dailydatewithgod

As human beings, we have a lot of thoughts.  A lot of thoughts that we often take seriously.   We are inclined to think it is true simply because we are thinking it.  It is coming from inside of us, so it must have some merit, right?  It wasn’t until I started going on my daily prayer and meditation dates with God that I began to develop a new relationship with thoughts and thinking. I came to realize the multitude of thoughts running through my head are not only not necessarily true but they are often about the same thing.  It is like there is some sort of machine inside of me that loops over and over with the same series of thoughts.  When it comes to things we are to ponder further there is usually some emotional energetic component behind it.  Pondering requires a pause to examine what is behind the uptick in energy and if it has any merit.  Again, just because I am feeling or have thoughts, does not mean I am meant to go from being to doing.  Both are indications of something.  Something may be a reminder that I am alive and have the capability to think and feel all kinds of things.  The something could be an indication my heart is calling out to me to step in and do some pondering.  As I practice looking within to my heart, I take a breath, turn to God, and ask, “How do you see this?”  Are the eyes of my heart seeing something that my mind and body are also communicating with me?  Will you ponder with me and guide my thinking?”  Inviting God into the pondering allows for a greater perspective and a reminder I need not ponder alone.

When we step outside the accepted norm we risk ruffling some feathers whether our own or others.  If we never deviate from the norm we are left wondering if we lived our lives or the ones we were told we were supposed to live. We fear being labeled deviant but really it is simply another word for different.  There are inherent biological constructs that make us want to belong and fit in. But if we do so at the cost of living the truth of who we are, what does it matter if we belong?  I know I have found great peace in connecting with others with whom I consider my chosen tribe.  I tried on many levels to fit into my family and culture from which I was raised.  It was taught valuable things and learned important lessons and hold with great respect and those who played a role in my upbringing.  It matters little at this point if the circumstances of my learning were the result of positive or negative experiences because like everyone else, the curriculum of life provides both.  I was not looking for a deviation when it came to the trajectory of my life, but I seem to have found one.  I spent most of my time trying to fit myself into a box not meant for me.  It is hard to accept one’s own deviation as much as it can be a struggle to accept others.  For me the longer I am in close relationship with God and get to know the truth of who I am, the more I see it is only by living this deviation that I can best honor where I come from.  Society and families place all kinds of expectations on us and we take those in.  We want so much to belong we lose sight of the power of deviation in providing a road towards inclusion with a tribe of our choosing. Life is about lessons and we do not get a grade.  We simply get the chance to grow our hearts one step at a time and the deviation versus the expected may be the path with our name on it.

We are all a vehicle for love.  We are set forth in this experience by our Creator who desired to spread love as far and wide and as multifaceted as possible.  The way for us to come to an understanding of this is through knowing the instrument we are.  It is about tuning into the core of who we are so the frequency that radiates from us is in alignment with our greatest purpose.  Instruments get out of tune and so will we.  Instruments have various parts as do we.  It is about making peace with our whole selves and accepting the instruments we have been given as the best way for us to be the vehicle of love we are.  We may not like our instrument whether it is our physical body, our attitude, our life experience, and training, or even the capacity of our hearts as we can see.  Learning to face all these elements of ourselves and see them as God sees them is us learning to play.  There is never an ending to the possibilities of how we as an instrument can be used for the greater good.  The more we recognize our role in the orchestra of life and the beauty of the tune we sing with our being, the less time we will spend wishing we were a different instrument or in a different section of the orchestra.

We like to think life will move along our expectations.  It is why we often experience being let down. There is a saying in recovery rooms that expectations are set up for resentment.  Depending upon how strongly we expect things to happen or people to behave, we can experience a sense of loss and frustration or worse due to the supposed aberration. We get caught up in the supposed idea of a thing and falter when things deviate from what we consider the norm, which we describe as the thing that is supposed to happen.  Many things have shown up as an aberration and ended up being exactly what I did not know I wanted or needed. As much as we like to think we know who we truly are, most of what we build our self-knowledge on are how the world defines us.  We are our name, our role in family and society, we are our gender, we are our looks, we are our job, we are our level of intelligence.  All of these are elements of ourselves but none of them are the truth of who we are.  Have you noticed all of those things are in constant flux?   How can we stand in a truth of who we are that shifts with the wind?  Perhaps these aberrations are merely life’s way of reminding us not to take ourselves so seriously.  Perhaps aberrations are invitations from our hearts to go with the flow.  To connect with the flow, we are invited to let go of the norm and the expectation and sit with the deepest part of ourselves. Within each one of us is a true sense of who we are which our heart invites us to get to know.  Only when we are in some cases forced to let go by experiencing aberration, do we stop seeking the answers in our head or outside of us.  An aberration becomes the unexpected invitation to look within at who God created us to be and assess how it matches up with how we and the world see ourselves and our expectations of normal.

