the wherewithal of our hearts.  It is about moving through moments of fear or pausing and breathing when I think I do not have the wherewithal to be kind one more time. It is the stepping outside the beliefs in my mind about the resources of my heart that the actual wherewithal of my heart gets to share with my mind the reality of what it and I are made.

Do you ever find yourself with a proclivity towards a person, idea, or experience?  There is a part of you that is captured by this person or thing but you can’t figure out why.  The penchants we develop don’t always come from our minds.  We could spend hours unearthing how we developed a penchant but what is the purpose?  God invites us to travel down the road of our penchants with curiosity.  With open eyes and hearts, we can explore what is there.  Perhaps it is not the focus of our penchant but it is the penchant that moves us to go down the path.  I have learned that life is so much more about the process than it is about the content.  Penchants that stem from our hearts can often lead us to places we could not conceive of in our minds.  It is life’s invitation to go in a direction we may not have otherwise.  A penchant will guide us to let go of judgment before we even get started.  Anything that can move us away from judgment is a movement closer to love.

I remember as a kid when one of us had a bad cough my mom would apply Vick’s VapoRub.  Along with the gentle touch from my mom, it had this soothing capacity that even if I didn’t the coughing did not stop right away, I believed it would get better.  We have all had those experiences on a physical level when we get the salve needed to cure our ailments. God encourages us to notice the salve we need and seek on an emotional and spiritual level. On my daily date with God, this begins with learning to tune in to the state of my heart.  It is as simple as touching my heart and taking a deep breath.   The attention is drawn to my heart and the fresh oxygen through my nose is like a lubricant to my soul.  We underestimate it because sometimes it only lasts as long as that moment.  We devalue it because we think we are too busy to stop and seek the salve we need for our whole selves.  Living in a work and productivity-focused culture which values salve time only when we are on vacation we can deprive ourselves of getting to know the whole of who we are. There are unlimited ways to find the emotional and spiritual salve needed when we find ourselves stressed out in our mind or body.  One system affects the other.  If we apply the ointment to our skin but do not breathe through the anxiety of what story we are making up about the rash on our arm could mean, the salve is only partial.  There is more awareness today of the full nature of complex systems that make up our reality as human beings.  Getting to know the salve present within our own selves to soothe ourselves empowers us to navigate through this crazy thing called life.

We are all aware to some degree the standard or accepted way of viewing things.  It is the unwritten cultural agreements that we are born into and adopt without much thought.  It is only when we encounter other groups or cultures who see things and behave differently when presented with the same situation.  My father would refer to it by the toothpaste argument.  He said that when a man and woman get married and are living together for the first time they find themselves arguing over the right way to squeeze the toothpaste (from the bottom, or any place on the tube).  I came across similar situations with my first set of roommates when we realized we all had different ways of indicating what was our food versus communal food. I thought I was going to have to start looking for a new place to live given the level of upset on her face. Similarly, we have a cultural agreement on what is considered an achievement. It usually looks like stuff in American culture.  Whether that stuff is a job title, letters after your name, admission to a particular university, a car, and so on.  It is measured by the outer ways indicating one has arrived.  Arrived at what I am not always sure because right behind it is another layer of achievement one is expected to meet.  God invites us to look into what achievement means as it reflects the truth of who we are at our core.  It is not about devaluing the outside view of achievement but equally valuing our internal sense of achievement.  A level of achievement that can be reflected in a given moment and does not need many years to get to.  A level of achievement signifying a growth layer for ourselves that others may not understand. A level of achievement that makes space for the fact that who we are at this moment allows for a different level of achievement then who we were yesterday or when in a different moment.

