dailydatewithgod

Perhaps it is living in Western culture but most of what I see and hear regarding the idea of prosperity centers around money.  As someone who experienced two periods of unemployment in the course of my career I know viscerally the freedom of not having to concern myself with if or when I have more money coming in and how I will afford things.  I have long had an adverse experience around money because growing up the two words that most commonly resonate when I think of money is fear and frustration.  So while this may be an influence on my rub about prosperity equated with money, it is also because doing so creates a limited perspective of prosperity.  Our inclination as humans to categorize and place value on things so we know what is important is helpful.  However, it can keep us distant from God’s perspective of what is possible.  An element of prosperity that I think other cultures have a stronger grasp on is one having to do with what I would consider prosperity of the heart.  We can choose to give something only the kind of value that society says matter or we can choose what is of value for us and perhaps recognize a level of prosperity within ourselves.  The prosperity of the heart extends through circumstances that look and feel like lack.  I am not saying I might as well be poor and living on the streets as long as I have a prosperous heart.  I am saying that I can have all kinds of money and not value any of it because I do not appreciate the things it affords me. Connecting with the prosperity of the heart is what gives me the courage to take action and do things in my life that mean something to me.  Prosperity of the heart provides the lens through which to see others with compassion and gentleness.  Prosperity of the heart is what whispers things to be grateful for when I am having a day where I feel anxious and uncertain.  Prosperity of the heart gives me the willingness to value my contribution and the contribution of others when mistakes are made because we had the guts to give something a shot.  Prosperity of the heart is present anytime I want to tap into it regardless of how much is in my bank account. It reminds me that in this moment, I have enough, I do enough and I am enough.

To the same degree that our minds flourish around what is known our hearts flourish in the unknown.  We have all come to face the limitations of our knowledge.  It can be frustrating, mystifying, and perplexing.   It seems as though no matter how much we learn or aim to be aware there are always elements of surprise.  I am a planner and I do my best to be prepared in most situations.  Some situations can simply not be planned. Life is designed to have us engaged and when we get caught up in our heads with what we know and expect we tend to miss out on what is right in front of us.  It is not as though our hearts want us to make mistakes and look like fools, although it happens.  God encourages us to seek the unfamiliar within the familiar.  Even when we have done something before or know someone, there are always elements of which we have no awareness. Entering into an exchange with another our hearts invite us to do so as a novice.  When we are present in the moment we are in we are apt to see things about someone we know we have never seen before.  We become the novice who is eager to learn all about them or about a situation.  Being the novice means our hearts lead us into trusting whatever discovery is in the moment is the one meant to illuminate us. The mind may fear what it does not know.  The heart has an inner knowing that no matter what it discovers as a novice, it will not undo us.  So often we do not bother to see something new in something familiar because we think it will make us look stupid or less than.  Our heart recognizes the truth of who we are at our core and it cannot be reversed by one moment.

We all have rules we abide by, follow, put up with, and or break.  We have all heard the phrase, “some rules were meant to be broken.”  Some rules are hard and fast, others are contextual and flexible.  As kids rules feel confining and at times pointless.  We look for the black and white in the grey.  Some of find them and follow them religiously.  Others don’t find them and rebel against anything resembling a rule.  I would describe myself as a good two-shoes growing up.  My aim was to figure out the rules, and follow them as best as possible.  For me this meant safety.  Safety not so much in following the rules or because I agreed with them but safety because the powers that be would approve of me.  Following the rules was much less to do with seeing the importance and purpose in the rule and more about being seen by others as okay.  I often wonder how I would be viewed if those in authority knew what I really thought about their rules. My daily dates with God taught me about a whole other realm of rules.  The rules of my heart. These were foreign to me because they did not pop up like automatic dictums of behavior.  Rules of the heart are about being in the presence of the flow of life.  Rules of the heart are about using the courage within us to walk through uncomfortable things.  Rules of the heart are the steadfast reality of who we are no matter how rocky we feel on the outside.  Rules of the heart resonate within my whole system when I take a breath and allow the flow of life to move through me.  Rules of the heart are not about having answers but beating steady in the discomfort of not knowing. The greater question for me when I encounter a rule of the world these days is not whether or not following it will allow me to be accepted by others but will it allow me to stand in the courage to be who I am at my core in this moment.

