dailydatewithgod

How many things in our lives do we consent to and are not aware of it?  I have heard that silence is the voice of submission.  If we do not object to something, the implied understanding is our consent. Yet what about the things we have consented to on an unconscious level.  We notice it once in a while when we hear ourselves say something we do not really mean.  Or someone points out to us a particular behavior that we deny doing.  We have consented on some level to it being a part of who we are and we do not even know where it comes from.  Much of our being is like this because so much of our functioning is not chosen by us.  We do have the power of choice but so often we consent to give it away. It seems like too much work or unnecessary. Maybe we believe we are not capable of changing even if we wanted to.  Is that true or yet another idea we have consented to without realizing it? To question our way of being seems like a threat, or at least feels like one.  To engage in the unknown is alarming to us on a biological level because for survival purposes, the unknown could mean death.  Yet many of our consents are not life or death territory.  They are a day-to-day territory.  They are relationship territory.  They are the possible awakening of our heart territory. While our minds clampdown in fear, our hearts get excited to enter into the mystery.  The mystery which gives us the space to choose our consents.  We never know what awaits us if we take the chance and examine a consent we have been operating from unaware. God encourages us to peek into the mystery of ourselves by awakening our hearts to what our minds may have determined is a done deal.

Our lives are filled with moments. Our hours are filled with moments.  Each breath is a moment.  When we look at our lives we recognize certain defining moments.  The times when something occurred and provided insight into who we are or who we could be.  They may not have been big moments by the world’s standards but they were the moments when we felt something within ourselves connect to what was happening on a deeper level.  It is as though our hearts were whispering to us to speak through our being as the fullest expression of ourselves.  We may see defining moments as times when we fell short of being the truth of who we are. In a learning universe, we can grow from those. Given the way the universe works, we do not have one defining moment.  If every moment is begun and ended with a breath, just like our whole lives, then there are defining moments wherever we choose them to be.  It may not seem very consequential to smile at someone in line at the grocery store or to ask someone a question, but we do not know how our being the truth of who we are will be a defining moment for the other person.  Perhaps the person you smile at is contemplating whether or not their life is worth living since no one seems to notice them.  Your smile could be their defining moment.  Maybe the person to whom you ask a question did not know how to articulate an answer until you prompted something within them through your question. The defining moments in our lives may have nothing to do with us.

We love the story of triumph in the end.  We are drawn to the situations and people who victoriously beat the odds. The message of overcoming lives inside of us which is why we recognize it.  It wakes us up and reminds us of what we are capable of.  It seems trite to speak of it in personal terms when reacting to someone else’s victory but it is personal.  The spark of overcoming awakens us and reminds us that we too can overcome.  The heart of love ever-present within us is the story of overcoming. In this messy, crazy, wacky, and often confusing world where sometimes we do not know which end is up we are reassured when we witness the triumph over those circumstances.  God invites us to notice how the spirit of overcoming is present in our own lives. The moments when we could succumb to our survival nature, to hunker down and hide, but chose to hold our heads up and lead with our hearts.  The moments when we take a breath and allow someone close to us to draw closer into our hearts.  The moments when we let go of the desire to be right and chose to be loving despite every reason not to be.  All of these are instances of our hearts overcoming.  God knows us as beings who overcome with love more than we realize but wants us to recognize and celebrate it within our own vision.

We get so stuck in right versus wrong.  It is so important to our egos to be right.  Thus the question which is most helpful in relationships with others, do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?   Essentially there is nothing good or bad about right or wrong. It is only an issue as it interferes with our growth and our ability to get along well with others.  It is easy for our minds to go along categorizing things as polar opposites–good/bad, right/wrong, evil/holy, and so on.  It is an automatic process that serves a survival purpose but when we take a closer look at life and live it day-to-day, we see the limitation in this perspective.  It serves a purpose but does it serve the purpose we need it to today? A deeper perspective might be gained by looking at the degree to which a person or experience is helping.  Does how I see this experience help me to grow?  Is my labeling this person as good or bad help me to grow my heart? How does spending time thinking about or holding this idea help me to make a contribution to the world?  When does this mindset help me to keep others at a distance?  What does treating this person as good or bad help me to feel about myself?  Does avoiding this kind of situation help me to take better care of myself?  How does this friendship help me to learn and grow? God encourages us to embrace the elements of our lives that allow us to connect to the truth of who we are.  In that scenario, anything that helps us move in that direction is good and right.

There are some words when you say them out loud they convey their meaning. Or perhaps it is the look on the person’s face when they say it.  Cherish is one of those words.  Maybe its the “sh” that gives it that oomph of meaning.  But somehow one pictures holding something with delicacy or touching with a certain softness.  The word breathes the lack of harshness which if it did would give the wrong sense of the word.  When we think of the persons, places, or things we cherish we feel this internal connection.  Cherishing seems to be as much a conveyer of meaning as an energetic push from the heart.  I might think long and hard about whether or not I would say I cherish something but my heart knows the answer right away.  Perhaps the language of our heart which can be felt in vibrations does not need a word.  Cherishing can be an avenue to gratitude and therefore alter our perspective in an instant if we let it.  How might we use the concept of cherishing to allow our hearts to guide the vision of our lives today?

