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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.

Brian Shipman


    • Jun 25, 2024 LATEST EPISODE
    • infrequent NEW EPISODES
    • 17m AVG DURATION
    • 104 EPISODES
    • 1 SEASONS


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    Latest episodes from Awestruck

    The Age of Exploration

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2024 27:25


    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)

    Know Doubt

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2024 20:37


    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)

    Welcome Back to Wonder

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2023 17:28


    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)

    The Real Ones

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2023 12:41


    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)

    I See You

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 7, 2023 10:34


    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)

    Axis Mundi

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2023 18:08


    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

    It's Time to Strike Out

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2023 13:04


    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)

    The Ground of Being

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2023 17:01


    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)

    Hocus Focus

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2023 17:00


    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?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2023 15:43


    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)

    Gate Expectations

    Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2023 20:54


    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)

    The Divine Path of Desire

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2023 19:13


    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)

    The Golden Rule of Engagement

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2023 19:34


    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)

    Whetting Your Appetite

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2023 14:54


    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)

    Breadcrumb Trailblazing

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2023 20:58


    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)

    Cross Beam

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2023 19:51


    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)

    A Most Auspicious Occasion

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2022 15:34


    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)

    Money on the Floor

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2022 17:19


    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  

    Sight Unseen

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2022 20:52


    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)    

    Lens Flare

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2022 15:37


    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

    The Heart Wants

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2022 18:42


    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

    Fast On, Fast Off

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2022 11:50


    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)

    The Great Exchange

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2022 20:18


    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)

    Creative Generosity

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2022 17:48


    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)

    Stage Presence

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2022 20:26


    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)

    Perfect Union

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2022 19:11


    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  (Apple I Spotify)

    Rekindling the Fires of Beauty

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2022 19:08


    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  

    The Best Defense is No Offense

    Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2022 22:51


    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

    The Hypocritic Oath

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2022 20:09


    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

    Easter Between the Lines

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2022 6:16


    In between the lines of the Easter story is an awestriking, mysterious, divine romance. 

    No Disassemble

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2022 15:07


    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?

    Murder is All the Rage

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2022 21:03


    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

    The Spirit of the Law

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2022 20:06


    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.

    The Hound of Heaven

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2022 21:49


    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.

    Let There Be Light

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2022 15:17


    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)

    Eternal Essence

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2022 16:50


    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)

    Haters Gonna Hate

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2022 19:04


    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)

    Creating Shalom

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2021 15:39


    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)

    Visionary Splendor

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2021 22:03


    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)

    Mercy Seat

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2021 16:48


    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 5:6 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Wait Training

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2021 18:20


    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 Extras Suggested Scripture: Psalm 22; Psalm 37; Psalm 42 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Just Right

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2021 17:12


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Meek in and Meek Out

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2021 17:45


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Have a Great Mourning

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2021 17:58


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify) Recommended Reading     

    Escaping the Matrix

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2021 21:05


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Inside Man

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2021 26:17


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    Good News or Fake News?

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2021 16:02


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    I Just Can't Wait to be King

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2021 18:25


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify) Resources to Explore the Life of Etty Hillesum Wikipedia Book: An Interrupted Life Book: A Life Transformed Quotes from Goodreads

    Immersive Design

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2021 19:44


    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 Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify) Resources to Explore the Life of Etty Hillesum Wikipedia Book: An Interrupted Life Book: A Life Transformed Quotes from Goodreads

    Sacred Space Travel

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2021 16:56


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

    The Wrath of Confirmation Bias

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2021 20:24


    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 Connect Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

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