dailydatewithgod

We pride ourselves on our knowledge.  We have initials after our name so others know before they meet us how much knowledge we have obtained.  We give people who know more or at least seem to know more places of authority.  We feel safe about having an answer.  None of this is either good or bad.  The real question is how do we perceive an experience or ourselves when we find ourselves doubting?  It is not a question of whether or not we will experience doubt but when and in what form.  The deeper question is what do we do with it once we experience it?  It may have a different flavor if we are talking about matters of the heart or matters of the mind, but doubt play an important role in what it means to be human.  Just like our dark sides, we try to pretend doubt is not really there or push it down.  Acting more assured of something or working to prove it to others to make it truer does not squelch the experience of doubt.   If we pause and breathe in the face of doubt and let it in the door, we can engage with it.  What kind of questions can we ask?  What might the experience of doubt without the context of the specifics be providing for us as a path to growth?  Sometimes we need to doubt to be pushed to see what it is we really do know or believe.  Only when we stop and take a look at what we have taken for granted, do we see get a chance to learn all of what it contains.

When we interact with others we are affected by them.  We can claim that we do not allow people to affect us but energetically there are things happening of which we are not consciously aware. Just because we do not experience it on a cognitive level does not mean it is not happening.   It is easier however to concede that we are affected by others than it is to own how much we are affected by the thoughts we think.  Many of our thoughts are so automatic we stopped paying attention to them.  Just because we do not experience it on a cognitive level does not mean it is not happening. When others repeat our words back to us, sometimes we stop to notice if we even believe what is going through our minds.  Often there are thoughts we think which we adopted a long time ago, so long ago we don’t even remember the circumstances or person from which they generated. When we learn to pay attention to our thoughts and watch them as though observing something outside of ourselves we can get some much-needed distance.  When we stop and listen to the words that come out of our mouth we can gain insight into what automatic thoughts are rolling around in our head of which we stopped being conscious.  On my daily dates with God, I have learned to become an observer of my thoughts.  It is powerful to know we are not our thoughts and we can choose which ones to hook into.  All are welcome and I am slowly learning not to make myself wrong for them or the effect they have on me.  My goal is to latch on to the ones which contain affection.  The affectionate ones are the ones I want to grow and make more automatic.  It takes practice given our propensity as human beings to be on alert for the negative, a much-needed survival technique. Even the approach to one’s thinking becomes layered with affection when we pause and seek to find what is workable with our thoughts.  It is a switch in perspective to be willing to be affected by affection in our thoughts and it can change the landscape of our inner world.

We recognize the choruses of songs because they repeat.  Anyone of us can recall a time when we could not get a song out of our head as though it was on replay over and over.  The thoughts which repeat over and over without our even realizing it become the litany of our lives. Why do you think prayers have a repetitive nature to them?  The way our minds work provides the soil from which to grow the experience of thought into belief.  A belief is just a repeated thought.  The litany of our lives gives us an indication of where our lives are headed or where we have come from. If we want to change our lives we need to start noticing the litany of thoughts we allow to take up space.  They become the prayer or song if you prefer of our lives. I remember when I first got into recovery. I would be in these meetings and they would read these steps and traditions every single time.  I first thought, don’t we know what they are by now?  Have we gone stupid and cannot retain information?  What we were doing is changing the litany of negative self-talk, thus changing our beliefs and providing a shift in perspective.  I have heard many people over the years talk about the power of finding a phrase or wording they repeat to themselves to put themselves in the right frame of mind. It sounds similar to how prayers work. They change the litany from worry to hope.  We can choose to change the litany in our minds when we pause to notice the barrage of thoughts we allow to roam rent free.  Using the prompting of our hearts through our bodies by taking a breath and noticing what kind of litany is present in our minds building our beliefs.  It is a litany of love?  Is it a litany of compassion?  Is it a litany of frustration? Is it a litany of things never working out?  Is it a litany we would want to give to another? Are we allowing a litany that works for us to play over and over in our minds or is it like one of those songs we can’t get out of our heads? Or is a litany that worked for the person who unknowingly shared it with us?