I wonder sometimes if the firm structure of the skull around our brain is symbolic of our hard-headedness versus the more open bone structure of the ribs around our hearts. I recognize our skull is made up of several pieces of bone held together and it is more flexible than it might appear to be.  I suppose the real question is, do we have more pliability in our minds or our hearts? The ever-changing nature of life means we need flexibility in all our systems.  How that adjustability manifests is of course different.  God encourages us to use the natures of our mind and hearts to create pliability which enables us to both be rooted in the unchanging nature of the truth of who we are while flexing in and through how that shows up at the moment.  A tree would not be a tree if it did not stand upright while being connected to its roots so it can grow strong.  At the same time, it needs to be able to sway in the wind and withstand various temperatures to go through its life cycle and be alive.  Learning how to create workable pliability of who we are at our core and respond to the situation at hand as it is.  Our particular life has something to offer each situation and it may be something different than what we have offered previously. This does not mean we are so pliable we have no backbone. It means we know how to be in the flow of life and respond authentically to the truth of who we are at our core. When we have no sense of our own roots, we do not know who or how to be in any given situation.  We start to think we are supposed to respond based on some formula of this is how everyone does it.  We lose true pliability by not being intimately familiar with who we are and who God designed us to be.

Much of life has order and the illusion of certainty.  There is a certain level of safety that comes from order and routine. Trust me I like order and I function well within it.  A side effect of the structures that we put in place through which to operate is not having to think so much about every little decision. We can easily find ourselves musing incessantly about the little stuff.  With such an occupied mind there is no room to experience the daydream effect of musing.  Like most things in life, there is not just one side to something. Musing can be something we do with intent and focus.  It can also be something that happens when we let go a bit and allow our mind to wander. It will be off traveling through random trails and when that happens, there is space for insight from our hearts or even our bodies.  Of course, all of this is filtered through our nervous system so it seems like we think it all through.  We recognize this kind of musing when it is a sense or almost a whisper of a concept or inkling.  It is the reason the muses of ancient Greece were these ethereal goddesses who believed to gift people with inspiration.  God invites us to allow the musings of the whole of who we are to be accepted.  We may not choose to act on them but judging them as better or worse than something we intentionally think up disconnects us from the whole of life. Why deprive ourselves of our interconnectedness to the universe by believing the musing of our minds that is literal and intentional is the only kind of value.

The body language used by humans to demonstrate honor seems to be present across various cultures.  Typically it consists of a bow or lowering of one’s head to indicate that whoever or whatever is being honored is of greater value than the person bending.  There is a correlating experience when it comes to the opening of one’s heart.   We see that when people are in awe, praying, or pausing to take in something that has touched them, they physically touch their hearts.  We touch our hearts to indicate honor of the power of the heart.  It seems to be a default awareness of honor in our hearts.  When we are caught by surprise or find ourselves emotionally touched we touch our hearts. God encourages us to honor ourselves for allowing something to affect our hearts.  It is part of our design for our hearts to be affected by our internal and external world.  When we touch our hearts physically we allow others to know something about us at that moment.  Given the unspoken nature by which it happens, it becomes a quiet and subtle communication between all kinds of people in the same way we know what honor outside of ourselves looks like.

The finished product looks like one thing.  It appears as a whole.  Yet anything whole is comprised of multiple parts.  If we choose to see only the whole we miss out on all the elements present in the whole.  This applies to all of life.  The fusion of elements is what makes up the whole of life.  We are far more interconnected and blended than we are aware of.  When we take into account our fusion we can operate on a more holistic level.  Recognizing the amalgamation of reality does not mean we are broken.  The reality of fusion as a universal principle is about valuing each part of the mixture and the unique flavor that its ingredient provides to the whole.  God encourages us to recognize our fusion as a human being with all our experiences, sensations, memories, ideas, feelings, and so on.  When we are responding to life we may be doing so from one part of the blend that is us.  An awareness of the element as well as the whole gives us insight into how we can steer the trajectory of our response so it is in resonance with the whole of who we are.  When a particular element of the fusion is out of balance it creates a lack of coalescence in us and hinders our ability to respond from the truth of who we are. It is not about being in perfect fusion.  It is about the recognition that sometimes we need to check the mixture and note what is of higher concentration at the moment.