I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” ― G.K. Chesterton
Our eyes capture the images we upside down on the retina, but our brain turns them right-side up again so that what we see is oriented accurately.
Our minds – our rational thoughts – do the same thing as our eyes when it comes to our circumstances.
Our minds process what is going on around us, but what we understand is upside down as it were. Our souls are what make everything right, orienting the external events within their proper context.
If our brains did not reorient the retina’s misleading images, we would find ourselves stumbling and holding tightly to walls as our feet carried us tentatively through the world. Likewise, if we do not allow our souls to orient us to see the real view of the world we need to see, our lives will be filled with chaos.
Take, for example, the way we see the fortune, or misfortune of another human being. If this person is close to us, we may find ourselves properly oriented by the power of love. We rejoice with them when they rejoice and we grieve with them when they grieve. If, however we observe someone we have chosen not to love – whether due to distance or grievance – we find ourselves somewhere on a spectrum of apathy at best and schadenfreude at worst.
Schadenfreude – or the attitude of sinister glee over the misfortune of another – is a pristine example of the ego blocking the soul’s work to orient the scene. The ego has left us seeing upside down, and though we may feel a temporary tingle of satisfaction, in the long run it poisons our ability to love even those close to us.
When we allow the soul to do its work, and we observe the misfortune of another, we respond with an inward empathy that drives an outward compassion. We strive to take measures that might relieve that grief or trouble. We may even go so far as, when possible, to reach into the well of our resources to help transform the other’s anguish into joy.
The culmination of the soul’s work in such a situation is a correlative joy with the other. Though we did not personally experience the beginning grief or final elation, we find ourselves inextricably bound, soul to soul, and share the joy. As the Swedish proverb says, shared joy is double joy.
The Sanskrit word mudita captures the essence of the human soul’s ability – its longing – to bring joy to others and share that joy. Mudita is the subject of today’s podcast.
Source Scripture
Muditation: John 2:1-11
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Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
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If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity
We all possess a deep sense of longing – a force deep within the soul that compels us to seek – to hunt – that which will make us complete.
Too often – most often, really – as this singular force wells up within us to propel us on the journey toward wholeness, the ego intercepts it, misinterprets it, and splinters it into numerous, disorganized fragments that, bereft of potency and purpose, cling briefly to the nearest pleasure. Even in its anemic state, however, these fragmented forces of longing realize that they have not yet found their mark and make another go at it.
The outcome is what we might call the human condition. Our lives are a frenzy of attachments that fail to fulfill, leaving us at best confused but determined to find the so-called right attachment or at worst defeated and dismayed that there may be no real way to be made whole.
Today, we’re going attempt to go deep into the soul and rediscover that original, wholistic force of longing as it exists before its disintegration and debilitation to see if we can allow it to re-emerge, uninhibited by the ego, and do its intended work in us. This is the only way to transcend the human condition and finally find our home in the divine.
Source Scripture
Eradicating Evil: John 1:35-51
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
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Suggested Movie: The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise
And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that “Beauty will save the world” but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual fact help the world of today. — Beauty Will Save the World: The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1970
Via Pulchritudinis is a Latin phrase meaning way of beauty. And in contrast with the ways of truth and goodness, its appeal does not call for rational consideration. It simply offers itself to behold. To leave us rapt, or awestruck.
Over the past six episodes, we have witnessed immense beauty that beckons us to behold the God of the Universe walking on earth in human form.
Let’s review.
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
Suggested Movie: Dead Man Walking with Sean Penn
There is a powerful human need to locate evil—that is, to contain it by assigning it a specific, bounded place (in some cases, a particular person)—even though this is impossible. The boundaries of evil are blurry and porous, if they can be said to exist at all. Doug Dorst, from the book co-created by he and J. J. Abrams, “S”.
We all want to be rid of the evil in our lives. In some cases, an individual or entire groups of people define themselves by their singular devotion to locating a particular brand of evil and eradicating it.
The challenge, however, is isolating the actual location of evil. And in our efforts, it might go something like this. We see a person caught on video commit an indefensible and unspeakable atrocity. This person, we reason by the evidence, is evil. But the boundary cannot be contained to this one individual. No. We see that he has some characteristic that identifies him as part of a larger group. We detect some sort of “uniform” that indelibly marks him as part of a team. And that team must be held responsible for its team member’s evil. This team could be a race, an authoritative power, a political party, a religious organization, an educational institution, or any other identifiable group.
Once we determine that the entire team is evil based on one or more of its members being caught red-handed, we set our sights on a righteous quest to topple it in the name of defending the innocent and ridding the world of darkness.
The problem, as we will see in today’s episode, is that our quest to locate evil is sometimes greatly misguided. Rarely does the guilt of one imply the guilt of all, and often the apparent guilt of one may be misinterpreted by the limitations of our perspective.
