Awestruck: Recent Episodes
Brian Shipman
Awestruck Podcast is a hero’s journey to the center of you.
Have you ever been awestruck? We were meant to live in this transformed state of attention, not just long for it or experience it rarely. It is the real. It is what makes you real. To be spellbound, captivated, filled with wonder, held in aesthetic arrest, awestruck.
It is in this state of wonder that we find our ability to find ourselves. To be real. And to accept real truth that transforms us into everything we long to be.
Discovery begets truth. Begets transformation.
And discovery begins with exploration.
The impulse to explore has largely been stunted in our time by the erroneous assumption nothing remains to explore. We’ve mapped the earth. We have GPS systems to tell us exactly where we are at any given time. We’ve been to the moon. We’ve sent probes to Mars and even beyond the edge of our solar system. Our telescopes now give us glimpses of the furthest shores of the Universe. Microscopes have deconstructed the atom and beyond.
We have relinquished real exploration to the experts, and we wait for them to sift through the discoveries and highlight what might be meaningful to us in our morning papers and Sunday sermons. And in so doing, we have lost the experience of discovery, settling for filtered reports from the frontiers’ edges.
This lack of experiential exploration has left us yearning for something more. Something that the information and technology revolutions have failed to give us.
The call to explore whispers still, beckoning you to begin a new age of exploration - one that takes you on a captivating journey that leads beyond everything you think is true and into the truth itself. A journey that leads to discoveries that topple deep-rooted paradigms and cultivate a framework that can lead to total fulfillment that transforms your life into one of meaning, beauty, love, joy, peace - into everything you long for and everything you hope to be.
A journey that leads to the center of you. And what you find there - who you find there - is the greatest discovery of all.
Source Scripture
Matthew 11:7-15; Luke 7:24-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Doubt is mostly viewed as a negative trait or as even as the opposite of faith. We think this way largely because we imagine doubt and faith in still life, or rigidly defined - devoid of motion. Such attempts at crystallization lose sight of the inner dynamics and play when we struggle with doubt. When we doubt, a number of forces arise within us: curiosity, fear, urgency, to name only a few.
These forces compel us to know - to experience - and to do so we act. We move. We seek answers. We position ourselves to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears.
Doubt drives the struggle - without it we would never see potentiality give birth to actuality. This is precisely why God does not present himself as an irrefutable fact. He wants us to struggle. He wants us to be curious and to move toward Him. He wants us to pursue him until, like the moth whose new wings are strengthened by its endeavor to escape the cocoon, we emerge transformed into a new creation that exchanges the rigidity of an earthbound life for the boundless skies.
Today we will rediscover the nature and purpose of doubt - and how to allow it to serve as a positive force for transformation.
Source Scripture
Matthew 11:1-6; Luke 7:18-23
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
We have unwittingly exchanged the active experience of being alive in the present for living in a dank library filled with atomized facts that we read not with just our eyes, but with our whole physical bodies. We willingly plug ourselves into a matrix of technology and information that, given the right combination, can summon fleeting fulfillment of our selfish desires: popularity, prosperity, pleasure, and power.
These four pillars serve as the supports that bear the table of lifeless and soul-less reductionism where we spend our lives attempting to put together the one-million piece puzzle from the box of pieces that, even if accomplished, would result only in a flattened and ghoulishly carved representation of the real world that awaits us in plain sight - if only we would just turn around, leave the puzzle behind, and embark on a journey of adventure, purpose, and meaning.
We live in blueprints rather than homes. We exchange the territory for the map and the symphony for the sheet music, both of which can be neatly tucked into our day planners. We have abandoned the rapture of a starry night for a lifeless book where the front cover has faded under the white-washed sky of light pollution, the back cover boasts of the data contained within, and the pages between them offer not stories, but columns and charts, distances and densities, enormity and expansion.
We have stripped sacred symbols of their resonance and reduced them to tokens and trinkets to buy, sell, or appropriate for monetary gain. Two-handed scrolls enchant no longer, now lost to mindless single-handed scrolling. Pythagoras marveled at meaning in mathematics, envisioning the number one as the symbol for unity and ten for perfection. He found astonishing connections between music and ratio. But now hear the name Pythagoras and all we can muster is a-squared plus b-squared = c-squared as a formula to conquer algebra tests and solve occasional problems. Mathematics are now mere means to ends.
We have wandered from wonder, only to wonder why we wander.
Today, we delve deeply into the hope that this wretched wasteland in which we wander is not our home - the hope that we may yet wake up and rise up and return to reverence, recapturing rapture and seizing the sublime.
Welcome back to wonder.
Source Scripture
Luke 7:11-17
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not. William Shakespeare
Such words capture the essence of a latent power within us, awaiting the spark of purpose to ignite.
From our first breath, we are cradled in potential, but our world orbits around primal needs, each cry a beacon of dependence. Yet, as the veil of infancy lifts, the tender choreography of growth and guidance train us to wield the sword of power. And once trained, we are free to choose how to fulfill our potential.
The easiest path, perhaps, is to mold power to the whims of desire, where the ego eschonces itself as the unyielding center, its gravitational force gripping all it covets.
As we grow older, the spectrum of power broadens—intellectual, political, social, occupational, extending its tendrils into the vast garden of human endeavor. And with every strand of authority entwined around it, there emerges a dichotomy of choice—will we use our power be a vessel of selfish craving or a conduit of collective good?
The news often paints a grim tapestry of power misused—a teacher betraying trust, a politician trading integrity for gold, a city council weaving webs of defamation, a police badge morphing into a shroud of fear, a shepherd fleecing his flock.
Yet, amidst this gloom, rays of hope pierce through— a policewoman’s badge shining as a shield of protection and service, a school principal crafting a haven of learning and respect, a city council sowing seeds of prosperity, a politician being the voice of the voiceless, a pastor trading earthly gold for the treasure of service.
In this grand theatre, the power of choice orchestrates every act. It's the silent custodian of all other powers, holding the potential to either plunge us into an abyss of self-indulgence or elevate us to beacons of hope amid the encroaching shadows. The path we tread in wielding this primal power echoes the essence of today’s passage—the reverence of recognizing a power beyond ourselves, an authority rooted in the heart of divine love.
Source Scripture
Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
To see is to discern with clarity what is…
C.S. Lewis addressed what he saw as the oncoming blindness to what is in his book The Abolition of Man.
Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.
Reason, both C.S. Lewis and Plato insist, follows a natural conformity to the existing harmony of the Universe - to what is. To see is to recognize this, much like a beginning piano player must strain to learn the existing workings of the piano and how dancing her fingers across the keys can create something beautiful.
To see and know what is, then, precedes reason. Reason flows into us once we take in the wonder - the splendor - of the true nature of being.
Today’s episode is a review of the previous six episodes, where Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount as a revelation of the true nature of being and then proceeds to immediately fulfill the deepest desires of a man gripped by suffering to be restored to his true nature.
And in all of these episodes, all the while as Jesus is opening our eyes to us what is, he is also peering directly into the depths of our souls to reveal our longings, our needs, and our blindness to the truth and whispers to us, “I see you - and I want to heal you.”
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:13-14 Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45 Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46 Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49 Matthew 7:28-29 Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Acceptance - we yearn for it in our inmost being. We long for others to accept us as we are, and yet we are terrified that who we are - which includes our shortcomings, our fears, our secret stories of horror, the terrible things we have thought and done - will repel others and deny us the very acceptance we seek.
And so we don costumes, adapting some role that isn't us, hoping to finally earn acceptance. But is it really acceptance if we gain it as someone other than our true self?
Maintaining the false self requires exerting so much effort that we then collapse when in solitude and wonder why we feel so empty, lonely, and starved for the very thing we created the false self in the first place - acceptance.
Your deepest desires for acceptance cannot and will not be met until your true self can safely and wholly emerge in full view of another that has an enthusiastic willingness to approach, to touch, to wipe away tears, to gently clean away all impurities to reveal the beauty that lies beneath - you.
When your desire for acceptance, free of costume, meets and grasps the divine desire to accept you for who you really are - you have reached the most sacred space on all earth - the axis mundi - where heaven meets earth. Where the divine meets - and embraces - you.
Source Scripture
Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Recommended Reading
The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus
Our modern way of thinking has created a false dichotomy between truth and experience. We have become obsessed with the reduction of truth into facts: atomic sentences and numbers and equations that we can use as a periodic table of elements.
But this obsession holds no real power. No matter how well you know that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to form water, this fact will not help you when you are on your knees in the desert and dying of thirst.
Water is life, and your experience of consuming it is vital.
Spiritual truths exemplify this need for active participation even more deeply. A sacred text is not sacred because it reveals truth in written form. It is sacred when and only when the truth in the text connects the spirits of both reader and writer and the experience of sacred communion takes place.
Facts stripped of truth and immersive experience are lifeless at best and oppressive at worst. But when spirit meets truth - yours and the divine - you lose your mind and find your soul.
So if you're stuck in your head and dying of thirst in a land of facts, it's time to strike out on a new adventure.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:28-29
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Our quest for peace - contentment, rest, fulfillment - is, paradoxically, most often filled with frustration, anger, exhaustion, and even rage. Make more money, acquire necessary things, secure fulfilling relationships, and fulfill sensual desires.
Over and over again, great obstacles present themselves. Storms arise. Obstacles roll over us. People thwart us. Disasters destroy all that we have worked for and take away those that we love.
And when we find ourselves naked and afraid - when all is lost except loss itself - where do we go? What do we do?
We could, like the great phoenix, resolve to rise from the ashes and rebuild our lives by starting over and repeating our quest.
Or, perhaps we could reconsider the quest itself and reexamine what it is we seek.
If what we seek is peace, which is an inward state of being - a mode of consciousness - then why do we assume at the outset that our quest must be the triumphal conquest of external circumstance?
If what we truly desire is an inward oasis, then our quest must be an inner odyssey.
The journey to fulfillment lies wholly within. And the deeper we go, the more this truth becomes clear to us, until in our spirit we arrive at the very ground of our being and discover there that the truth really does set you free.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Without conscious and concerted effort, our focus will always be on ourselves. What we want. What we need. What we'll do to get what we want and need.
This focus reveals our purpose - which, if we are honest, is to bend the world and all that is in it in our favor. We desire to be seen and to be valued, and with this focus we devise actions that will garner attention, gain praise, and earn love. When we fail, as we inevitably will, we become increasingly discontent and grow more likely to reduce others to the role of competitor, ally, enemy, or tool.
Such self-centered living is destined to fail, despite our rational thoughts to the contrary and despite seeing those we idolize post their social proof. The human soul is not designed to be selfish - it is designed to serve. It is designed to be a cup that receives divine love from above and pours it out freely here below.
Soul-centered living brings freedom and opens the doorway into the kingdom of heaven. Self-centeredness, in its desperation to justify itself, has a way of pretending to be righteous with magic tricks that may fool the eye at first glance. But all that hocus focus cannot and will not ever serve us or others.
Today, we'll expose the magic tricks that attempt to make self-centeredness disappear, and we'll rediscover the true meaning of life.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
What gives? The sun gives light and warmth. A mother gives milk and hugs and nurture. Birdsong brings smiles. The forest offers solace. The moon and the stars above give a sense of awe and perspective below. Friends provide comfort. Children bring joy. Trees bear fruit. Sheep provide wool.
What takes? Light pollution takes away the splendor of the night sky. Thieves seize what is not theirs. Accidents, war, and disease take loved ones. Litter takes away beauty. Thorns take blood. Wolves take life.
We are attracted to what gives. We are suspicious at best or terrified at worst of what takes.
Knowing this natural law of attraction and avoidance, some costume themselves as what gives, but behind the mask is a liar. A thief. A murderer.
Today, we learn how to identify these masked marauders - particularly those who claim to give goodness and truth and guidance when in fact they are only after what they can get out of us.
To take is human. To give, divine.
Let's open our eyes to the divine to see what gives.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
To attain what we desire most, we mistakenly believe that we must move forward, acquire more, learn much, guard relentlessly, achieve fame, win awards, and stockpile power.
And yet, our true desires are never met by our effort, ingenuity, or winsome charisma. Our true desires - the ones that emanate from the ground of our being and refuse to quiet their call until we fulfill them - are found through simple, quiet, effortless means.
Finding fulfillment in this life does not come by learning, but by unlearning. It does not come by grasping, but by releasing. Not by pursuing, but by surrendering to being pursued. Not by leading, but by following. And not by demanding, but by accepting.
The gateway to paradise - the kingdom of heaven - exists on this side of the grave. It stands open for all who would enter.
Finding that gate....is the focus of today's episode.
Source Scripture
Mathew 7:13-14
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Desire is a divine gift that stirs the soul, prompting us to pursue its fulfillment. Yet we often corrupt divine desire by conflation and control.
We conflate love with lust, which drives us to see the other as a utilitarian object to fulfill lustful desire rather than a divine being with which to seek meaningful presence. We conflate joy with happiness, and pursue fleeting pleasures. We conflate peace with the absence of annoyance and play never ending whack-a-mole with the slightest intrusion.
Conflation leads to control. Lust requires control, reducing sex to on-demand video, one-night stands, rape, pedophilia, and worse. Happiness demands that we control the trinkets kept within our reach so that we may summon them at will. Removing annoyances instead of seeking shalom forces us to use force to silence unwanted voices.
To pursue desire by conflation, control, or the commingled concoction of both inevitably leads to anxiety, frustration, and the worship of money as the wellspring of control.
We suffer anxiety over our limited control and abilities to obtain what we want. Frustration strikes when we fail, but ultimately even when we supposedly succeed as our conflated counterparts don’t culminate in contentment. And the love of money is inescapable. Money is control, mathematically summoned at will.
The path of conflation and control to fulfill desire will never bring satisfaction - it is a dead-end road that, despite our best efforts, cannot be turned into a luxurious culdesac of consummation.
The divine path of desire is paved with trust in the Divine God of the Universe who created our desires and designed us to seek Him for their fulfillment. Trust removes the need for control and eliminates the habit of conflation, leaving us in a state of blissful shalom.
This underlying theme pervades our last six episodes, though without in-depth contemplation we will engage today. Today, we see the beauty of Jesus’ words through a review of of the thread that weaves through his last six otherwise isolated proverbs in his Sermon on the Mount.
Today, we see the beauty of trust as the path to fulfilling our desires.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13-15 Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32 Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37-42 Matthew 7:6 Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13 Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
We long to be seen and celebrated for that which is deeply good and worthwhile in us, and we long for a love that is strong enough to contain our frailty and sinfulness. Something in us knows such love is a transforming power. - Ruth Haley Barton
When Adam and Eve hid from God amidst the trees of the Garden of Eden, clad with fig leaves sewn by trembling fingers, they for the first time in their lives feared being in the presence of God. Before the fall of paradise, they were unashamed to be fully seen and known. But now, they lived with a new reality: to be fully known came coupled with the horrifying dread of rejection.
And as they shuddered in the shadows, God called to them. He came to them. And though their shame was as much their own making as their fig leaf coverings, God gently took away both - covering them with love and the skins of of the first creature to ever die.
God’s love enveloped both their worth and their failure, held in the tension between the curses of Paradise Lost and the promise of paradise regained through a future descendant of Eve.
We live in that fallen state - it infects us today. We long equally to be fully known and fully loved, yet we believe the former inherently negates the latter. This leaves us in a terrible state, for we see the love really want on one horizon and who we really are on the other. Trapped in desperation of a world of our own making, we hopelessly run toward one or the other. To run toward love, we believe, we must cloak and costume our true selves, leading inevitably to a false version of love for a false version of ourselves.
And when we can take no more of this, we turn back toward the other horizon, back to ourselves. But, where is this place from whence we came? The landscape looks different now than when we left. We are lost. We search desperately for who we really are, but in so doing the more we discover leads us farther and farther away from the love of anyone who could ever embrace what we find.
And yet, what we do not see or grasp as we run back and forth like little flatlanders who can fathom only two dimensions, a divine voice cries out from above in love, asking the same question asked of Adam and Eve. Where are you?
God’s love seeks us. It searches us out. God is love, and He is capable of loving us fully and knowing us fully, awakening us to and rescuing us from the torturous, writhing, fallen state of forever believing we must choose between experiencing love and being seen for who we are.
Once rescued, we find paradise regained. All we ever desired returns to us.
And then - we find ourselves with one new desire - the desire to do for others what was done for us.
This is the golden rule of engagement.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Desire is so fundamental to our nature that we often overlook its significance. Its guiding force. We are created - designed - to desire and to be satisfied.
