dailydatewithgod

In the world of adult learning there is emphasis placed on knowing what the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) is for one’s audience. If you can know what their WIIFM is then you will more readily capture and keep the attention of the learner.  It is a concept used broadly and certainly has merit.  We tend to approach life in this way.  We look to people and situations to determine what they have to offer us.  We hold the expectations that people or circumstances are designed to meet our needs.  If reading this in black and while makes us sound rather selfish and self-centered all I can say is the truth hurts.  Now, it is not necessarily all bad.  It is important to have what we need to survive.  The challenge is moving out of survival into a place of thriving and ultimately contribution.  The paradoxical nature of the universe is when we go into a situation focused on what we have to offer instead of what it is offering us, we get are offered more.  This does not mean offering at the sake of our survival but finding ways outside of that which enable us to be an offering to whatever person we encounter or situation we are in.  An offering is not necessarily something tangible.  Since life happens in multiple elements, sometimes the most profound offering we can provide is our attention in the moment.  It is something we have to give, if we choose. All it costs us is taking our attention away from ourselves.  In recovery I learned offering service is the quickest way to get out whatever negative head space I find myself in.  I stop and ask myself, what am I offering myself in this moment by listening to the harsh self-criticism versus what can I be offering to someone else who needs a smile or a look in the eye?  The experience of my heart has shown me when I am offering my presence and attention outside of myself, my mind cannot simultaneously continue on about what I am doing wrong.  My offering to another ends up being my gift.

I was reminded recently of my choices.  I was reading about how we have these experiences we find inconvenient or troublesome.  Our initial inclination is to avoid them, get out of them as fast as possible, or hope they go away.  Who likes discomfort really?  I am not a big fan myself as much as I know it is a catalyst for growth.  The spiritual text reminded me, the reader, of how each rub is an opportunity to practice my kit of spiritual tools.  This is not the first time I have come across this concept.  I had a spiritual mentor years ago who reminded me regularly that life is a gift or a chance to grow.  She emphatically pointed out that in the moments it did not feel like a gift, I was experiencing an opportunity to grow.  When I am in a good space, I see this view from my heart’s eyes.  The issue is I default to the opportunities according to just my mind.  Those include the aforementioned of avoidance, speeding through, or hoping it disappears.  The opportunity presented by my heart is always hopeful.  It reminds me no matter what I am experiencing it is a chance to see myself as well as the other person in a different light.  It is an opportunity to be reminded at the very least that more is happening than the eyes can see.  God invites us and seemingly challenges us in our moments of discontent or discomfort, to pause, connect with our hearts and see what opportunity is right in front of us.  While I may be inclined to chastise myself for not remembering this more often, this too is not how my heart sees it.  God gently guides me to again, pause, connect with my heart and see the opportunity to view myself as someone who is willing to pause and see it differently.  There are endless opportunities available to us if we pause and connect with our hearts.

We are all spurred on in life by something.  Whether it is some inherent biological drive or a specific intention to live fully we are endowed with the stimulation needed to engage in this life.  The capacity and the desire to live is innate in our design.  It may seem hard to imagine given how many people think about suicide or who express an interest in giving up when they find themselves in dire circumstances.  The stimulation of life is more than just the physical.  How many people relate to the idea of loved ones who have passed on but are still with them?  There is something to life and the connection they had with each other which is the stimulation to carry on the relationship in some form. Even our memories serve as stimulation to move us forward. All of life cycles through.  Some elements stimulate life by passing on, others by starting new.  Every in breath, must have an out breath if we are to keep breathing.  When we think about the stimulations in our lives moving us to take one more breath, where to we think they come from?  The drive of the heart keeps life in motion.  The heart stimulates the continuance of life on all levels.  It is not about some weird perspective on life to agree there is more than the physical.  The physical may be the most obvious or easiest to see but it is not a physical reality which stimulates us to connect to each other on an emotional level. Is it not a physical reality calling us to acknowledge a greater presence at work in the forces in the universe.  The light of life continues to exists despite how many things come and go in our lifetimes and beyond.  The stimulation of life’s light is something in which we all play a part.  Sometimes when I have experienced moments of darkness, I cannot see any light in me to stimulate any kind of life or motivation.  It is in those moments I have been touched by someone else who has the stimulation of life present in them or is able to see it and acknowledge it in me.  We are all called within our hearts to play a role in the stimulation of life. Sometimes it is by giving, other times by receiving.  Every in breath, must have an out breath if we are to play our part in the stimulation of life.

