dailydatewithgod

There was a time in my life when I did not drink much water.  I thought it was too bland and tasteless. Today I drink more than enough for my body and strangely I am rarely thirsty.  I do notice that there are certain waters I enjoy more than others. Some leave a filmy taste in my mouth and with others, it can feel like I have just let a beautiful fountain run through my system. Mostly I am grateful for the easy access to clean water which is not the reality in some parts of the world. I recognize that the difference in taste has to do with the hydrant.  Depending on where the supply is coming from alters the experience when I drink it.  Even if it is the distinction between a warm and a cool hydrant.  There is something awful about taking in warm water on a hot day.  It makes me shiver just to think about it.  The same goes for ice water when you are standing in a foot of snow but on the other end of the spectrum.  The hydrant of our energy is equally important.  Water gives and grows life and so depending on the hydrant, the life that is given and grows will change.  The hydrant God encourages us to take a look at is our energy.  Our existence is so multifaceted that it is hard to parse out if we are drawing from the hydrant of our minds, our hearts, our bodies, or our souls.  Usually, it is a combination of all of them as we are whole beings. When we get still as God encourages me to do on our dates, we can learn to recognize which hydrants will provide the life-giving and growing supply I need for this moment.  There are times when I can be present in body but I am not drawing from the hydrant of my heart or my mind so I seem absent, even if only to myself.  Sometimes we need to prime the hydrant to pull the water from it.  It may need a twist or a tightening before the water from the hydrant will flow.  Attuning ourselves to our various hydrants serves us as we strive to show up as our most authentic selves in a given moment.

Being a lover of music, there is nothing better to soothe the soul than a little Sting. Something about his voice just runs right through you like you are being bathed in light. One of my favorites for many reasons is Fragile.  It is something that stands out to me in the middle of this current unrest where people are using their anger like a whipping stick and those who think they are harmlessly getting away with hurting people by stealing from them and destroying their property. I am all for protesting, using one’s voice, and standing up for what you believe.  It is one of our constitutional rights.  Part of what we are witnessing when see people hurt one another is their hurt.  We were not all given the tools needed to express our anger, grief, fear, sadness, frustration, and desperation in a healthy or even productive manner. We hurt others when we are hurt.  I do it. You do it. We all do it. Watching it on a grand scale at one moment in time has a profound effect on us. It speaks to me of the fragility of every person, whatever his or her reaction is to this experience.  It does not matter if we are in the face of it or watching from the sidelines.  It does not matter if we are appalled by it, hoping it will end soon before more people get hurt or cheering people on.  Our fragility and our basic human energetic connection mean we are not immune to it.  God encourages us when the information we are taking in begins to swirl and we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves as a result, to take a moment and go into our hearts.  It is by our connection and breathing into the fragility that we can find the resources to walk through this instead of hiding away whatever that means for each of us.

One thing I have learned is no matter how much I get to know someone or feel like I know how they operate I will never fully understand their method.  One’s method is about how they go about achieving whatever their aim or goal. If we try and measure people by their method, we lose the underlying picture.  It is like presuming we know how big the iceberg is based on the amount we can see above the water level.  I think we get in titanic proportions how detrimental it is to fall for that line of thinking.  The reality is many of us have not taken the time to determine what is underneath our own method let alone someone else’s.  We can notice a particular pattern but how often have we seen two different people do the same thing thinking it was for the same reason only to find out it was not.  I think the method of driving is to get from point A to point B.  For someone in a fast and slick car, the point of driving is to go for a ride in a really fast machine wherever possible.  Two different realities but the same method. I do not know that it is actually any of my business to understand the method of another.  I can accept it or not, but sometimes understanding does not reap the benefits one might presume. When it comes to ourselves, connecting to the underlying intention and perspective which guides our method allows us to pause and notice if the method we are choosing is the one best suited for the situation. When we are connected to the intentions of our hearts and use it to inform the processes of our minds, we are apt to choose a method for carrying out our intentions in a way that allows us to use ourselves and a situation for the greater good.  Often in those moments, we can detect the intentions underlying the method because of the energetic clarity which carries it through.  Imagine the kind of powerful force we can create in life when we are in alignment.

