dailydatewithgod

It feels safe to operate within boundaries.  We like lines on the road, signs which tell us which direction to go, and consequences for not following or understanding them.  The difficulty these days is there are so many guides we are given in so many areas of life, it is hard to know which, if any, to follow.  How do I know which guidance will get me where I am supposed to or want to go?  How will I know as I follow a particular guide that it is moving me forward instead of backwards?  We look to people, ideas, institutions, and beliefs to be the guides in our lives.  Surely, one of those must have the answer for us.  If not, maybe the stars can be our guides.  Why do things seem to work for others when they follow a particular guide and not for me?  We search so much outside of ourselves to find the answers we are seeking.  It seems only rational on some level, that someone or something else knows how to guide us.  God is calling on us to pause for a minute.  Stop once in a while and check in with ourselves.  Is the guidance we are receiving for us or the people who are giving it?  What is the purpose of the guidance?  Does it correlate with the guide we have within ourselves?  Being in recovery and spiritual circles one often hears the question, how do I know I am doing God’s will?  I have found I can’t completely say for certain.  I am not sure I am supposed to be able to know exactly how God is guiding me from moment to moment.  What I can do is show up. What I can do is move in the direction that most seems to resonate with the power within my heart.  We are all gifted with the connection to all of creation and life itself within us.  Our first task is to get to know it.  To get to know the truth of the guide within us.  Many of us spent a lot of time pilling ideas, people, wounds, and unloving experiences on top of the truth of our hearts.  We need to show up, look at the build-up and trust that beneath it is the guide we want and need to connect with.

One of the super powers we forget to use more often is noticing. Not just seeing, but noticing.  Looking past what is obvious and pay close attention to what is happening at any given moment.  Noticing heightens our observation level allowing us to take in a full picture and experience the moment outside our defaulted boundaries.  Within noticing we are able to pick up on distinctions.  As we hone our skill of noticing we can make the distinction between what is happening and any meaning we are attaching to it. Our reaction to an experience comes from the distinction of what we are making something mean.  What is happening is just what is happening.  What we are noticing, is what we are noticing.  None of it has any meaning. Practicing this allows us to pick up on the pattern of distinctions we make in our meaning.  It is easy to not pick up on the distinction of what we are making something mean and just assume how we are experiencing something is exactly what it is but we lose out.  Our distinctions of meaning give us an indication of what we are called to play with in this life.  If I stop to notice, I pick up on how when one coworker provides an update on her project, I make the distinction that she is speaking defensively.  I can stop and look at why I label her language as defensive on her use of words versus another coworkers update.  Do I make the same distinction when reading her emails?  Do I make the same distinction with others but only on this particular project or all projects?  We find we can question our distinctions to provide indications of how we are thinking and feeling about a particular person or experience.  Stopping to notice these internal distinctions enables us to respond versus reacting to what we are noticing.

We have this illusion that we do not change must as human beings or we aren’t going to change once we reach a certain age.  We have fixed ideas about life, we have labeled ourselves as a particular personality type, and we find ourselves bothered when things outside of us change unexpectedly.  Yet everything about life changes.  The question then becomes do we actively allow ourselves to shift and grow with life or do we fight it?  Some areas of our lives we embrace it depending on the cultural context.  In the western world, aging is seen as a negative change while in other cultures it is a shift into a wise sage.  I am not sure I am looking forward to having more wrinkly skin, but the shift I have seen into a more balanced perspective on life I have appreciated as I have aged.  I made a drastic shift when I got into recovery and have become more open to shifts occurring in all areas of my life so they are more in alignment with the truth of who I am at my core.  When we are present in the moment we may find the call to shift our perspective and let go of the preconceived notion we carried into it.  A willingness to shift asks us to trust the process and the presence of life.  Shifting calls upon us to be open to how we can be changed by life.  Shifting utilizes the capacity of an open heart as well as an open mind.  Shifting is being in the flow of life instead of insisting on things going our way.  Our minds are more resistant to the idea of shifting anything about ourselves but our hearts know the power of being open to being touched by life.

