dailydatewithgod

Sometimes we are invited by life to take a closer look.  It may not seem like an invitation but we know it when we find ourselves looking at a part of our lives from a different angle.  It is as though our eyes are being opened to a new perspective of something we have only seen from a fixed perspective.  Sometimes it is experienced as a slap in the face but prior to that we get a chance to peer at it from a different angle.  We sometimes miss those because peering is more subtle than a flash.  We are used to waiting for things to flash and grab us versus come sit besides us and whisper in our ears.  The advantage of listening to the whispers of the peering is a chance to embrace it with a gentleness.  There is no right or wrong approach or preference when it comes to change.  Change is change.  Peering may lead to less resistance and gives us the opportunity to open ourselves to it a little at a time.  God is interested in us growing in love and light at every moment of our lives. God is not interested in forcing us.  God simply opens the door of our hearts and allows us to peer in to see what is in store for us.

The effectiveness of our brain in categorizing information is very useful.  It is the reason it happens automatically.  When we have something to attach or identify a person, idea, or experience we are less fearful of it.  It makes sense therefore that we often mistakenly categorize things incorrectly in an effort to subvert discomfort.  The categories in place are often those we adopted from those who came before us.  The constructs of the categories themselves is different for different people although many are agreed upon by particular groups.  For example the way we label things as good or bad, important or unimportant, weak or strong.  We do it so automatically that we find it silly to even question it.  It is just how things are.  God invites us to question what we label as good or bad, important or  unimportant, and weak or strong.  Depending on the moment we are, the experience of being bad, might be good for us.  The context of a particular moment may reveal to us what was seemingly unimportant as the most important element.  Therefore, equally, there are times when it is our weaknesses which reveal our greatest strengths.  We are usually too busy avoiding the things we have placed on the negative to take a closer look and see what is really there.  It takes courage to come face to face with our weaknesses. In my experience when I do find the courage of heart to see what is there, I find the opposite to be true.  It makes no sense to my mind but to my heart it is more real than anything.  God invites us to at least pause and take a moment to notice in the moment we are in what is more true. . . is this really weakness or is it strength?

In this world of duality we find two opposing modes of operation present in our lives.  I suspect it is a human conundrum but I only know of it in the western culture context.  There is both a push to reveal ourselves and share our lives and every moment of it with all kinds of people while also keeping under wraps the less than acceptable elements of ourselves.  While opposing ideas they do feed into one another.  We can use the showy elements to make it seem like we are revealing more about ourselves than we really are.  Yet much of the truth of who we are and what we think often remains in obscurity.  Is it the resistance to vulnerability?  Is it the fear of judgment that we know exists because it is the same judgments we hold of others?  Or is there perhaps some prudence in participating in some levels of obscurity.  With the advent of social media it seems like the thing to do is share what you think and who you are about everything to everyone.  While I am advocate for having a voice, with everyone chiming in it sounds like noise.  I am not sure I want to know every element of the people running for political office.  I do not necessarily care what the politics are of my favorite singers.  I am happy there are things which remain in obscurity for those people.  I want to know how the politician plans to serve in office and I am curious what inspired the lyrics and the music of the latest song.  The levels of obscurity that concern me within myself are those I attempt to keep from God.  Somehow I think the Creator of my heart does not know what I want to keep hidden so I delude myself and find myself wanting to keep it from myself.  God encourages us to embrace those things within us that we perceive as best left hidden not necessarily to be shared with everyone but to be looked at through the lens of our hearts.  Within us is the capacity to see with compassion the broken and fragile elements of ourselves with the compassion we crave.  It exists in the light.  The light will not enter the obscure areas so we must bring our obscurity to the light.  Trusting the light of love to follow its design takes courage and practice.  A little at a time we strengthen the muscle of faith in the light of love each time we share an obscurity within ourselves to ourselves.