The nature of existence leans towards survival.  The impetus behind every energetic and cellular expression is done for the benefit of life. One of the perplexing elements of human nature is our ability to act in ways that seem to contradict the inclination towards life. What we often do not realize is the degree to which something seems to be in contradiction is not in fact contradictory at all. We have a way of creating beliefs and conceptions that over time become the structures that benefit us.  What can happen over time is that our beliefs and conceptions change based on our experience but we do not update our structures.  The structures still benefit us in some way even if it is the false sense of security we get from relying on them.  At the core of many of the reasons I was not willing to change in my addiction was I still believed that being a fat person protected me and I lived protected in that structure. I created a whole persona around being fat and it had its benefits.  I did not have to have a strong voice because my body did the talking for me. I did not have to take a closer look at my sexual abuse history because it was easy to cut it out of my life. It was not until the benefits of being fat were outweighed (pun intended) by the detriment of being fat that the structure began to crumble.  It was not until I stopped using my drug of sugar that I could hear the still small voice in my heart and spirit which spoke the truth of who I am and dispelled my illusion of weight as protection. Everyone in the world could tell me how my sugar habit and fat body were not of benefit to me but it was not until I was open to discovering a different structure for a way of living, which for me turned out to be the 12 steps, which did not depend on my old beliefs and conceptions that I could see it for myself. From this comes compassion that enables me to see the behaviors of others and myself as recognition of benefit in action.

In the second of the 12 steps where one comes to an understanding of a belief in a power greater than oneself the literature states that “belief meant reliance, not defiance.”  The point is for a belief to work it has to be something we can rely on. What is the point if we do not use the belief we have?  Similarly one of my favorite quotes of C.S. Lewis is: “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” One thing I realized early on was that if I was going to show up each day for my daily date with God it would not mean much if I did not rely on God to be there.  My understanding of God and what I am relying on has changed over time.  The idea of God’s presence in whatever way I need God to be that day is a reliance I have.  I may not feel God each day.  I may not sense a connection each day.  I may not find it useful or want to rely on God on a particular day. I show up as a demonstration of my belief in myself and in the process.  Over time the reliance on God while never a prescriptive thing has been one way to show my commitment to live from the heart of belief in the life-giving light that lives within me.  I enter each day not knowing what it means to be a believer but one thing I do know is a reliance on a power greater than myself is part of the deal.

When I find myself stuck in thinking or a feeling in my body I get frustrated. It is remarkable to me that I used to be so stuck I simply expanded my body to compensate for the tremendous false reality I was trying so hard to live.  Experiences that I had to keep secret from myself just to survive.  I see now with the lens of compassion that my denial was a protection mechanism. I am grateful I found a way to get through it long enough so I could enter a time and space where I could let it go. Food was the primary tool I had along with self-hatred and I used them to their full potential.  When I got into recovery and starting going on my daily dates with God I learned more tools.  Given my default into self-criticism however, I can sometimes use those very tools to hurt myself.  It is in those moments when I find myself in need of God’s sight which is beyond my own.  God’s vision of me is nothing like a religious or even spiritual one.  It is the energetic embrace of a love which I can barely allow myself to taste it is so powerful.  It is the rainbow that emerges after a storm of thunder and lightning.  It is the breath I takes after jumping in the deep end and hoping I make it to the top before my lungs burst.  There is a life force that God reminds me I am a part of.  It is both outside of my realm of understanding and with my capacity to know I am one with it at the same time.  On my daily dates with God I find myself caressing this experience enough to know that in the moments when I need to be embraced by it, it is just a breath away.  I am not sure why being an incest survivor gave me the opportunity to find and connect with this experience, but I am grateful it does. I suppose in all humility it means I am grateful for the whole of the experience.  Being able to say that in writing means I have found some peace in the madness that is created from trauma.  It gives me hope as I see us all in the world experiencing a collective trauma.  We too will find a way to collectively surpass the pain and trauma in whatever form it presents for us at this time.  I trust that if we are willing to be with it, we and God can transform it into beauty.