Desire and satisfaction were part of Paradise before the fall. When God created the world and saw that it was good, he rested. When Adam and Eve worked the garden each day, they would stop in the evening and walk in the cool of the day beside the divine God of the Universe. And when they were hungry, they found satisfaction from taking the fruit of any tree in the garden.
Except one, of course.
The serpent injected venom into Eve's desires and bent them toward the forbidden. Forget God and what He said, the serpent suggested, and become like him by eating from this tree.
Eve, having then entertained the idea of going against God's guidance, looked at the fruit of the tree. The Scriptures say she saw three things that she desired: she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom.
And so, in an attempt to satisfy those desires, she took the forbidden fruit. And ate it. And then gave some to Adam, who was standing next to her.
Adam and Eve abandoned their natural, divine provisions that would naturally meet their desires and grasped for something outside the realm of God's desire.
And yet, though we call this event the Fall - or Paradise Lost - what we find is God's desire only beginning to reveal itself. God came to the garden in the cool of the day to find Adam and Eve, desiring to walk with them. He called to them when he could not find them, desiring their presence. And once they confessed their sin, He covered their shame with animal skins that he sacrificed, desiring to relieve their shame. He handed down discipline and ejected them from the garden, but left them alive and well, desiring to continue to be a part of their lives. And the rest of Scripture is the story of God's divine pursuit - his holy desire - to win us back from doing the same thing over and over again - trying to gratify our desires with anything other than Him and His provision.
God's desire is us. And when we loosen our grip on the forbidden fruit and take our eyes off its deceptive appearances, we find that what we really desire ourselves is God. And when God's desires and ours converge, Paradise is regained.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world. Theodore Roszak
The prevailing mode of consciousness today might be captured in the word materialism. Philosophical materialism suggests that all that matters is matter, and everything that occurs does so strictly within the material world.
Practical materialism, which flows from its philosophical wellspring, focuses on the acquisition, manipulation, and removal of material objects based on their usefulness.
A better term for this prevailing mode of consciousness that is rooted in philosophical materialism might be objective consciousness.
In layman's terms: Where's my stuff? I want stuff. I need stuff. But not that stuff.
Objective consciousness limits us to see, live, and act only within the physical world of stuff. Of things.
Beyond the stuff of earth, however, is a realm of awe and wonder. The spiritual world. The plane of existence where we experience love, joy, peace, gratitude, hope, and communion with the divine.
The membrane that separates these two worlds can only be permeated by shedding the entirety of the material world, including and especially the center of it all - the self.
To the self, this appears as a mythical fantasy at best or suicidal mission at worst. And so, any invitation to cross the threshold is met with dismissal or attack.
So how does anyone trapped in the prevailing consciousness of the material, objective world ever see the truth of what lies beyond?
There is one - and only one - spiritual substance that can penetrate the physical world and shine light that illuminates the path between these two world
And that substance is the focus of today's episode.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:6
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
One of the most harmful and yet least examined impulses of human nature is that of judgement. In silent milliseconds, we can observe a fellow human being and decide if he is worthy or unworthy, right or wrong, good or bad.
And with that judgement, just as quietly but more deadly, we condemn. We From our judge's chair while draped in our robes of black, we pass one of the many sentences available to us in our play book.
Rather than turn the other cheek, we turn our back. Rather than go the extra mile, we force them to. We hurl insults. We raise our hands in obscene gestures. We steal back what is supposedly ours. We open the floodgates of rage into our hearts and with our minds we justify the mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that we heap on our accused.
And as we pass judgement and condemnation on the other, we silently and often unknowingly hold up our get-out-of-jail-free card - the one we earned by being right, righteous, good, better. We choose to be our own judge, and we always find ourselves innocent.
At stake here is not who is right and who is wrong. What is at stake is you - your state of being. The desire to set the world right is a God-given desire implanted in us. It is etched in the imago dei of our souls.
But the fulfillment of that holy desire does not and cannot come from judgement. Judgement arises from egoistic pride, arrogance, entitlement, and a withering connection to the sacred.
It is time to bring the oft-overlooked act of judgement into the light and let it be judged for what it is. It is time to acknowledge and take the beam out of our own eye. The good news is that we have a Judge who is willing to both forgive us and to teach us his way of forgiveness - freeing us to walk this earth in peace and love.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
Source Scripture
Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37-42
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
The ruthless elimination of worry is key to peace in the present moment.
We worry when we direct our focus to something we want beyond our current grasp of control. We cannot abide the uncertainty of achieving our goal, and this state of consciousness produces anxiety.
We then believe that to overcome anxiety and find peace, we must create methods and procure resources that provide us with the right amount of power and control.
The curious state we now find ourselves in is one of double anxiety. To get what we want, we must first get something else, and we worry about the prospect of obtaining both.
If we do not question this default approach to living, we will succumb to its relentless grip on our soul and live in either the anxiety of either acquiring control or preserving it. The present moment will remain elusive as future concerns usurp it.
Worry is the enemy of peace. Of shalom. Of bliss. Worry aspires to be hope, but falls far short because it has no one to hope in beyond the self-centered ego.
When we are free of worry, we experience the bliss of of what really matters: the present moment. The naked now. We find ourselves trusting in God’s providence, resting in his promises, and able to experience the joy of His presence and the presence of others.
The present moment is a most auspicious occasion, and with it today we will pursue the ruthless elimination of worry.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Within us is a yearning to experience being - life in its fullest capacity. This divine desire propels us on a quest to find - to seize those experiences that bring us closer to true being.
And yet, too often in our haste to experience the fullness of life, we conflate the spiritual well that activates and actualizes being with tactile, temporal offerings. The call of rich, meaningful, inner experiences of being available to us drowns in the cacophony of materialistic voices without. And the more we lose touch with ourselves, the deeper we wade into the waters of materialism until eventually the riptides of greed and lust pull us ever further away from the shore of our own soul.
Our materialistic pursuits, though they vary in tone and texture, all converge at this apex: money. Money becomes the well from which we draw in order to satisfy our materialistic goals. And without even realizing it, we have now strayed so far from the shore that we cannot even see it, choking on saltwater in a futile effort to slake our thirst. We have conflated our desire for being with the lust for material things, and we have further decided that to have what we want, we must have money to get it.
In most cases, we don’t question this mode of living at all. At best, we comfort ourselves by donating a small percentage of our money to what we deem our worthy causes. At worst - we are at our worst - slaves to the master of money as we plod forward in our erroneous belief that money buys things and attracts people that will fulfill our innermost longings.
But you can’t smell the roses when you’re lost at sea.
The only way we escape the clutches of money is to return to the shores of our soul and begin the trek inland, exploring the true, rich, fulfilling, divine experiences of being that await until they enrapture us and we forget all else - including and especially money.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13-15
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist (Apple I Spotify)
Meaningless Incense
As the science vs. faith battle wages to determine who is right and what is real, what each can miss in this philosophical tournament is the opportunity to lift up their eyes and see beyond the coliseum that hosts it - and walk outside, leaving the weapons and armor of the game behind and embracing the search for being.
Science creates rules that govern and limit how we see. Faith, a term which once meant something much more, finds itself reduced by modern Western thought to nothing more than another set of rules, creeds, and systematic theology - a flattened version of what it really is.
Faith, in its essence, is not a set of rules. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Faith is knowing that the deepest, truest desires within us are real. This means that our longing for love, transcendence, meaning, purpose, acceptance, and connection to the divine is not an unrealistic outlook. Faith gives us confidence that these desires are the most genuine thing about us.
And faith is the assurance that these longings, which cannot be seen with the eyes of objective consciousness, can be trusted to lead us to their fulfillment. And they can be trusted precisely because the divine, transcendent God who created us planted these inherent desires within us. He designed us with these invisible desires to seek Him so that he can fulfill them all in communion with him.
And all we have to do is to see this truth in our spirit, accepting it by faith.
Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:1
Matthew 6:2-4
Matthew 6:5-15; Luke 11:1-4
Matthew 6:16-18
Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34
Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
When our inner being is filled with divine light, our eyes emanate that light, and help us navigate this life in truth and love. But when our inner being is full of darkness, our eyes will be equally dark, and everything we do will will be nothing more than stumbling in that darkness.
Today we focus on the connection between being and doing, and keeping the inner fire burning so that we see clearly to light the world.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Paradise Now - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
Created things pull us outside ourselves. We fix our attention on objects, and so our mode of consciousness becomes objective. We assume that the pursuit of the external will, in return, bring us reward as the objects of our attention come to us.
And yet, no matter how hard we try, the external cannot cross the threshold into our inner being and satisfy our real need. Possessions can go no further than an ephemeral caress of the ego. And this maddening tease drives us to toss aside one failed object for the next, leading us on an endless and fruitless pursuit.
Saint Augustine awakened from objective consciousness, from his madding pursuit of created things, to discover that looking outside himself for meaning only drew him away from himself. And the way back to himself was to yield to the divine call that comes only from within.
Today, we turn our attention away from created things out there - letting go of objective consciousness - and look toward the treasure that lie within, where the Creator of all things calls to us.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Paradise Now - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
To fast is to return our attention to ourselves - our spiritual center - our souls.
Its easy to lose touch with our center when we allow the outside world to seize our attention with its sensory, sensational, sensual offerings. And when we focus on these things that couple only with our physical selves, we become self-centered. Egocentric.
And, let's not forget, we have real physical needs: hunger, thirst, human connection, and much more. We are not bifurcated creatures whose physical and spiritual sides can be separated - not until death, anyway. We are whole beings. Each of us has a soul and a body, woven inextricably together in the Imago Dei.
Even the Lord's Prayer, as we saw in the previous episode, has a line devoted to asking God to provide our daily bread. So why would we ever spend one or more days shunning that divinely created need?
Fasting has many benefits, but today we will focus on one in particular: that of re-centering - living from the soul. Fasting is a discipline that in the moment may seem pointless, but in the end is a training exercise that yields spiritual strength.
So let's slow down, and fast.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:16-18
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Our modern ears interpret the word pray as ask God to give me something I want or need.
But the word pray used in the Greek text of the Bible means, literally, to move towards the will of God - so that our will might be exchanged for his.
We see this meaning in play as Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done.
This is, perhaps, the most enchanting possibility available to those of us with free will - to choose to to relinquish our will in exchange for his.
This is the purpose of prayer.
Today, we will see the purpose of prayer unfold before us in The Lord's Prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples - and to us. And the walk through that prayer is awe striking.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:5-15; Luke 11:1-4
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Creation is an act of generosity. Generosity is an act of creation. To create is to gather the resources available to us and shape them into something new and wondrous for others to experience. To be generous is quite literally the same thing.
And yet, how many times do we cheapen and pollute our works of creation by scribbling our name all over it?
Rather than create for the purpose of inducing wonder, we hastily mix a stew of popular and unhealthy ingredients and tempt others with the result. And our only motive is payback through attention or money.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, wisely explains to us that altruism is creative and permeated with light, while selfishness is destructive and lives in darkness. Generosity is a creative force that moves outward from the self. Selfishness is a destructive force that collapses in on itself. And any attempt at mixing the two so that the self - the ego - gets the credit, only destroys that creation.
Is it any wonder that God's first known words in history are let there be light as he creates all that is, generously giving us all a place to live, and move, and have our being.
Today, we explore DMLK's definition of generosity as creation in contrast to selfishness as destruction, emphasizing Jesus' words when he said, It is more blissful to give than to receive.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:2-4
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The ego longs to be seen and admired, and all those who fall under its narcissistic spell see the world as their stage. Abandoning their true selves for the sake of thunderous applause, they live their lives in performance.
But, as with all performances, the script has an ending. The actors take their bows. The audience goes home. The stage falls silent, and the performers go back to the dressing rooms, remove their costumes, masks, and makeup, and go home as themselves.
The Greek word for such a stage actor is hypokrites. In English, we transliterate that word as hypocrite, and we use it to refer to a person who acts as if he is one thing on the public stage, but lives as if he is another thing entirely in private.
None of us wants to be known as a hypocrite. None of us wants to be seen as a narcissist. We just want to be seen. Noticed. Accepted. Loved.
The problem is that we are afraid that people will not accept us for who we really are, and so we fashion costumes that hide our true selves in hopes that we will be seen as the performer's persona and receive the requisite rounds of applause that go with it.
And the longer we play a role, regardless of how much recognition we receive, our true selves will continue to grow restless until we are seen and known for who we really are.
Today, we will wrestle together with the natural tendencies to fall into narcissism and hypocrisy and discover the rewards of being true to ourselves.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:1
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Love and belonging is what we seek. And when we fail to experience love, we fail to experience being. We become broken, lost wanderers in a wasteland of desperation, impatience, entitlement, greed, addiction, and emptiness. Our substitutes for love forever fail to fulfill, and we flounder.
Conversely, when we experience intimacy with another, we are struck by something beyond ourselves. It is if the energy of being itself suddenly takes hold of us and carries us helplessly toward the other. The woman who you will one day propose marriage in hopes of even greater intimacy. The baby who did not exist one year ago but now inexplicably interweaves itself into your soul. The best friend who gets you.
Your best friend gets you because she gets you. Your presence. She is privileged to know you intimately and loves you deeply. With her you have trust and vulnerability and peace. You have being.
But how do we find love? Where can we discover belonging? Especially in a world where everyone wants to take and no one wants to give?
The answer comes to us as we review the last six episodes of Awestruck, where we see Jesus revealing the culmination of all of the Old Testament Law and Prophets - in him. In his life. In his words. In his actions.
And as Jesus weaves together the entirety of the Old Testament into a living portrait of himself, what we see in that portrait is divine love. We see a God whose sole purpose is to bring us into perfect union with him and with each other.
Source Scripture
See episodes 71-76
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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Imagine a reverse wedding ceremony, where the climax occurs as two people stare into each other's eyes and declare for all to hear, I don't.
The bride's wedding dress is blackened with soot. Thorns are strewn in place of flowers. Writhing snakes replace candles. On either side of the aisle there are opposing forces who shout at each other.
And leading the ceremony is zombie-like creature, who says, "Dearly be-hated, we are fractured here today to part these two by breaking the bonds of love and fueling the fires of fury."
There is a reason why we do not see such ceremonies - they are devoid of beauty.
Weddings are filled with beauty, and set the stage of hope that love will forever bind two people.
Reverse weddings, where two people decide that they are enemies - whether husband and wife, or father and son, two former friends, or perfect strangers who meet on conflicting terms, are filled with darkness. And yet, such ceremonies occur in the privacy of our hearts.
We decide that someone in our lives, whether the crazy neighbor next door or the ruthless dictator of another country, is our enemy. We know that they have no good will toward us specifically or humanity in general, and so we feel justified in assuming the same posture toward them - precisely because we are right and they are wrong. And right must prevail.
Yet perhaps the real reason that we declare war on this enemy of ours is because they have robbed us of beauty and love. And so, wounded by this loss, we exacerbate the issue by living in hate, robbing ourselves - and the world around us - of beauty and love.
We become that which we hate in an effort to extinguish it and hope that beauty returns when the smoke clears.
If we truly wish lost beauty to return, then we must stoke its fire - both within and without.
Source Scripture
Matthew
Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-28,32-36
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
For Further Contemplation
1 Samuel 24
Recommended Reading
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
When we are wronged, we feel out of balance. Our knee jerk reaction is to restore balance with an equal but opposing force. This, we reason, should even the score. Such an approach fits neatly into a broader, largely unquestioned paradigm of living that we will call the quid pro quo mindset. I will give something to you if you give something to me. I will love you if you love me back. I will forgive you if you forgive me. I will ___________ as long as you do the same.
The expected result of quid pro quo living is balance and harmony. Everyone does something for everyone else in equal measure and there is much rejoicing.
A closer look at quid pro quo, though, leads not to the expected balance in our relationships. Instead, we withhold generosity while waiting on others to give to us first. And when everyone assumes this same posture, frustration sets in. Over time, this frustration crystallizes into jade - creating an unbalanced quality of being.
Frozen in this state, we wait for all others to make the first move towards us. And if that move is not in our favor, our internal angst drives us to label it as on offense - whether real or not.
Quid pro quo demands that any offense be met with defense, and so we do the only thing we know how. We strike back, whether passively or aggressively, or some combination of both.
And when we strike back, they strike back, and on and on it goes, creating an unthinkable, undesirable, unsustainable way to live - a decaying orbit destined to burn us all out.
And yet, there is another way. The way of peace. Love. Balance. And it comes not by taking an eye for an eye, but by turning the other cheek.
