dailydatewithgod

As I was growing up I noticed a tendency I had to over-explain something or myself.  I was so concerned about what people might think about me I figured if they had more information they could make a better judgment.  My efforts to elucidate however were often met with greater confusion or simply disregarded.  We all have a need for love and approval.  It is inherent in us as far as I can tell.  I only recently feel after these years of daily dates with God that the concept of being worthy of God’s love simply because I am alive has begun to sink in.  It is one thing I do not need God to elucidate for me.  If nothing else I can chalk it up to the fact that God does not see things as I do.  God does not carry the judgments I have about myself.  God does not put conditions on love.  It would be like putting conditions on himself.  She would not be the being of love if it were to require elucidations. There are situations where elucidating is helpful but when it comes to elucidating so that it alters someone’s perspective of me, most of the time it is not.  People, strangely enough (are you picking up on the sarcasm here?), think whatever they want regardless of what I elucidate.  The peace I find in knowing the very being of love provides the love and approval I truly seek from my heart of hearts allows me to step away from the often exhausting task of needing to elucidate about myself or my actions. Despite my ingrained thinking I do not need to elucidate why I like one thing over another unless someone asks. I do not need to elucidate why I feel the way I feel in order to make the fact that I am experiencing a feeling okay. I may want to get further clarity if I find myself always feeling and reacting to something in a way that is not helpful for me, but the elucidation is not to make it okay to be human with feelings. The elucidation I seek in moments of truly needing to feel loved and accepted is much like how I see God described in one of my all-time favorite songs by Queensryche’s, Silent Lucidity:

. . . and despite the knee jerk reaction to explain why this song means so much to me, I choose not to elucidate. I trust God knows what it means to my heart when I hear it and that it will speak to you and elucidate whatever it is meant to when you read the lyrics or hear it for you.

We have a tendency to pride ourselves on our clarity and knowing. We value people who have high degrees and speak as though they know the answers.  We place importance on facts and less importance on opinions.  I wonder how many facts started out as opinions. We determined because we believe there is safety in certainty that to have a clear answer is better than a hodgepodge of information.  The mishmashes we exist in are making us uncomfortable because we are more interested in it looking like we have it all together rather than vulnerably revealing the jumbled way we feel most of the time.  The funny thing is even when we have the answer or follow along with the socially acceptable fact we come across a contradiction.  We are often faced with times when the supposed right answer is not the right one at the moment.  We fall back again to our mishmash of understanding and feel lost.  If we are the least bit inclined, as I am, to be hard on ourselves we figure we must have messed it up.  God invites us in the moments of a mishmash to ease the focus from our ego-driven mind to prove how right we are to our hearts where there is space to learn.  The mishmash experience is an opportunity if we allow it to be, for opening ourselves up to discovery.   If we remember to use our breath to engage the curiosity of our hearts it will travel to the mind and open the eyes in our head to see something new. A mishmash perspective is not a failed one.  We are not wrong for being a jumble of thought and wonder unless we deem ourselves as only worthy when we have the right answer.  A mishmash is an invitation to travel a little further with questions and curiosities as we open ourselves up to what the possible right answer is for the moment we are in.

It is easy to get caught up in what we are thinking and doing.  Our mind is nonstop chatter with ideas and opinions about everything from the color of the sky to the outfit someone is wearing.  We can choose which of those thoughts to adhere to.  Sometimes our minds go into a loop and we cannot seem to let go of a particular thought or idea.  It seems to keep coming around as though it is haunting us.  The way I have found to deal with such thoughts is to bring them to my heart.  When I pause, take a breath, and connect with my heart, I can look from a different angle.  A moment of breath provides the opportunity to stop and question what is behind the thought that keeps looping through my mind.  What is it that is adhering to this thought?  What might this thought be trying to communicate to me?  Our thoughts are sometimes like children which just keep repeating themselves in a desire to be heard.  We push them away or discount them, not realizing they are actually asking us to adhere to our hearts. We could view the looping as annoying and pointless and sometimes it may be, but what if each incident of looping was an opportunity to connect deeper and with our hearts?  What if our hearts were able to make effective use of our annoying mind by extending an invitation of adherence to love?

