dailydatewithgod

The instrumentality of our lives is about being our best selves.  When we are within our instrumentality and not trying to play someone else’s instrument because it is was they or we think they expect, we have agency.  We are designed to be the instrument of love in our design.  God would have created us exactly the same if we were meant to bring love instrumentally to the world in the same way.  There are similarities, but no instrument is exactly the same, nor is it meant to be.  We need each other to create an orchestra and play the symphonies of love but we have been hand strung and carved by the Creator to be the best instrument in the situation we are individually in.  Only we know from the depths of our hearts which note is most aligned in the moment we are in.  When we are in sync with ourselves we will find our string section and the orchestra for which we are meant to play.  We learn how to play off each other and make beautiful melodies when we are part of an orchestra in life.  Plus, when it is time for our solo, if we know how we are instrumental in the whole picture of love, the rest of orchestra will shine because we are able to be ourselves.

After all these years of daily dates with God I find myself opening up to God’s perspective of learning from life.  I have always been curious, we all are, and saw myself as someone who is committed to growing and learning as I go through life.  It is one of the reasons that propelled me into the professional field of education.  In my heart there has always been an awareness of learning as much more than schools and books.  My relationship with God encourages me to look at my day to day experiences as lessons in love.  If I am in a good place I am willing to learn from everything.  If my heart is closed off and I perceive a lack of safety, my mind goes directly to survival.  In those moments there is no room to learn.  Like everything else in the flow and dance of life there is a time and a place to explore.  Deeper than just looking at the day-to-day experiences our hearts, if we are open to listening, will also call us to look at some of what we believe are the darker parts of our lives. Things from our past that we may have shut the door on.  Even being with experiences we do not want to think about let alone contemplate what can be learned about love from them.  Little by little God has opened the eyes of my heart to be willing to consider there may be something to salvage from those dark times.  As an incest and obesity survivor those are not spaces I enjoy reflecting on.  Strangely learning to salvage lessons of love from them brings me freedom.  Maybe it has something to do with our concepts of past, present, and future not being as fixed as we imagine.  Ultimately, it comes down to seeing as God sees.  God has greater insight into what can be salvaged by looking at it through the lens of love.  It is not about staying the past but being able to open my heart to find the power of love even in the dark.  It is about reckoning with my belief that there is no where God is not.  It is allowing God to use me to salvage the dark parts of my life by bringing it into the light of love.

It is easy to figure out things or experiences are generating excitement for us.  It is hard to fool ourselves and tell ourselves that we do not have the titillation we know is present, unless of course we are practiced in the art of self-deception.  Many of us are well-practiced in self-deception because we have lost touch with our hearts.  I know I lived in that space for a long time. When we are titillated it is present in our bodies, our minds, and our hearts.  We are fully attentive the experience, person or idea grasping our attention.  We find it easy to put energy into it because it is as though we cannot help ourselves.  This is how God created the universe.  Sometimes we think God is not interested in every little detail of our lives, but that is our thinking.  We figure God’s attention waned and there could not possibly be any titillation present when God’s thinks of us.  Just because we have lost interest, just because we can’t imagine God being titillated by our presence in her life, does not mean it is true.  God’s desire to know every cellular movement in our lives stems from his titillation of us.  We lack the capacity to fathom the enthusiasm with which God engages with us.  What I have learned over the years on my daily dates with God is the lack of comparison when it comes to my understanding of things and God’s.  My continual prayer is God, help me to see this as you see this.  What would happen if we asked God to help us see ourselves with the same titillation God sees with?  What might we say or do differently?  How might we approach the decisions in our lives or the interactions with others who are seen by God with the same level of titillation?  The possibilities are endless and ever-expanding.  Our hearts invite us to be present to the energy of the titillation of God each time we take a breath.  It is as simple and as profound as allowing life to be a titillating experience of existence today in our breathing.

