My BFF God . . .

Have you ever just sat and talked to a friend on the phone for hours on end?

I mean, literally.  Just sat. Nothing moving except the mouth.  For hours.  I have.

And I am not even going to own up, at least not in writing, to exactly how long some of those conversations lasted.  Suffice it to say they gave new meaning to the expression “long-distance call.”  Yet, during those calls, my friend and I were so relaxed, so comfortable in each other’s company that time simply didn’t exist for us.  To us, it was no different than those times when we were geographically close enough to one another to visit in person. We’d sit, chit-chat, and hang out for the entire day, simply happy to be in each other’s company.

As I reflected upon and recalled these experiences with great fondness, I realized there was a greater lesson to be learned here:  about communication, about best friends, about myself…and most especially about God.

Now, hold that thought for a moment while I shift gears and briefly talk about meditation.   (No worries, stay with me it’ll all make sense by the end. At least it did for me.) Meditation is a wonderfully beneficial tool for various and sundry reasons all of which I’m not going to address here. But if you don’t meditate—or have a laundry list of reasons the length of your arm as to why you can’t meditate—then I strongly encourage you to choose to change that . . . sooner rather than later.  For now, though,  I want to focus on meditation from the perspective of a communication tool.

Are you starting to see where this is going now?

In my reflections, one of those big, beautiful, bald-faced truths that like to smack me square in the face and keep me honest struck me:  my own meditation practice needed improvement.  It’s not that I don’t meditate.  I do. It’s not that I am not in possession of some very good meditation tools.  I am.  It’s not that my meditation practice has not drastically improved from when I started.  It has.  Yet, more work is needed.

Some might say, “Well, that’s the point of meditating regularly.  The more you practice the better it gets.”

That’s kind of my point, though—not the regular part but the better part. Or should I say, that’s more of my challenge.

Why?

Because the better means deeper—deeper than I’ve already gone.  Deeper means a greater awareness of the Self.  A greater awareness of the Self means a more intimate relationship with the Self as God.   Trust me when I say I really, really want to know myself as God on a much deeper and profoundly more intimate level than I do so far, and I am fully committed to that course… on a conscious level.  But the prospect of this level of intimacy on a subconscious level is like the proverbial game of strip poker, with my subconscious declaring when I sit to meditate, “Girl! You’re already stripped down to your undies. What? You trying to lose this last hand or something? Not on my freaking watch!”

So it was. I found myself committed to improvement but at a loss as to exactly how to effectively win this battle with my subconscious in less than a few decades of practice. This is when I remembered the phone calls and realized that God, in that quiet little way, was showing me the way.

So I asked myself, “Is not God really my very best friend?  Is not God the bestie who knows more about me than any other human being on this planet to include me? Is not God the BFF who listens to everything I have to say 24/7 without complaint or one whit of judgment for what or how I say it?  Is not God a true friend who loves me unconditionally and whose advice is ALWAYS spot on?  Is not God a blessed friend who will just sit there with me in silence yet whose presence communicates so very much more than mere words could ever do justice to?  Is meditation really not just a telephone for me to call my very best friend, God? So why would I be afraid to spend an hour or two or more on the metaphorical phone (of meditation) communicating with a friend like this?”

And for any triggered by my use of this three-letter word God, I have but one word for you: meditate.

At that moment, I reframed the definition of meditation to one that works for me.  Now, I tell my subconscious that it is not my intention to meditate.  Rather, I am simply going to get on the phone and sit, chit-chat, and hang out with my very best friend in all the world.

What better way to spend a day?

Just a little food for thought . . .