One of the best tools for shifting my mindset is to focus on gratitude. It does not matter how small it is.  Gratitude is one of those practices that magnifies my experience.  When my head seems to be focused on what is going wrong or how I am wrong it is hard to see outside of it.  The last thing I may be feeling is gratitude.  Yet the magnification power of gratitude does not require much to get me shifting in a different direction. It may seem silly to be grateful for standing when I am dealing with the fear of standing and speaking in front of a group of people.  The one thing to be grateful for acts as a magnifier because it moves me away from my fear and turns my attention elsewhere.  The magnification is then further boosted because my energy is not being drained by focusing on the fear.  The thoughts of gratitude then begin to snowball.  Before I know it, I am grateful for having a voice, the courage to do something uncomfortable, the reminder that I have a finite time in which to do the task and it will have an ending, when it is over I can acknowledge my willingness to show up, and more. Gratitude is a magnification of the heart’s energy.  Focusing on it brings me into the present where I can dispel the fear stories which are from the past or stories of the future.  Gratitude’s magnification power bring my mind into alignment with my heart.

The amount of connections is astounding.  The longer I am alive the more I witness the interconnected nature of the universe.  I recognize living in the flow of life means being present with how it is all intertwined.  We get so used to piecing things apart into categories and labels in our minds that we sometimes lose sight of the interdependence of it all. It can feel like going down a rabbit hole when trying to decipher the origin of something.  It reminds me of research I would do in college when I had to site-specific sources for phrases.  I found that this one was in reference to another one which was in reference to a particular context that gave it a different meaning.  It can be mindboggling.  No wonder there is sometimes a level of futility when attempting to understand our own internal motivations and actions. So many fixed ideas about what we know for sure are in reference to something that happened long before we became conscious of them.  They refer to a particular context that no longer exists. The beauty in embarking on the journey to explore with curiosity where the references stem is an opportunity to choose them for ourselves.  We cannot undo the context in which they were created.  Those conditions have already shaped us and if automatic has a familiar pathway established in our mind.  However, we can choose whether or not the original reference that our mind goes to is one that resonates with our hearts.  If yes, then there is no need for change.  If not, we can invite the energy of our hearts to shift the reference the mind makes to create something new. A familiar reference for sexuality for me is fear and anger. It is a well-worn pathway my mind travels without much choice on my part. As an incest survivor, this makes sense.  As a grown woman, it no longer serves me.  I cannot the reference that my mind is programmed to make automatically.  I can use the energy of my heart to observe it with curiosity and compassion and breathe in the possibility of creating new references.  This is not easy, but we all have opportunities to find the courage within us and use that energy of our hearts to make something of the references instead of them dictating our lives.

I have always seen myself as a lifelong learner. When I embarked on a career in education, it was in part because I figured I would always be a place that valued learning. I did not realize how much there would always be to learn. The journey of recovery has opened up a whole other avenue of learning.  The discoveries of the world are amazing but it is the discovery of the world within me that God has invited me to on our daily dates. I have slowly come to understand that it is what is within me that navigates my movement in the world. The discovery of how it all operates is a daily path.  There is knowledge I gain about myself in general from outside sources in terms of what it means to be a human animal.  It provides tremendous insight.  I can take it into my mind, integrate it with what I know currently, and make use of it or not.  Sometimes it moves me to make different choices resulting in different actions. Those different actions in turn create more avenues of learning.  It becomes an ongoing cycle. When I bring my heart into the learning process there is a deeper layer of discovery of who I am which lays outside the purview of my mind.  Sometimes when the learning reaches my heart it feels like a piercing or a breaking open.  I know the learning has become an avenue of deep discovery when I feel it resonate from my heart through my whole system.  The shift created from this kind of discovery redefines my sense of being in the world. I sometimes wish certain things I learn would connect with me but they don’t.  Developing a trust of my inner heart’s navigation process of discovery is a life long path.