It has been said many times that the only constant in life is change.  There are the ones we choose and the ones that seem to happen with or without our choosing.  For something that is a given, it is amazing how resistant we are to change.  I once heard a speaker giving a talk about change and he said it was not the change we are resistant to, it is the transition.  The in between times when the change has not yet taken hold where things feel uncertain is where we get squiggly.  Many of the changes in my life happen as alters.  Alters are like little adjustments which change the shape, texture, and context of an experience of myself and others.  By recognizing the alters of our lives as movements in the direction of our truest selves, we see the gentle hand of God moving within us.  There is something sacred about welcoming and inviting in opportunities to alter ourselves or our experience.  When I see something I want to change, I can approach it by looking for the spaces where my thinking or being can be altered to create something new.  The beauty of change is how it signifying the presence of aliveness.  Choosing to participate in that aliveness despite the fear that comes up is easier to swallow when I see myself participating in alters. By initiating alters I am laying the groundwork for new life through my being.

When we witness confidence in others we know it.  It is conveyed in all facets of their being including verbal expression, body language, posture, and word choice.  We give credence to the person we see as confident.  We believe what they are telling us.  If we stop to look closer, we will notice they give credence to the message they are conveying.  They believe themselves to their core.  This is how we can be deceived by those who provide us faulty information.  We fall for it because we are not buying into what they say or do as much as who they are being when they say or do it. The same can be said for ourselves.  When we give credence to what lies at the core of who we are, we will convey whatever message is housed in there with everything we do.  If we believe we are not worth others’ time, we will convey that message and others will see us as not worth their time.  If we give credence and value to what we are sharing with another person as our truth, they will believe us because it comes through our verbal expression, body language, posture and word choice.  Just saying it to someone else will not enable them to see its truth.  For many years our ancestors lived and related to each other without formal language.  We needed a way to be able to pick up on messages being conveyed other than through words.  We still possess this capability.  If we want others to believe what we are saying and doing, we need to start with giving credence to what is the truth of our hearts.  God invites us over and over again to pause and look inward to find the jewel of our being beneath whatever circumstance created beliefs we have thrown over our hearts. If we are not conveying with credence through our being what we think we believe about ourselves it would behoove us to take a closer look and see how it might differ from how God sees us.

There are models of behavior that we use as a society to demonstrate what is acceptable or not.  Within those societal models of acceptable behavior are the contours of personality, a way of relating to others, clothing, specified roles or jobs, and definitions of what constitutes different kinds of relationships.  Learning to live with those contours keeps us safe as children.  By operating within those accepted contours we make our way through life without over exposing ourselves to criticism or the risk of being ostracized by those close to us or society as a whole.  Being a part of the group insures our survival.  Part of the process of maturation involved testing the boundaries of those contours which we see teenagers engage in much to the dismay of many adults who have forgotten this is part of what is needed to mature into an adult. The degrees to which we test the boundaries of the contours matters little, the point is to test them.  The spirit within us is prompting us to a deeper level of testing of contours. But the prompting comes as a whisper and can get missed among the loud noise of the accepted contours.  This is what helps determine the contours of our heart and to seek alignment with it as the ultimate authority in our lives. This level of maturation sometimes never occurs.  It is however the deep calling of our soul to determine the contours of own hearts so we can use them to guide our role in becoming the best version of ourselves.

When we bring interest, intention, attention and energy into an experience we are giving our whole selves to it.  We approach the opportunity with gusto.  We look to embrace it fully.  We do not hold back our hearts or allow our analytical mind to stop us from full participation.  This same gusto is the energy God uses to design creation. The fact that we possess it is evidence of where we come from.  The gusto within our hearts and every cell of our body is continually breathing the message of life.  Life which is created to embrace light and grow.  Our hearts remind us of our gusto when we remember to check within ourselves.  In the times we feel disconnected from life it is because we have lost connection to our hearts. We are given the makeup needed to choose life at every turn.  We sense the gusto of life when we choose to bring ourselves fully to any person, place or thing.  God has shown us through our hearts that we have what is needed to grow and be the messenger of light and love for which we were designed.  The gusto is the push needed when we do not feel it or have a million reasons to want to shut down and escape. It may seem like an easier option to not put forth intention, attention, and energy but those are the times we can turn to God and ask to be used.  What stands in the way for me are my ideas of how it should be or how I should be.  When I remember to check back in with my heart I see within myself the gusto needed to take the next step.  Life all happens one step at a time.  A gusto for life is within us at all times, sometimes we just need to be reminded when we forget who we are.  The experiences where we do not think we or the experience are capable of bringing or growing the light of love are the very times God is offering her hand to guide us back to our hearts.

