dailydatewithgod

How do we ultimately know when something is real?  Is it because it is certain, authentic, legitimate, credible, accurate?  Is it real because we know it to be true?  How do we determine what constitutes as real for us?  Is it different for everyone?  If what I feel is real but it is not something felt by another person is it still real? Realness speaks to the concept of identifying our own truth.  There are many agreed upon truths which can become beliefs but if those are not seen as real are they still true?  We engage in a collective and individual experience of life simultaneously.  Many conflicts emerge when we do not agree on what is real.  The question becomes how can we honor what is real for us without discounting what is real for someone else?  There is a humility involved in recognizing that one person’s sanity is another person’s crazy.  How many individuals throughout time were called crazy or irrational because they had a different view of reality which turned out to be truer than the accepted reality at the time?  There were many years in the United States when it was unreal to think women would have the vote.  There were lifetimes when the whole world believed the earth really was the center of the universe.  I am sure it felt as real in the past to believe it as it feels unreal to believe it in the present.  To show up and make the contribution we are here to make with our lives we want to convey a level of realness.  People can spot a fake a mile away and it becomes to hard to keep up after a while.  Our real selves always manage to unveil themselves somehow.  God invites us to turn to our hearts to find the real nature of our being.  A nature not reliant on outside validation of what is real. It takes time and effort to weed out the accepted ideas and beliefs of what is real about us and anything for that matter from what is real for us as children of God.  It is the journey of a lifetime.

We have this funny way of thinking if we brush something aside it goes away.  It clears the area and takes it out of view but it does not go away.  It is a gentle nudge and an adjustment of what is right in front of us but it then gathers itself on the peripheral.  In other words it is not the part of the iceberg we can see that causes the damage when we crash into it, it is the part beneath the surface we do not see.   There are times when brushing things aside so we can face the more immediate circumstances of our lives makes sense.  The difference is when we brush things aside because we would rather not deal with them or believe we are not capable of facing.  We risk things compounding or becoming worse until we cannot brush them aside.  Then we are forced to deal with them.  Some might argue that is how it is supposed to go.  It takes courage of the heart to look at something when it is the size at which we can brush it away versus waiting for it to be an immovable force in our lives.  It is choosing to listen to the whispers and hints calling our attention instead of just the bullhorn announcements.  In my experience, Spirit whispers with a still gentle voice, which can easily be brushed aside.  The closer we draw into connection with our hearts the more capable we are to attune ourselves to the frequency of the still small quiet voice.  I believe that some things are meant to be faced when they can be brushed aside and some things are meant to be faced when we can no longer brush them aside.  On my daily dates with God I get to decide in partnership with a being who sees the full value of my strength and courage for this life what calls for brushing and what calls for facing today.

In our minds the dramatic and explosive seem like the best option.  We are fascinated by it in stories, we look for it in the news and in movies, and we think our story is less important if it is not dramatic.  We want the most people to see it and everyone to like it.  Most of life is made up of adjustments.  Little tweaks here and there which add up to look like dramatic changes.  It depends on whether we are playing a long game or a short game.  If we are only in it for the quick and flashy the dramatic experience makes sense.  If we are here for a longer game of life, we will quickly burn out if we are present only for the high impact experiences.  On my daily dates with God I have learned the value of steady and continuous presence.  My heart began to thrive on the consistency and simplicity of showing up for myself each day.  I learned to be open to adjustments in my life because I knew I could admit to needing adjustments without abandoning myself or being abandoned by God. Continuous improvement may not seem like much when we look at in the moment, but when we look upon the arch of our lives we will see the impact of the little adjustments made along the way.  The willingness to keep showing up and make those adjustments because we know they lead us on a path of life bringing fulfillment is the song of our heart and soul.  It may be more flashy and dramatic to make drastic changes but it is the little adjustments which stick and keep us in the game of life for a full life.  It is the adjustments which make the most of the moments we are in and design the path of life of our hearts one day at a time.

