dailydatewithgod

We become habituated to a particular style of living.  It happens within a culture, a time period, and ourselves.  We develop a way of relating to those around us based on a particular custom and do so because it is accepted practice.  When we witness the customs of other families, time periods, cultures, or individuals we are often perplexed. We use the mind of our own custom to interpret what we are seeing.  Many things get lost in translation.  There are even customs of our minds and hearts that seem to operate in opposition to each other.  Creating a custom of how we relate to our own inner reality between the mind and the heart goes a long way to relating to the outside world.  So much of what we view as being perplexing or annoying about others is merely signifying the level of internal perplexity and annoyance.  God encourages us to find a custom of communication and space for our minds and hearts to work in unison.  Through it, we are better able to make room for the eyes of our hearts to shed a light on the perspective of what we are seeing outside of us with our eyes.

It is hard to see the storm clouds when the rain is pouring down on you.  It is challenging to remember how strong we are when all we feel is weak and hopeless.  It is easy to forget that the sun is still shinning when the clouds hamper our view of the sky.  We get focused on our most immediate reality and understandably so.  We have the capacity to experience life on so many levels.  It can be overwhelming to balance the reality of all there is at any given moment.  No wonder we choose to check out sometimes. Being alive is no small feat.  I believe even the statistics of being born are still miraculous but I can’t provide you the numbers at the moment.  I do know that so far there have been many ways that I have attempted to push away life but thankfully I am not successful.  It is synonymous with the idea stated by the character Pearly Somes ( a servant of Lucifer) in the movie A Winter’s Tale:  “I’ll tell you something that should chill your blood. No matter how far we tip the scales our way, no matter how many of them we turn dark, nothin’ seems to break their capacity for hope. They pass it back and forth like the flu at a preschool fair. We’re losing, Lucifer. One bright star at a time, we’re losing.”  When we listen to the quiet voice of our hearts we find the call to venture on life.  It is a venture that requires courage, hope, and light. Our hearts have all the tools we need and they seem to be working in us even when we are not aware of them. As we become come to know the truth of who we are, we learn to utilize the built-in tools to answer the call to venture on life, our life. Just because we can’t see ourselves as the bright and courageous stars we are, doesn’t mean our next breath isn’t infusing and circling hope within. Maybe by our remembering what our hearts are truly made of we will infect those around us.

We seem to stand in contradiction to ourselves a lot. Perhaps it is the dual nature of the universe in which we live or the way we are not capable of understanding the denial we are in when we are in it. We vacillate between wanting our privacy to screaming at the top of our lungs that we need to be heard.  We anonymously hide behind names and organizations with some sort of groupthink while begrudging them for not having more of our individual interests in mind. We are like vessels that leak their true intentions while behaving and thinking in a completely opposite manner.  It is mind-boggling how we manage to create peace among each other with all the leaking going on.  God invites us to know the truth of our own hearts and seek peace with our duality.  By accepting the various and ever-changing nature of our existence within ourselves we find peace.  When we learn to make peace with the whole of who we are body and mind we are less in need of seeking it outside of ourselves.  We develop compassion for the leaks from others that make them seem like hypocrites.  We learn our of our fragile nature when we carry the expectations of others and ourselves.  All the ways we witness the leak stemming from the duality of life remind us to not take it personally.  Of all the tools I learned and aim to live in recovery strengthened on my daily dates with God, not taking myself so seriously is a gem.  Life is full of duality and there will be leaks even when we are certain its a sealed and secure.  A river does not leak from the mountain, it flows.  The waves do not leak onto the shore they share their gift of rhythm with the sand.  The leaks of our lives and invitations to notice the air leaking in and out of us all day long as a way to return to the heart of who we are.

We often do not realize the ramifications of an event until long after it has happened.  Given our proclivity to be meaning-making machines we take incidents and create stories around them.  We feel better and more at ease when things make sense.  It can feel almost painful like a headache when we can’t wrap our minds around something or someone.  While it may put our minds at ease to design meaning around something there can be additional ramifications for the meaning we create.  The ramifications fall on all ends of the spectrum and we can make even more meaning out of how we interpret the ramifications.  Our mind just keeps going and going.  It is quite marvelous.  Sometimes in the mix, however, an incident gets laid on our hearts.  The work of coming to terms with the ramifications then needs to be done with the heart as well as the mind.  We are whole beings so the idea that we can handle everything between our ears denies the fact that we are not only alive between our ears.  Yet, I am many times guilty of assuring myself that I can think my way of out of something that requires a bit more in-depth work.  My resistance is often around feelings because they are so fluid and have no set trajectory. Plus, I learned as a child that only certain ones were permissible. God has shown me on our daily dates that incidents of the heart are best faced with the breath.  By opening myself up to the power of the heart to courageously walk me through whatever is lying on the other side of the incident, I can walk the path with curiosity.  God invites us all to become curious about the incidents on our hearts that are calling to us to learn more about the power of love in our own lives, no matter what story our mind tells us about their meaning.

Looking at the landscape of our lives we are better able to get a grasp on the full story of what is happening. From the panoramic view, there is a much wider perspective to take in. Our minds have the brilliant capacity to focus in on things and solve problems.  We can gear our attention and focus in such a way that we do not get distracted.  This is a valuable skill in a world that is constantly trying to find ways to distract us. God invites us to put equal value on the panorama of our hearts. When we pause and take a deep breath.  One that goes through the top part of the lungs and reaches the diaphragm we not only approach the widest part of our lung capacity but we widen the lens of our eyes.  The panorama provided allows us to take the long view of how our lives are unfolding.  When we are fixated and stressed, our breathing is shallow.  We have a hard time seeing past our own nose.  By following the inclination of the heart to see the panorama of existence, even if for just a moment, we can return to our focused view with new eyes. I was driving along the California coast the other day and it was as though I heard God saying, “look up and out”.  Just adjusting my view to look beyond the cars in front of me my eyes rested on the panorama of beauty around me.  Taking the moment to step into that panorama I felt myself take a deep breath. In that instant, my eyes were what opened me to breathe deeper.  I am not sure how or why but I found myself less stressed or irritated by the line of cars on the road to head back over the mountains.  I don’t even remember how long we were stopped.  The panorama of the heart opened up a softens that blew away the frustration with my breath.