The moment we think we know what is going on or we know what the answer is we get ourselves in a bind.   We become wedded to what we have figured out and breathe a sigh of relief that a resolution has been found.  It is nice to know. The fear in us quiets down because of the certainty we feel we have obtained.  However, all it takes is a little rotation of ideas or circumstances to upend our sense of security.  The reality is within each known are multiple unknowns.  The greatest security can be found in the awareness of rotations present in any given experience.  It is also freeing to know that if we reach a point of outgrowing the level of certainty we have always had we do not need to go very far to see things from a different angle. The rotation of all things while unsettling to the mind allows for the flow of life known by the heart.  When we reach the point of recognizing we are not sure if it better to breathe out and then breathe in or breathe in and then breathe out, we can begin to play in the joy of rotation.  In fact, if you ever want to experiment with how to rotate your mind’s perspective start with alternating your breath between your two nostrils.  Rotate between holding the breath in or out or using strong or soft breaths.  All these simple little rotations can create a different mindset prompted by the heart which needs fresh oxygen ongoing throughout the day. Rotation allows for adaptation and growth and this is what the truth of us seeks out all the days of our lives.

When I look at the pattern of my life, I see one steady advance after another is what has created change. I often think a change would come easier if it happened all at once.  Yet experience has taught me that while I did not know it at the time each steady advance on the path towards change was somehow necessary.  I could not know or predict which step might be most valuable and so taking the next indicated advance in front of me is what I chose to go with.  Even in moments when it seemed like a step back, it was actually an advance because it was a point of growth which facilitated a step in another area of my life which I did not know I would need.  I cannot determine if something is an advance by my judgment alone.  I need God’s help with how I see my life. I have spent a fair amount of time bemoaning that I wasn’t as far along as I thought I would be or pushing away the idea that I was back dealing with the same thing.  If I judged advances solely on their forward trajectory it would not work.  In my mind, life moves in a linear fashion.  God has shown me on our dates that life and nature are cyclical.  Even the long view of history shows us how life and cultural move cyclically. not just on the linear timeline where we see events.  The question is not why am I hear again but how did I advance within myself so I know how to keep living through this kind of experience?  Can I show life and myself that I have advanced as a person from the last time I was here?   The joy of growth and expansion of the heart is what makes whatever we are facing easier.  The shortest distance between two points might be a straight line but am I looking for the shortest life or the heart expanded life?

One of the benefits of my daily dates with God is the practice of halting.  By making time each day to slow down and connect with my inner life I get a chance to peak at what is going on without reacting to it.  This halting of reaction gives me space to look at things from a different perspective.  I can notice what is happening and not be enveloped by all the things attached to it.  The practice of halting from judgment, halting from belief, halting from identification with the thoughts or feelings gives me space to discover who I really am.  By the halting, I give myself the power to wonder who is it that is thinking those thoughts and having those feelings.  By halting I can ask God to show me how to see them through the eyes of my heart. By halting I can stay grounded in the truth of who I am without feeling obligated to play along with the thoughts and feelings.  All my life all I really wanted was a sense of sovereignty.  I never knew I could get it from halting the stories of who I am and what I am supposed to do.  God wants us all to learn to get to know ourselves.  God desires for us to open up to the real vision of who we are in God’s eyes.  If we are busy jumping on the train of whatever thought or feeling without first halting to choose whether or not we want to be on that track, we cannot begin to know who we are at our core.  The practice of daily halting and getting curious about who I am being gives me a sense of peace aside from all the things I or the word tell myself about my life.  I get to choose which version of myself I most want to align with, my own, the world’s, or God’s when I practice halting.