In the practice of mindfulness the intention is to be with what you are experiencing, to create an intention to pay attention and notice what is happening, and to practice awareness of oneself and his her surroundings. Whenever we feel someone is not paying attention causing them to do something oblivious we find ourselves asking them, “do you mind?” Having the presence of mind is about noticing and paying attention.  It is about noting with consciousness the awareness we are practicing in the moment.  The irony is the more we notice with our mind, the less we find ourselves minding.  We observe and create some distance from our experience in such a way that our mind is less attached to what is happening.  Mindfulness leads us to mindlessness.  It sounds like a riddle but it is not.  By practicing presence of mind we become aware that much more is going on than what the mind’s dialogue is telling us in our heads.  If we want to mind less and be present for all, we have to start by becoming aware of our state of mind in any given moment.   On my daily dates with God I learn to question what my mind tells me about everything especially everything it states as true.  Our dates have led me to believe there is much more light and laughter present in the world than my mind wants to believe but my heart knows the truth. Minding our mind through the practice of mindfulness enables us to mind our mind less and keep life in perspective.  Like many spiritual solutions, the answer comes when we embrace the thing we feel is responsible for whatever we are struggling with and allow our hearts to see beneath the surface.

We like to find the solutions. Who wouldn’t?  Sometimes there is nothing more painful than coming up against a bunch of locked doors but not having the right keys.  As someone who has been accidentally locked out of my apartment or gotten to work only to realize I don’t have my keys, I know what a tough spot it can be.  Keys to unlock doors are more easily remedied than unlocking hearts but both require some time, patience, and connecting with others.  The difficulty when it comes to hearts is we often do not realize the door is locked and even if we do we may have a hard time identifying the right keys to unlock them.  Getting into recovery I realized I had spent many years under the guise of protecting my heart and inadvertently locked it up and threw away the key.  First there was some thawing that needed to occur to get to see the lock,  It was a lock I saw after the ice around my heart thawed.  It was my best thinking for my life thus far.  It was a no longer effective process of heart protection.  It had worked well for so long, I stopped noticing when it wasn’t working until I thought I would break.  The keys I picked up as a kid did not work as an adult. Walking into a 12 step room, provided some badly needed warmth, in the form of safety and complete acceptance, I did not realize I needed or wanted.  From there I began to thaw.  Thawing hurts and it was not a blissful process but my soul and the kinship of fellows kept me in the game.   Soon after accepting God’s invitation to a daily date, the warmth penetrated below the surface.  The dimly lit candle within my own heart began to grow and extend the warmth outside of myself.  These were the keys I did not imagine were the ones I needed. Nor did I think other people would be a key component to guide me into a willingness to unlock my fixed notions of what it means to be safe to love.  The finding of the unexpected keys to my heart has opened my eyes to how keys to unlock other doors in my life may be  not the ones I am expecting or currently have.  The evidence in my life has shown me I can trust God will guide the light within my heart to find the keys I need when and how I need them.  It is a humbling and surprising process sustaining me and makes me less reluctant to freeze or lock my heart again one day at a time.

There is a sense of relief when we feel like we have found where we belong.  It settles a fundamental part of our nature because it assures survival.  If we fit into the groove of people we will not be left to fend for ourselves.  If we match the groove of the way others think we will not be considered too strange to belong.   This primal nature drives us more than we realize. Our grooves may extend outside the group we belong to but provide a connection point from which to grow.  Unfortunately many of us end up experiencing grooves as ruts.  We feel like it is something we are stuck with because we were born into it.  The perspective of being stuck in some cases provides an easy excuse not to explore and in others a reason to rebel.  Our hearts find us somewhere in the middle.  What if the grooves we were born into were only meant to provide an initial training ground from which to grow?  What if we were never meant to stay put in our grooves but branch out and discover new ones?  What would it look like to value the grooves we started with and use them as a springboard to grow in our hearts and minds by carving new grooves for our lives and the lives of others we have not yet met? Our lives are not predetermined and we can create new grooves if we choose.  It takes courage and commitment because the challenge of carving and forming new grooves will come from within ourselves and those who belong to the groove we started in.

When we are reading or watching a fantasy story the creator counts on the audience’s suspension of disbelief when telling the story.  As human beings we are not usually willing to delay or hold things back especially if they rub up against our sense of what is right and true.  Doing so brings up the fear of being made a fool and experiencing possible shame because we fell for something we should have known not to believe.  Yet in the context of a story we oblige because we get to explore and take a ride to see what is possible and lies outside our boundaries of what we know. Plus when we do it collectively there is less chance of experiencing shame.  Our hearts encourage us to engage in a suspension of belief when it comes to interacting with others and ourselves.  So often we approach things from the mind that knows and can make decisions about ourselves and others automatically.  This is very helpful to get through life and inherently a good thing but it has limitations.  What might it look like if we listened to the heart’s call to pause and hold back or delay what we know about another person to discover them with new eyes?  How might something we believe we know about ourselves have a chance to be explored if we suspended our belief about whether or not we were capable of it?  With suspension comes rooms for curiosity and possibilities which are the realms of the heart.  God designed us with the capacity to grow and change.  We stop ourselves when we do not suspend our beliefs about things we know for sure and take a chance on seeing what we might not have seen before.  We get stuck in fear for the same reason we fear speaking in front of an audience, we do not want to chance looking like a fool and feeling shame. How many people who suspended their beliefs about what was possible with themselves or others were not first called crazy?   Pretty much all of them.  It is only now we see the wisdom in their ideas and inventions.