Source Scripture
Matthew
Matthew 5:38-42; Luke 6:29-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
For Further Contemplation
Leviticus 19:18; Proverbs 20:22; 1 Samuel 24
Recommended Reading
Unoffendableby Brant Hansen
Commitment. We all have our various means of desiring to change, choosing a path of transformation, and then mustering the will to follow-through.
Often we turn to ritual, contract, or other form of pledge that marks the moment our new journey begins to assert that we will, in fact, do what we say we will do. We make New Year's resolutions, buy gym memberships, or announce our goal to family and friends to hold us accountable.
This longstanding approach - longing for change, choosing a methodology, and then attempting to seal the commitment - is fraught with tenuous threads that cannot hold the weight of our convictions.
Transformation rarely occurs without first immersing ourselves - our souls - in truth. We first listen. We drink deeply of the divine until truth overwhelms us within, prompting action without as in inherent by-product.
Today we take a journey backwards from our written, verbal, and internal vows that we will change until we arrive at the wellspring of transformation. From here, we can journey back to the surface, taking with us the boon that eliminates the need for empty promises and giving us - and others - the real power we need for change.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:33-37
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Recommended Reading
The Hidden Order of Intimacy by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
In between the lines of the Easter story is an awestriking, mysterious, divine romance.
Trending: trading the transcendent for the trivial.
This is the essence of idolatry - to embrace a deflated form of or wholesale alternative to divine love in a futile attempt to satisfy the inner longings of the soul.
And when the idol doesn’t deliver, our thirst drives us to double down. We either increase our obeisance or turn to another and settle for whatever fleeting hint of satisfaction we can find before we are back where we started.
Parched. Desperate. Bereft.
So pervasive is this paradigm that it permeates our entire purpose and everyday practice.
We trade transcendent truth for trivial trinkets. We exchange the presence of the God for the study of God, leaving the landscape of our souls littered with crumbling idols of dogma. And eventually, when all conceivable idols fashioned in the image of God fail to satisfy, we abandon all hope in God altogether and wander even further into the desert.
And in that desert, as we encounter other divine beings created in the image of God like ourselves - we create idols of them as well.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in our pursuit of a husband or wife to share a lifetime of love.
Rather than embrace the presence of the divine one created in God's image, we spend years developing an idol that potential candidates must conform to. And when they don't - we send them away, whether literally or metaphorically. We cancel them. We disassemble the relationship with them in favor of maintaining the relationship we have with the idol.
Today, we will seek to escape this paradigm, casting aside our idols so that we may instead embrace the divine God of the Universe himself, along with the one he brings to us in the relationship of marriage.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:27-32; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 16:18
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Read Malachi 2:10-16. How does this Old Testament passage, written 400 years earlier than the Sermon on the Mount, compare to Jesus' words?
Read Leviticus 18, a chapter devoted exclusively to the Old Testament law concerning sexual practices. One verse seems totally out of place - which is it? How does this verse regarding idolatry relate to verse preceding it?
Read Mark 10:1-12. What was the motive for the Pharisees asking Jesus this question? What motive did the disciples have for following up Jesus' response with their own questions privately?
If you have suffered loss due to divorce, there is hope. Read Psalm 147:3. What is God's attitude toward you? What does he intend to do for you?
Anger is like fire. Under control, it can bring much-needed warmth to a cold environment or form a backfire to stop the spread of a raging wildfire. But out of control, the smallest of sparks can ignite an inferno that races to consume and destroy. Controlling anger is not, as we might often assume, merely the exercise of withholding caustic words or violent deeds. Containing the anger within the confines of the body does not bring it under control - it suppresses. Compresses. Distresses.
Left in this state, we smolder. And the resulting pressure requires release. It will either build a backdraft that explodes when someone or something opens the door, or it will seep out at regular intervals in a period - or even a lifetime - of passive aggression.
Some of us, without even knowing, live in a perpetual state of anger - like the coal fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania, that has been burning underground since 1962. And in this state, everyone - and everything - agitates us. Or, more destructively, we find ourselves wondering we explode at the slightest provocation.
Today, we will take a fresh look at unsettled anger - how to determine if we need to extinguish it, or build a good fire that helps others. And, in most cases, we learn how to avoid creating the drought conditions in the soul that allow it to burn uncontrollably in the first place.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:21-26
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Read 1 John 1. How does this passage relate to today's podcast and help you examine your inward life as it pertains to anger? Where do you see the ministry of reconciliation to God and others? How does hypocrisy sneak into our lives to prevent us from seeing how our refusal to reconcile warps our view of the divine?
Books to Read
Unoffendable by Brant Hansen
Is it a sin to..... fill in the blank. Yes, or no!! The formulation of such questions and the hands-on-hips scrutiny that awaits their answers disclose an underlying, dualistic paradigm that we might call religious meritocracy.
Do the right thing - earn your way to heaven. If, then. Yes, no.
Religious meritocracy produces, as its logical conclusion, rigid boundaries with which to declare judgement, excluding those on the outside and self-righteously promoting those on the inside to elevated status. Everything becomes about the boundaries, where all troops are amassed. And yet, in so doing, the interior state becomes entirely devoid of the life with which the boundaries were intended to cradle.
It's easy to fall prey to this paradigm if you take only a cursory glance at sacred Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. The law given to Moses and the message preached by prophets often center on those deeds that, if committed, warrant punishment. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Or else.
And yet, as we will see in today's episode, the sacred rarely emerges from cursory glances, just as the breathtaking experiences of vacation in a beautiful country does not come by walking its borders heal-to-toe all the way around and then returning home.
Today, we cross the threshold of the borders outlined by the letter of the law and go deep into the interior - to the breathtaking Spirit of the Law - that brings life and love to otherwise dead religion.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:17-20
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Read Romans 8-13. Compare Paul's explanation of living by the Spirit and his religious establishment's failed attempts to find the kingdom of heaven they were looking for.
It is in our nature to be connected with each other. Interwoven. Interdependent. Interlocked in love and community.
And yet this is not our reality. Instead, we are alienated. Separated. Resentful. Mistrustful. In fear and paranoia, we depersonalize. Criticize. Exploit. Avoid.
In this increasingly diseased state, lacking the restorative powers of wholesome social community, the suffering caused by our isolation intensifies - due to our isolation.
It's time to reverse the trend. To heal the wounds. To cure the disease.
Today, in our look back at the previous six episodes, we will surface their underlying theme of creating community and reversing the curse of isolation and the catastrophic toll it has taken from on of us.
Words. Logic. Reason. Argument. Language is the bedrock on which most of us form and defend our framework of belief - the over-arching narrative that governs how we make sense of the world around us.
If something cannot be expressed in words, we think, then it cannot be true. How could it be?
And yet, are not the greatest experiences of our lives those in which we find ourselves… Speechless? When someone we know faces profound grief and loss, do we attempt to console them with logic? Would you prefer a detailed map and well-worded paragraph describing the islands of Hawaii over a personal visit?
Logic, reason, and the scientific method can go only so far in their attempts to penetrate the depths of the human soul. To limit ourselves to only what they offer is to live in the shadows of the fullness of reality. In a growing darkness. Where we crawl about, wondering why we cannot seem to see and experience the true depths of who we are and who we are meant to be.
What, then, can penetrate this darkness if not reason?
The divine light of truth, demonstrated in the raw, authentic, spiritual form of a narrative.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:14-16; Mark 4:21; Luke 8:16; 11:33
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Essence. This word connotes the wellspring of being - our nature. Often in an attempt to describe such a concept we turn to words like...
Father. The essence of a father is that he has children that he loves, provides for, protects, guides. If we see someone who claims to be a father violating that essence through abuse or abandonment, we feel natural tension. That tension is the distance between what we believe to be the essence of fatherhood and the broken example now before us.
Husband, mother, policeman, priest - all of these possess an inherent essence that, when lost, fill us with disappointment. But when fulfilled, as in an example where a father gives his life to save one of his children, we feel an overwhelming sense of awe.
The alignment between essence and reality matters.
Whether we realize it or not, our essence is divine. Our wellspring is the heart. The soul. And when we choose to live in alignment with our essence, awe permeates our reality. But when we pollute or dilute our essence to pursue the non-essential, we break faith with the divine and life loses its meaning - for us and for those who know us.
So what word best describes our divine nature? Salt.
We are the salt of the earth...
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:13; Mark 9:49-50; Luke 14:34-35
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The truth hurts, and its wounded often lash out.
When the divine light of truth confronts, all masks and costumes fashioned to conceal it fall away. And in that moment, confronted with the reality of our naked being, we face tough choices: run, fight, or embrace.
Those who run search for a place where they may reacquire the familiar cloaking devices. Those who fight rush the source of the light of truth and attack, hoping that darkness may once again fall. And those who embrace the truth are transformed and experience the divine.
Truth ignites hatred in those entrenched in ego-centered living, because it calls their entire being into question. Truth is a threat to the ego’s way of life, and so the mightiest personal military forces available must be sent out to "protect."
A life founded on the ego's principles resorts to hatred instead of love, lies instead of truth, and insults instead of encouragement.
Today we will face the reality that those of us who speak truth, live rightly, and align ourselves with the divine will inevitably be the victims of enraged, wounded egos. And in that reality can find happiness, because it is an indicator that we are living in the kingdom of heaven.
Conversely, though, if we find ourselves unnoticed. Unchallenged. Unopposed. Unaffected by the egos of the world, then it is a haunting sign that our truth is hidden or corrupt. Our living is weak or off base. And our Jesus is an idol constructed in our own image and not the living, breathing God of the Universe.
So let's see where we stand.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:10-12; Luke 6:22-23,26
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Thinking is shown as a barrier to shalom, yet contemplation is the broker of Presence. Steve Wickham
Thinking here means engaging the mode of consciousness that divides everything into categories, classifying, comparing, and cataloguing everything and everyone in order to determine their place in orbit around the ego. In the last episode of Awestruck, we called this objective consciousness and discovered that it was the primary shroud preventing us from seeing the divine.
This mindscape, we'll call it, has one primary orientation: preference. Things and people become good or bad, accepted or expelled, embraced or eschewed. In such a state, peace is impossible to attain, because something unwanted inevitably invades, producing anxiety, frustration, impatience, and in general a constant state of annoyance. This internal cauldron boils over into fruitless strategies to achieve ego-centric stability.
Contrast this approach to acquiring peace with that of contemplation, a mode of consciousness that shifts the focus from rational analysis to the transcendence of wonder. In this state, the gravity pull of the ego gives way to the levitation that exists only in the spirit.
Here we find shalom, where gratitude eclipses greed. Anxiety dissolves in divine trust. Annoyance gives way to joy.
And shalom is not just something we seek for ourselves. Anyone experiencing peace inherently longs to see it spread to others - and works towards that end.
Achieving shalom is an act of creation, and the creative forces that give birth to it are inherited from the divine creator. Today we look at how to create peace - in ourselves, in others, and in our world.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:9
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
We have come to inhabit a hopelessly flat and prosaic and disenchanted world, even though it is anything but. It's not the world that has become disenchanted, but rather our collective perceptual habits of mind that have created filters that have all but blocked out the soul qualities that are there whether we filter them out or not. Jack Whelan
Where is God? If he is so real, why doesn't he show himself? Where are the miracles? The irrefutable evidence? If God exists and he really is a God of love, why does he allow so much suffering? Why do those who claim to believe in God often seem to have so much hate for others?
All of these are valid questions, to be sure.
If God is real and wants us to believe in him, why doesn't he simply allow us to see him?
He does, but we have largely lost our ability to see.
One of the primary reasons we fail to perceive the divine is the increasing social demand that we constrain our powers of perception to only those allowed under the totalitarian jurisdiction of objective consciousness, where all that exists is reduced to the world of all objects outside of us and the reasoning power of one small object inside of us.
This new world order, which we might also call scientism, would explain the metaphysical away by definition, leaving us devoid of the divine and disoriented by disenchantment.
This oppressive force serves as a creeping, collective cataract that increasingly blinds our third eye.
Today, we will offer a surgical procedure to remove the cataracts of objective consciousness and restore divine sight to the those who long to see.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:8
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. William Shakespeare
Atop the human body is the head. Here we inhale and exhale, consume food, see, hear, smell, and taste the world around us, and experience consciousness as provided by the brain. For whatever reason, all of this takes place at the highest point in the body.
Atop the pyramids is what is known as the pyramidion - the capstone. Typically it is a different color and stone than the rest of the pyramid and often contains the name of the owner of the pyramid etched into it. Many pyramidion of the ancient pyramids are now missing, lost to treasure hunters who valued their uniqueness.
Atop the Washington Monument is a small pyramid itself, with a capstone comprised of 100oz of aluminum and with the words laus Deo - or Praise be to God - etched therein.
Atop the Christmas tree every year are various objects of central importance to families - an angel or a star or some sort of prominent decoration that crowns the tree in symbolic fashion.
The highest point of a human or object or story is often set apart from the rest. It is the location that represents the climax of everything that led up to it or that comes afterward.
Today, we will examine the top, the crown, the climax of the nine beatitudes that Jesus shares with us at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount. It is the fifth beatitude, and the apex of the chiasm formed by all nine of the statements Jesus made beginning with "blessed."
And it deserves special treatment - because it is the climax of message of God to us, not just in the beatitudes, but in all of Scripture.
That beatitude is...the subject of today's podcast.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:7
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling. C.S. Lewis
We may not realize it, but our modern definition of waiting has devolved into something like this: that maddening interval of time we must endure between two successive desired experiences that leaves us irritable and discontent.
The key point to recognize here in this definition of waiting is that what we see as positive are only the bookends - the experiences on either side of the waiting period - and not the treasury of stories available to us in between.
As much as we may like to think so, life does not consist of creating an agenda and checking off each line item with as little waiting in between as possible.
Life does, and always will, consist of waiting. And so the key to life in this respect is not the impossible task of eliminating the wait. The key is establishing an altogether different definition of waiting.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell
In today's episode, we will attempt to derive a true definition of waiting, to accept it as an inevitable and necessary, and to embrace its presence...through embracing the present.
Source Scripture
Good News or Fake News? - Matthew 5:1-2; Luke 6:17-20
Inside Man - Matthew 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-26
Escaping the Matrix - Matthew 5:3; Luke 6:20,24
Have a Great Mourning - Matthew 5:4; Luke 6:21,25
Meek in and Meek Out - Matthew 5:5
Just Right - Matthew 5:6; Luke 6:21,25
Connect
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Extras
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Suggested Scripture: Psalm 22; Psalm 37; Psalm 42
Shall we hire a herald then… or shall I myself announce that… the best and most just man is happiest. Plato
Plato concludes his famous work Republic with this declaration by Socrates. The entire work focuses on one central concept: justice, or righteousness.
In fact, there are those who believe that the correct title of Plato's work is not Republic, but On the Righteous Man.
The Greek word at the heart of this 2400 year-old work is dikaiosune. Sometimes it is translated justice. Sometimes it is translated righteousness. The reason for this juggling match is that English does not have a single word that encapsulates the intended meaning of Plato's subject.
An accurate translation might be as follows: harmony with purpose - what is right and good - within the soul and in relation to others.
The concept of harmony is at the heart of this concept of justice or righteousness. It implies multiple musical notes played simultaneously that produce the sound that is "right", not discordant or "wrong".
Do this, say Socrates and Plato, and you will be the happiest person alive.
Today we will examine a single statement of Jesus in which he not only sums up the entirety of Plato's republic, but takes it a step further, inviting us all to sing in perfect harmony - and be our happiest.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:6; Luke 6:21,25
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When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner. William Shakespeare
The day is June 5th, 1989. The city, Beijing, China, is soaked in the blood of soldiers, students, and bystanders after the Chinese army's violent suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square.
A column of four tanks, just like the one that had plowed through a crowd hours earlier and killed eleven people, is rolling down the street near the square. An unknown person, known since that day only as Tank Man, walks in front of the steel beasts that could easily crush him. He stops. His arms, carrying shopping bags, are down by his side. He makes no gesture of hate. He has nothing with which to attack. He simply stands there, facing them, knowing that he possesses no power whatsoever with which to physically halt the oncoming instruments of war.
The tanks attempt to maneuver around the man, but he calmly shifts his position to stand in their path. The choice becomes clear. Those in power must decide whether to use it and kill a man who calmly stands there or to stop.
The captains cut the power to their engines.
The photo that captures this moment and the story behind it is awe-striking. What captivates us, in this case, is the wonder of how gentleness can be as or more powerful than murderous military force.
The gentleness with which a single man subdued a column of tanks that could have easily taken his life is known as meekness. And in today's episode, we will explore how we can tap the forces within in order to forego the forces without, transforming both ourselves and our world with the gentle power of meekness.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:5
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I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed by such lines [where happiness and kindness abound and they always lead to good things]. But since it is abundantly clear that I don’t, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction. … Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. … Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. C.S. Lewis
When suffering strikes, we seek instant relief. Our instinct is to eliminate the suffering by locating the source and then elude it, shield ourselves, or counterattack.
These tactics are natural and necessary, but what are we to do when they fail us? What do we do with the suffering for which we cannot pinpoint the source? Or, perhaps even worse, how do we endure suffering from an obvious cause but no method of escape?
We deem inescapable suffering as intolerable. And why shouldn't we? Our underlying definition of the good life excludes all forms of suffering. We spend countless hours and dollars creating and purchasing insulation from suffering.
And yet still, it finds us. And when it does, our desperation to escape the inescapable sends us into wailing and writhing under its weight. And finding it unbearable to remain still, we run down every dead-end road that offers an appearance of relief, only to find none.
We play the victim, crying out for sympathy. We play the blame game, seeking respite in revenge. We reread our certificates of entitlement and petition the world to take note. We ingest numbing agents. We preoccupy ourselves with pleasure. We fortify our defenses against further pain. We deny the very existence of our suffering, but it only reappears in the camouflage of anger, busyness, or anxiety. Or we succumb to hopelessness and drag ourselves through each day.
None of these solutions produce true comfort. But there is another that does. And that solution is mourning - pure mourning - free of impurities, additives, and alternatives. When we enter the state of true mourning, we finally find comfort. And, we find ourselves.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:4; Luke 6:21,25
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We conquer nature, we augment our power and wealth, we multiply the means of distracting our attention this way and that...but the despair burrows in deeper and grows fatter; it feeds on our secret sense of having failed the potentialities of human being....Out of despair, they grow burdened with moral embarrassment for themselves, until they must at last despise and crucify the good which they are helpless to achieve. And that is the final measure of damnation: to hate the good precisely because we know it is good and know that its beauty calls our whole being into question. Theodore Roszak
From the moment our memory offers us a glimpse into our origin story until now, we have likely navigated life with the unquestioned assumption that we must assert control over our environment in order to achieve any measure of happiness. This is the kingdom in which we live - to establish and maintain control - so that we may, on-demand, summon the experiences to which we believe we are entitled: pleasure, popularity, prosperity, protection, and the progressive preservation of this presuppositional power.
The inescapable outcome of such hubris, whether individual or collective, leads not to happiness - but variegated forms of its opposite.
It is impossible to control everything, especially when our peers seek the same, and so once enough trial and error confirm this, we despair. In dismay we double down our resolve - knowing of no other way to press on - and inexorably resort to manipulation, deceit, and varying degrees of force ranging from passive aggression to wholesale violence.
And yet, if we ever become still enough to listen to the depths of our own souls, we would hear a gentle voice from within crying out there is another way. There is an alternative kingdom in which you can live.
The beauty of this voice and the magnitude of its truth call our whole being into question. We are faced with either hating this challenger of all we have become and labeling it a siren, lashing ourselves to the mast of control, or abandoning ship and succumb to the call.
In this kingdom to which this voice calls us - this alternative mode of reality - the currency of control has no power to purchase happiness. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
Today we will explore the sound of this voice from within and the kingdom to which it calls us - where the currency of control is worthless - to ascertain if it is siren... or Savior.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:3; Luke 6:20,24
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Quotes
Engaging inner work is the modern hero’s journey, and it manifests a life blessed with meaning. DENNIS ARCHAMBAULT
Actions may speak louder than words, but motives have even greater volume, though they whisper.
Some say we should simply examine our motives and make adjustments if we want to improve ourselves. But this is far too shallow approach to transformation. We must not merely examine discrete, isolated motives as if they could be eradicated one by one like the occasional flies that make it into the house. No, we must scrutinize the house we are living in and see whether or not the foundation itself is crumbling, creating cracks that let allow all the flies in and is perhaps reaching a level where partial or total collapse is inevitable.
Like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot of water, we are inherently unaware of the increasing danger of allowing ourselves to remain still while our surroundings penetrate and destroy us. The frog feasts on those flies that are coming in the house and thinks he is safe, but the water temperature is still rising and will eventually kill the distracted frog - if the entire house doesn't crush it first.
The only solution is a radical change - a revolutionary overhaul in the way we think and live. This is what the Greeks called metanoia. That word means literally, beyond thought - and that's exactly where we are going to go today in our quest for transformation.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-26
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When deeds and words are in accord, the whole world is transformed. Zhuangzi
In the world of cyber security, there exists a device known as a firewall. The firewall sits between the outside world and a company's informational resources, sniffing every atomic particle of traffic asking to be let inside. It trusts nothing without examination. It is incessantly on guard, executing thousands of rules aimed at keeping out the bad and letting in only the good.
But as good as it is, the bad actors on the outside are sometimes better, and eventually, a Trojan horse slips through and brings down the business.
You and I have our own firewall. We are incessantly alert, trusting no one and no news without careful examination. We cannot afford to allow anyone or anything inside that has any intentions beyond our best interests. Beyond truth. Beyond love.
Like many businesses, we have been burned. We have allowed news inside that we later discover to be false. We have allowed people inside who we later realized just wanted to use us and then discard us.
All these experiences convince us to harden our firewall. To the point where we even keep out truth. Where we even prevent anyone from coming inside because we are afraid that their motives and intentions are malicious.
The end result is confusion and loneliness. Skepticism. Mistrust. We become increasingly jaded. That firewall becomes a shield we carry, and it grows heavier and heavier until we can barely move through life at all.
For those of us who need truth and love, we are too afraid to let it in. For those of us offering it, we find it increasingly difficult to get past those overreactive firewalls.
There is only one way to deliver the payload of truth and love that will make it through these hardened defenses: a synthesis of words and actions devoid of selfish motives and replete with a longing to see the well-being of the recipient.
Today, we will encourage you how to relax your firewall to receive this payload - and how to be that payload for those in desperate need of it.
Source Scripture
Matthew 5:1-2; Luke 6:17-20
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To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance) really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being. Christos Yannaras
The default mode of living for the ego is to establish itself as the center of the universe. To be king. Now. Without any more delay.
And when we choose to accept this quest of the ego as the default mode of thinking and being, we enter a life of ceaseless contention with the circumstances that thwart us and the people who can't wait to be king themselves.
Blinded by this ambition, we trudge forward every day, analyzing our headway and modifying our strategy. It's an exhausting and rarely fulfilling way to live. The few that do seem to make it become our idols and give us hope that we, too, can make it to the top.
And yet, though the ego knows no other way to live, the soul does. There exists within us a divine calling to shed the ego's skin and become our true selves. And this mode of thinking and being is antithetical to the ego's understanding. It is beyond thought, a concept captured in the Greek word metanoia.
The soul's way of living involves letting go of the incessant campaign to be king and living another way - a way that exists beyond thought. It is the way of transformation.
Source Scripture
Four Score: John 5:31-40
Real Love Awaits: John 5:41-47
Relinquish Control: Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5
On the Other Hand: Matthew 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11
Spacing Out: Matthew 12:15-21; Mark 3:7-12
Learning by Immersion Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16
David Waits to be King: 1 Samuel 8 - 2 Samuel 2
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Resources to Explore the Life of Etty Hillesum
Wikipedia
Book: An Interrupted LifeBook: A Life Transformed
Quotes from Goodreads
I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned. Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum, like Anne Frank, was arrested by the Nazis and transported to camp Westerbork. And, like Anne Frank, she wrote diaries of her experiences before her arrest. Etty continued to write at Westerbork, documenting not just the atrocities taking place around her, but the inward transformation taking place within her.
Though surrounded by evil, she chose to immerse herself in the good she believed permeated even her increasing darkness. At Westerbork she wrote, "The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down for a chat, the sun is shining on my face – and right before our eyes, mass murder....
"Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learnt to love Westerbork."
Etty Hillesum wrote these words not long before she was ushered aboard a train to Auschwitz. There, in the crowded boxcar, she wrote her last known words on a postcard that she then tossed out of the train. It read, "We left the camp singing..."
When evil and suffering surround us, it is easy to let the darkness take hold of us and become part of us. We know no other response than to fight back in rage or attempt to escape the pain with unhealthy distractions or curl up in the fetal position on the floor and weep.
Those will be our responses if we immerse ourselves in the shadows we face. But where there is shadow, there is light.
It is not easy to overcome the darkness. We need help. The good news is we have it. We have been invited to immerse ourselves in a new way of thinking and living. We are designed to walk in this light.
But in order to let go of our current way of thinking and living, we must first immerse ourselves over a period of time fully in the light until it begins to penetrate the darkness within us.
Source Scripture
Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16
Connect
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Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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Resources to Explore the Life of Etty Hillesum
Wikipedia
Book: An Interrupted LifeBook: A Life Transformed
Quotes from Goodreads
Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache. - C.S. Lewis
That old ache within us is a longing to be whole. Complete. Fulfilled. Something is missing and we must find it. Nature, along with the soul, abhors a vacuum.
And so we refuse to stay still. We move toward anything and everything that bears any semblance of fulfillment. The shallow things of this world like fame, fortune, power, and pleasure capture our initial attention, but over time we realize that they fail to bring us into the quality of being that we long to experience.
We then find ourselves inexplicably drawn to what is deeper than things the ego is capable of grasping. The soul begins to guide us us. And lead us. Toward truth, meaning, purpose, and worth. We long to be known. Understood. Valued. Loved.
To find such things, we search for sacred spaces - places where the soul can attune itself to these things and the ego's incessant voice fades into silence.
Such spaces are hard to find, and so we make travel plans to reach them. In the Old Testament Scriptures, the Jewish temple in Jerusalem became the most sacred space of all - the place where God himself dwelled - primarily in the Holiest of Holy Places, between the angels atop the mercy seat that covered the Ark of the Covenant.
But over time things went wrong. The Ark disappeared. The temple became a legalistic sacrificing machine in the inner courts and a greedy and smelly marketplace designed to take advantage of visitors in the outer.
What a disappointment! Where, then, is our sacred space? Our axis mundi? The place where we can find what is right and escape what is wrong? Where we can find comfort and welcome from God and others?
There is a sacred space, and there is a doorway you can walk through to get there. Let's open it right now.
Source Scripture
Spacing Out: Matthew 12:15-21; Mark 3:7-12
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My Dear Wormwood,
Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. Ensure that the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognizing there is a problem with himself.
Keep up the good work,Uncle Screwtape
C.S. Lewis
Innate within us is a yearning for understanding good and evil, and to be on the side of good. And yet coupled with this desire is an equally powerful compulsion to grasp what is beneficial to us and what is not, and to seek all things beneficial.
These two primal urges are always at work within us and can, when followed in spirit and truth, lead us to wholeness.
When we stray from spirit and truth, however, fall prey to the power of the ego - which seeks to redefine what is good and what is beneficial in terms of external circumstance and stimuli. But even the ego, ever determined to please itself with the sensual, cannot deal with the cognitive and spiritual dissonance that erupts when what it perceives as beneficial conflicts with what the soul understands as evil.
The resulting inner turmoil requires us to seek relief. If what the ego desires is what the soul knows to be evil, we must either deny ourselves the pleasure and suffer outwardly, or we must reclassify the evil as good through mental machinations and suffer inwardly.
Over time, we tend to give way to the ego precisely because both its gratification and its suffering are more present and immediate to us. And so our fixation remains on the sensual, leaving us locked in a decreased quality of attention - and being.
And so it is the soul that suffers. And our solution is to deny it and attempt to convince ourselves that what we seek and obtain is actually good.
But the soul will not and cannot remain silent, despite the ego's attempts to disguise it. Remember, you don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body. As the spirit cries out from within for a return to truth, the turmoil manifests itself in a maelstrom of angst, anger, sadness, deception, fear, and every other form of psychological brokenness.
William Shakespeare said it like this: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can return to the soul-centered life and get out from under the wrath of confirmation bias that cripples us.
To find out how, today we'll look at a divine encounter that left those with confirmation bias enraged and miserable, and those seeking truth in a spirit of rapturous joy.
Which example you follow - is up to you.
Source Scripture
On the Other Hand: Matthew 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11
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Control and manipulation are not love; the outcome is a life of imprisonment ultimately leading to deep-rooted feelings of resentment. Ken Poirot (Poy-row)
Control. It is one of humanity's greatest addictions. We crave it. We seek it. And we believe that if we obtain it, the high we feel will equate to happiness.
But it doesn't. And it never will.
In our last episode, we talked about the addiction to the approval of others - a cheap imitation of divine love. Today, we will delve into the gripping addiction of control, which cloaks itself as a pathway to peace, but in reality, robs us of the very thing we seek.
Here is the addiction cycle. We feel anxiety within - something isn't quite right. And all we can think of is quelling that gnawing sense of angst that grows within. Our normal response alleviate anxiety is to seek an outward change in scenery or circumstance or the subservience of our royal subjects. And to induce this desired change, we create a strategy.
This strategy requires rules. Rules like, "If I can just be left alone for the first 30 minutes of the morning with my coffee, then I'll be happy." Or maybe, "No car is allowed in the passing lane if it isn't passing or I will be unjustifiably hindered and upset." These are just a few, simple and almost comical rules that some of us have. But this addiction is no laughing matter. Some of us have complicated, deep-seated rules that are seldom met and leave us riddled with anxiety.
Some rules are, let's be honest, must-haves. For example, "I must be free of abuse in order to be at peace" is a valid rule. But today we're talking about rules that go beyond basic needs and fall into the category of entitlement.
When we feel entitled, we create rules or we appropriate existing rules that we think will get us what we desire. And we almost always tailor the rules so that they benefit us, even if it means that others are shut out from getting what they want. Control subjugates others. They become necessary slaves to our rules.
The logical conclusion of this strategy of living - this addiction to control - is increased anxiety, fleeting pleasures, never-ending stalemates between your rules and those of others, exhaustion, and unhappiness. Like a long-time addict, the pursuit of the "control" substance takes a terrible toll.
There is an alternative, though. A way that leads to freedom from addiction and the experience of true peace.
And that is the subject of today's episode.
Source Scripture
Relinquish Control: Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5
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Braveheart - Prima Nocta
The truth lies within you. If you’re true in what you do, you’ll meet with the truth. If you’re not, you’ll meet only with the things that are fake and imitation. Ajahn Fuang [Ah'-jun Foo'ung]
The drug addict pursues an altered state of experience through the intake of substance. Over time, the ill effects of long-term addiction take their toll on the individual. Without the intervention of loved ones or some form of rehabilitation that leads to sobriety, the addict spirals out of control. The end result is a miserable and shortened life.
This form of addiction we comprehend. But there is another addiction, just as sinister if not more so, that society and large and we ourselves may never recognize - even though the long-term effects are just the same - a miserable and shortened life.
This subtle form of addiction, like drug addiction, is an attachment to a substance that we believe will bring us positive experience, but in reality is nothing more than cheapened and dangerous imitation that fails to fulfill the experiences we seek.
The experience sought in this form of addiction is love. And by love I mean the experience of knowing that one or more others seek our presence, validate our worth, and long to know us more.
The substance of this addiction - the attachment - is approval. We make the mistake of equating love with approval based on something we do, possess, or appear to be. And once this attachment - this substance - has us in its grips, we become lost in the addiction of seeking the approval of others.
No different than the drug addict, those of us addicted to approval build our entire lives around acquiring our substance. Nothing else matters. Before long, we become inwardly grotesque - no different than the pictures we see of drug addicts at their worst. With each temporary high we get from approval, we later come down and crash. The substance of approval is fake love. Imitation love. And it leaves us only wanting more because we cannot imagine that love is anything else.
Today we are going to take a hard look at what a life built on seeking the approval of others does to the human soul. That's the bad news. The good news is that we will also take a look at what we can do to break the cycle of addiction and experience a life filled with authentic, true, divine love.
Today won't be easy, but it will be true. It will be real. It will expose the addiction you have, the substance you crave, and the lengths you have gone to that contort your life to have it. But it will also show you the way out. The way to break the cycle. The way to find and experience true love.
Source Scripture
Real Love Awaits: John 5:41-47
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Wonder is like grace, in that it's not a condition we grasp; it grasps us. Wonder is not an obligatory element in the search for truth. We can seek truth without wonder's assistance. But seek is all we'll do; there will be no finding. Unless wonder descends, unlocks us ... truth is unable to enter. Wonder may be the aura of truth, the halo of it. Or something even closer. Wonder may be the caress of truth, touching our very skin. - David James Duncan
When our search for truth has an underlying aim to understand for the sake of harnessing the power of knowledge to serve the ego's desires, then search results are poor. There are results - but they are not true. They are simply a heap of useful facts we place in our arsenal and protect with fierce confirmation bias.
The difference between truth and fact, for the purposes of this episode, is this: a fact is a mere neutral atom of information. The ego seizes upon the presence of these facts as leverage, studying each atom to form a periodic table of elements with which it then experiments and builds compounds that best serve its desires.
Truth, however, is not neutral. Truth is like light. It radiates. Warms. Enlightens. Heals. Captivates. It envelops the ego like a pearl does an irritant, leaving only beauty in its place.
C.S. Lewis captures the essence of the difference between fact and truth this way in his book The Abolition of Man.
For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious..... If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe’s Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from his devils, but gold and guns and girls. ‘All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command’ and ‘a sound magician is a mighty god’. In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit. The true object is to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work but his goal is that of the magician.
In other words, the difference between fact and truth lies largely in the endgame of the observer. To the one seeking to subdue reality to his wishes, there are only facts. To the one seeking to align her soul with reality, there is truth.
Truth is divine. Information is human. The purpose behind the quest for truth determines the quality of the search results.
Today we will see how Jesus confronts the religious leaders of his day with this important distinction, where he reminds them - and us - that it is the Way of Truth that leads to life.
Source Scripture
Four Score: John 5:31-40
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While Shakespeare and Donne would inevitably have had in mind the political and religious upheavals of the age, it is surely something far greater than that, a different sort of power game, that they have intuited. They lament the loss of the relation of part to whole, of individual to community, of the context, the cosmos, to which each single soul belongs – each now standing alone. There is a loss of harmony (‘each thing meets in mere oppugnancy’, in Ulysses’ phrase), the whole has become a heap of bits and pieces (‘crumbled out again to its atoms’). And, as Ulysses reminds us, this can have only one ending:
Then every thing include itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite,And appetite, an universal wolf(So doubly seconded with will and power),Must make perforce an universal prey,And last eat up himself.
Iain McGilchrist in his book on the brain, The Master and HIs Emissary
As we traverse this life in the context of the Information Age, we have an inherent tendency to reduce what we experience into facts and figures that can be analyzed. This quality of attention is second nature. To reduce everything into its smallest component parts seems normal to us. After all, our end goal is to understand. And our understanding of understanding is that gathering more and more information is the best method of pursuit.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, our end goal is deeper than mere understanding. Our end goal is to understand in order to take advantage. Information is currency, and with it we may purchase that which benefits us.
And yet, as McGilchrist and Shakespeare and Ulysses and the core of our own souls would observe, such a pursuit cannot help but see everything and everyone as utilitarian. Nature becomes a heap of resources to exploit. People become a grid of traits and resources with which to judge as useful, irrelevant, or in need of cancellation.
This reductionist mindset, this reduced quality of attention, has infiltrated not just society at large, but, in a bit of irony, all of its component parts - including the church. The Church, as we will see in today's episode, is called to a much higher quality of attention. One that sees Nature as the glory of God and people as his image-bearers, even the least of all people as Jesus himself.
Today we will review the last six episodes of Awestruck and how each of their individual themes collectively make the whole message we marvel at today more than just the sum of its parts.
The time has come for the Church - for all followers of Jesus - to lay down our weapons of mass reduction and return to living lives of wonder, reverence, and love for all.
Source Scripture
Through the Roof: Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26
Party Time: Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32
I Have a Proposal Matthew 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39
Everyone Out of the Pool: John 5:1-16
Good Work! John 5:17-18
You Look Marvelous: John 5:19-30
All That is Required: Micah 6:8
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
This is How to Focus (Tik Tok)
The state of wonder....is itself a higher form of knowing than the explanations one subsequently seeks in the absence of that state.... If one steps out on a starry night and observes one's inner state, one asks if one could hate or be overwhelmed by envy or resentment. ... Is it not true that no man or woman has ever committed a crime while in a state of wonder? - Jacob Needleman
The reason we cannot seem to find ourselves in a state of wonder anymore is that we must lose ourselves to be in a state of wonder. The gateway into wonder has no room for the self, which is precisely what makes walking through it so wondrous.
Think back to a time to a moment when you were awestruck. Captivated. Swept away by wonder. In that moment - time ceases to exist. There is no past. No future. No desire. No ego. Anxiety does not exist here, because there is no you to feel it. The only thing that exists is the captivating subject of your attention that pulls you completely out of yourself. You are incapable of judging it. Evaluating it. Reducing it. All those forms of analysis require you to perform them. And in wonder, there is no you.
How can there be no you? No self? If there's no you, then who is the observer? Who is the entity caught up in wonder if not you?
The answer is a paradox. The entity caught up in wonder is you. The real you. It is your naked soul, free of the ego and all of its entrapments. It is the being you long to be. That you were intended to be. That you are if you will just shed everything that attaches itself to you. To find yourself, you must lose yourself.
To be and not to be. That is the answer.
The question is how? How do we shed ourselves to enter through the gates of wonder and live in this state of being?
How can we marvel if we do not know how?
We follow the one who does.
Source Scripture
You Look Marvelous: John 5:19-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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When you think of the word work, what comes to mind? For most of us, it is the time and effort required to accomplish a goal. The energy required to move an object over a distance. The physical exertion, unwanted but endured, to obtain reward.
Cast in this light, work becomes something to avoid. Escape. Evade. True happiness, we begin to believe, comes only when work is absent and leisure is present. Paradise and work become mutually exclusive.
And yet, if we go back to the beginning of time, the divine God of the Universe engaged in work to create the earth. To create mankind. To create the Garden of Eden - paradise itself. And he placed man in the garden to work it - to continue the divine act of creation by cultivating the garden to produce fruit.
God rested on the seventh day from his work of creating paradise. He rested because his work was good. Complete. Perfect.
One thing was missing, though. Adam was alone, and God said, "It is not good for man to be alone." So he caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep - to rest from his work - while God continued to work one more time in creating Eve. Only then was paradise complete.
Adam and Eve then began life in paradise with the work of tending the garden. They worked during the day, and they walked with their creator in the cool of the evening.
Work and paradise coexisted in harmony. Work, it seems, is divine.
Until that fateful day when the serpent interrupted their work. When he slithered around the trunk of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and convinced Adam and Eve that they should ignore God's warning and sample its fruit for themselves.
And in that moment, when Adam and Eve stopped working the garden to entertain the idea that they knew better than God and could take action contrary to his desires and direction, paradise was lost.
And so we arrive at today, where we live under the shadow of the serpent coiled around the trunk of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, gloating over us as we work under the curse of thorns and sweat and toil.
And yet, where there is a shadow, there is light. The divine God of creation is not done with his work. He is at it again. He is creating. He is re-creating. He is restoring paradise.
How, you ask? Let's find out.
Source Scripture
Good Work! John 5:17-18
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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Man must reverse the first dispersal of the soul by drawing unto himself the attention which he unnecessarily gives to his thoughts, emotional reactions and sensations, and which results in the deformation and distortion of the entire human organism, to the extent that he has fallen to the level of a sick animal....As long as [he] has no control over his attention his possibilities remain imprisoned in the ego no matter what ideals he espouses and no matter what efforts he expends. Jacob Needleman
Two old men, both octogenarians, study the meal placed before them in the retirement home. The first notices hints of brown tracing the edges of the lettuce in the salad. He also notes the main course - which appears to be some failed attempt at lasagna. He sniffs it, and shudders. He glances at the glass of tea, which appears to be weak without nearly enough ice.
He sighs.
The second man removes his baseball cap from his head and says, "Let's give thanks."
He bows his head and prays. Halfway through expressing gratitude for the meal before him, his voice begins to quiver. He musters a feeble Amen.
The first man is incredulous. "Are you crying? What's going on?"
Putting his baseball cap back on, the first man replies, "I'm just so blessed to have something to eat. So many have nothing."
"How can you say that? This food isn't fit for a dog!"
"When I was a boy, we had no food in the house. My daddy was a janitor and my momma had nine mouths to feed. We had no electricity and no running water. Every day the grocery man would drive by our house to the nearby dump to get rid of the day old bread and expired food from the store. He would honk twice as he went by to let us know. I would run to the dump and forage through the food to find something to eat. And sometimes I would get there before the dogs did and find something.
"And them ladies back there in the kitchen? That's a volunteer group that cooked it today. They didn't even have to be here, but they got up, got dressed, drove over here, and cooked so we could have these plates before us. I'm honored someone would consider me worth their effort."
He raises his tea glass to his friend. "Let's eat!"
Two men. One meal. One is deeply grateful. The other is dissatisfied.
What makes the difference?
Focus. The focus of the first man is evaluating the quality of the food and whether or not it meets his high standards to satisfy his palate. The focus of the second man is on the sheer privilege of having food to eat at all and people willing to provide it.
Today's focus is on focus - and how it can awaken us to the true joy of being. Without soul-centered focus, we find ourselves wandering in the frustrating, ego-centered world of pursuing sensory stimulation aimed at pleasing the shallows of our being: our thoughts and emotions.
You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. These elements comprise only the skin that surrounds the real you and reveals what's beneath - your soul.
It's time to get under your skin.
Source Scripture
Everyone Out of the Pool: John 5:1-16
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
This is How to Focus (Tik Tok)
We live in an age that philosopher Charles Taylor describes as an immanent frame, or, a state of disenchantment that eliminates the spiritual realm and reduces us to biological beings with five senses and no more. In such a context, it is only reasonable that our motivations and goals - indeed our very lives - become preoccupied with the manipulation of objects and people into an optimal order that maximizes our sensual pleasures.
In such a state of attention, then, we inevitably slip into the dualistic mindset of meritocracy. Because there's nothing in this world for me to do other than seek sensual pleasures, and I am aware that you, too, are engaged in the same pursuit, then the only way for us to move forward is to agree that if I do something for you, you do something for me.
If I work for you, you pay me. If I do you a favor, you owe me. If you harm me, I will take revenge.
This mindset is so pervasive that even those of us who would reach beyond the eminent frame to seek the God of the universe who exists both beyond and within it allow us to be caught up in a spiritual meritocracy. If I do a good deed, God smiles on me and must bless me. If I suffer, God must be disappointed in me. If something bad happened to that poor chap over there, he most assuredly deserves it for something he has done.
There is no escape from this dualistic mindset without the divine, a new dimension of being, that exists apart from the immanent frame of disenchantment at worst and spiritual meritocracy at best. We need metanoia or repentance that leads to a new quality of attention, an entirely new way of thinking, that rises from the ashes of sensual orientation and seeks presence with the divine God of the universe and those around us that he has created in his image.
In our story today, Jesus confronts this immanent frame and invites us to live beyond it in the realms of love and enchantment and joy and peace.
How Jesus does this is the subject of today's episode. He uses three metaphors that initially seem separate. Isolated. But when you allow them to coalesce, the result is a startling, overarching metaphor hidden in plain sight that stretches as far back as Genesis 1 and as far forward as Revelation 22.
Come and see for yourself.
Source Scripture
I Have a Proposal Matthew 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God. Thomas Merton
The Ark of the Covenant. It is the subject of much of the Old Testament Scriptures. It is the central object of desire for Indiana Jones and Adolph Hitler in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is the ultimate boon for many treasure hunters who still seek it.
The Old Testament Scriptures tell us that God spoke to Moses from between the two cherubim - or angels - that rose above the lid of the ark. Inside the ark were the two tablets of stone on which God etched the Ten Commandments with his finger. The ark was so holy it was never to be touched, but instead covered with cloth and carried with staves that allowed the men moving it to maintain adequate distance.
The Ark made its way from its birth at Mount Sinai through 40 years of wandering in the desert, and then to the Jordan River where it split the waters and allowed the Israelites to cross into the Promised Land on dry ground.
It eventually made its way to its final home - the Jewish temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem. It was placed in a room of the temple called the Holy of Holies, where only the great high priest could enter once per year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to seek forgiveness for the people of Israel.
The Ark of the Covenant, the most holy object of all time, resting in the Holy of Holies, had itself a most holy place - the lid atop it that covered the Ten Commandments. The place where the great high priest would sprinkle the blood of sacrifice once per year.
It is here, between the two angels atop the lid, that God said his presence permeated this world from the heavens beyond. And this lid was known as the mercy seat.
Of all of the ways that God could choose to present himself and make himself known. It was not through the tablets of law that were hidden inside the ark, which represented the requirements of the people to remain in good favor with God. It was not through the magnificent structure of the temple that encased it. It was not through the gleaming gold that covered every inch of it. It was not through the blood sacrifices that occurred just feet way outside in the inner court of the temple and got most of the attention.
No, the portal between heaven and earth where the divine God of the Universe presented himself to mankind was on the mercy seat.
Mercy. This is God's posture toward us. This is his intent with us. And this - this unfathomable mercy of God - is the subject of today's episode.
Source Scripture
Party Time: Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
What is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the 'Peculiar Institution? ' If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system-which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her ministers and churches-we wish to be shown where it can be found. Sojourner Truth
Though it seems unfathomable, there was a time when so-called followers of Jesus justified the kidnapping, ownership, forced labor, separation from families, torture, and killing of human beings who were in no way different from themselves beyond the color of their skin.
Religion, as we see in this horrifying example from recent history, can easily misappropriate the name of Jesus and hide behind it a system of belief and practice that bears no resemblance to the name it takes in vain.
Such misappropriation continues full force today, albeit in more nebulous forms with vague boundaries. More clear is the racism that still unfortunately exists. Less clear, on the other end of the spectrum is the general failure of religious institutions that bear the name of Jesus to adhere to this hallmark of his teachings: love your neighbor as yourself.
How does this happen? How does an individual, group, or institution that claims to follow Jesus succeed in living and promoting a lifestyle diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, as Sojourner Truth sought to understand?
The source of the problem appears to be two-fold. The first is the wanton lust of the ego. The ego wants what it wants and, left unchallenged by the soul, will write any name - even that of God - on its shield as it marches forward to slay anyone or anything in the path to fulfilling its desires. The second reason is equally insidious but less recognized. It is this. The systematic reduction of Love God and love neighbor to endless rules and regulations meant to deflect attention from the target of love and legitimize a particular form of false piety.
Today, we are going to tackle the tough problem of misappropriation as it pertains to religion and attempt to ferret out any that may exist in our own hearts so that we may return to what matters: divine love.
Source Scripture
Through the Roof: Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
The meaning of life. Some say it doesn't exist and you simply make your own way. Some say it does exist but must be understood and approached through a rigid belief system. Some say it involves achieving and conquering. Others say the meaning of life is to eat, drink, and be merry.
But some, like Victor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of the horrors of the holocaust, believe the meaning of life can only be found in love.
Today's episode echoes Frankl's conclusion as we review the stories from sacred Scripture that encompass our last six episodes together. Scene as a whole, they reveal the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of the divine God of the Universe as he relentlessly pursues us. And then, we he finds us and we open ourselves to receive his divine love, he shows us how to let it flow through to everyone else.
This flow of divine love into us, through us, and out of us to others is, as we will see, the meaning of life.
The topics that we covered in the last six episodes include faith, pride, calling, holiness, selflessness, and free will. So, where did we see the love?
Let's find out.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Adventure Awaits: Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11
Wholly Holy: Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
Pursuing Free Will: Matthew 4:23-25; Mark 1:35-39; Luke 4:42-44
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
The need itself is not the call. Charles Hummel - The Tyranny of the Urgent.
We have all been there. Overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent. By the weight of what is pressing. We cannot do what we want to do because we must do what we have to do. It's enough to make you question whether or not you have free will. After all, if you simply "go with the flow", and the flow is a roaring river of whitewater rapids carrying you unwillingly downstream, then free will takes a back seat to determinism.
If we have free will, why do we so quickly and easily choose to surrender it? Can we ever escape these incessant rapids, make it to peaceful shores, and set our feet on terra firma?
We can. But free will is not, as we so often think, an isolated exertion of psychic forces to empower a series of selfish choices. No, free will originates in the soul and exists as an ongoing call to choose that which sets us free to divine being.
Free will is a function of the spirit, and as such can only be pursued in the spirit. And because it originates from the divine God of the Universe, we can only exercise free will when our spirit is in communion with His. It is his will, not ours, that sets us free.