Taking into consideration how much information we have coming at us we can be grateful at the interference run by our minds.  The interference filters out from our awareness all that we are familiar with and have a space for in our minds.  It pulls up the programming needed to handle the information and situations all in an effort to conserve energy and keep us alive. Clearly an invaluable system.  The down side of this effective interference so we can survive is the tendency to take life for granted.  We assume we know what is happening and what will happen because we are operating on past validated experiences.  We do not see the value of the face of our friend because we are familiar with it.  We could miss a particular nuance in it on a particular day because we do not stop to actually look at him or her.  Changes in ourselves can even go unnoticed because we don’t stop to pay attention to what is actually looking back at us in the mirror.  This is why we often have a different image of ourselves in our mind than the one we see in pictures of us.  So how do we appreciate the benefits of our mind’s interference while still being present in our lives?  On my daily dates with God I have learned the practice of daily gratitude seems to flip the switch.  Somehow by making note of all the seemingly obvious or trivial pieces of information about my reality and seeing them as something for which to be grateful, I notice them more often. I have a practice of writing a gratitude list each night before going to bed.  The challenge is to list things I have not listed yet.  Over time I realize I have a lot to be grateful for. I laugh when I see myself writing gratitude for fingernails, windows, or keyboards.  On any given day I do not even notice or feel my fingernails, realize I am looking through window or appreciate how my keyboard smoothly allows me to send communication through a computer. I do not notice until I pause to contemplate on all the myriad of things I may be taking for granted or not be aware of at all on any given day. I think today I will add my brain’s capability of interference of information coming in to keep me alive and alert to things that may impact my survival to my daily gratitude list.

We all have unique talents and abilities.  We all have particular likes and dislikes.  We get introduced to people, places, and things through experiences that lay outside our known sphere and we refine our likes and dislikes.  It may even cause us to initiate a willingness to be trained in a new skill. We have a physical body which determines our physical sphere.  We have an energetic sphere which extends outside our physical body. We operate from a limited sphere because we live in a limited reality.  God has a limitless sphere.  When we check in with ourselves about what we can control and what we cannot, it is helpful to think about our sphere of influence. There are many things we would like to be able to control which lie outside our domain.  There are people and experiences we do not want to take responsibility for allowing inside our sphere.  We sometimes find it easier to focus on what lies outside our sphere of influence than take responsibility for what lies within it.  We can distract ourselves by expending energy and exhausting ourselves with the things we cannot control.  We fall for the illusion of control by working so hard to bring within our sphere those things which will not fit.  Those are the very things we need God for.  God’s realm is limitless and is the power we need to effectively guide us so we can cultivate the power within our own sphere and use it effectively.  We can limit the excess energy used up by trying to effect things outside our sphere.  As a mentor of mine once put it, there are three kinds of business: mine, others, and God’s and the only one I need to concern myself with is mine.

A push in the right direction can be very helpful.  We get going on something and along the way we get distracted, lose interest, get frustrated, or face hurdles that are harder to overcome than we imagined.  While it is part of the process of being on a journey, those bumps can lead us to give up or abandon ourselves. We can fall prey to our negative thinking and jump to another path.  It is an option to change our minds or decide it is no longer a fit for us and time to embark on another path. What if it is our path and we just cannot on our own garner up the needed resources to keep going? If we are clear within our hearts as to the path we are on, boosts are needed to counteract the bumps.  Being open to how, when, and in what form the needed boosts will show is a God job.  Our focus is to keep ourselves in alignment with our hearts resonating in the energy of knowing as best as we can know anything that we are where we are supposed to be. When I have been open to the timing and type of boosts on my path I have been pleasantly surprised at the ways people show up and random circumstances occur.  Sometimes all we need is a little boosting perspective.  We are not looking for something or someone to rescue us from our path so it does not have to be grand and overly demonstrative to propel us in taking the next step on the path of our heart.  Boosts are often those little moments reminding us to not yet give up on ourselves, to trust our hearts, and to know we are not alone.