We learn early on about cause and effect.  It the language of our behavior it is phrased as actions and consequences.  We often are not aware of the effect of our action (cause) until we witness the consequence(effect).  Sometimes we can predict based on past experiences the probable consequences.  This is used to modify our behaviors as the focus is usually on preventing negative consequences from occurring.  We do our best as we cannot always prevent negative consequences.  Regardless, this focus gives a lopsided view of consequences.  When we think of someone of consequence it is usually a positive thing.  They are taking action and making things happen.  A person of consequence is mindful and intentional.  We are all people of consequence.  We all matter and we all have an effect on each other.  The question is how much time and energy do we put into our heart’s intention to be a beneficial consequence in our lives and the lives of others?  Instead of focusing solely on our survival mind which wants to prevent bad consequences, we can balance it out by focusing on how we can create good consequences by being a person of consequence.

The first time I heard the concept of kindred spirits was when watching a movie based on the story of Anne of Green Gables. Then I read the books.  I loved the way Anne spoke of kindred spirits and their seemingly unbreakable heart connection.  We all learn who we are related to early on.  Usually we live or near those who are our kin.  As we go through life we make connections with those outside our immediate relations. Often with those we relate to more than perhaps those we are related to.  So how can those we do not relate to be our relations?  It seems to defy logic but only if we hold tight to our concepts of what it means to relate to one another.  For those to whom we are biologically related, we can identify a common origin and way of being raised that gets passed down from one generation to another.  For the kindred spirits in our lives with whom we feel connected without a biological tie, there is a heart connection and a growing together of a spiritual kind that seems to with ease.  Yet those who are our blood relations also bring about an opportunity to connect with our hearts and grow spiritually, but we often do not see it or even experience the opposite.  I have had my own share of difficulties with my blood relations and am in no way an authority on how to create the best and highest good from and for those relations.  I believe in my heart it is possible.  We are literally biologically connected to our relations for a reason as God is a purposeful creator.  It could be simply a matter of choosing them as we do the kindred spirits with whom we relate.  Or perhaps it is about letting go of the labels we have for each other as mother, sister, father, brother, cousin, and so on.  Those titles carry expectations on them that friends do not.  I am continually open to exploring how to play a role in creating connected relations with those I am related to as well as those to whom I relate.  I look to the source of love to guide me on this heart centered path and do the best I can in the meantime.

As a senior in high school I attend a retreat called Kairos (meaning God’s time).  Our group of 40 seniors plus senior student leaders and staff spent 3 1/2 days together at a retreat center away from school and all other activities.  It was a pivotal experience on my spiritual journey and I remember it like it was yesterday.  One of the talks given by a student leader was called, “Love in Action.”  Through the course of the week we moved through the concepts of seeing the truth of who we are, accepting ourselves, understanding God and our relationship with God, and finally how that translates into how we interact with others.  Love in Action is about how we live the knowledge we are loved and cared for by God.  It was a very moving experience attending this retreat which included letters from our parents, fellow students, and close sharing with those in our small group throughout the week. It was a chance to let ourselves be seen and accepted by each other which at that age does not happen too often.  I took advantage of it to the degree I was able to be honest with myself at the tender age of 17.  I know the week of Kairos 75 in November of 1991 changed something inside of me and became a shaper in the relationship I have with God today.  Through the love of the team who guided us, the students back home praying for us and our families letters, I saw how much we were loved.  It broke my heart open because I had no idea anyone even noticed me. They were all love in action for us.  Even more profoundly I saw the power of shared experience and acceptance of one another in our small group.  We were living love in action.  Our action of love in any given day is to stand present in the awareness we are loved completely and fully by God and be that message for others as we let it guide our actions towards them.