Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Self-worth is a core value that none of us question. We all want value, purpose, and love.
The reason we struggle with securing self-worth is two-fold: 1) We equate self-worth with feelings and emotions, which are the deepest part of the ego but only the shallows of the soul. And 2) We spend our lives devising schemes that will attend to our ego’s perceived needs, which do little or nothing for the soul, leaving us exhausted and discontent.
Today we’ll take an honest look at the goals we set in pursuit of self-worth to see how and why they may be missing the mark. We’ll also go deeper in order to realign our very definition of self-worth, which will inherently alter our way of life. Our quality of life.
Source Scripture
Nothing is Everything: Matthew 2:19-23
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You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go. – Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
We too often mistake the sum total of who we are for what we feel, think, and do. This dooms us to believe that the deepest fulfillment available to us is experiencing positive feelings. And this assumption leads us to one primary paradigm of living – we must survey the environment of people and things available to us and master the art of manipulation as it pertains to all of them so that we can achieve and maintain those desired feelings.
But wait. If our feelings are desired, then there must be more to us. Where do our desires originate?
We went down this rabbit hole in Episode 10, Shadow Work, but we need a refresher for today’s focus. Here is a Dr. Seussian summary of Shadow Work…
The choices you choose
Birth beliefs that you use
To nourish desires
That fuel all the fires
Of emotions you chase
Which form thoughts you embrace
To condone what you do
That reveal the real you
Our makeup goes much deeper than our feelings and emotions. And the core choices we make reveal who we are and prompt us to do what we do.
When we get stuck, as many of us do, in the shallows of believing our depths are limited to just thoughts and emotions, we become desperate to maintain our emotions in their desired states. So desperate, in fact, that we don’t yet realize how far we will go.
This is by definition the ego, and the logical conclusion of its pursuit is that we become prodigals, far from our true home, depleted, starved, and wondering if we can ever go back.
Today’s episode offers you a divine pathway that will light the way back home no matter how far you’ve wandered, and keep you close to home once you get there.
It’s called meekness. And it’s one of those core choices you make way down deep in your soul. Here is a proper definition of meekness.
Meekness is trusting in divine providence over external circumstances so much so that you resist every temptation to exert egoistic forces (such as manipulation and violence) and instead live centered in the soul.
Meekness may rhyme with weakness, but the similarities stop there. Meekness draws on great strength to resist the forces of evil that will inevitably descend. It has at its heart this mantra from Romans 12:21: Do not overcome evil with evil, but evil with good.
Today we will see just how far two people will go in regards to meekness. One will escape in darkness to another continent with his family to embrace it, and the other will embrace the darkness and destroy many families just to escape it.
Source Scripture
How Far Will You Go?: Matthew 2:13-18
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Our nature consists in motion. Complete rest is death – Blaise Pascal.
When Galileo asserted that the earth was not the center of the universe but in fact moved around the sun, he was convicted of heresy by the church, forced to recant, and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.
“And yet, it moves,” Galileo would whisper about the earth, despite the threat of even harsher punishment. It took years for all of humanity to awaken to the truth.
The Universe was formerly seen as man saw himself – as within, so without. I am the center. All must revolved around me. But the truth became plain through Galileo’s telescope – as above, so below. I am not the center. I am in motion, along with others, around something much bigger than myself. Something full of radiance. Warmth. Light. Life.
Though the outward struggle to believe Galileo’s truth no longer exists, the inward struggle to relinquish the ego as the center endures.
How we see ourselves determines how we see the world. As within, so without. And how we see and accept the truth determines whether we know ourselves. As above, so below.
If we allow the truth to penetrate us, we will live freely and animated, centered in the soul. But if we refuse, we will stagnate and wither.
Source Scripture
When You See It: Matthew 2:1-12
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There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung
The shadow is the darkest part of you that works against soul-centered living. Sometimes you are completely blind to it, and sometimes you turn a blind eye to it intentionally because to confront it – to confront yourself – creates too much unrest. Too much cognitive dissonance. And so you suppress, deny, rationalize, diminish, blame shift, judge – anything but confront yourself.
