Awestruck Podcast

Inside Man

September 25, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

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)

I Just Can’t Wait to be King

September 3, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

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

Avant-Garde Duty

January 2, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality, Uncategorized Post Comment

What the modern cultural environment has required of us is an enormous extroversion of attention and energy for the purpose of reshaping the Earth into a global industrial economy. For two centuries we have been subordinating the planet and our deepest personal needs to that project. This great act of collective alienation…lies at the root of both the environmental crisis and individual neurosis. In some way, at some point, a change of direction, a therapeutic turning inward, had to take place within a culture as maniacally driven as ours has been by the need to achieve and conquer.Theodore Roszak 

These are bold words that call not just for simple regulatory nudges to facilitate moderate societal improvement. No, these words cry out for outright revolution that begs us wholeheartedly alter the trajectory of how we think and live.

There is a word in the New Testament that captures the essence of this kind of revolutionary call for change – internal change that then leads to corresponding external change. The word in Greek is metanoia. It means, literally, go beyond the mind or, alternatively, to think differently afterward. We translate this word in English as repent, which has the unfortunate connotation today of reducing this revolutionary change in thinking to a mere adjustment away from an isolated vice.

We explored the depths of this word as used by John the Baptizer in Episode 16, Beat the System, Part 1. Today, we’re going to explore Jesus’ choice to use it as his first word to launch his message to the world. And our focus will be on the destination of the revolutionary new trajectory to which he calls us: the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom is a radical concept. It was then. It is now. That’s why it requires a radical adjustment to thinking, A transformed quality of attention – or metanoia – to see it and enter it. It defies preconceived notions.  It offers everyone a chance to enter and experience it. And it’s unlike anything that exists on earth.

What is the kingdom? Let’s seek the answer together.

Source Scripture

Matthew 4:12-17Mark 1:14-15Luke 4:14-15John 4:43-45

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)

Beat the System, Part 1

August 29, 2020 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

Deprived of bread or the equal benefits of the commonwealth, the person shrivels. Obviously. And that is a clear line to fight on. But when the transcendent energies waste away, then too the person shrivels–though far less obviously. Their loss is suffered in privacy and bewildered silence; it is easily submerged in affluence, entertaining diversions, and adjustive therapy. Well fed and fashionably dressed, surrounded by every manner of mechanical convenience and with our credit rating in good order, we may even be ashamed to feel we have any problem at all. — Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends

Cultural norms often lure us into a trance where, like zombies, we seek only to feast on whatever life-giving forms are in reach. 

Left unchecked, our society at large and we individually can easily devolve into spiritual dystopia, where people move about and speak and huddle together in clusters of cultural confirmation bias, but in reality they are walking dead, greedily shoving each other in competition to consume. 

This is precisely the character at large of the culture in the first century when John the Baptist first began crying out in the wilderness. And I submit your you that it is also the character at large of the culture in which we now find ourselves.

But there is a way to beat the system…

Source Scripture

Breathing Underwater: Matthew 3:1-12, Mark 1:1-8, Luke 1:80; 3:1-18

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)