We all make use of things, ideas, people, and experiences.  Life is spent.  For all we know, when we breathe our last breath, we do not get to take any of it with us.   A life lived to the fullest means we take hold of what it is worth and use it up.  When we think about expending ourselves we do not normally think in terms of cost.  We see ourselves as separate from some equation of value.  And while we may not have a financial price or particular numerical value we all can acknowledge that there are times when we feel we are expending more or less than who we are.  The deeper question is are we expending more or less because we are not pulling from the truth of who we are?  Are we expending more or less because we are being from something other than our core?  Does the expending enhance our value or detract from it?  Looking at how we are expending ourselves gives us an insight into where we see our core center of operations.  Do we expend more from our minds, bodies, hearts, or spirit?  Do we equally draw from all the elements of ourselves to determine the level of expending we can afford?  How often do we rely solely on our own resources to determine the level of expending we can show up for?

When we reflect on the status of our lives, what we see is a weaving of all our experiences and knowledge up to this point. We like to think that if we did not have to deal with certain circumstances or people that we might be better off.  We think if we could excise certain elements from our lives we will be free.  The reality is all of life is designed to grow us in love.  All of existence is present for us so we can learn how to grow our capacity in love.  The funny thing is that circumstances and people present themselves as exactly the opposite of love.  This causes us to get lost.  We attach to the form that is presented and sometimes lose the lesson.  We forget life is about growing our heart not our status.  We lose what we might be able to weave into our experience and become more of ourselves.  Ultimately, God wants us to know the presence of light and love within us.  We do not need to be hindered by what we see going on outside of us.  Whether it is good or bad circumstances, helpful or harmful people, or whatever other stories we come up with claiming that we cannot grow from them.  It is humbling to admit I often forget God uses all of life to grow me in love, not just the elements I think I would prefer.  It is up to me to weave the learning of love, not the form it shows up in, to a new understanding of the power of light and love.  We do not need to incorporate the form, just the lesson.  It is the lessons that reveal who we are to ourselves. Within the lesson is the opportunity to weave in the truth of love as it resonates in our hearts.  So when I am put off by someone who is irritating or annoyed by having to wait in traffic and see nothing worth weaving into who I am, I can stop and ask, “God how do you see this?“

Do you ever have those moments when you feel like we have been thrown around by life?  When it seems like life is out to wear you down?  This weariness afflicts us from time to time. In the end, there is a balance but while life is in progress you may feel on the wrong end of the seesaw in the playground of life. Better yet, you may feel like you are holding up the seesaw for its installation. The weariness of life can feel defeating especially if we do not know how to move through it and get to the upside.  It is not as though there is a clear set of directions as each experience is not exactly the same, but it begins by knowing where our center is.  Our awareness of our center on a physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic level gives us a place to move from.  We do not have to believe the message we may be sending ourselves about what it means to be weary. We can use the weariness as a signal of where we need to re-calibrate ourselves.  Maybe there is some letting go that needs to happen on a mental or emotional level.  Perhaps we need to take on something on a physical level.  Our spiritual heart center may require attention.  Rest assured, not all answers will come immediately but they will come. It helps to start with the simple act of a breath.  A breath that awakens our heart center which is connected to all the other centers of our being.  It begins the conversation within ourselves to determine how best to connect back to the strength we need to garner to become centered in the truth of who we are. From there we may get thoughts that create decisions that start our bodies moving and our emotions come online.  Before we know it the simple act of breathing has engaged all centers through the heart and we are energetically awakened.  Being awake starts the dissipation of the weariness and we can let go of the story we may have created around what the weariness means about us.

In a culture where we pride ourselves on our individuality, we run from the very idea of dependence.  Yet if we are honest with ourselves we realize the very individual freedom which we describe as independence is actually more like interdependence.  Multiple systems operating simultaneously to enable other systems to operate independently.  Everything has an origin.  Nothing came from nothing.  Even when we think of galaxies emerging out of darkness, that is what they did. Darkness or dark matter is a thing.  The greater question is what is our heart dependent upon?  Obviously, on a physical level, it does not operate on its own.  If we want it to operate effectively it will need certain elements present.  Without oxygen-rich blood to pump through, the heart will stop.  Our breath has an interplay of dependence with the heart.  If we do not take in oxygen it will not be in our blood to travel to our body.  Our heart needs our breath.  Our breath is the manifestation of spirit.  It is why it is called respiration. It is the re-spiriting of the body.  So physically we see the dependence of the heart on the breath and it is mirrored energetically and emotionally.  If we want to take a closer look at what is allowing our heart to thrive and grow, we must ask ourselves how much we are involving Spirit upon which it is dependent.

Everything has a beginning.  Often times we are so in the throws of doing what we normally do we do not even know the source of our behavior or our words.  We say and do things automatically not realizing how much comes from who we truly are versus what we are simply used to.  It is only when our system of things we are automatically doing and saying either break down or begin to create friction in our lives do we take a closer look.  Sometimes it is so dramatic we have to take a complete turn away from the automatic behaviors.  We hold on to them because of their familiarity and assume they are quintessential to who we are without realizing they have nothing to do with us. God invites us, often subtly to pause once in a while and take note.  We can ask ourselves, what is the source of that behavior? Where does that expression come from?  Is it true to the source of who I am or is it just something with which I am familiar?  Most importantly, we can ask: is the way I am being in alignment with the source of my life from which I draw the truth of who I am?