Anything else is indentured servitude to the ego disguising itself as free will.
Today, we will take a closer look at how to rejuvenate the powers of free will in order to escape the tyranny of the urgent.
Consider this your free will call.
Source Scripture
Pursuing Free Will: Matthew 4:23-25; Mark 1:35-39; Luke 4:42-44
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde
When consciousness first breaks in the morning and you become aware of being, what is the first word that forms in your mind?
Nearly always, it is I. I need my coffee. I am so tired. I wish I could stay in bed. I have to get moving. I have so much to do today. I want my breakfast.
And then as you rise and move through the day, your I-centered posture continues to dominate your thoughts. Your motives. Your actions.
It's natural for you to do this, of course. It is the way of the world. What other way is there? Surely to be happy you must think of yourself first. After all, happiness by definition is self-centered. Or is it?
This posture of selfishness, though, keeps us bent on acquiring things. On putting things and people and experiences in orbit around us. And in so doing, of course, those around us become aware of our gravitational pull. And more often than not they resist. They pull away. They are repelled with disgust by your selfishness because it is mutually exclusive to their own.
This resistance frustrates us, and so you increase the gravitational pull. And so do they. And so the dance downward through the darkening spiral goes, until you reach with bitter finality the logical conclusion of continuing to maintain this posture. You become a black hole - something to avoid at all costs because everyone knows that nothing escapes your selfish grasp if they get too close. And then life is only darkness and misery and frustration.
It's time to put this posture to bed and adapt a new posture altogether, one that births in you a shining star that radiates warmth and light to others. One that brings you the depths of fulfillment you seek while, ironically, comes only when you let go of your selfish pursuit of it.
It's posture bedtime.
Source Scripture
And You Give Yourself Away: Matthew 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-34; Luke 4:38-41
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Fool's Crow and Hollow Bones
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness....How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible. C.S. Lewis
In the movie Sixth Sense, for those fortunate enough not to see it coming, there is a point in the story that awakens the viewer to an altogether new reality - to abandon an existing framework of thinking altogether in order to adapt a new one that instantly resolves all of the unanswered questions and makes the story make sense.
But for the story to make sense, we need that sixth sense. For the pieces of the story to fit all together, we need an altogether new way of thinking. To resolve the unanswered questions, we need a renaissance of resonance.
When our lives are out of balance, centered in the ego instead of the soul, we experience frustration. Confusion. Despair. And most often we assume this to be the case because our outer world is not in proper orbit around us. This assumption drives a paradigm of frantic manipulation of people, possessions, and small green pieces of paper.
But what if this is not the way? What if our paradigm is all wrong? What if, like Galileo as he gazed through his telescope, we realize that we are not the center of the universe?
There is a new paradigm that, once embraced, suddenly brings the meaning of life into focus. This sixth sense helps everything make sense. This altogether new way of thinking makes everything in our lives fit all together. It resonates with all that we long to experience, and has the power to usher in a Renaissance that renders our lives rapturous.
This paradigm is called holiness. Our modern world has largely misunderstood holiness, relegating it either to an antiquated, irrelevant way of living or to a rigid regimen requiring self-flagellation.
But holiness is neither of these things. Holiness is the foundation of soul-centered living. It is the underlying armature that pervades Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of heaven. And it is the way of thinking that, once adapted, will make your entire life - your story - make sense.
Source Scripture
Wholly Holy: Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done. Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose), they get afraid and run away. At times, they’re downright mean. No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne–everything–to rescue the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is…it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves His children and comes to rescue them. - Sally Lloyd-Jones
In every hero's journey, there are a series of common steps that lead to a critical juncture.
When we first see a future hero in a given story, we find him or her living an ordinary life in an ordinary world. But then, something happens. There is an allure to break out of the ordinary world to do something extraordinary. This is the Call to Adventure. The future hero becomes aware that there is another way to live - something that seems to pull from deep within toward living a larger, better, more selfless life in service of a greater good.
But then, of course reason screams back at the soul's longing with this threat, "You can't do that. This is your life we're talking about. And you have responsibilities. And needs. And people who respect you. All that will be lost if you play the fool and walk away. Don't do it!" This is the inevitable Refusal of the Call to adventure.
It is at this stage that we meet the mentor. The guide. The hero-to-be in our story receives reassurance and wise counsel concerning the call. This guidance helps overcome whatever doubts linger until the hero is born. He lifts up his eyes to behold the call to adventure and then boldly crosses the threshold into the new life.
The pattern of the hero's journey, sometimes called the monomyth, serves as the armature for stories told in every culture at all points in history - from King Arthur to the Lion King, from Perseus against Medusa to Luke Skywalker against the Empire, and from Faust and the dragon to Katniss Everdeen and the Capitol.
These stories draw us - fascinate us - over and over again because they reveal what is already imprinted in our souls. We are designed to pursue the path of the hero's journey. We are called to leave our ordinary lives and embrace the call to adventure. We will inevitably struggle with this call, but we can, if we choose, receive the supernatural aid offered by the mentor. And we can summon the courage to accept the call and live the life that we always longed to live.
And all we have to do is listen for and accept the call to adventure.
Source Scripture
Adventure Awaits: Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of pride towards their fellow-men. C.S. Lewis
Well all seek worth and validation - purpose and importance. But all too often we settle for a cheapened version of these things by looking down on others. After all, if they are down there, then we are up here. And up here is where it's at.
To look down on others, we must first convince ourselves that we are above them. And so we turn to the ego, that master of dualistic thinking, and resort to comparison.
We compare money and possessions. We compare age and appearance and reputation. We compare education and experience. We compare our family line and who we know in the community and beyond. And before realizing it, we've built our lives on comparison - on looking down on others. It gives us a smugness and false sense of importance so foundational to who we are that we can't even see it.
This spurious sense of superiority we superimpose on our insecurities is called pride. It's the first in the list of seven deadly sins. C.S. Lewis calls it the utmost evil.
It is this utmost evil called pride that we will explore today, from its subtle ability to infiltrate us unnoticed to its overwhelming power to destroy the very thing we thought it would safeguard: ourselves.
And, more importantly, we'll discover what it takes to expose and eliminate the hidden shadow of pride that lurks within us. And as we will see, the solution to eradicating pride is a real cliff-hanger.
Source Scripture
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
What Jesus Read to the People of Nazareth: Isaiah 61:1
Sacred Scripture is like a Sword for the Heart: Hebrews 4:12
Sacred Scripture is Designed to Bring us Joy: John 5:39-40
Jeremiah Sees Sacred Scripture as a Feast: Jeremiah 15:16
Jesus Says Sacred Scripture Brings Joy: John 15:11
In my view, Jesus changed lives because he was able to change the way people imagined their lives. He dared them to imagine the stranger as neighbor, the child as teacher, the enemy as mirror, the deity as loving father. He helped them imagine lepers, women, and Roman centurions as exemplars of faith. He asked them to imagine that the most important person at the table was the waiter, and that the end of the line was the place to be. At the moment I cannot think of a single story he told that was not intended to change the way his listeners imagined the world. I believe the arts can do the same thing. They can break my heart, rekindle my courage, wreck my prejudice, give me second sight. Barbara Brown Taylor
The kingdom of heaven is the name Jesus chose to give to the new way of life to which he invites us to embrace. He refers to his message about the kingdom as good news or the Gospel, and he challenges us that to become part of that kingdom, it requires us to completely alter the way we think.
If you have been following us in our previous episodes, Jesus has just returned to his home country of Galilee to formally share this message of the kingdom and extend his invitation to join. And today we explore the first story that illustrates this foundational new way of thinking required to enter it. It's called faith.
Now over the centuries, the word faith has unfortunately devolved largely into the idea of creating and adhering to a set of well-defined precepts. This unfortunate appropriation of the word faith is responsible for the denominational divide that still haunts the Christian Church. It is also responsible for keeping us out of the kingdom of God, because it offers a cheaper, easier alternative. Just agree intellectually to what is good and what is bad. Make sure your precepts validate your life and invalidate others, and sign on the dotted line.
This so-called faith does not transform. It attempts to bypass your need for transformation by printing a ticket that claims you are a lifetime member of the club.
But the kingdom is not a club, and faith is not an intellectual exercise.
Today, we will take a second look at faith in an attempt to grasp its original breadth and depth. And, when we do, we'll begin to see just how foundational authentic faith is for experiencing true transformation and living authentically in the kingdom of heaven.
Source Scripture
Take a Second Look: John 4:46-54
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Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. Thomas Aquinas
The first time we ever hear the divine God of the Universe speak he says, Let there be light. Four words that birth light itself - an agent that behaves as both a wave and a particle, both in continuous motion as they emanate from a central source outward toward everything around it.
The first time we see water flowing on earth, it is in a river that originates in Eden and then divides into four headwaters. One river that births four that then proceed in continuous motion to water everything they touch. In Hebrew, the word for river is the same word as the word for radiating light. A river flows. Light flows.
And then we have Ezekiel's wheel within a wheel, a mysterious object in motion that flashes light and bears multiple iterations of a creature with four faces: a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Together, these radiant beings move back and forth, left and right, along the primary compass axes. Together they symbolize that God's presence continuously radiates in every direction.
And finally, we see the four Gospel writers. Four men who entered orbit around the Gospel story of Jesus and then chose to share that story through the light of their writings. Saint Matthew, the man. Saint Mark, the Lion. Saint Luke, the Ox. And Saint John, the Eagle. The light of the Gospel is in continuous motion, emanating from Jesus to these four and then on to the entire world. Including now you.
This pattern of God's light emanating from him through a primary four and then onward to everyone else is played out not just in the foundations of Scripture, but also in those of science.
When Galileo Galilei, the father of science, first turned his telescope skyward towards the planet Jupiter, he was stunned to see four tiny stars on either side of it. He watched night after night and finally concluded that Jupiter had four visible moons revolving around it. What convinced him was the motion of the moons. He noted the changes in their position not just over weeks or days - but over hours.
He reported his findings in a publication called Starry Message in March, 1610.
Since then we have discovered no less than 79 moons encircling Jupiter. The light and motion of the first four were only the beginning.
The name Jupiter is comprised of two roots Dyeu and Pater. Dyeui means sky or God, which is where we get the name Zeus or the Latin Deus as in the phrase Deus ex Machina, which translates to God, out of the machine. And pater means father. Jupiter, it seems, means Father God.
The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the radiance of of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. Jesus doesn't just radiate the divine - he is the radiance itself. He is light in motion - and that motion is toward us. Jesus seeks us out. He is for us.
The four Gospel writers reflect this divine radiance in sacred Scripture.
Today we will review how all four Gospel writers are doing this by taking a look back at the previous six episodes. There is a pattern in the Gospel stories there that emerges - a radiance that continues to shine. It begins with the four Gospel authors, who each have so far shared different vantage points in the life of Jesus. And for the first time, our most recent episode featured a single Gospel story told by all four writers simultaneously.
Seen as a whole, the last six episodes cover four stories that give us an experience much like Galileo's first sightings of Jupiter and it's four satellites - it is something that, when documented and shared, will change the outlook of the entire world.
So let's get moving.
Source Scripture
This is the Way: John 1:1-18
Genealogies with Geographies: Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38
The Woman at the Well - Part 1: John 4:1-26
The Woman at the Well - Part 2: John 4:27-38
The Woman at the Well - Part 3: John 4:39-42
Jesus announces the Kingdom of God:
Matthew 4:12-17
Mark 1:14-15
Luke 4:14-15
John 4:43-45
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The Logos is the Tao
Two Genealogies - Why are they Different?
The Story of Tamar
The Story of Rahab the Prostitute
The Story of Ruth
The Story of Bathsheba
The Story of Abraham and Isaac
The Story of David and the Threshing Floor of Araunah
The Story of Jehoachin and the Temple's Destruction
The Chosen: (Woman at the Well Scene: Download the app and Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
Abraham Builds the First Altar in Israel in Shechem
Joshua Builds the Altar of Fulfillment in Shechem
Joshua Renews Abraham's Covenant in Shechem
What the modern cultural environment has required of us is an enormous extroversion of attention and energy for the purpose of reshaping the Earth into a global industrial economy. For two centuries we have been subordinating the planet and our deepest personal needs to that project. This great act of collective alienation...lies at the root of both the environmental crisis and individual neurosis. In some way, at some point, a change of direction, a therapeutic turning inward, had to take place within a culture as maniacally driven as ours has been by the need to achieve and conquer. Theodore Roszak
These are bold words that call not just for simple regulatory nudges to facilitate moderate societal improvement. No, these words cry out for outright revolution that begs us wholeheartedly alter the trajectory of how we think and live.
There is a word in the New Testament that captures the essence of this kind of revolutionary call for change - internal change that then leads to corresponding external change. The word in Greek is metanoia. It means, literally, go beyond the mind or, alternatively, to think differently afterward. We translate this word in English as repent, which has the unfortunate connotation today of reducing this revolutionary change in thinking to a mere adjustment away from an isolated vice.
We explored the depths of this word as used by John the Baptizer in Episode 16, Beat the System, Part 1. Today, we're going to explore Jesus' choice to use it as his first word to launch his message to the world. And our focus will be on the destination of the revolutionary new trajectory to which he calls us: the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom is a radical concept. It was then. It is now. That's why it requires a radical adjustment to thinking, A transformed quality of attention - or metanoia - to see it and enter it. It defies preconceived notions. It offers everyone a chance to enter and experience it. And it's unlike anything that exists on earth.
What is the kingdom? Let's seek the answer together.
Source Scripture
| Matthew 4:12-17 | Mark 1:14-15 | Luke 4:14-15 | John 4:43-45 |
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The divine is in the present and you must be present to experience it. When you vacate the present and recede into your mind, allowing worries or work to remove you from the moment, you leave the plain upon which the divine dwells.
When you are constantly under the anesthetic of digital distraction, you withdraw; you are no longer conscious, and therefore are in no fit state to commune with the sacred.
If you wish to hear the answers you seek, you must be present to hear them. If you wish to partake in the insights there to be known, you must be present to receive them. If you wish to know the divine, you must be present to meet it. L.M. Browning
The present moment. The here and now. The naked now. Can we ever actually get there? Stay there? Be there. When it calls, we are evasive. When we reach for it, it is elusive. When we do attain it, it is intensive. So intensive we may not be able to maintain it.
For the most part, we opt not to live in the present but in those two other, much easier states of attention: past and future. We wallow in the past, contorting our ability to live in the here and now. We hobble in regret, remorse, resentment, or we wish we could go back and relive something that seems better than what is in front of us at the moment.
Or we focus on the future: what could be, should be, what might be, what will be as far as we can tell.
Or - and this is where we really prove ourselves masters of dodging the present moment - we throw ourselves into distraction. We may not be caught up in the past or the future, but we're not here. We're checked out, sedating ourselves with screens, substances, and seizing anything and everything but the day.
Today, we'll look at some practical steps to help you to live in the present. To seize the day. To be here, now.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well - Part 3: John 4:39-42
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The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10). Visit your App Store to find this amazing story.
The world beneath us spins in circlesAnd this life makes us twist and turn and swayBut we were made for more than rhythm with no reasonBy the one who moves with passion and with graceAs He dances over all that He has made
Stephen Curtis Chapman
We all have a profound longing to experience being - that nearly indescribable essence - that rush - of ecstasy as our soul within aligns and connects with the body and its brain without and all that we are cannot help but erupt in joy. Bliss. Wonder. Awe. We feel worthy. We feel whole. We feel alive. We feel ourselves. And we dance.
But we are impatient. And shallow. And we begin to confuse being with the fleeting pleasures available to us on the surface. We see money as the power that allows us to purchase an endless supply of amusements. We begin to see people not as fellow beings, but as objects that merely provide, assist, or prevent us from obtaining those thrills. We pursue popularity because, in our surface-level thinking, it validates our worth.
And once we make the conscious choice to pursue pleasure through popularity, power, and prosperity - we harness all of the energies within us into seizing the bounty.
Enter a most woeful irony.
In our obsession with procuring these prizes, we give ourselves over willingly into indentured servitude. The daily grind. The treadmill. The rate race. The hamster wheel. We lose ourselves in grueling work in exchange for the someday spoils. But before we realize it, our lives become the grind. And there we sit, wallowing in the two-fold misery of the burden we willingly accepted and the frustration of failing to find euphoria.
A prolonged quest into these fruitless ventures produces an oppressive fatigue. We become restless. Jaded. And so we turn our attention to anything that can bring escape: staring at a screen, ingesting a substance, purchasing a toy, indulging in sensual encounters, fantasizing what could be instead of relishing what is.