There is a description written into many plays and scripts as a scene ends after the last line it will say: “Fade to black.”  It means the picture slowly goes black or the stage lights are moment by moment disappearing because it is the end of the play or scene.  It has this finality to it that one cannot turn away from.  One cannot turn away because it happens so slowly it is like we hold on until the very end. When the fade becomes completely black we blink because we want to make sure there isn’t anything more we can see.  There is no explosive end.  In our day to day lives, we do not typically experience this kind of fading.  We turn out the lights when we go to bed.  Our phone and computer screens turn black when we turn them off.  The idea however of fading to black is that the end happens slowly.  When we fade the lights in from our eyes or in our heart we slowly lose the ability to see what is happening and it gives the sense of a disappearance.  The reality is that things change over time.  Sometimes they happen so slowly we do not notice the fading from one phase to another.  We pick up on the more drastic changes.  Sometimes we fall asleep to what is happening right before our eyes because it is fading but still lingering.  Our hearts often pick up on the subtlety of fading in a way our eyes cannot.  We sense the energy draining or the lack of enthusiasm in an experience.  It can tell us something about how present we are to a situation or a person or ourselves.

As someone who spent many years trying to protect her heart from ever being hurt again, it has been a slow road to come to terms with my understanding of love.  It is not something I have a full understanding of but I do acknowledge its ethereal and multifaceted nature.  There is a space in my being between my heart and mind which sits comfortably with the acceptance of God as love.  As I open myself up more and more to the many faces and experiences of God being present in life, the more I have flexibility and forgiveness around the sometimes convoluted understanding of what love is.  I have always been a fan of the song by Foreigner which shares what I think we all long for–to know what love is.  It is a calling from our hearts. It is unfortunate and fortunate that we use the same word to describe our like of chocolate and someone for whom we would willingly sacrifice our lives. My guess is those from whom we have learned love are just as confused by its meaning.  We are all really just doing the best we can.  We are all doing the best we can to meet the truth of who we are. Given we have been created by and out of love it is about coming home.  My best from moment to moment is to accept how love shows up in me, others, and the amazingly convoluted world we inhabit despite my expectations.

How many of us find ourselves in situations or people from which or whom we would like to escape?  How often have we wanted to escape the chatter going on in our own minds?  What would happen if instead of following that instinct into action (not including times when we are in physical harm, of course) we paused to take a closer look?  What might we discover about what we would like to escape that we can actually learn something from?  What if there are other options besides escape?  What if our desire to escape is happening because we are meant to look beneath the surface and find a gem? On some level, it is easy to check out, get discouraged, listen to our negative thinking and abandon ship.  But what if our minds’ ideas about the best course of action which does not coincide with our heart’s call to step into escape and explore?  When we take the time to pause and notice what our minds are telling us about what is happening we can verify the truth of the mind’s story. Getting quiet allows us the space to open our hearts to connect to something deeper.  Our desire for escape often times derives from our imaginings of the worst case scenario.  We do this so automatically we forge to question it.  It takes patience and awareness to listen to the whispering call of escape as a call to adventure.  What might we learn about the nature of life and love if we stay still when we want to escape instead of jumping into action?