The capability and capacity to grow is an essential part of what makes us human.  We agree with this understanding based predominantly on physical and mental growth.  We also believe growth happens up to a point.  What we do not realize is we have the capacity to continue to learn as long as we choose to.  It is about our mindset.  We can enhance our capacity for learning by harnessing our intention to learn.  By harnessing our focus on a desire to learn from whatever comes our way we expand this capacity.  There need not be wasted interactions or experiences if we engage in harnessing the drivers which will lead to learning.  It may mean harnessing our choices so we do not find ourselves simply doing what is expected.  It may mean harnessing beliefs about ourselves which supports us as being learners.  It may mean harnessing individuals around us who are similarly focused.  All of these elements can be harnessed to support us in our desire.  We think of learning as solely an intellectual exercise but we are not just body parts.  We are impacted by and we digest life on multiple levels.  As far as I can tell none of us makes it out alive.  I am drawn to harnessing what I need to support the perspective that as long as I am here I am growing, hopefully in the direction of love.

Sometimes without realizing it, we give away our power.  Whether it is the ideas of others, beliefs based on a societal agreement of norms, or an experience we have had, we choose to bend our will to things outside of us.   The clout we assign to these things outside of us we determine is what has shaped us to this point and therefore are assigned the driver seat in our car.  But where does that end?  At what point is it okay to give our own thoughts and feelings clout?  God invites us to look at where we are relying on people or things outside of ourselves to determine the direction of our hearts.  Recognizing the clout we give to outside forces starts by acknowledging who or what we deem as important.  It does not mean all of those forces are given clout stronger than our own internal experiences. It means those are the areas we are inclined to give clout above that of our own.  The reality is no one or thing outside of us can know how we are experiencing it.  The clout we assign to these outside elements is actually a step in the direction towards getting to know ourselves.  The question to ask ourselves is, do I see within myself the same qualities I attribute to the clout I am giving this person, place or thing outside of me?  What can it tell me about the character of my own heart?  Being willing to look helps us determine if the clout can be assigned to us instead of something outside of us.

We do not realize how much we are impacted by sound until we experience the lack of it. There is the obvious impact that comes with silence but the effects of sound on our experience of life are far more than what we hear with our ears. The vibrations which accompany the movement of energy are present throughout the universe. I remember on a retreat in the mountains many years ago it was so still and quiet in a way I had never known. There was such silence at times I could feel my heart beating and vibrating energy throughout my body.  I expressed the impact to a friend by saying how loud my body was.  I described an inaudible experience as an audible one because both are vibrations and my dominant perception of vibration came through my ears. It makes me wonder how much vibrational energy is present within us and around us of which we are oblivious.  How might our hearts provide an opportunity to begin to tune into more vibrations of the universe?  We often describe people and places as having good or bad vibes but maybe it is our way of interpreting the vibrations our hearts pick up on that resonate or do not resonate with our own vibrations.

There are times when we find ourselves present in experiences we could not project no matter how creative we believe ourselves to be. Somehow in our mind’s eye or our heart’s eye, we are led to experience. Looking back we are unable to figure out which steps led to us getting into the situation. There are too many twists and turns along the way.  How could we have known this is where we were longing to be all along?  Essentially we are seeing how we place our projections on top of whatever is happening through our feelings. We lead towards some object, ideas, or experiences based on what we feel we will get when in that space or possess that thing. We are left wondering is it the thing or experience or is it the feeling?  How much of what we are experiences even present in physical matter versus what we project onto to the moment? It leads one to question if it matters since we are experiences what we truly desire.  I do not have answers to these questions but they are wonderings of my heart.  It seems as though our heart is doing more directing in our lives than we give it credit for. I think I want to know the answers but maybe I just want the feeling I imagine I will have once I know the answers.  In that case, am I simply projecting that feeling on the first answer I come to or the experience of exploring the questions?

