It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly. – J.R.R. Tolkien
When someone calls us out for doing something we know is wrong, it hurts. It stings. It hits us where we live.
And the cognitive dissonance that erupts in that moment elicits action. The ego’s impulse? Defend itself with one of its all-too-familiar tactics against the voice of rebuke: muffle, muzzle, discredit, destroy.
In the rush to defend ourselves, however, we would be better served to harness our swelling psychic forces and use them in service of the soul’s deep longing to know truth – even when that truth wounds us.
A rightful rebuke exposes our inner darkness – whether buried unknowingly in our shadow or in plain sight but hopefully hidden from others by some cunning veneer.
And that darkness within us is the true source of the indignation we channel toward the rebuke. The very reason we have that reserve of repressed resentment at-the-ready is due to our extant spiritual dissonance over harboring the darkness in the first place.
And so we must choose. We can protect the ego with misdirected energies that assail the rebuke, which only tightens the noose of inner tumult, or we can let those striking words find their intended mark and bring about the illumination that leads to transformation.
Source Scripture
Who is Really In Prison? Matthew 14:3-5; Mark 6:17-20; Luke 3:19-20
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Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt.
When we live centered in the self, we analyze the world around us in terms of what will benefit us most. And to do so, we must compare. And the easiest way to compare is to divide things into two parts and choose the one that seems better.
This habit is so foundational to the ego that it cannot imagine any other way to live. I prefer this to that. I have done more for you than you have done for me, so it’s your turn to serve me. My political party is better than yours. This sunset is not as pretty as yesterday’s.
The result of our habitual comparisons, we think, will be a better life. After all, we have surrounded ourselves with a collection of better people, places, and things.
The real result of this lifestyle is frustration in a number of ways…
- We are never satisfied, because everything can always be “better”
- We reduce people to transactions – I did this so you must do that.
- We develop a sense of entitlement. I deserve this.
- We habitually divide everything into two parts, never taking in the whole. This is called dualistic thinking.
In short, the ego’s dualistic and frazzled search for contentment produces just the opposite. It’s an endless dance
Today, we’ll look at the non-dual, soul-centered approach to finding contentment – and keeping it.
Source Scripture
None Compare John 3:22-36
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light. C.S. Lewis
We rarely present ourselves as we are to others. Instead, we produce a carefully crafted facade designed to impose one or more of the following on the truth. Limitation. Concealment. Obfuscation. Fabrication. We do this out of fear that the whole truth of who we are would surely earn us immediate rejection.
Over time, this habit of cloaking the truth becomes second nature. We graduate from hiding the things we have already done and move on to stealthily planning ahead to doing things we know we can keep hidden in the dark based on our diploma.
On rare occasions some outside agent may confront us and attempt to shine light into that darkness. Our response is almost always fight or flight. But there is a third choice: enlightenment.
Welcome to one of those rare occasions. The goal of today’s episode is to allow the divine light of truth to confront you. To allow it to pierce the darkness, overcome fears of exposure, and offer the exhilarating immersion of your soul in the freeing light of truth.
Let the confrontation – and the immersion – begin.
Source Scripture
Love Like So: John 3:1-21
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
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We should not be ashamed of anger. It’s a very good and a very powerful thing that motivates us. But what we need to be ashamed of is the way we abuse it. —Mahatma Gandhi
Everyone gets mad sometimes. The important thing is what we do with the mad that we feel in life. – Mr. Rogers
The powerful force of anger arises in all of us – sometimes slowly after brewing over time, and sometimes in an unexpected instant. Regardless of its speed, it always has a directional component to its velocity. It begins within and travels outward towards a target – someone or something that we perceive threatens us or others in some way.
We all want everything to be right in our lives. And when someone or something threatens that rightness, we focus on what we believe to be the source of the problem. That focus often takes the form of anger.
Today we will grapple with what do with the powerful force of anger that we all possess, and in so doing we will scrutinize the rightness we seek from which anger springs as well as the target our anger longs to extinguish.
And we will view both the source and target through the lenses of telos, which in itself can mean target, but carries the weight of an ultimate aim or purpose.
Today’s story will telos how to deal with anger.
Source Scripture
Telos – Why You’re Angry: John 2:13-25
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” ― G.K. Chesterton
Our eyes capture the images we upside down on the retina, but our brain turns them right-side up again so that what we see is oriented accurately.
Our minds – our rational thoughts – do the same thing as our eyes when it comes to our circumstances.
Our minds process what is going on around us, but what we understand is upside down as it were. Our souls are what make everything right, orienting the external events within their proper context.
If our brains did not reorient the retina’s misleading images, we would find ourselves stumbling and holding tightly to walls as our feet carried us tentatively through the world. Likewise, if we do not allow our souls to orient us to see the real view of the world we need to see, our lives will be filled with chaos.
Take, for example, the way we see the fortune, or misfortune of another human being. If this person is close to us, we may find ourselves properly oriented by the power of love. We rejoice with them when they rejoice and we grieve with them when they grieve. If, however we observe someone we have chosen not to love – whether due to distance or grievance – we find ourselves somewhere on a spectrum of apathy at best and schadenfreude at worst.
Schadenfreude – or the attitude of sinister glee over the misfortune of another – is a pristine example of the ego blocking the soul’s work to orient the scene. The ego has left us seeing upside down, and though we may feel a temporary tingle of satisfaction, in the long run it poisons our ability to love even those close to us.
When we allow the soul to do its work, and we observe the misfortune of another, we respond with an inward empathy that drives an outward compassion. We strive to take measures that might relieve that grief or trouble. We may even go so far as, when possible, to reach into the well of our resources to help transform the other’s anguish into joy.
The culmination of the soul’s work in such a situation is a correlative joy with the other. Though we did not personally experience the beginning grief or final elation, we find ourselves inextricably bound, soul to soul, and share the joy. As the Swedish proverb says, shared joy is double joy.
The Sanskrit word mudita captures the essence of the human soul’s ability – its longing – to bring joy to others and share that joy. Mudita is the subject of today’s podcast.
Source Scripture
Muditation: John 2:1-11
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras