dailydatewithgod

The system of blood moving through our bodies carrying oxygen to our cells and allowing us to live is known as circulation.  Not only does it define the flow but the word itself means to move circularly.  The pattern of functioning means blood is always circling back to the heart.  Yet each of these blood cells has within it a nucleus known as the brain of the cell.  Aside from its task of transport, what energetic signature might be circulating through your body?  If you are carrying within you feelings and thoughts that impact your heart, those messages get carried to the whole of your body.  Our blood to and from our heart is moving within the physical body with the energetic signature of our emotional and mental body.  Knowing we cannot block experiences and ideas from affecting us it would be mindful of us to process what we are dealing with so we can continue circulating that which gives life.  It does not mean never to be upset or down. It does not mean always be happy.  It means allow for the flow of life to flow through us.   Allowing all of life’s experiences to flow through our hearts means it can aid us in flowing with life without getting too attached to thoughts or feelings or pushing them down or making them wrong.  If we notice them and allow ourselves to experience them fully by circulating them through our being, we can expand our awareness of what it means to live fully.  If we invite our hearts to do what they do in circulating life through us, we may find ourselves more open to all of what is possible instead of shutting things down out of fear.  This is a step by step process, at least for me.  Before I got into recovery my willingness and capacity to handle feelings was limited to feeling uncomfortable, making myself wrong for having them or blaming myself for being too sensitive, and stuffing things down.  There was no interest or capacity to allow the circulating nature of my heart to engage.  I was too busy trying to keep my heart safe by keeping it under lock and key.  On my daily date with God, I have bit by bit opened myself up to the circulating power of the heart to allow for what is to come and go.  I can trust if my heart seems to recirculate the same thoughts and feelings, something is inviting me to take a closer look. I can trust the circulating of my heart because I am not alone with it. God is always in my heart with me.

I remember as a kid my sister and I were in the kitchen and we managed to create this blob substance from flour, water, and food coloring.  I remember it was all over our hands and we walked around trying to convince people to be scared of the green blob that had overtaken and disfigured our hands.  It was absolutely ridiculous but this concoction made up of simple materials became what seemed like endless entertainment.  That is until we had to clean it up.  We were brought back to the reality of it being water and flour.  When it hardened onto our skin and the table surface we created it on, it was actually rather laborious to clean up. It was still worth it just to see the neighborhood kids freak out. Kids are free to create concoctions all the time and they do.  There is a freedom there to make things out of whatever materials they have at the present moment.  We do this all the time in our heads.  It is shelved under the heading of creativity when we are tasked with it at work or in an improvisation class.  Most of the concoctions we create are only in our minds and we forget they are made up.  We create meaning out of what someone says to us.  We design a story of reasoning from little details obtained from our limited perspective. The difference between these kinds of concoctions and those created in play or discovery is we do not see it as our mind playing.  We see our concoctions as real.  We believe our concoctions.  We create them so quickly and do not question them as real or not. We take it so far as to be dismayed and deny the validity of other evidence when we find out our concoctions are not real.  When we are provided with more details from other people and sources instead of taking them into consideration we defend our concoctions.  This is when we know they have hardened.  Concoctions are our imagination at work and an important part of who we are.  The question is, how many of them have hardened into beliefs about ourselves and others based only on our limited perspective?

Everything seems to scream go, just do it, keep going, move forward, and so on.  What happens when we come across an obstacle?   Or we find ourselves not able to just do it?  We conclude the obstacle is outside of us. It is something or someone impeding our ability to do the very thing we want to do.  What if the deeper question became, what is the hinder inside of me that looks like an obstacle outside of me?  Isn’t this what differentiates the people who let the obstacles outside of them stop them versus those who plow forward despite the resistance?  What do they do with their internal hinders?  Are they able to apply the same principles to their hinders in all areas of their lives or just some?  Is there a message contained in the hinders?  When we attune ourselves within we can explore the hinders without judgment.  All things, even obstacles can be our teachers if we let them.  What if the hinders tell us more about what we really think or feel than the obstacle it looks like outside of us?  We may think we are certain in our minds that we want to move forward.  Does our heart want to move forward?  Do we mute the hinders because we do not want to face the truth of where we are concerning the movement in our lives?  It might call us to dismantle some of what we think of ourselves or what we think others believe about us.  God invites us to use the hinders to take what we have decided in our minds and align it with our hearts.  To do so we need to take time to quiet the noise of the outside world as I have learned to do on my daily date with God.  In the quiet, we can engender patience to listen closely to the hinders and what they are speaking to us from the truth of who we are.

Life is full of many possibilities and experiences and we may not have even gotten out of bed yet.  Both within us and outside of us exists potential and movement in multiple directions.  Sometimes we feel we are steering the ship of our lives.  Other times we feel as though life is steering us.  God has shown me on our daily dates that even in the moments when I feel as though life is directing me on a course I can steer where my focus and intention lies.  I can steer the energy of my heart which alters the view I have of whatever I perceive as directing my experience.  The reality is nothing outside of me can steer me away from me unless I choose to let it.  No matter how many times in my life I may have not had any control and been an actual victim of someone else’s behavior or of circumstance, it does not strip me of the capacity to use it to steer my life in a direction that works for me.  I did not choose to be a victim of incest.  No one asks for this.  But it happened and I can choose to steer the trajectory of my healing and reconnecting with the truth of who I am if I choose.  We all have had experiences, good and bad when we did not have a say, many of those happened as children.  When we experience any form of that as an adult and have not made peace with that experience as a child, we will approach the adult experience with a child perspective. God has shown me in more ways than one that as an adult I can look to my heart to steer my reaction, my feelings, my thoughts, and my choices each time something comes up for me that relates to my experience as a child.  I am no longer a victim. When I look to my heart to take the helm, I am steering the ship of my life by connecting with the truth of who I am at the core of my being.