We all have distinctive talents and desires.  We are all equipped with particular inclinations and interests.  We readily accept this about ourselves and others yet we do not know where they come from.  They seem to be inherent within us.  In the same way we are drawn to particular colors, flowers, music for no particular reason we also posses particular person styles.  Our personality styles indicate things about our proclivity towards negative or positive default perspectives as well as comfort level around other people.  All of these elements of ourselves are a mixture of nature and early life experience.  Why is it then we are bothered when someone seems particularly negative but are not bothered that the prefer orchids to roses or the color purple to green?  Our caliber for all the various things we experience in life is in large part due to what we have already been exposed to in our lives.  Getting to know our own caliber for all the elements of our lives begins with not seeing them as right or wrong.  My caliber is not better or worse depending on someone else’s in the same way my interest is not better or worse because I am more drawn to pine trees versus palos verde trees.  We tend to blame people for the caliber because we see it as possible to grow and change it.  It is, but only if we are interested or are motivated to do so. Rarely does contempt of one’s character motivate that person to change.  The level at which we hold the caliber of another human being in dislike corresponds to level of contempt we hold for a similar caliber in ourselves.  Other people may be better at showing their particular caliber but if it was not something also living in us, we would not recognize it.  The fact we are bothered by it, tells us more about ourselves than the other person.  It is too easy to blame people for their character not being what we want it to be.  The heart driven initiative takes courage because it calls us to take a look inside ourselves and assess our own caliber of the trait we see in someone else.  When we make peace with our own caliber, we are not disturbed by another person’s.

Sometimes I forget I have a choice.  My adopted character defense of being a victim kicks in.  I do not realize I can ask questions and feel no sense of personal agency.  Gratefully, with God’s help it is not my predominant mode of being anymore.  These days I get tripped up by it in more subtle ways.  I am humble and grateful when I notice it.  I work on not making myself wrong for it, instead I notice it and exchange it for another way of being.  I see it when I do not like the choice I have.  In a situation with another person when they are behaving in a way that does not make it easy for me to interact with them, I can choose to either accept them as they are, say something or remove myself from the person and or situation, or adjust my expectations.  Exchanging the perspective that there is nothing I can do about it or seeing acceptance as defeat does nothing to bring about a personal sense of agency.  It is humbling to accept reality as it is, people as they are, and let go of the ideas we have about how we think it should be.  It is exchanging the idea that I have the better perception of the situation and I know what is right with being in the reality of how things are.  Exchanges in perspective from my thinking to God’s thinking come only when I am willing to trust I will be okay no matter what.  Exchanging my thinking with thinking of my heart means I know the core of who I am will not be irreversibly damaged by what I am experiencing.

I noticed the other day when I was driving to work things were slowed down because there was construction going on.  First it was road repair and then it was a new building for which the big cement trucks came in to lay the foundation.  I was irritated because it meant I was not going to get to work early as I had planned.  I was bothered because it was seemingly in my way.  I began to wonder if this is my default disposition when it comes to my own personal construction or others.  Life is about construction.  Things fall apart and they get rebuilt.  Things come down and then go up.  We lay new foundations, we repair the roads, and everything is in a constant state of flux.  Our own construction messes with our timelines.  We like the end product but the process to get there is kind of irritating. What about those who are involved in the construction?  I bet the construction workers like their job or are at least grateful to have a way to earn a living.  I sometimes think the guys holding up the slow down sign is there to send a greater message. I think of them as construction angels sending messages from beyond (when I am not in a hurry, that is).  Are not all those elements of construction valuable?  As valuable as the end product?  Will I appreciate the end product as much if I do not know what it took to construct it?  Our hearts remind us to see value and purpose in the building and creating of our lives. Each end product whether ourselves, a new building or a smooth road are the result of all the people and things that led up to it.

There is something inside of us all that we share.  It is our core essence.  When we get past the facades, the appearances, and all the things we say and do to separate ourselves and make ourselves unique is the truth of who we are.  We and everything living was created out of love.  There is nothing we can do or say to make it untrue.  We can run from our quintessence, we can try to hide it, we can squish it down, but we will return to love just as we originated from it.  The greatest prayer we can say when we are struggling with ourselves and each other is, “God, help me to see me as you see me.”  In other words, “Life of the universe, help me to remember who I truly am, who they are and what it is.”  When we connect with our quintessence and allow our hearts to guide our sight, the differences fall away.  They may not stay away but for the amount of time we can be in the space of our quintessence is worth more than life itself.