We may not realize what it means to be created by God.  We cannot fully comprehend what comes with being designed by the Great Designer.  We get a sense of it when we allow our minds to wander and dream.  We grasp it when we are filled with a sense of pride for something we created and see to completion.  We know it when we spend time in the quiet of our hearts, in the stillness of our breath, and in the alignment of the truth of who we are at our core. Our ability to concoct things is tied to the presence of love in our hearts.  Our willingness to explore our inventive capacities can explode when we are willing to play.  We can concoct all kinds of mixing and matching of ideas.  We can contrive a solution to a problem because we are allowing ourselves to explore.  Most of our lives are made up of concoctions of others. Nothing operates alone.  We are all blends and mixtures of creation.  God encourages us to delve into the creative space within ourselves to see what concoctions we design for love.  Maybe love does not have to look the way we think it does.  Maybe love is more of a blend of experiences than a one time star lit moment that captures our hearts. Concoctions of love are limitless when they are driven by our intention to continue to create from a place of love we believe resides within us.

Have you ever encountered a person who walked in the room and the whole room lit up? How about a time when an idea hit you and it is as though your brain just had the lights turned on?  Then there is the relief that comes when we turn on the lights in a dark room so we can find what we are looking for. The brilliance of light in our lives cannot be understated.  According to some scientific studies regions where there is less light exposure have higher incidents of suicide.  There is a reason why our planet gathers its energy from the sun and sees fit to makes its connection to it by constantly rotating around it.  The luminosity in our lives comes not just from the physical presence of light but the energetic light of love God cultivated within ourselves.  We may think we are dark and messed up.  We may believe what someone else told us at some point about how unworthy we are to take up space on this planet.  But the luminosity within ourselves is needed via our presence in this world.  Why else would God have created us?  Who are we to argue with the Creator who designed the whole of the universe?  How can we think we know better than the designer who somehow set in place the capability of the earth to rotate around the sun?  God invites us to notice how our lives would begin to shift if we recognized the luminosity present within ourselves which we are designed to bring to life in a way only we can.  By accepting God’s invitation each time we take a breath to notice the luminosity within us, we can awaken ourselves to how it might be the very thing needed to illuminate the moment we are in for ourselves and others. How might our lives look if we rotated them around the energetic luminosity of our hearts?

There was a time in my life when a request would be made of me and I thought I had to respond yes or no right away.  I felt responsible for giving an answer, even if I did not yet know.  It seemed to be part of the same structure of my life where I felt I had to know things I did not know.  I wanted to be the one people had no problems with.  I wanted to be approved of and if you were waiting on me to have an answer, you might be disappointed.  Unfortunately, it would backfire on me because I would say yes too quickly and then realize I committed to something I did not want to be committed to.  Then came the white lies to squirm out of it or running the risk of really disappointing the other person by not being able to follow through.  Strangely I did not hold the same standard for others when I made requests of them.  I saw others take time to consider their options, ask to get back to me, or let me know when they would be able to provide an answer.  These are things I learned in recovery.  It is what gets reinforced on my daily dates with God.  It is flexing the pause button so when I need to be strong, the musculature is there. When I take the time to pause and consider my heart’s response to a request, I am more likely to provide a response connected to the truth of who I am.  My head will present an answer right away.  It takes courage and patience to utilize the tool of consideration.  However, when I enact the courage of my heart to consider the perspective of my heart, my head has to work much less to come up with ways to squirm out of something I may have misleadingly said I was willing to commit to.