Have you ever had a question for which you did not know the answer and it seemed to drive you crazy?  Our minds are problem solvers.  Facing unknown things can be both exciting and anxiety-ridden depending on what story we have made up about it.  The irony is that sometimes it is the story that gets in our way of coming up with a solution.  Creating a story is a way that our minds fill in the breaches of our knowledge.  It is a way of reassuring our system that we will survive.  It comes in handy when there are many gaps in our knowledge.  On my daily dates with God, I am invited to notice where I have filled a breach with a story.  God guides me to connect with my heart by breathing into it. The breathing comes in handy when I am called upon to evaluate whether the story that filled the breach is still serving me.  My mind will tell me it is needed so there is no breach.  God reminds me that perhaps the breach is best remedied by the story of my heart. It is the heart that houses the possibilities not seen in my mind. With curiosity and some interest in exploration, we can step into a breach with the courage of our hearts and see what is not visible to the mind.

As human beings, we have unconscious biases.  Many are built-in and some develop over time. Some of them come about simply due to our minds’ inclination to categorize.  Categorization is an essential element to our survival and ability to handle all the incoming information.  It is our minds’ way of taking care of us and allowing us to live most efficiently.   Unfortunately, these biases can cause our minds to create reservations which impact our actions.   Our minds are very good at making stories up about how perhaps we should hold back to be safe and ensure survival even if it is an idea about not having judgments based on the bias.   We do not have to concern ourselves with dangerous tigers in the wild who will kill us.  So instead we have reservations about the validity of an idea coming from someone we have not met but does not look like someone from our tribe.  God invites us to investigate if our heart has the same reservation.  Pausing to take a breath opens the energy around our hearts. Giving ourselves permission to close our eyes and listen to the idea without the interference of what we are seeing can help us to determine whether the same reservation is in our hearts as well. We can notice if there is a difference and determine if we want to act from our mind’s reservation or not. Equally, there can be things we become aware of for which the mind does not have a reservation but it does not resonate with our heart.  We find ourselves moving into action based on what is considered acceptable by our tribe.   On my daily dates with God, I learn to explore my reservations with curiosity. It becomes a way of knowing the truth of who I am. Making room to pay attention to the reservations of our hearts and minds gives us access to knowing more completely the wholeness of our being.  Learning to be who we are designed to be wholly, allows us to be the unique gift to the world we are designed to be.

We focus on what makes us look good in the eyes of others.  We take time to earn achievements to create a place of good standing for ourselves.   We aim to be successful by the world’s standards.  When we achieve success according to the world we are adorned with accolades, we become known and experience a mix of being inspiring and envied by others. They are the kind of adornments that our mind counts on to tell us we are enough.  Success to the mind is to be held up as an example of someone others should model themselves.  Success in the world means we have arrived. While it is an essential part of the human experience and self-actualization to make something of oneself there is a limit to the adornments provided by the world. Often in the mix, we lose sight of the adornments of the heart.  The adornments of the heart are not ones we need to acquire, they are within us already. We connect to them by venturing on a journey of learning the nature of our own being. Sometimes it takes us a while to find it because we have placed so much of the world’s adornments on top of it.  Upon reconnecting to the truth of who we are in our hearts, we develop a lens through which we can observe and know what we are here to be. There are value to adornments of the mind and the heart to embark upon a full human experience.  God invites us to get to know the needed balance within ourselves to be the truth of who we are in full expression.  It starts with our breath.  It starts with a beat.  It starts with pausing to notice if our actions are drawing from our inherent adornments or the ones we think we are supposed to be earning.  There is an intertwining of the two and we are encouraged to get to know our process for developing a life that mirrors the truth of who we are.

It is easy to mistake the in-between space and moments as times of waiting.  It can feel agonizing when we are awaiting a particular event or interaction.  When we are excited or dreading something the time before can appear to go on without end.  In our minds, we do not know what the hold up is. We can’t imagine why there even needs to be an in-between. Why have the beat between the inhale and the exhale?   God invites us to recognize the power of integration that occurs in between.  There is a distinction between ingestion and integration.  Integration happens over time.  Integration is something that has no specific time boundaries.  It is about rhythms and flows.  The integration of anything is about making whatever it is a part of ourselves so that we can utilize it as an expression of truth from ourselves.  Anyone can digest and regurgitate information or experiences.  To fully embody something takes integration.  Not everything we consume is meant to be integrated on the same level for everyone if at all.