While the song Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones is very popular and quite catchy, on its face it is rather hopeless.  What is the point if we can never be satisfied?  Why bother?  On a deeper level what Mick Jagger and Keith Richards may have been alluding to is the idea of satisfaction not coming from the sources where we seek it.  It is not going to come from another person, a product,  or what the world has to tell us to get us going.  God did not design us to be satisfied with the uncertainty of an ever-changing world.  It is satisfying at the moment but it is fleeting.  We cannot sustain a feeling.  Feelings are meant to move.  Opening ourselves up to the courageously seek out the satisfaction of our hearts brings us once again to the deepest part of ourselves. God has already given us what we need within to find the peace and contentment of which we seek.  Life even works in partnership with this design because often it is not until we experience yet again the dissatisfaction of the unsustainable outer experience of peace and contentment do we turn inward.  We think it is a failure or we are on losing streak like they sing of in the song.  What if those experiences are designed as such to prompt us to seek within ourselves?  As far as I can tell when we leave this world we cannot take anyone or anything with us.  We cross over on our own and maybe it is time we started to seek peace and contentment within ourselves.  The great benefit of this as I have learned on my daily dates with God is it changes the eyes with which I view the outside world. Suddenly what I see on the outside is more satisfying than when it was the only place from which I sought satisfaction.

We recognize the power of knowing where and who we come from.  We are curious about our background and ancestry even to the level of DNA.  We want to know what of our story comes from what came before us.  Knowing one’s heritage provides a fuller picture of who we are and what has transpired in order to bring us to who we are. Heritage is not only our background of people and places but of beliefs.  Those ideas get passed down often without question as to their current application.  Why is it we get together at Thanksgiving every year?  Is it because we want to celebrate that particular national remembrance? Is it because we are Americans and it has meaning for us? Or is it that we believe we are supposed to do so with the people from whom we came and shaped our lives in the beginning?  We cannot change who or where we came from but we can evaluate whether the ideas that came along with those people and places still apply to us today. A place to start is by looking to see if those ideas hold a place just in our minds or in our hearts as well.  It is not about getting rid of it all or making it wrong.  It is more like taking it off the display shelf, dusting it off, seeing what it is made of and trying it out to see if it fits our heart today.  Some things may and some things may not.  It does not make them right or wrong, after all, they worked for whom they worked for in their situation.  Why else would they have carried them out?  People do what works. We are called to live our lives in the design of the hearts within us.  We cannot truly live the truth of who we are if we are only a carbon copy of our heritage. The heritage we come from gives us a starting point and it is what we make of it with the uniqueness of who we are that allows it to grow and become something alive in the world today.  We can honor our heritage without blindly following it.

We always think the end is the most important time.  Why are we looking forward to when things are over? Is it really that we want them over or that we want to be on to the next thing?  I often think when I am done with this, it will be better.  When I don’t have to deal with the situation I am in, all will be at peace. On our daily dates, God is always with me in the moment.  Is it that I do not think I can handle what I am in the middle of or I simply don’t like it or somewhere there must be something better going on?  We are where we are at in the moment we are in it.  It is not easy to trust in the timing of God.  I am certain God laughs all the time hearing me go on about why something is taking so long or is not happening soon enough.  I find God draws me back to my heart in those moments to let me know where I am is exactly where I am supposed to be.  If by the will of force I could change my reality, I would have done it.  The irony is in many ways I already have done it and I am where I am because of it.  Just because I do not understand the timing of life doesn’t mean it is wrong or I have a better way.  Why do we get upset that we are not at our vacation yet when we are on the road to get there?  It isn’t just children who go around asking, “Are we there yet?”  When I settle back into the truth of who I am I can see the timing of life as not something I can orchestrate at all.  Just because I can see how it moves according to numbers on a dial, does not mean I have any real idea of how many things go into the workings of something coming about or changing in my life.  Much like I do not see all the inner workings of a clock, I do not know what inner workings of my heart are at play when it comes to the timing of my life.  I am left with trust in God’s view or not.

There are people we call friends, others associates, and then there are the people we randomly come in contact with in everyday life.  All these people and our family are our companions on this road of life.  We are in each other’s lives for a reason.  Sometimes we know why and understand the role we seem to play in each other’s lives but not always. I wise woman once said to me, some people come into our lives for a reason, some for a season, and some for seasoning.  All of these various companions are here to teach about what it means to connect and they provide an opportunity to look at ourselves.  We get to explore what it means to be in a relationship with another and what we are here to give and receive.  Rarely do we pay attention to the companions we allow the closest, the thoughts and feelings within us.  We often see ourselves as having no choice.  Sometimes we look for ways to drown them out or pretend they are there.  We think by making them wrong, the experience of having the thought and feeling companions will make them disappear, but it doesn’t’ work that way. We make jokes about people who talk to themselves.  I am more concerned about what I am allowing to talk to me inside my own head.  When I think of the thought companions I keep inside myself, I realize I would never consider them a friend.  The ones I allow to spring up from my heart are the kindest companions.  The ones God shows me to draw close to are friends to my soul.  God reminds us when we take the time to quiet ourselves, we are not at the mercy of these inner companions.  We can always choose to step back and observe and choose the level of closeness we want with them.