And yet, as we toss and turn in our self-inflicted maladies, there are moments when a whisper of being captures our attention and we catch a glimmer of hope. It might be the wet nose of a puppy nuzzling your ear and asking to play or the unexpected kiss of a loved one on the forehead who has just come from far away to see you. Or the sight of a surprise snowfall through the window on Christmas morning.
Is it possible to capture the essence - the being - we experience in such moments? Can we live in bliss instead of hanging onto mere morsels of memories?
Yes. We were designed to live this way. Let's explore how.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well - Part 2: John 4:27-38
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The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible....In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. - C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Our seemingly wholehearted devotion to applying the scientific method to ascertain the nature of reality has produced in us a remarkable blindspot. Science, by definition, aims to discern objective truth through observation and experiment.
But here's the blindspot. While holding tightly to the belief that nothing can be true apart from scientific proof, we find ourselves in the possession of an inheritance of long-held theoretical truths that are yet to be proven or impossible to prove. And rather than employ the scientific method, we leave the decision to whim.
Enter the ego, whispering if it hasn't been proven, then it must not be true. Reject it if it suits you.
We do this not because we are firm believers in science, but because our egos now have a loophole in which to exploit the realm of the unproven in order to to mine it for favorable resources.
Rather than seeking to discern universal, objective truth, we proceed with impunity to determine personal, subjective truth.
For example, it has long been held that forgiving your enemy when wronged is the only way to inner peace. But science has yet to prove this. The ego seizes this uncertainty to its advantages and proposes other, personal truths. Anger, hate, bitterness, vengeful fantasies, or outright retaliation.
The ego wants to determine truth in order to get what it wants. The soul longs to discern truth so it can fall into rhythm with it, live by it, and share it.
Today we will take a journey through time and space via sacred Scripture to three wells where we will discover those truths that exist in not in the domain of scientifically proven fact, but in the realm of the Logos, the Tao, the Way, the objective Truth of the Universe that permeates everything and reveals itself in the soul.
Let's begin with well #1.
Source Scripture
The Woman at the Well: John 4:1-26
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The Chosen (Woman at the Well Scene: Watch Episode 8 beginning at 40:10)
Abraham Builds the First Altar in Israel in Shechem
Joshua Builds the Altar of Fulfillment in Shechem
Joshua Renews Abraham's Covenant in Shechem
Levi and Simeon Take Murderous Revenge in Shechem
Joseph's Bones are Carried from Egypt and Buried in Shechem
Joseph's Story of Curses to Blessings (Read Genesis 37-50)
Jesus Carries the Government on His Shoulders (Shechem)
All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Genealogies have become a recent fascination with our society as science, history, and technology collide, giving us the newfound ability to traverse backwards through time and accurately trace our roots - the names and dates and places and relationships that all somehow worked together to culminate in our birth.
If you look at an unfamiliar genealogy, it may seem dry and uninteresting. But if it is yours and you have spent time in research, those names and places and dates and relationships connect and come to life, evoking your origin stories.
Today, we're going to take what many would arguably call the dullest two passages of the New Testament - the two genealogies of Jesus - and bring the origin stories to life in a way that will leave you awestruck.
Source Scripture
Genealogies with Geographies: Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38
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Two Genealogies - Why are they Different?
The Story of Tamar
The Story of Rahab the Prostitute
The Story of Ruth
The Story of Bathsheba
The Story of Abraham and Isaac
The Story of David and the Threshing Floor of Araunah
The Story of Jehoachin and the Temple's Destruction
C.S. Lewis says the following in his book, The Abolition of Man...
The Chinese speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar....This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao’. Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.
We've lost the grip on this truth of objective value - that we as humans are part of a grand design that includes conforming all activities to that great exemplar. The Tao, C.S. Lewis' best word for communicating this ultimate truth, is also the best translation from Greek to Chinese for St. John's use of the word logos in his very first sentence in sacred Scripture where he said, In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.
In the West, we have diluted the strength and scope of the word logos by rendering it into the English word word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
This is not a mistranslation, because logos can mean word. But it also means way, or road or the overarching truth that describes the governing force of all creation. It is simply unfortunate that English readers most often see the word word and take it to mean nothing more than a written or spoken unit of speech.
This is why Chinese translations of John 1:1 are often translated as In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God.
Today, we are going to attempt to restore the essence of Saint John's logos in order to rediscover that Jesus is not merely the Word of God. He is the Tao. He is the Way. He is the ultimate Truth. And He is the Life.
Source Scripture
This is the Way: John 1:1-18
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The Logos is the Tao
The state of mind and body that blocks any awareness of the presence of greater being inevitably produces a special kind of suffering....We must strive to reach a state where our transparency to Divine Being endures....It is essential to discover within ourselves an attitude - even a physical posture - in which we can be open and submissive to the demands of our inner being while at the same time allowing this inner being to become visible and effective in the midst of our life in the world. And for this to happen we must so transform our ordinary daily life that every action is an opportunity for inner work. Karlfried Graf Durckheim
None of us want to be ordinary. We long for the extraordinary. Our inner being - our soul - longs to soar above and beyond the mundane.
And so we strive for greatness, searching for whatever will help us clamber....higher.
But too often, we confuse the extraordinary with what seems to be the highest peak in the realm of the ordinary. And yet a caterpillar does not seek transformation by climbing the highest tree to feast on the best leaves or becoming the fastest on its many feet or seeking a name for itself amongst all other caterpillars. No, a caterpillar eventually reaches a stage in its life when it seeks to go beyond the ordinary entirely. To seek the truly extraordinary. And to do so, it spins a beautiful cocoon out of silk, ceases all of its normal ways to living, and enters a place of silence. Stillness. Here it allows the natural unfolding of metamorphosis to transform it into something entirely new.
We humans are equally designed for such transformation, but unlike the caterpillar, we resist the call to cocoon and change because we don't like stillness. And silence.
And you will remain unchanged as long as you ignore the call within. As the villain in the book S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst illustrates, you will remain firmly planted in the ordinary...
As long as you choose extraction over creation, as long as you mistake commerce for art and destruction for progress, as long as you remain drunk on the juice that issues from the crush of a thing or place or person.... as long as you conflate power with influence, primacy with honor, goal with purpose, duty with responsibility.
These earthly shadows of the extraordinary are no substitute for the divine.
Today we will review the last six episodes of Awestruck to see the overarching depiction of how we can live in the tension between the external demands of an ordinary world and the internal yearning for transcendent being.
Source Scripture
Eradicating Evil: John 1:35-51
Muditation: John 2:1-11
Telos - Why You're Angry: John 2:13-25
Love Like So: John 3:1-21
None Compare John 3:22-36
Who is Really In Prison? Matthew 14:3-5; Mark 6:17-20; Luke 3:19-20
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Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
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Suggested Movie: The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise
TikTok User @PonderingWorshipper
It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly. - J.R.R. Tolkien
When someone calls us out for doing something we know is wrong, it hurts. It stings. It hits us where we live.
And the cognitive dissonance that erupts in that moment elicits action. The ego's impulse? Defend itself with one of its all-too-familiar tactics against the voice of rebuke: muffle, muzzle, discredit, destroy.
In the rush to defend ourselves, however, we would be better served to harness our swelling psychic forces and use them in service of the soul's deep longing to know truth - even when that truth wounds us.
A rightful rebuke exposes our inner darkness - whether buried unknowingly in our shadow or in plain sight but hopefully hidden from others by some cunning veneer.
And that darkness within us is the true source of the indignation we channel toward the rebuke. The very reason we have that reserve of repressed resentment at-the-ready is due to our extant spiritual dissonance over harboring the darkness in the first place.
And so we must choose. We can protect the ego with misdirected energies that assail the rebuke, which only tightens the noose of inner tumult, or we can let those striking words find their intended mark and bring about the illumination that leads to transformation.
Source Scripture
Who is Really In Prison? Matthew 14:3-5; Mark 6:17-20; Luke 3:19-20
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Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt.
When we live centered in the self, we analyze the world around us in terms of what will benefit us most. And to do so, we must compare. And the easiest way to compare is to divide things into two parts and choose the one that seems better.
This habit is so foundational to the ego that it cannot imagine any other way to live. I prefer this to that. I have done more for you than you have done for me, so it's your turn to serve me. My political party is better than yours. This sunset is not as pretty as yesterday's.
The result of our habitual comparisons, we think, will be a better life. After all, we have surrounded ourselves with a collection of better people, places, and things.
The real result of this lifestyle is frustration in a number of ways...
- We are never satisfied, because everything can always be "better"
- We reduce people to transactions - I did this so you must do that.
- We develop a sense of entitlement. I deserve this.
- We habitually divide everything into two parts, never taking in the whole. This is called dualistic thinking.
In short, the ego's dualistic and frazzled search for contentment produces just the opposite. It's an endless dance
Today, we'll look at the non-dual, soul-centered approach to finding contentment - and keeping it.
Source Scripture
None Compare John 3:22-36
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Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light. C.S. Lewis We rarely present ourselves as we are to others. Instead, we produce a carefully crafted facade designed to impose one or more of the following on the truth. Limitation. Concealment. Obfuscation. Fabrication. We do this out of fear that the whole truth of who we are would surely earn us immediate rejection.
Over time, this habit of cloaking the truth becomes second nature. We graduate from hiding the things we have already done and move on to stealthily planning ahead to doing things we know we can keep hidden in the dark based on our diploma.
On rare occasions some outside agent may confront us and attempt to shine light into that darkness. Our response is almost always fight or flight. But there is a third choice: enlightenment.
Welcome to one of those rare occasions. The goal of today's episode is to allow the divine light of truth to confront you. To allow it to pierce the darkness, overcome fears of exposure, and offer the exhilarating immersion of your soul in the freeing light of truth.
Let the confrontation - and the immersion - begin.
Source Scripture
Love Like So: John 3:1-21
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TikTok User @PonderingWorshipper
We should not be ashamed of anger. It’s a very good and a very powerful thing that motivates us. But what we need to be ashamed of is the way we abuse it. —Mahatma Gandhi
Everyone gets mad sometimes. The important thing is what we do with the mad that we feel in life. - Mr. Rogers
The powerful force of anger arises in all of us - sometimes slowly after brewing over time, and sometimes in an unexpected instant. Regardless of its speed, it always has a directional component to its velocity. It begins within and travels outward towards a target - someone or something that we perceive threatens us or others in some way.
We all want everything to be right in our lives. And when someone or something threatens that rightness, we focus on what we believe to be the source of the problem. That focus often takes the form of anger.
Today we will grapple with what do with the powerful force of anger that we all possess, and in so doing we will scrutinize the rightness we seek from which anger springs as well as the target our anger longs to extinguish.
And we will view both the source and target through the lenses of telos, which in itself can mean target, but carries the weight of an ultimate aim or purpose.
Today's story will telos how to deal with anger.
Source Scripture
Telos - Why You're Angry: John 2:13-25
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I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” ― G.K. Chesterton
Our eyes capture the images we upside down on the retina, but our brain turns them right-side up again so that what we see is oriented accurately.
Our minds - our rational thoughts - do the same thing as our eyes when it comes to our circumstances.
Our minds process what is going on around us, but what we understand is upside down as it were. Our souls are what make everything right, orienting the external events within their proper context.
If our brains did not reorient the retina's misleading images, we would find ourselves stumbling and holding tightly to walls as our feet carried us tentatively through the world. Likewise, if we do not allow our souls to orient us to see the real view of the world we need to see, our lives will be filled with chaos.
Take, for example, the way we see the fortune, or misfortune of another human being. If this person is close to us, we may find ourselves properly oriented by the power of love. We rejoice with them when they rejoice and we grieve with them when they grieve. If, however we observe someone we have chosen not to love - whether due to distance or grievance - we find ourselves somewhere on a spectrum of apathy at best and schadenfreude at worst.
Schadenfreude - or the attitude of sinister glee over the misfortune of another - is a pristine example of the ego blocking the soul's work to orient the scene. The ego has left us seeing upside down, and though we may feel a temporary tingle of satisfaction, in the long run it poisons our ability to love even those close to us.
When we allow the soul to do its work, and we observe the misfortune of another, we respond with an inward empathy that drives an outward compassion. We strive to take measures that might relieve that grief or trouble. We may even go so far as, when possible, to reach into the well of our resources to help transform the other's anguish into joy.
The culmination of the soul's work in such a situation is a correlative joy with the other. Though we did not personally experience the beginning grief or final elation, we find ourselves inextricably bound, soul to soul, and share the joy. As the Swedish proverb says, shared joy is double joy.
The Sanskrit word mudita captures the essence of the human soul's ability - its longing - to bring joy to others and share that joy. Mudita is the subject of today's podcast.
Source Scripture
Muditation: John 2:1-11
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If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity
We all possess a deep sense of longing - a force deep within the soul that compels us to seek - to hunt - that which will make us complete.
Too often - most often, really - as this singular force wells up within us to propel us on the journey toward wholeness, the ego intercepts it, misinterprets it, and splinters it into numerous, disorganized fragments that, bereft of potency and purpose, cling briefly to the nearest pleasure. Even in its anemic state, however, these fragmented forces of longing realize that they have not yet found their mark and make another go at it.
The outcome is what we might call the human condition. Our lives are a frenzy of attachments that fail to fulfill, leaving us at best confused but determined to find the so-called right attachment or at worst defeated and dismayed that there may be no real way to be made whole.
Today, we're going attempt to go deep into the soul and rediscover that original, wholistic force of longing as it exists before its disintegration and debilitation to see if we can allow it to re-emerge, uninhibited by the ego, and do its intended work in us. This is the only way to transcend the human condition and finally find our home in the divine.
Source Scripture
Eradicating Evil: John 1:35-51
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Suggested Movie: The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise
And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that "Beauty will save the world" but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual fact help the world of today. -- Beauty Will Save the World: The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1970
Via Pulchritudinis is a Latin phrase meaning way of beauty. And in contrast with the ways of truth and goodness, its appeal does not call for rational consideration. It simply offers itself to behold. To leave us rapt, or awestruck.
Over the past six episodes, we have witnessed immense beauty that beckons us to behold the God of the Universe walking on earth in human form.
Let's review.
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Suggested Movie: Dead Man Walking with Sean Penn
There is a powerful human need to locate evil—that is, to contain it by assigning it a specific, bounded place (in some cases, a particular person)—even though this is impossible. The boundaries of evil are blurry and porous, if they can be said to exist at all. Doug Dorst, from the book co-created by he and J. J. Abrams, "S".
We all want to be rid of the evil in our lives. In some cases, an individual or entire groups of people define themselves by their singular devotion to locating a particular brand of evil and eradicating it.
The challenge, however, is isolating the actual location of evil. And in our efforts, it might go something like this. We see a person caught on video commit an indefensible and unspeakable atrocity. This person, we reason by the evidence, is evil. But the boundary cannot be contained to this one individual. No. We see that he has some characteristic that identifies him as part of a larger group. We detect some sort of "uniform" that indelibly marks him as part of a team. And that team must be held responsible for its team member’s evil. This team could be a race, an authoritative power, a political party, a religious organization, an educational institution, or any other identifiable group.
Once we determine that the entire team is evil based on one or more of its members being caught red-handed, we set our sights on a righteous quest to topple it in the name of defending the innocent and ridding the world of darkness.
The problem, as we will see in today's episode, is that our quest to locate evil is sometimes greatly misguided. Rarely does the guilt of one imply the guilt of all, and often the apparent guilt of one may be misinterpreted by the limitations of our perspective.
Worse yet, we may define some person or people as evil solely to justify our own desires to obtain something we want or protect something we believe to be rightfully ours. This itself is evil, and eventually someone will see it for what it is and go on a quest to defeat it.
And so the cycle repeats itself.
How do we break the chain of evil? How do we identify and locate true evil and rid the world of it once and for all? Where is the compass that guides us on our quest?
Let's find out.
Source Scripture
Eradicating Evil: John 1:29-34
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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Ghandi
We too often fall prey to the delusion that our identity is rooted in doing something uniquely or supremely that sets us apart from - or above - everyone else.
Such a foundational fallacy can lead us into a lifetime of anxiety and frustration and failure. The few who do manage to clamber to the apex of this approach to identity become to us a dangling carrot that perpetuates this perversion of who we are and who we are meant to be. And meanwhile, those on top of the world looking down on the rest of us find themselves yet unsatisfied and searching for more.