As much as we hold to the things we know our reality is there is far more to what we don’t know that exists.  We often resist acknowledging what we do not understand for fear of seeming less intelligent or as though we are not paying attention.  There is much bewilderment existing in the world. We can choose to fear it or we can embrace it and use it.  As an incest survivor, I can tell you I spent many many years in a state of bewilderment about my own experiences.  At a very young age, I could not make sense of the puzzling behavior of my body or my relationship with my father.  As a child who is dependent upon the adults in her life for survival, I had to choose the only way to stay alive which I decided was to be bewildered about me and my body versus my relationship with my father and what was happening.  In my mind, at least I could control the bewildering experience by hating my body and treating it poorly.  I could suppress any natural sexual feelings that came up and mask my experience of them by making them wrong and bad.  Coming out of the bewildering experience as an adult I still carried the same tools for living which no longer worked for me.  Living in recovery means recognizing the bewilderment for what it was and working with it.  Seeing the fear in the experience and choosing not to fall for it.  Bewilderment becomes the gateway to an inner knowing and trusting of my experience.  Bewilderment is the portal through which I can access my hearts knowing and see what is real and not real for me.  The bewilderment on whatever level we experience it does not have to signify a stupidity or a lack of intellect or make us less than.  Bewilderment about life can open us up to exploration.  Exploration is the lifeblood of our hearts which seek to make room for being with what is in at the present moment.

At least in the Western world, there is a lot of emphasis on one’s profession.  Western identity is strongly tethered to the world of work. In school, we are asked to think about what we want to be when we grow up.  What schools do we need to attend so we can be sure to get into our chosen profession?  Is the profession we are interested in one that is respected and revered?  Is it one that is paid well or poorly?  Is it one that will make you stand out as someone who makes a noticeable contribution or behind the scenes contribution?  Is it one that aligns with what you are good at or what people in your family are invested in?  Before we even have a chance to discover who we are, what our strengths are or what we like and dislike we are asked to think about our careers.  Our profession is the primary way we make our mark in the world.  What about those who do not stay within a particular career trajectory?  What about those who have a profession only to make money so they can do what they love doing outside of work?  The reality is our professions are more about who we are being than what we do.  We may be a professional doctor but if we have the bedside manner of a crook, we are professing two different ideas. Our career as a garbage worker may say we dig through people’s garbage but what we are professing is we are willing to do the things others deem as less than with dignity.  We are more than the labels we put on ourselves or others put on us based on a set of particular criteria.  We may be in a particular profession but the way we live professes to the world how we see our role in that particular profession.  This is how we can bring our hearts into the work we do each day regardless of what the outside world calls that work.  None of us our stationary beings.  Even when we are a part of a particular profession on one day we profess the best parts of that profession and on other days the worst.  How might our lives and our view of others change if we began to look at what professions people are making with their beings versus their titles? How might the eyes of our hearts open to the hearts of others if we see past their professions into what the professions of their hearts are portraying in their lives?

Upon examination of our lives, we can see the times we have taken action with conviction and the times we have not.  We often tout to the world all the things we believe in but the question is if we were put on trial at the end of our lives would we be convicted of the crime of living those beliefs.  When we step into the realm of conviction, what we believe takes on new meaning.  Conviction involves the energy of our hearts because we have to garner courage.  If we are convicted about something we are willing to take action and stay the course.  When others condemn us or try to make us wrong, it is our conviction that gives us the fortitude to stand with ourselves and those who believe as we do.  Clearly, when we look at conviction we see the difference between a belief which is a repeated thought and a lived belief.  Conviction requires action, not just words.  God invites me over and over again to look at the beliefs I have, especially the ones I hold without question.  I do not necessarily witness, nor do others, the beliefs which I have accepted without question.  They may be a good fit for me or not, but I do not know until I look at them through the lens of conviction.  If I am willing to take action and stay the course, I can claim my belief as true for me to my core.  At the end of the day no matter how many things we claim to believe about ourselves, others, and the world, it is ones which we hold with conviction telling the story of our life.  The more daily dates I go on, the more I realize the importance of the beliefs I hold also being beliefs that hold me with the strength to stand with them no matter what is happening outside of me.