Sometimes commercials are downright funny.  The people who create them are very creative.  I do not even remember what the commercial was about but what struck me is how a situation can sound like one thing and then when you look closer it is something else altogether. The commercial has a couple stating that their new living quarters have a clogging problem.  One naturally assumes they mean that their pipes are clogged or something else is impeding their access to something. Then it switches to see the apartment above them which is a family of clog dancers!  It made me muse about what kind of things we view as blocking us from getting access or having something we need when it is really a dancing problem.  Given my inclination towards any kind of metaphor around dance, I could not help but smile.  Seriously, though, how many clogs in our lives are a matter of needing to appreciate the dance being gifted to us and not the impediment they appear to be? What kind of ideas seem to clog our minds not allowing us to move forward when all we need to do is learn how to dance?  Our hearts provide an opportunity to flow and move through a clog in our minds that we cannot get to seem past.  The awakening of the heart through our breath also wakes up our minds to start by stepping away from the clogged process of being stuck in the clog.  Every dance begins with a step, has rhythm, and invites us to be in the moment with our hearts.

It is hard to imagine that one can transform their lives so much that who they find themselves to be after a time is completely different.  It is hard to imagine but possible.  There are so many ways I have witnessed both myself and others in recovery and other spiritual paths live a life transformed.  Who I am today versus 20 years ago not only looks different but thinks differently.  It is not as though who I used to be is erased.  You could say it has been incorporated and adjusted to be someone from which I do not want to run.  Being someone who lived amidst a subconscious daily mantra of self-loathing and criticism when things got to the height of my addiction, I could not conceive of the possibility of being at peace with myself and in acceptance.  I only had to be willing to see myself and life from a different angle.  I could not have chartered the path I have followed or known where my daily dates with God would take me over time.  I still do not know where this whole thing is going.  I only know that the more I come to know and accept the truth of who I am the more I see God everywhere.  More love becomes visible in the little and random moments.  It is knowledge not of the intellect but of the heart.  The heart speaks from a different angle.  Life looks different and much improved from this side.  Within my heart is the capacity to see all I am experiencing, good, bad, and indifferent as something of the moment.  From the angle of the heart, I can choose how much power I give a thought, a feeling, a belief, or an experience in this moment.  This means I can choose the angle of the heart to see it as working for me or against me.  The heart does not dictate its perspective.  The heart only provides another angle where I think there is only the one I see through my eyes.  There is no certainty in the heart’s angle except that there is always another one in the next moment, the next breath.

I think we can all concede that our minds are very creative.  Our imaginations are illustrious and there seems to be no end to what we can conjure up in our minds.  When we use this capability to enhance our lives, open ourselves up, and grow into what is possible, it is wonderful.  When it is used to create fear stories, run the worst-case scenario, and cause us to believe a mirage is real we find ourselves in pain.  It is not a problem that our minds have the capacity to create a mirage of fear.  It is simply important to know when it is happening and test it out.  Often we wait until we get there to let go of it.  Like a mirage in the desert.  We may not have to wait. Our breath provides a tool that can come between us and the mirage.  We pause, take a deep breath and in that moment before running the mirage again through our minds we can ask questions.  We use the energy of our hearts through the breath to bring us to this moment.  This moment is before the impending mirage will either show itself to be in fact a mirage or real. Based on the evidence of my life most of my fears have shown themselves to be a mirage.  By using my heart to bring me into the current moment before bellowing down the road to find the mirage and determine if it is real or not, is one way to have the chance to remind me of the last time I took off down the road.  My heart continues to show me a beauty embedded in our basic physical mechanism alongside my capacity to imagine is I can take as many breaths as I need to bring me to this moment.  The moment before the mirage.

I have noticed an interesting dichotomy about myself.  I am very organized in certain ways and messy in others.  I have let go of needing to fix it and stepped into acceptance.  I am sure there are deep psychological reasons or not, either way, I do not need to spend a lot of time navel-gazing to figure it out.  I have surrendered to the idea that if and when the time comes for me to address what has seemingly gone awry in my reality, I will know.  When my heart tugs at me to take a closer look at what is awry I may find myself fearful or even resistant.  Most likely the resistance will not last long.  Learning to trust my heart because of my daily dates with God has shown me that whatever looks awry is often a gift.  Whatever appears to the world as imperfect or a problem is simply a matter of misperception.  It is often in the things labeled as awry according to my mind that I have simply not allowed the lens of my heart to view.   I am less concerned by the form of what has gone awry than the state of my heart.  If something I am doing or being is in opposition to the truth of who I am I will commence by taking a look.  God guides my hand to my heart, encourages me to breathe through the fear or resistance, and reminds me that whatever is awry is not who I am.