This strategy is doomed to fail, because it is rooted in the centrality of the ego and its expectation that the world gravitate towards it. Happiness, the ego insists, comes only when things outward flow inward.
And yet the soul - our very ground of being - is never satisfied by what comes from without. It, as we have seen culminating in previous episodes, finds identity only in opening itself to divine presence and allowing that to flow outward to others.
Today, we are going to place these two strategies side by side to see how and from where they originate, what influences us to choose one over the other, and where they ultimately lead.
The goal today is to leave you with your true identity revealed and with safeguards in place to avoid being lost to one of the greatest tragedies you could face in this life: identity theft.
Source Scripture
Who are You? John 1:19-28
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Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves. Henry David Thoreau
The world is full of distractions, now more than ever before. Artificial sights and sounds solicit our absorption. But embracing an ersatz outer world leads only to an ersatz inner world.
To be clear, it's not the outer world that empties us of life. It's our enthusiastic embrace of it. Our pursuit. Our focus. Our choice to settle for the unreal as a substitute for really living.
Sometimes - maybe even right now - we feel the need to withdraw. Retreat. Unplug from the Matrix.
Is your soul crying out for more than 9-5ing, daily grinding, thumbflick-scrolling, mind-controlling, posture posing, market closing days and nights and weekends?
It's time to listen and to respond to those inner cries for freedom.
It's time to go on Walkabout.
Source Scripture
Take a Walk: Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13
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When we experience those moments - spellbound by story, held in wonder by a starry night, overwhelmed with the beauty of a song, held in aesthetic arrest by work of art, awestruck by the selfless generosity of a friend - we enter a quality of attention - of being - in which we are meant to live.
Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known. - Blaise Pascal
To be loved is the greatest of all gifts. To be chosen. Pursued. Valued. Cherished.
As with all things precious and invaluable, however, counterfeits arise, and with them a culture that has left us on a loveless spectrum somewhere between disoriented and despondent. We have become blind to true love, which embraces who we are, and instead joined the garish system of parading ourselves in costume in front of the masses in hopes of winning first prize.
First prize, and even the lowest of consolation prizes, is nothing more than two costumes stitched together. When either one grows weary of the wardrobe, the source of union is lost. The love that never was is gone.
True love wears no costume and expects none on you. The source of union in true love is the soul, and it knows no separation. .
There is an alternative to awaking every day to don your costumes of body image, career prestige, Instagram influence, and whatever else hangs in the closet - designed to conceal the real you in hopes of what at most will be an imitation extract of love.
You don't have to live this way. You don't have to lure love.
There is a way to beat the system.
Source Scripture
Love is All You Need: Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22
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Deprived of bread or the equal benefits of the commonwealth, the person shrivels. Obviously. And that is a clear line to fight on. But when the transcendent energies waste away, then too the person shrivels--though far less obviously. Their loss is suffered in privacy and bewildered silence; it is easily submerged in affluence, entertaining diversions, and adjustive therapy. Well fed and fashionably dressed, surrounded by every manner of mechanical convenience and with our credit rating in good order, we may even be ashamed to feel we have any problem at all. -- Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends
Cultural norms often lure us into a trance where, like zombies, we seek only to feast on whatever life-giving forms are in reach.
Left unchecked, our society at large and we individually can easily devolve into spiritual dystopia, where people move about and speak and huddle together in clusters of cultural confirmation bias, but in reality they are walking dead, greedily shoving each other in competition to consume.
This is precisely the character at large of the culture in the first century when John the Baptist first began crying out in the wilderness. And I submit your you that it is also the character at large of the culture in which we now find ourselves.
But there is a way to beat the system...
Source Scripture
Breathing Underwater: Matthew 3:1-12, Mark 1:1-8, Luke 1:80; 3:1-18
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The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates The unintended by-product of the scientific revolution is most of us rarely if ever engage in the scientific method. We are merely consumers of the results of their investigation.
We no longer know how to search. We only know how to google.
This long-term consumerism produces atrophy in our ability and even desire to search for truth. We simply assume we can summon it on demand with keystrokes, as if consuming mere morsels of truth will produce transformation.
The end result is a two-sided fallacy, especially as it pertains to the development of our true selves: we believe that consuming truth is all we need, which means we also believe that the search for truth is no longer necessary when we can google it.
But is is the search for truth that transforms the soul. The consumption of truth offers only a two-dimensional glimpse of that three-dimensional transformation. The search is like a lengthy vacation in a foreign land. Mere consumption is like reading the brochure for a trip never taken.
Just as muscles will not develop by reading exercise plans, spiritual transformation will never take place by consuming doctrine, especially that which is delivered in the inevitable banal language suited to consumerism.
Today, we are going to take a 3-day journey in search of truth. And our guide is a twelve-year old boy.
Source Scripture
The Search is On: Luke 2:41-52
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When Albert Einstein was five years old, sick, and lying in bed, his father handed him a compass. He became fascinated by the needle's ability to always point north, no matter how he rotated it. He called it a "wonder" and later in life said this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
And what do we see Einstein growing up to do? Searching for the hidden forces at work in our universe.
As above, so below.
There are hidden forces at work in you, too. Deep down in your soul. And Awestruck's aim is to lead you on a journey to the center of you to discover those forces.
In this episode, we will review the hidden forces explored in episodes 8-13 and get a sneak preview of what's ahead. And, you'll also get the answer to these questions from listeners...
- Why do you use Scripture as your source?
- Why is this podcast called Awestruck again?
- What is all this soul-centering talk?
Source Scripture The Birth of Grace: Luke 2:1-7
Treasuring: Luke 2:8-20
Expose': Luke 2:21-40
When You See It: Matthew 2:1-12
How Far Will You Go?: Matthew 2:13-18
Nothing is Everything: Matthew 2:19-23
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Self-worth is a core value that none of us question. We all want value, purpose, and love. The reason we struggle with securing self-worth is two-fold: 1) We equate self-worth with feelings and emotions, which are the deepest part of the ego but only the shallows of the soul. And 2) We spend our lives devising schemes that will attend to our ego's perceived needs, which do little or nothing for the soul, leaving us exhausted and discontent.
Today we'll take an honest look at the goals we set in pursuit of self-worth to see how and why they may be missing the mark. We'll also go deeper in order to realign our very definition of self-worth, which will inherently alter our way of life. Our quality of life.
Source Scripture
Nothing is Everything: Matthew 2:19-23
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We too often mistake the sum total of who we are for what we feel, think, and do. This dooms us to believe that the deepest fulfillment available to us is experiencing positive feelings. And this assumption leads us to one primary paradigm of living - we must survey the environment of people and things available to us and master the art of manipulation as it pertains to all of them so that we can achieve and maintain those desired feelings. But wait. If our feelings are desired, then there must be more to us. Where do our desires originate?
We went down this rabbit hole in Episode 10, Shadow Work, but we need a refresher for today's focus. Here is a Dr. Seussian summary of Shadow Work...
The choices you choose
Birth beliefs that you use
To nourish desires
That fuel all the fires
Of emotions you chase
Which form thoughts you embrace
To condone what you do
That reveal the real you
Our makeup goes much deeper than our feelings and emotions. And the core choices we make reveal who we are and prompt us to do what we do.
When we get stuck, as many of us do, in the shallows of believing our depths are limited to just thoughts and emotions, we become desperate to maintain our emotions in their desired states. So desperate, in fact, that we don't yet realize how far we will go.
This is by definition the ego, and the logical conclusion of its pursuit is that we become prodigals, far from our true home, depleted, starved, and wondering if we can ever go back.
Today's episode offers you a divine pathway that will light the way back home no matter how far you've wandered, and keep you close to home once you get there.
It's called meekness. And it's one of those core choices you make way down deep in your soul. Here is a proper definition of meekness.
Meekness is trusting in divine providence over external circumstances so much so that you resist every temptation to exert egoistic forces (such as manipulation and violence) and instead live centered in the soul.
Meekness may rhyme with weakness, but the similarities stop there. Meekness draws on great strength to resist the forces of evil that will inevitably descend. It has at its heart this mantra from Romans 12:21: Do not overcome evil with evil, but evil with good.
Today we will see just how far two people will go in regards to meekness. One will escape in darkness to another continent with his family to embrace it, and the other will embrace the darkness and destroy many families just to escape it.
Source Scripture
How Far Will You Go?: Matthew 2:13-18
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Our nature consists in motion. Complete rest is death - Blaise Pascal.
When Galileo asserted that the earth was not the center of the universe but in fact moved around the sun, he was convicted of heresy by the church, forced to recant, and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.
"And yet, it moves," Galileo would whisper about the earth, despite the threat of even harsher punishment. It took years for all of humanity to awaken to the truth.
The Universe was formerly seen as man saw himself - as within, so without. I am the center. All must revolved around me. But the truth became plain through Galileo's telescope - as above, so below. I am not the center. I am in motion, along with others, around something much bigger than myself. Something full of radiance. Warmth. Light. Life.
Though the outward struggle to believe Galileo's truth no longer exists, the inward struggle to relinquish the ego as the center endures.
How we see ourselves determines how we see the world. As within, so without. And how we see and accept the truth determines whether we know ourselves. As above, so below.
If we allow the truth to penetrate us, we will live freely and animated, centered in the soul. But if we refuse, we will stagnate and wither.
Source Scripture
When You See It: Matthew 2:1-12
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The shadow is the darkest part of you that works against soul-centered living. Sometimes you are completely blind to it, and sometimes you turn a blind eye to it intentionally because to confront it - to confront yourself - creates too much unrest. Too much cognitive dissonance. And so you suppress, deny, rationalize, diminish, blame shift, judge - anything but confront yourself.
And so you live in the shadow, which inherently produces a state of being that the Hopi Indians sum up in a single word: Koyaanisqatsi. Life out of balance. Off center. The Scriptures also have a similar, single word to describe not only the life out of balance, but also the shadow that produces it: amartia - or missing the bull's eye. This single, amazing word conjures the full scene of an archer selecting an arrow, drawing the bow, taking aim at a target, releasing the tension, and watching in dismay as the arrow fails to hit the center of its intended target. The result is that the arrow now rests off center.
The only solution is re-centering.. Not trying again. There is no try. You must re-center your life from the soul. There you will find light again, exposing the shadow and placing you perfectly in the bull's eye.
This is called shadow work. And it's not easy. But remember, we are on a hero's journey to the center of the soul. And every hero in the making must face his biggest fear to continue.
Source Scripture
Expose': Luke 2:21-40
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The subject on which you choose to focus gives birth to the predicate that composes each sentence of your life's narrative.
Focus on the oft-overlooked treasures pulsing in nature and your soul may stir, leaving you rapt and composing the poetry of the ages.
Focus on the money not present in your bank account and your ego will be in agitation, producing frustration within and self-centered wrecklessness without.
The subject of our focus is our choice. Which means the predicate we live is our choice as well.
Today - we will focus on the hidden treasures all around us that offer themselves as the subject of our focus. To find them, we just need to dig.
Source Scripture Treasuring: Luke 2:8-20
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Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. Albert Schweitzer Kindness is a divine force that moves people. Grace, a radical form of kindness, transforms.
Formally defined, kindness is intentional goodwill freely offered to another without an expectation of reciprocity. Grace is the demonstration of unmerited kindness, often in such a way that it involves great risk or is offered to someone undeserving.
The ego-centered life wrestles with kindness. It is cautious, determined to seek a return on its investment - if not from the recipient, then from a tax deduction or boost in reputation or the like.
The ego even has trouble with receiving kindness, because it lives in suspicion of its obligations to return the favor. Each ego fears the expectations of the other.
And if kindness is rare, grace is impossible to the ego, because it sees no opportunity for return at all. To the ego, grace is nonsensical madness.
The soul-centered life thrives on grace because it is a natural tributary of the river of divine presence that flows from the God of the Universe through us and outward to others.
Today we will see multiple examples of amazing grace that invite us not only to observe, but to participate.
Source Scripture
The Birth of Grace: Luke 2:1-7
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Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. [Margery Williams, "The Velveteen Rabbit"]
Note in this beautiful metaphor that the real you is not connected to your physical self, and those who think it is don't understand. That's because the real you is also not connected to the ego's way of thinking.
The search to find the real you should not have to wait until your body is aged and falling apart, but for many it does. Too often, it takes a lifetime of trial and error before we finally realize that the ego’s pursuits have not and will not produce any connection to the real.
You can’t find real fulfillment until you discover who you are. Until then, you’re a missing person. And you are missing personhood.
This is what Awestruck is all about - finding that missing person. And doing so requires a different focus - a different quality of attention – than we are used to assuming. This quality of attention is centered on the soul and not the mind. And once we grasp that quality of attention – once we are awestruck – it opens the door to the journey. The hero's journey to the center of you.
Why do we call it a hero's journey? And where is this center of me of which you speak? And what's this business about needing to be awestruck to begin? And where in the world is this podcast going?
In today's episode, I will attempt to answer all of these questions. So let's get started.
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A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. —Albert Einstein Presence is what happens when we choose to bring the full attention of our soul to the soul of another - and the other does the same. In that moment, the two souls come together, creating presence: a tangible flow of spiritual intimacy. Creating and maintaining presence is not easy. It requires the full attention of our soul, - not our ego or any of its attachments.
The ego is full of self-promotion, self-defense, hidden agendas, hideous masks - and a host of other things only break presence. But the soul is raw, authentic, vulnerable, full of love and acceptance. You might say presence is what is birthed when two or more souls come before each other in only naked truth in the naked now.
The goal of today's podcast is to help us open our presence to others, and, taking it a step further, to assist others in unfolding their own potential to open their presence as well.
Source Scripture
Preserving Presence: Matthew 1:18-25
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He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. - Albert Einstein
Wonder is a quality of attention that rises above and outside normal rational thought. And once we have wonder flowing through us, we find ourselves with access to its tributaries: love, joy, peace, gratitude, and many others.
Today, in Wide-Eyed Wonder, the goal is to get us through the wilderness of ego-driven attachments to that river. There, we can not only experience wonder in the present and future, but we can also reframe our past in a way that lets us reinterpret even the most painful moments through new lenses.
Source Scripture Newborn Wonder: Luke 1:57-79 Connect
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JJ. Abrams Mystery Box (Ted Talk)
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. - Joseph Campbell Joy. We all want it. We chase it. We devise formulas to reproduce it. We do our best to seize hold of it.
But where is it?
Ask the wrong question and you will never find the right answer.
Joy is not something we chase, or concoct, or grasp. It is something to which we yield. In order to experience it, we must let go of what thwarts it. You don't find joy. You yield to it and it flows through you.
Source Scripture
Joy Flows When Souls Connect: Luke 1:39-56
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Brené Brown on Joy as Vulnerability
Attachment is conflating a true, soul-centered longing with an ego-driven desire for gain.
We conflate joy with pleasure and become addicts to people, places, or things.
We confuse peace and contentment with a state of mind and emotion and spend the day discontentedly manipulating the outward circumstances trying to arrive there.
Before we realize it, we are living our lives attached, or let's just call it what it really is, shackled to these conflations that we are miserable.
And the only solution is letting go.
Source Scripture A Young Woman's Beautiful Example of Non-Attachment: Luke 1:26-38
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You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. - Author Unknown
Grasping this - and learning to live by its truth - is what we'll call soul-centering.
An ego-centered life is like a black hole - everything is pulled towards itself. Nothing escapes. Not even light. It's pure darkness.
A soul-centered life is more like a star - everything is radiating outward. There is only warmth. And light. This is how we're meant to live.
Source Scripture An Angelic Encounter: Luke 1:5-25
For Further Study
Living from the Center: Galatians 5:16-18
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Awestruck Podcast is a hero’s journey to the center of you.
Have you ever been awestruck? We were meant to live in this transformed state of attention, not just long for it or experience it rarely. It is the real. It is what makes you real. To be spellbound, captivated, filled with wonder, held in aesthetic arrest, awestruck.
It is in this state of wonder that we find our ability to find ourselves. To be real. And to accept real truth that transforms us into everything we long to be.
Sources
Saint Luke's Prologue: Luke 1:1-4
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Read the fascinating story of the scientific examination of Saint Luke's bones in Padua.
In the book of Acts, Luke mentions 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 Mediterranean islands. He also lists 95 people by name, 62 of which are not named elsewhere in the New Testament (Metzger, 171).
In addition, Luke is intimately familiar with the constantly-changing political conditions of the Roman world. References to Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Quirinius, the Herods, Felix, and Festus are recorded. In not one of these citations is there a mistake. (Source)