Living in Southern California can lead one to take for granted good weather. I know I am guilty of it.  Originally being from New York, I learned early on how extreme weather can be and how wide and broad the seasonal changes can be. Aside from remembering to dress in layers at certain times of the year, there is not a lot of lifestyle adjustment that needs to occur when other parts of the world are experiencing snow, rain, or super intense heat.  I am super grateful for the weather out here and it is a big factor in my choice to stay living here for almost 20 years.  By surrounding myself with a pleasant physical environment does much to add to my peace of mind.  Although one’s surroundings cannot do everything. I have had days when I was in such a funk in my head or dealing with some intense situations that I could care less that it is beautiful outside.  I have even had times when I found myself pissed off that my outside surroundings were so beautiful since I felt anything but that inside.  I can also experience disappointment when it is cloudy for too long.  Awareness of one’s surroundings has as much to do with what we are surrounding ourselves with inside as what we see outside. Actually, what I surround my internal experience indirectly affects the eyes through which I view my external surroundings.  Taking the time to reflect on gratitude, to spend time on my daily dates with God where I pay attention to my internal surroundings provides the gauge needed to know my interpretation inclination.  Then when I notice a particular reaction to my external surroundings such as weather, people, experiences, ideas, and so on, I can connect to my inner surroundings and choose how to proceed.  If I take the time to build internal surroundings of gratitude, space for my heart to breath, the power of noticing the external without creating a story around it, the power of noticing my internal thoughts without believing them and allowing the eyes of God to define me (i.e.-get to know the truth of who I am), the more external surroundings change.

I am rather fascinated by mystery.  Not scary mystery although a little of that is always good to get the juices flowing.  In terms of TV programs or books, I enjoy stories about people who devote energy to figuring out the mystery.  Life does not fit it a book or a 45 minute period where all the mysteries are solved but I am drawn to how the characters use their skills of detection to get into the heart of the mystery they are trying to solve.  While in some cases there is a lot of pressure on the detectives in a story in many ways it is an experimental process.  They notice clues and look beyond what is obviously there to get closer to what happened or how the mystery evolved.  The power of noticing ourselves in our own lives is something God taught me on our daily dates.  By taking myself out of the equation, I increase my detection skills for figuring out the mystery of me.  Figuring out the presence of love inherent in me. It also provides a way to begin detecting God’s presence in our lives. Is the bumper sticker just a bumper sticker or is there some greater message behind why it appeared in my sight the moment it did?  The skills of detection, like anything, if overused will drive one mad.  Embracing detection as a way to clue into the mysterious and sometimes playful ways God shares love with us provides a new set of eyes through which to see.  Using detection as a tool to engage with God and embrace the presence of the one who designed us can lead to insights on how we can be the presence of God in the world.  I imagine it will take a lifetime if not more to detect all the ways God makes present love in our lives but what a fun mystery to spend time exploring!

Years ago there was a movie, “The Commitments” about an Irish band and one of the things which have always stuck in my mind is the lead singer’s rendition of the song, “Try a Little Tenderness”.  Up to that point, I had never heard the songwriter, Otis Redding’s rendition of it so I was surprised in my first hearing of the song that it almost seemed to contradict what the song was conveying.  The lead singer in this film was so passionate and his voice was far from tender.  (That may have something to do with the fact that he was drunk which was his state through most of the film).  You almost got from his expression that it was a stretch for him to try a little tenderness for himself or anyone else.  Kind of like how we are with ourselves and each other.  I think if God had one overlaying message to give us each day it would be to try a little tenderness.  As Redding sings, “you won’t regret it.”  In our everyday life we are often in such a rush we forget how fragile we are.  I do not mean we will fall apart easily but rather we are much more sensitive than we think we are which brings me to a favorite song of mine, “Fragile” by Sting.  Did I mention that I love music and I often find God speaks to us through music?  Why not?  Music is full of spirit (inspiration), vibration (energy), and rhythm (flow of life) it only makes sense that God would use it as a messenger.  Maybe today we can listen to God’s messages by keeping in mind how fragile we are and try a little tenderness with ourselves and others. We in each of our lives know how best to interpret the message of tenderness for ourselves.  The more we attune ourselves to our tenderness the more we are sensitive to the tenderness of others because we have adjusted the lens through which we are seeing.

If we are really honest with ourselves we recognize how much we do not know.  In fact, the amount of things we do not know far surpasses the things we do.  There are actually two differentiations when it comes to things we do not know.  One would fall under things we do not know that we know we do not know.  The other would fall under things we do not know that we do not know we do not know.  Is your tongue tied yet?  Given how much we are unaware of, why do you suppose we are surprised when we are flummoxed by life.  We find ourselves upset and even take it personally when we are hit by a confounding experience or idea.  How else are we to learn new things if we cannot own how much life is one big flummox after another. We lose the heart of a child when we make ourselves wrong for being surprised by life.  All that is happening when we are flummoxed is we did not somehow plan for, prophesize, or foretell the future. For all the times we tell ourselves we know exactly how something or someone is going to play out or behave, we are flummoxed when they do not go as prescribed.  In those moments, we are experiencing the present.  Someone or something is not being as they were in the past which is what we are basing our assumptions on.  Our minds want us to hold on to the idea that we already know because it requires less brain power to function from the already known.  Our hearts get energy from being the present and look with an eye of adventure each time we are flummoxed.  Perhaps God is trying to help us initiate a balance so experiencing the opposite of our expectations feels less like a flummox and more like a little tap to look in another direction.  Maybe God within our hearts is inviting us to see what is in front of us that lies outside our assumptions.

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.