So much of what we experience as strife in our lives stems from a disconnection.  It could be disconnecting from ourselves, others, particular ideas or identities.  We sense that we are somehow separate but it is not something we can put our finger on. We blame it on circumstance or convince ourselves we do not feel the longing to reconnect but it can eat away at us.  At the heart of the idea of repairs is the re-pairing.  It is about finding a way to reconnect. Repairs are a way of recommitting to the connection despite current or further indications of separateness according to our minds.  When I experience anguish or frustration with myself, others, or a circumstance it is because I feel not as connected as I would like to be.  I do not feel a part of a group or I tell myself I have nothing to offer, my body hurts and is in pain, or I can’t seem to communicate with my friend.  All of these are elements in need of repair but the repairs begin in my heart.  It is my heart that contains the truth that what appears to be disconnection is not actually possible.  All of us are connected for better or worse.  We fool ourselves into thinking we do not interact and impact each other as much as we do. If I begin the repairs by acknowledging that I am falling for some untrue story in my head, I am that much closer to re-establishing the connection.

One of my favorite words is continue.  It is a simple yet profound term to describe hope or devastation depending on the context.  It is a word speaking to the power of lingering with something.  As a child, due to the sexual trauma I experienced, I learned really quickly how to abandon myself.  It took the form of leaving my body because of the confusion and the discomfort or my perspective on what was happening which did not seem to agree with others’ perspectives.  I then found other ways to create the same experience through food and self-hatred. The idea of lingering with myself as a safe place to be was foreign to me.  I am not sure I truly understood what it means to linger in safety until my daily dates with God began.  I had such a mixed-up sense of safety because what I told myself was safe and unsafe caused me to want to leave myself.  It was God who showed me the power of lingering a little bit past my comfort zone to move from a place of unsafe to safe.  It seems contrary to our minds to linger when we experience discomfort of any kind.  Why not leave?  Why not get on to something more comfortable?  Yet there is power in lingering past what our minds’ tell us is our capacity, our courage, and our strength. The truth is our heart is far more resilient than we realize.  It is what allows us to continue on despite difficulty.  It is what empowers us to continue to search for a way to make it through when we feel lost.  Being with God who is happy to be lingering along with me as I get to know the landscape of my heart is what has taught me what it means not to abandon myself.  Lingering with our heart gives us the fortitude to continue to hope no matter what we are going through.

It is sometimes hard to discern what applies to us.  There are so many categories and elements to who we are that when we come across ideas or situations we may think it pertains to us but it may not.  There are all kinds of categories to which we belong and some we do not have any control over.  I am a woman, a worker, a friend, a sister, a daughter, an American, a Southern California resident, a car owner and driver, a master’s degree holder, a descendant of Irish and Italian immigrants, a writer, a blonde-haired person, a spiritual being, a giver, a learner, and so on.  We could spend all day divvying up where we belong based on all our different characteristics. Consider for a moment how there are groups and qualifications assigned to any one of those categories which may pertain to us.  That is a lot of categories or groups to belong to. But do they really pertain to us?  How do we figure out what pertains to us or how much of that characteristic pertains to us?  Which of those elements of ourselves pertains enough to impact how we are being in the world?  What about the categories for which we are not a part?  Do those pertain to us?  There is only so much time and energy we can spend being a part of or involved within one day.  We get to choose the level of how any one of these elements pertains to the truth of who we are.  It may not pertain that much to me in a particular circumstance that I am a woman and tomorrow it may not pertain as much to me that I am a worker.  We get to discern which elements of our lives pertain the most to who we are being and what we are up to in the moment we are in.  No one else can determine that for us.  Some think it is their job to point out to us that we belong to them, but if we feel it does not pertain to us we can choose otherwise.  We are not victims of our circumstances or elements.  We have the agency to discern in any given moment the level to which any part of ourselves pertains to us.