And so you live in the shadow, which inherently produces a state of being that the Hopi Indians sum up in a single word: Koyaanisqatsi. Life out of balance. Off center. The Scriptures also have a similar, single word to describe not only the life out of balance, but also the shadow that produces it: amartia – or missing the bull’s eye. This single, amazing word conjures the full scene of an archer selecting an arrow, drawing the bow, taking aim at a target, releasing the tension, and watching in dismay as the arrow fails to hit the center of its intended target. The result is that the arrow now rests off center.
The only solution is re-centering.. Not trying again. There is no try. You must re-center your life from the soul. There you will find light again, exposing the shadow and placing you perfectly in the bull’s eye.
This is called shadow work. And it’s not easy. But remember, we are on a hero’s journey to the center of the soul. And every hero in the making must face his biggest fear to continue.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Joseph Campbell
Let’s begin the descent and see what we find.
Source Scripture
Expose’: Luke 2:21-40
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There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes. Percy Bysshe Shelley
The subject on which you choose to focus gives birth to the predicate that composes each sentence of your life’s narrative.
Focus on the oft-overlooked treasures pulsing in nature and your soul may stir, leaving you rapt and composing the poetry of the ages.
Focus on the money not present in your bank account and your ego will be in agitation, producing frustration within and self-centered wrecklessness without.
The subject of our focus is our choice. Which means the predicate we live is our choice as well.
Today – we will focus on the hidden treasures all around us that offer themselves as the subject of our focus. To find them, we just need to dig.
Source Scripture
Treasuring: Luke 2:8-20
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Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. Albert Schweitzer
Kindness is a divine force that moves people. Grace, a radical form of kindness, transforms.
Formally defined, kindness is intentional goodwill freely offered to another without an expectation of reciprocity. Grace is the demonstration of unmerited kindness, often in such a way that it involves great risk or is offered to someone undeserving.
The ego-centered life wrestles with kindness. It is cautious, determined to seek a return on its investment – if not from the recipient, then from a tax deduction or boost in reputation or the like.
The ego even has trouble with receiving kindness, because it lives in suspicion of its obligations to return the favor. Each ego fears the expectations of the other.
And if kindness is rare, grace is impossible to the ego, because it sees no opportunity for return at all. To the ego, grace is nonsensical madness.
The soul-centered life thrives on grace because it is a natural tributary of the river of divine presence that flows from the God of the Universe through us and outward to others.
Today we will see multiple examples of amazing grace that invite us not only to observe, but to participate.
Source Scripture
The Birth of Grace: Luke 2:1-7
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A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. —Albert Einstein
Presence is what happens when we choose to bring the full attention of our soul to the soul of another – and the other does the same. In that moment, the two souls come together, creating presence: a tangible flow of spiritual intimacy.
Creating and maintaining presence is not easy. It requires the full attention of our soul, – not our ego or any of its attachments.
The ego is full of self-promotion, self-defense, hidden agendas, hideous masks – and a host of other things only break presence. But the soul is raw, authentic, vulnerable, full of love and acceptance. You might say presence is what is birthed when two or more souls come before each other in only naked truth in the naked now.
The goal of today’s podcast is to help us open our presence to others, and, taking it a step further, to assist others in unfolding their own potential to open their presence as well.
Source Scripture
Preserving Presence: Matthew 1:18-25
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He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. – Albert Einstein
Wonder is a quality of attention that rises above and outside normal rational thought. And once we have wonder flowing through us, we find ourselves with access to its tributaries: love, joy, peace, gratitude, and many others.
Today, in wide-eyed wonder, the goal is to get us through the wilderness of ego-driven attachments to that river. There, we can not only experience wonder in the present and future, but we can also reframe our past in a way that lets us reinterpret even the most painful moments through new lenses.
Source Scripture
Newborn Wonder: Luke 1:57-79
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Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. – Joseph Campbell
Joy. We all want it. We chase it. We devise formulas to reproduce it. We do our best to seize hold of it.
But where is it?
Ask the wrong question and you will never find the right answer.
Joy is not something we chase, or concoct, or grasp. It is something to which we yield. In order to experience it, we must let go of what thwarts it.
You don’t find joy. You yield to it and it flows through you.
Source Scripture
Joy Flows When Souls Connect: Luke 1:39-56
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