Life is about progress, not perfection.  I am not even sure aside from God what is really perfect.  I have had experiences of perfection but most of the time when I fall for the idea of perfection there is an element of safety I am desiring.  There is this idea that if everything is just so, I will be okay.  If all things went according to plan this might be a realistic thing to work towards, but when do all things go according to plan?  And whose plans? Mine? Yours? God’s? I never thought of myself as a perfectionist because as far as I am concerned I fall very short of perfectionism in any realm.  But I do know that I am someone who progresses. Sometimes it is hard for me to see my own growth but that is what friends and mentors are for.  Those are also the people acutely aware of how hard I am on myself and perhaps wish I could more readily see my own progress. Yet even in that, I am progressing.  After many daily dates with God, I have come to recognize the power of progress as a kind of perfection.   You could say progress is in the range of perfection. As long as we keep growing, we are alive.  What is more perfect than life?  The beauty of God, if nature is any indication, shows us the power and mystery of how life unfolds despite our plans.  How many times have we experienced something we did not plan which turned out to be better than our plans?  More times than I can count for me.  Being in a relationship with God allows me the breadth and depth to not need to be protected from life but a willingness to embrace it.  I have come to know that no matter what happens it will progress to something else.  If I keep my eyes fixed on the Creator of all things I might catch a glimpse of the perfection of this progression of life and come to find peace.

We carry around strange ideas about what it means to have things in our lives.  We figure if we have things in our physical hands it is ours.  We do not claim the same level of ownership when it comes to our perceptions and ideas about ourselves and life. Sometimes no matter how much we operate from particular beliefs or ideas, in the moments we are labeled with them by others we act confused as to where their assessment stems.  We are even known to quickly abandon the possession of them.  And what about what we possess in our hearts?  What do we claim ownership of there?  Our confusion about this stems from a lack of awareness of how we came to possess the beliefs and perceptions we hold within us.  Most physical objects we know how we came to own them.  But so many of our ideas and feelings have been handed down to us or we adopted unknowingly from our early caregivers.  Yet we continue to possess them and in some cases claim them as our own without realizing whether or not they are still true for us.  It is the work of awareness to be willing to slow down and take a look at what we are possessing and in some cases what is possessing us in terms of ideas and perceptions that are not a fit for the truth of who we are. God invites us to use the energy of our hearts as a gage to determine if what we are possessing in the form of ideas and perceptions serve to facilitate the truth of the message of our lives in the moments we are in.  We do not have to drastically unearth everything at once.  We are invited by life when we experience moments of discontent between our hearts and minds to pause and look deeper.  What might be possessing our mind that does or does not resonate with our heart?  We have the courage to take a look if we so choose.

When we look at the decisions we make in our lives it is helpful to look at what our criteria are for making the decision. Sometimes we get caught up in using criteria that are not our own.  We were instructed at some point on how to decide on something but were never told the criteria of the person instructing us.  Paying attention to our criteria requires a deeper look at what our values are.  It also asks us to pause and pay attention if we are listening to the criteria in our minds or in our hearts.  Are our minds and hearts in alignment on the criteria we are using?  Our criteria shape our perspectives motivates our actions and tells us more about the truth of the room from which we are operating on a daily basis.  Spending time in quiet listening both to the stories in our mind and the rhythms of our heart enables us to take a step back and get to know ourselves.  Only then can we begin to shift the criteria from which we make our decisions.

We are constantly picking up information from multiple sources.  Our bodies and mind do such a good job of handling them automatically that we are not consciously inundated with them.  If we were we would probably go mad just from the sheer volume alone.  Understanding this can shed some light on how things get lost in the shuffle when it comes to communication.  We intend to transmit a certain message or experience and the people on the receiving end do not get it.  Whatever we are transmitting can also be misconstrued because it is not being done in a clear and cohesive manner.  If what we are transmitting is not in alignment with the truth of who we are the message comes out unclear and lacking power because what is mixed up in the transmission are contradicting elements.  When we do things because it is what is expected but the people who are receiving what we are doing sense the lack of authenticity. Often it is so subtle we do not notice it within ourselves let alone with other people.  We all do this and with some exception, it is not intentional.  Often it is not until someone does not receive our transmission do we stop to take a look at what we are transmitting. God invites us to pause and take a look at the state of our heart before transmitting anything of value.  It helps to be clear about the intention and motive of the transmission.  Being able to sit with ourselves and get to know the truth of who we are goes a long way to transmitting the messages we want to convey to ourselves and the world around us.