We all seem to be racing to get it done, whatever it is.  As though coming to some kind of conclusion is the point of life.  That being the point of life sounds pretty sucky to me.  If that were really the case, why bother showing up for the journey?  Why not just expedite the conclusion?  When I have moments of real quite and let the outside world settle to less than a hushed whisper, I can hear the beating of my own heart.  Within the heart space lies the message longing to be lived before I reach the conclusion of life.  We are all going to get there, no one escapes without experiencing the final conclusion.  As a kid, I used to think I couldn’t wait to be an adult.  Now I wish I could more easily access the freedom and wonder at so many things I have no idea about.  I thought I would be safe if I knew what would happen.  I figured having the conclusion would make things less painful.  Now I see I only wanted to feel safe and free to be myself.  No amount of knowledge of some kind of elaborate conclusion can bring that for me.  Only my daily date with God have given me what I needed to be with what is, whatever it is and not want it to or fear it concluding. Here is what I know in my heart:  right now within me and within you exists everything we need to live in the moment we are in.  Knowing how it will ultimately conclude only takes me out of the preciousness of the moment I am in.  If I stay out of the moments of right now, I will get to their conclusions feeling like I missed out because I did.  It takes courage to be in the moment we are in not knowing how or when it will conclude.  It is the beautiful mystery God calls us to if we dare.

We can go on and on about what we value and what is important to us.  The quickest way I have learned to really get a look at what I value and what is important to me is by looking at how I allocate my time. There is no way I know of to replace time in the literal sense.  I cannot get back the 30 minutes I spent in traffic or the hours I spent worrying about the thing that never happened.  Now, I have no control over traffic, but it does indicate the importance of the things I am going to or coming from that causes me to be in traffic. Given the reality of traffic in Los Angeles, for better or worse this can be enough of a deterrent to not participate in something due to its distance or time of day.  If traffic comes to point of getting in the way of my life, I will need to consider moving.  I have learned when I look at my allocations of time and energy, I see the possible gap between what I say is of value to me and what really is.  I have never been particularly math inclined but numbers in black and white are harder to deny than our rationalizations.  They bring me to the reality of what my actions say to me.  The more finicky question these days is what do the time allocations on our phones say about what is important to us?  Most phones have an app that will give you the data on how much time you spend on particular phone applications.  The real irony is there is probably a small allocation of time actually talking on the phone.  I am beginning to think society might want to change the smart phone to another name.  Now more than ever as the world clamors for the time and energy allocations we have not already assigned or occupied in our schedule, I find going back to my heart most necessary.   It is hard when we fear missing out, do not want to disappoint others, or struggle to say no.  Drawing into my heart helps me determine where my allocations would best serve the truth of who I am and who I am created to be in the world. When my head hits the pillow at night, my heart and soul are at peace knowing I did my best to use my allocation of  time and energy in most alignment with the truth of who I am even if it meant saying no, missing out, or disappointing others.

Compared to extreme adventurers I live a boring and complacent life. Don’t get me wrong, I love nature and have done enough camping trips where roughing it meant breaking up and setting up your own camp daily and going without a shower for days on end to earn some street cred.  But this gal much prefers a nice hotel with soft towels to spending the night with creepy crawly bugs.  The frame of my life as compared to a seasoned outdoor adventurer is less extreme depending on one’s definition of extreme.  The real question is what do I do when I reach the edges in my life?  I am not talking about literal cliffs, but the edges I reach when I find myself saying: “I don’t know how to handle this,” or “This could be uncomfortable” or “I am afraid . . . ”  All of us have the edges we reach in our lives. The question is do we keep inside them or do we rub up against them?  Do we listen when our minds tell us not to go near there or do we take the adventure our heart’s tell us too when we can feel the fear beating against it louder and louder?  It is not the content, it is the experience.  We all know our edges and when we are being in the truth of who we are we are a bit more willing to dance up close.  Having faith in the power of love means we know within ourselves no matter what happens or does not happen, nothing can truly be undone.  God is more powerful than any fear of a person, situation, physical experience, idea or belief.  With all that has come and gone throughout the history of time, love still stands.  Our hearts call us not to recklessly mock our edges but take a closer look, do a little dance, find a laugh, and see what we are made of.  Our edges show up to remind us we were designed to create our experience and it may mean redrawing the lines of our lives.