There is much we can learn about how we conceptualize our world by listening to the words we use.  We say things in conversation which have multiple meanings.  We use words that describe things that out of context would make no sense.  We tell someone what they said sounds good. Depending on the context we mean either the sound is good or we understand and agree with what was said.  Either way our auditory facilities were used to achieve the conclusion stated.  Perhaps we both understood the actual sound and liked the sound vibrations of the words that came out of the person’s mouth.  I wonder if also we found what the person said to be sound?  Or did it make us feel sound upon hearing the words or the actual sound?  No wonder we rely on verbal tone and visual cues in conversation to understand what is being conveyed in conversation.  No wonder we think we are talking about the same thing when sometimes we are not.  When we look at our lives, what areas do we find soundness in?  It seems to be of importance to us to convey a healthiness, a solidity to our experience.  When we convey soundness in our living and our being, do we convey it in our words, our actions, our feelings, or all of it? If it is the truth of who we are we can hear it in our conversations.  Our hearts have an energy that extends outside our bodies and when we experience a soundness within the core of who we are we are sharing it with those around us.  If we are troubled in our hearts we will share that as well.  We like to think we only experience things on the physical level but that would be the same as thinking we are always having the same conversation and operate from the same concepts as someone else.  The most important thing is to find the level of soundness within ourselves so it is what lives and breathes in us at the level of God’s conception for us.

If we are willing to be honest with ourselves we can admit there are times when our criterion is a little off.  We find ourselves engaged in experiences or with people with whom we feel we do not belong because we misjudged our place in the situation.  Perhaps we saw ourselves as being something we are not.  Perhaps we were afraid to speak up and say what is true for us out of fear of offending someone else.  Perhaps we wanted so much to belong we figured we could withstand the discomfort of not being with the criterion of our heart.  What does it mean to allow our hearts to be the basis of criterion when it comes to living our lives?  Do we carry judgment that to do so would be unrealistic?  Do we think we will be all on our own?  If we make an effort to connect with the truth of who we are within ourselves how can we really be existing within a criterion that brings us anything but peace?  Maybe until it is uncomfortable enough going against the criterion of our hearts are we willing to do the opposite.

In the season of cooler weather I am mindful of the experience of the lack of heat.  There is a reason why we associate warmer temperatures with comfort.  The word warmth is one used to describe more than temperature.  In science class we learn there is no such thing as cold, there is only lack of heat.  Heat is the measurement of energy.  So in our daily lives we can measure what kind of energy we are putting into something by its level of warmth.  In our interactions, we have the option to be cold and shut off or warm and inviting.  We think it may be easier to be cold towards someone but that is because it does not require as much energy.  If we are focused on survival, we do not have extra energy to extend to others.  Extending warmth requires energy but it is energy we can get connected to if we make the attempt. The presence of love in our hearts fuels our energy if we let it.  God continually invites us to cultivate the energy within our deepest and truest self.  Our minds may try to tell us that we don’t have time or the energy to be kind and extend warmth but our hearts have a different story.

We make a multitude of decisions in the course of a day or even an hour.  Most of them we do not recognize as decisions because we do not believe we are making decisions.  We tell ourselves we have to do something, it needs to get done, or we do not have a say in the matter.  None of these are true.  We always have a choice.  We may not like the choice but we still have it.  Except for dying just about everything else we have some choice in the matter.  The real question is what is sanctioning our choice?  Is it our head or our heart or both? Is it us or something or someone we are giving the power to choose for us?  It can be difficult to decipher whether our heads or our hearts sanction the decisions.  Mostly they are made by both but may be more head than heart or vice versa.  We like to think we are so logical that our heart does not get involved but we underestimate the integrated design of our being.  The truer question is what state of presence are our hearts and heads in when they sanction the decisions we make.  In fact, where are they when it comes to getting us believe we are not making decisions.  The only way I know to stay in touch with what is sanctioning the decisions in my life is to get quiet.  I also watch my language.  Anytime I find myself saying I have to do something and it catches in my ear, I stop and reflect on what or why I have chosen to give my sanctioning power over to an expectation.  Is it an expectation that is of value in my heart or in my mind?  Is it sanctioned because I am more concerned with who I look like to someone else or because my soul is calling on me to step up and I am not sure I can do it?  So much goes into what we sanction in our lives. God encourages us to make a practice of pausing, notice what is sanctioning our decisions, and ask if we are beholden only to our best selves, would we still sanction the same choice?