As human beings, there are many things we can learn about ourselves from those who take the time to understand the subtler nuances of how we operate.  Whether they are scientific, physical, psychological, spiritual, or metaphysical they provide us with knowledge based on experimentation or experience of the standard human operating system.  As beings who are continually growing it is helpful to listen to those who spend time, more than one person alone could in all of these areas.  God invites us to take what we learn and determine for ourselves which is a fit. While we are more similar than not, we are each a valued and unique expression of a human being.  We can take what we learn and be inventive about how that is present in our lives.  We benefit by using the knowledge given and designing inventive ways to make use of it enables us to be the best version of ourselves.  Our inventive ways may be the same as others or they may be very different because we are incorporating the energy of our own hearts into the mix. We design an inventive way of taking what is outside us and integrating it within our being so it becomes the expression of love we are designed to be.  We become the carriers of the knowledge of ourselves and how it is best expressed for ourselves and the world outside of ourselves.

With the speed of information in the world, it is challenging to get a sense of what is going to become widely adopted in our culture versus popular for the moment. When it comes to incorporating information and discerning for ourselves if it is a fit for us, it is easy to get caught up in trends.  Learning to distinguish between the trends and the mainstays is about knowing the prevalence of energy within our own being. Choosing to incorporate a prevalent trend is about whether it matches the prevalence of who we are growing ourselves to be.  It is not about acceptance or denial.  It is about paying attention to the resonance of the trend as well as what is presented at face value.  God invites me often to listen and pay attention to what is being shown in the world as prevalent and just notice within myself what deserves my attention.  When we know the prevalence of who we are being, we can know how to approach the latest thing and determine if it is a good match for us or not.

We often underestimate the need for balance in our nervous system.  It is not about maintaining some sort of unrealistic homeostasis at all times.  It is about recognizing when our nervous system has gone through a heightened time of awareness and needs some consolation.  We exert a great deal of energy through our various bodily systems all of which travel through us on the level of sensation, even if we are not aware of it.  Our nervous system takes in these inputs and responds.  If we are continually bombarded with information without time for consolation we will wear ourselves thin.  We see it in children easily because they cry or become disruptive.  It is harder to tell in adults because we are crafty about the language put around it.  We make it nice and tolerable to keep pushing ourselves past the brink. Then we seek out consolation in the form of numbing.  It reminds me of a poster I saw once in a secretarial office, “I have one nerve left and you are stepping on it!” God invites us to turn to our hearts to seek consolation continually enabling us to show up for what is present in the moment.  It is as simple as bringing our attention to our breath. When we alter our breath we tell our bodies and our minds that we are shifting.  We send a message through the nervous system that there is a pause happening on needing to do anything other than just be.  From this point, we can determine if there is further consolation needed or if we can keep moving forward with what we are facing.  It is not about waiting for someone or something outside of us to tell us what we need.  Our hearts can open us to tuning into our own levels of vibration and consolation so we can navigate the waves of life.

We do well in what we know.  We feel comfortable when there is a flow to an experience. Things fall into place.  It is like we are in sync with the language of the moment we are in. God has shown me on our daily dates the simple steps involved in creating fluency with life.  It seems counterintuitive to go into the dark and shadowy spaces of our lives, let alone seek to make peace with them.  Everything in our world screams that we must look good, put on a good face, focus on the positive, and run, numb, or hide when it is uncomfortable.  God has shown me that not only is there nowhere for me to hide from myself, but there is no reason for it. By opening up to God’s vision of the truth of who I am I see the darkness and the shadows for what they are, a call for love.  By having fluency with the whole of who I am, I can experience it whatever I am doing or being. If I am busy putting energy into hiding, running, or numbing I exhaust myself and feel out of step with life.  Trust me, I gave it a good try.  By the time I came into recovery, I was exhausted emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  I had no concept of what the fluency of life was about let alone how to connect to it. One step, one breath, one moment of willingness is all it takes.

So much of how we operate in the world is under the umbrella of protection.  Essentially since our brains are wired to keep us surviving, the protection is from death.  In the western world that has morphed into protection from aging.  In the modern world by many accounts, it is protection from living.  I get it.  I understand it.  I have lived through many things by all accounts had life gone the way I wanted or an ideal way, I would have not had to experience it.  No one signs up to be incested, made fun of for their weight, suffer from depression, or almost kill themselves slowing through substances. We all have our experiences that “should not have happened.”  Part of maturity is about recognizing that no one gets out of this experience alive.  The very ingrained thing in us about survival simultaneously creates a remarkable capacity to be resilient despite challenging circumstances and does not work.  I suppose it could be viewed as a big joke of life. Unless of course, we recognize there is a bigger picture going on.  When we see ourselves as solely individuals who live and then die and it is all over, we are subscribing to the common perspective which makes sense to our minds. God invites us to widen our perspective by looking at life through the lens of the heart.  It does not make sense the peace and power we feel when we look at life through the heart’s lens.  It seems absurd that we are moved energetically inside when we see someone we love or how we are moved emotionally by the actions of someone who by all accounts is not connected to us.  The perspective of the heart holds the sacredness of life as being possible whatever stage of life we are in.  The perspective of the heart speaks the possibility that perhaps what we see with our eyes is not all there is.