When we think of mediation we imagine a coming between opposing people or opposing ideas.  We think of it as a way of finding a middle ground or a compromise.  What would happen if we begin intervening with our own thoughts?  What kind of internal peace could we create be intervening between our thoughts and our beliefs?  Unfortunately, all of us at some point fall prey to believing in things just because we think them.  We do not intervene and ask questions of our own thoughts?  It is labeled as crazy or strange to talk to oneself.  How much more crazy is that than believing everything we think is true.  How much more crazy is it to believe that our perspective is always the right one?  If we start intervening between the thought and the action we gain a level of self-mastery.  We think many things all day long and if we stop attaching to all of them, we can begin to open our eyes to see and experience things from different directions.  Intervening is a powerful tool to keep us from always following the thoughts that might lead us down a path we do not wish to go on.  The power of intervening by taking a breath after a though reaches our conscious mind is all we need.  From there we can make a conscious choice of where to go.  The good news and the bad news is most of our thoughts do not register consciously.  We recognize the ones they do because we attach energy to them.  We call them feelings.  These feelings feed into the thoughts like giving them juice and we are off to the races.  Intervening by breathing allows us to step back and even ask ourselves, who is thinking this thought?  It may sound all woo-woo, but sometimes a little woo-woo is what we need to shake ourselves out of the automatic loops of thoughts.  Intervening gives the opportunity for our hearts to step in and play a role as well.  From there we can reconnect to the truth of who we are. We can invite the mind to pause before taking action and regain a little bit of self-possession.

We like to think we know people better than we do.  The reality is much of what experience as knowledge of others tells us more about ourselves.  Given that every expression, every word, every action, every interaction with have with others is filtered through our understanding of life, most of what we think is knowledge of them is our version of them.  It may sound funny, but think about how many different opinions exist about people in the public sphere.  Some people can’t stand this person, other people love them.  Can we all be right or wrong?  How others express themselves tells us something about them but the meaning we attach to those expressions are what we believe is our knowledge of them.  The even funnier part of life is others often know more about our expressions than we do.  There are things we do so automatically we are not conscious of them.  It is done by body memory.  We can start to know ourselves by paying attention to our own expressions.  Reflecting on what we did when something happened or we encountered our experience of others.  It requires a slowing down to pay attention to what we are expressing.  Often we do not really pay attention to the words that come out of our mouths, let alone whether or not our body language matches the words we are using.  Why do this?  Why would we want to focus on our expressions?  God designed us each at our core to be an expression of love. None of us really know how to do that, but it is what drives us.  Our lack of knowledge and understanding of the true nature of love leaves us to make ill-fated attempts at expression. What comes out may seem completely contrary to the very idea of love.  Taking the time to get to know the inner workings of the core of who we are is how we begin to notice what kind of expressions we are capable of.  It is not about meeting some moral standards or the approval of others.  It is about living the truth of who we are created to be.  Getting to know our expressions and learning how to make them come from both our mind and our heart in alignment allows us to feel and be alive. Isn’t that why we are here?

When we get weighed down by the everyday little things of life it is hard to remember to wonder.  Our breath provides us a quick reminder to stop and take it in and let it out over and over throughout the day.  Have we lost the connection to our phenomenon?  Have we forgotten where we come from or how we were created?  Of course, we have. It happens. Why do you think we have to breathe so often each day?  Each breath is an opportunity to step back into the awareness of our phenomenal nature.  When we spend time in nature or just even glance at the majesty of the ocean, the peaks of the mountain, the colors of the butterfly, or how the wind moves the clouds, we step into the phenomenon of creation.  In that moment of breath’s invitation to pause, we have access yet again to the still place within us which remembers we too were created the same way.  We get lost in our outside coverings and the labels our brain places on ourselves and others.  But in the moment of recognition of truth, we can marvel at the phenomenon we are.  God would not take great care in designing the grooves on a leaf but then leave a part of us less than as intricately wondrous.  Just because we cannot see what God sees or know the heart of God at the moment of our creation, does not mean we are not the phenomenon of God. The eyes of our mind only tell us part of the story.  I do not see the roots of the tree in my front yard but I know they are there.  It would not be able to stand tall and spread its branches without falling over. It would not keep growing if it was not getting nutrients from the soil and its connection to other trees. We are rooted in the phenomenal nature of God and our phenomenons ourselves.  We are created to serve as living breathing evidence of the love from which we were created.  We would not be able to grow in love as a standing reminder of the power of love no matter what we experience in this life if we were not rooted in the phenomenon of God’s love.