Worse yet, we may define some person or people as evil solely to justify our own desires to obtain something we want or protect something we believe to be rightfully ours. This itself is evil, and eventually someone will see it for what it is and go on a quest to defeat it.
And so the cycle repeats itself.
How do we break the chain of evil? How do we identify and locate true evil and rid the world of it once and for all? Where is the compass that guides us on our quest?
Let’s find out.
Source Scripture
Eradicating Evil: John 1:29-34
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Ghandi We too often fall prey to the delusion that our identity is rooted in doing something uniquely or supremely that sets us apart from – or above – everyone else.
Such a foundational fallacy can lead us into a lifetime of anxiety and frustration and failure. The few who do manage to clamber to the apex of this approach to identity become to us a dangling carrot that perpetuates this perversion of who we are and who we are meant to be. And meanwhile, those on top of the world looking down on the rest of us find themselves yet unsatisfied and searching for more.
This strategy is doomed to fail, because it is rooted in the centrality of the ego and its expectation that the world gravitate towards it. Happiness, the ego insists, comes only when things outward flow inward.
And yet the soul – our very ground of being – is never satisfied by what comes from without. It, as we have seen culminating in previous episodes, finds identity only in opening itself to divine presence and allowing that to flow outward to others.
Today, we are going to place these two strategies side by side to see how and from where they originate, what influences us to choose one over the other, and where they ultimately lead.
The goal today is to leave you with your true identity revealed and with safeguards in place to avoid being lost to one of the greatest tragedies you could face in this life: identity theft.
Source Scripture
Who are You? John 1:19-28
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Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known. – Blaise Pascal
To be loved is the greatest of all gifts. To be chosen. Pursued. Valued. Cherished.
As with all things precious and invaluable, however, counterfeits arise, and with them a culture that has left us on a loveless spectrum somewhere between disoriented and despondent. We have become blind to true love, which embraces who we are, and instead joined the garish system of parading ourselves in costume in front of the masses in hopes of winning first prize.
First prize, and even the lowest of consolation prizes, is nothing more than two costumes stitched together. When either one grows weary of the wardrobe, the source of union is lost. The love that never was is gone.
True love wears no costume and expects none on you. The source of union in true love is the soul, and it knows no separation. .
There is an alternative to awaking every day to don your costumes of body image, career prestige, Instagram influence, and whatever else hangs in the closet – designed to conceal the real you in hopes of what at most will be an imitation extract of love.
You don’t have to live this way. You don’t have to lure love.
There is a way to beat the system.
Source Scripture
Love is All You Need: Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates
The unintended by-product of the scientific revolution is most of us rarely if ever engage in the scientific method. We are merely consumers of the results of their investigation.
We no longer know how to search. We only know how to google.
This long-term consumerism produces atrophy in our ability and even desire to search for truth. We simply assume we can summon it on demand with keystrokes, as if consuming mere morsels of truth will produce transformation.
The end result is a two-sided fallacy, especially as it pertains to the development of our true selves: we believe that consuming truth is all we need, which means we also believe that the search for truth is no longer necessary when we can google it.
But is is the search for truth that transforms the soul. The consumption of truth offers only a two-dimensional glimpse of that three-dimensional transformation. The search is like a lengthy vacation in a foreign land. Mere consumption is like reading the brochure for a trip never taken.
Just as muscles will not develop by reading exercise plans, spiritual transformation will never take place by consuming doctrine, especially that which is delivered in the inevitable banal language suited to consumerism.
Today, we are going to take a 3-day journey in search of truth through the art of questioning. And our guide is a twelve-year old boy.
Source Scripture
The Search is On: Luke 2:41-52
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Jung
There are moments in our lives when something strikes us with such resonance that it transforms us.
When Albert Einstein was five years old, sick, and lying in bed, his father handed him a compass. He became fascinated by the needle’s ability to always point north, no matter how he rotated it. He called it a “wonder” and later in life said this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
And what do we see Einstein growing up to do? Searching for the hidden forces at work in our universe.
As above, so below.
There are hidden forces at work in you, too. Deep down in your soul. And Awestruck‘s aim is to lead you on a journey to the center of you to discover those forces.
In this episode, we will review the hidden forces explored in episodes 8-13 and get a sneak preview of what’s ahead. And, you’ll also get the answer to these questions from listeners…
Looks like we’ve got a lot to cover, so grab your compass and let’s get started.
Source Scripture
The Birth of Grace: Luke 2:1-7
Treasuring: Luke 2:8-20
Expose’: Luke 2:21-40
When You See It: Matthew 2:1-12
How Far Will You Go?: Matthew 2:13-18
Nothing is Everything: Matthew 2:19-23
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras