dailydatewithgod

Do you ever get a tingly sensation when you hear someone say something which has a deep resonance for you?  Have you ever notice when someone bristles at something you say? Both of these experiences of prickles are at their essence sensations.  We are the ones who label them good or bad.  When we find ourselves encountering prickles whether they are situations, ideas, words, people, or memories, they are not inherently positive or negative. Sensations are neutral.  Our interpretation of them is what provides the context.  The meaning we place on them speaks to our state of mind at the moment we are experiencing them.   Recognizing our prickles are contextual and based on our meaning we see the power of our choice.  If prickle (whether an idea, an experience, a person, or thought in our mind) is felt as chilling or spiky we can step away from blaming the prickle and look at what meaning we are attaching.  We are no longer at the whims of the prickles in our lives because those sensations hold only the value we place upon them.  We are freer than we perceive ourselves to be.  I am not saying it is easy to let go of believing it is the prickle causing the distress and anger or even the joy and elation, but it is truer than the idea that we are victims of sensations. We cannot change the prickles but we can be open to creating new meanings.  The simple prayer I say often holds great power for me, “God, how do you see this?”  It is the gateway to tilting the perspective from the eyes of my mind to the eyes of my heart.

It is easy to focus on where things are missing.  Perhaps it is the inclination to view the glass as either half-full or half-empty.  Has anyone noticed the glass is both half full and half empty?  Focusing on the gaps in our lives is not so we can wallow in them or start a pity party.  To be able to see them we can recognize them and our perspective of them as part of ourselves.  The more we are willing to look at all areas of our life the more we can know what we are working with to construct a life.  In the same way, there are moments when it is best to let our hearts be the stronger impetus behind our decisions and moments when it is best to let our minds be the stronger impetus it is good to focus on our gaps.  When we know where the loopholes are we can see how they make up the tapestry of our experience. If we try and hide them by pulling the rug over them, we will fall through when we walk across the part of the floor with the gap underneath we cannot see.  If we are willing to look with the eyes of our heart upon the gaps in our lives we will grow in love for them, ourselves and all those around us who have their gaps too.  We can work together to fill in each other’s gaps and show each other how we learn to live with the ones that don’t seem to be fixable.

When it comes to nourishment, we think mostly about physical nutrition. What is the sustenance needed to keep us going from one day to the next? There are also elements of nourishment for our hearts, minds, and spirits.  Knowledge is nourishment for our minds. So is quiet.  The nourishment of our heart is a connection to ourselves and others.  Nourishment of our spirit is everything from acknowledging our role in the greater experience of life and a deep knowing we are more than our physical experience. For each of us, there are different elements which create the levels of nourishment needed on any given day.  What may be nourishment to one person is poison to another.  However, just as in nutrition for our bodies, there are some similarities.  Just like water seems to be an essential part of physical nourishment for everyone we all share similarities as to what nourishes our hearts.  Those are the places we can connect with others.  The common elements of nourishment of our hearts are what unite us.  When we develop and focus on those there is less reason for strife with others.  If we do our part in providing ourselves with the nourishment we need to sustain our hearts, minds, and spirits we do not depend on others to do so for us.  Others can be an integral part of it but in the same way, they cannot be the water we need, we cannot expect them to be the source of our nourishment.  For me, my daily date with God is an essential part of the nourishment of my mind, heart, and spirit.  Our committed time together grounds me and provides the nourishment needed to move through the moments in my life as fully as I can.  It may not be what I expect and I may encounter experiences I do not want, but I have the nourishment I need to face whatever happens.

We have conceded the idea that in order to grow as a human being we need to be learning.  We make room for it with children or when acquiring a new skill in adulthood.  We allow it in classrooms and discussions.  Life is busy teaching us the design of love and how it works all along the way.  When we open our eyes to the teachings of love we realize we can learn it from everyone and everything.  At any interval, we can ask ourselves: What am I learning about love in this situation?  Where is the presence of love in this person?  How do I accept myself when all I feel is pain and contempt for the circumstances I am in?  How could I possibly bring love into this relationship, job, circumstance, and so on?  All of our moments from breath to breath are life teaching us about the capacity and diversity of love.  We are designed to grow in learning about love so if it were to only take place in a given experience with certain people (i.e. a house of worship, a specific book, or a spiritual medium) we would be very limited. God is not limited, therefore God’s teachings on love are found in every crook and cranny of the universe.  Our job is to open our eyes to see and feel how we are being taught of love.  Often it is the least likely person, place or thing we would imagine teaching us anything about love which moves our hearts the most. It is the walking through recovering from childhood incest, working with challenging personalities at work, the desire to find a place of peace and freedom in my own body which I vilified for many years and seeking reconciliation for long wounded relationships where I have found my teachings on love which reached me deep within.

Life provides all kinds of indications.  We get them through our experience, our feelings, other people, all our senses.  Some of them speak louder than others with words or not. The ones which find a connection within ourselves are the ones we want to pay close attention to.  It may sound strange to ask what my pain is suggesting or what my frustration is suggesting.  How about what our laughter or delight is suggesting?  How we relate to our experience tells us something about how we are interpreting our lives.  We can use them as the suggestions they are to take a deeper look.  Things are rarely what they seem.  At least for me, it is not the face value which causes the pain or pleasure I sense in my heart.  It is what I think it is suggesting about me or my experience.  Being open to other suggestions is what I rely upon God for.  God, help me to see this as you see this?  What is this experience suggesting to me about who I am being or not being?  How might I learn from the suggestion of this experience about love today? I know deep down we are all here to grow into the love from which we were created.  It is our ideas about what is happening that typically prevent us from listening to the suggestions of life guiding us to remember who we truly are.

Sometimes we just need a break.  Life is a mess.  We have things coming at us all day long and we manage most of them automatically and are therefore unaware of the true volume.  We do not notice how much we need an interlude until we give ourselves one.  Just a moment to stop and take a look at where we are and who we are being.  A moment to treasure the gift of being alive. We tell ourselves we will do it when we retire but that could be a long waiting time.  We do not even know if we will make it to retirement.    An interlude during which we are one with our breath is provided for us a multitude of times in an hour, in a day.  Did we even stop to wonder why it is we have to breathe in and out so often?  Maybe we are designed this way to provide automatic interludes as we experience life.  Perhaps God knew life would be such an abundant experience for which we would have untold curiosity and desire to be in, we would need a reminder to take an interlude and let it soak in.  Having an interlude is not because we can’t handle more but because we want to be more alive and present for the fullness of life.  Surrendering ourselves to the inherent reminder to create breathing space allows us to have more of the experience we are in.  Letting go into the flow of life by taking the interlude designed in our system, is our thank you to the gift of the life for which we are present.  Not taking advantage of an interlude is like saying you are breathing by only inhaling.  We need both the inhale and the exhale to keep existing.

Our minds are creative, imaginative, and an endless source of stories. Especially when it comes to narrating the whys.  My mind can spend endless hours constructing a story about why something that does not make sense occurred.  It designed narratives of motivation, suspicion, potential reasons to hope or to despair, and I sometimes think I could be a screenwriter with the story behind the why.  It is a gift to have such creativity and an extension of who we are at our core.  However, by the time my mind is done constructing the story behind why there is little evidence to back it up.  The fearful element wants to know all the details so it can solve the puzzle.  With the mind’s inclination to survive any possible dangers it conjures up multiple potentials of dangers to watch out for going forward.  Sometimes we don’t know why things happen. Sometimes there isn’t a reason.  Sometimes things happen.  As the author and spiritual teacher, Michael Singer wrote, “you can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.”  There will always be a why we cannot solve.  The evidence we are truly seeking is the knowledge we are okay.  We think if we can solve the mysterious why we can guard ourselves against the bad.  Yet is it the mind or our heart that is telling us the story of something being bad or good?  When we drop into our hearts we reconnect with the inner knowing of who we are at our core and how we cannot be undone by life’s happening.  It is the only evidence we need to take one more breath.

We all have a purpose in this life.  We have many pieces that feed our main purpose of being messengers of love.  God designed us to be and create more of what God started within us.  We are here to supply the means by which others can discover the truth of who they are.  We begin the journey of supplying what is needed in this world by recognizing we need it as well.  It is not about being an expert or having all the answers.  It is about our lives being the supply of our purpose in life.  We model and live the experience of what we are supplying to the world.  It comes through us.  We are the channel by which God’s message is given to the world.   Just as St. Francis of Assisi spoke of in his prayer:  “Lord, make me a channel of your peace.”  We are the instrument being played so the world around us can hear God’s song of life by looking at our lives.  We do not need to worry about how to supply our purpose, we just have to show up to the life we are in.  It may not be at all what we thought it would be but it is the message in our hearts which we discover when we get quiet and learn who we are at our core.

One of the things I learned following the spiritual path of the 12 steps is the importance of upholding the principles in all areas of my life.  Just like it makes no sense for a churchgoer who professes love for God would only be kind to people when at church, it doesn’t make sense to recreate one’s life only to keep it to a specific area of practice.  And it is a practice.  There seems to be no attainment of perfection from human standards when one approaches preserving the values one hold’s closest to their heart.  For me, it is about doing the best I can each day to live out the principles which have saved me from destroying my life in all aspects of my life.  Preserving the gifts I have been given in my relationship with God comes by showing up each day to spend time with God.  How can I preserve being in alignment with what is best for the greatest good if I am not in constant contact with the being at the core of it all?  Preserving the principles of love, hope, tolerance, kindness, accountability, honesty to name a few means living them in my thoughts and actions.  I am grateful not to have to attempt this alone.  I have a community of people who practice preserving the same principles.  At all of our core being resides the power and the courage to preserve the truth of who we are.  Many of us spend a lot of time running from getting to know the truth of who we are and end up preserving principles which do not serve us or the greater good.  The act of preserving which brings me into constant contact with God is the same act which invites me to get to know the truth of what I am preserving.

It may sound counter-intuitive to pay attention to our piques in order to better understand where our energy can best be used. Aren’t we supposed to get over our annoyances?  Aren’t we supposed to be better people and not get annoyed and resentful?  If we accept that within our lives we are going to experience piques and not make ourselves wrong for it we can actually use them.  What if underneath our piques are feelings not addressed?  What if our piques are a cover-up for the fact that we actually want to be closer to the person or situation with whom or what we are experiencing piques?  We are so quick to try and cut off our leg despite our toes or throw the baby out with the bathwater as the expression goes.  God shows us that all things in the universe are of use.  Why would they be here?  If God can sit still with us when we are focused on our piques, who are we to run? Spending time and energy squashing them down, condemning them, or condemning those who represent them do not allow us to practice love. We are here to learn and grow in love.  How can we be the messenger of love’s presence if we are busy trying to run from our piques?  Even the piques are simply a call to love.