Awestruck Podcast

The Divine Path of Desire

April 6, 2023 by in Contemplative Christianity, Deconstruction, Exvangelical, Spirituality, Uncategorized Post Comment

God wants you to move through this day with a quiet heart, an inward assurance that He is in control, a peaceful certainty that your life is in His hands, a deep trust in His plan and purposes, and a thankful disposition, toward all that He allows. He wants you to put your faith in Him, not in a timetable. He wants you to wait on Him and wait for Him. In His perfect way He will put everything  together, see to every detail… arrange every circumstance… and order every step to bring to pass what He has for you. Roy Lessin

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)

Visionary Splendor

December 20, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

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)

Have a Great Mourning

October 14, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

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

Hinds' Feet on High Places
Dark Night of the Soul
The Problem of Pain
A Grief Observed

     

Focus Woke Us

May 8, 2021 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality Post Comment

Man must reverse the first dispersal of the soul by drawing unto himself the attention which he unnecessarily gives to his thoughts, emotional reactions and sensations, and which results in the deformation and distortion of the entire human organism, to the extent that he has fallen to the level of a sick animal….As long as [he] has no control over his attention his possibilities remain imprisoned in the ego no matter what ideals he espouses and no matter what efforts he expends.Jacob Needleman

Two old men, both octogenarians, study the meal placed before them in the retirement home. The first notices hints of brown tracing the edges of the lettuce in the salad. He also notes the main course – which appears to be some failed attempt at lasagna. He sniffs it, and shudders. He glances at the glass of tea, which appears to be weak without nearly enough ice.

He sighs. 

The second man removes his baseball cap from his head and says, “Let’s give thanks.”

He bows his head and prays. Halfway through expressing gratitude for the meal before him, his voice begins to quiver. He musters a feeble Amen.

The first man is incredulous. “Are you crying? What’s going on?”

Putting his baseball cap back on, the first man replies, “I’m just so blessed to have something to eat. So many have nothing.”

“How can you say that? This food isn’t fit for a dog!”

“When I was a boy, we had no food in the house. My daddy was a janitor and my momma had nine mouths to feed. We had no electricity and no running water. Every day the grocery man would drive by our house to the nearby dump to get rid of the day old bread and expired food from the store. He would honk twice as he went by to let us know. I would run to the dump and forage through the food to find something to eat. And sometimes I would get there before the dogs did and find something.

“And them ladies back there in the kitchen? That’s a volunteer group that cooked it today. They didn’t even have to be here, but they got up, got dressed, drove over here, and cooked so we could have these plates before us. I’m honored someone would consider me worth their effort.”

He raises his tea glass to his friend. “Let’s eat!”

Two men. One meal. One is deeply grateful. The other is dissatisfied. 

What makes the difference?

Focus. The focus of the first man is evaluating the quality of the food and whether or not it meets his high standards to satisfy his palate. The focus of the second man is on the sheer privilege of having food to eat at all and people willing to provide it.

Today’s focus is on focus – and how it can awaken us to the true joy of being. Without soul-centered focus, we find ourselves wandering in the frustrating, ego-centered world of pursuing sensory stimulation aimed at pleasing the shallows of our being: our thoughts and emotions.

You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. These elements comprise only the skin that surrounds the real you and reveals what’s beneath – your soul.

It’s time to get under your skin.

Source Scripture

Everyone Out of the Pool: John 5:1-16

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)

This is How to Focus (Tik Tok)

Missing Person

July 18, 2020 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality, Uncategorized Post Comment

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. [Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit”]

Note in this beautiful metaphor that the real you is not connected to your physical self, and those who think it is don’t understand. That’s because the real you is also not connected to the ego’s way of thinking.

The search to find the real you should not have to wait until your body is aged and falling apart, but for many it does. Too often, it takes a lifetime of trial and error before we finally realize that the ego’s pursuits have not and will not produce any connection to the real.

You can’t find real fulfillment until you discover who you are. Until then, you’re a missing person. And you are missing personhood.

This is what Awestruck is all about – finding that missing person. And doing so requires a different focus – a different quality of attention – than we are used to assuming.  This quality of attention is centered on the soul and not the mind. And once we grasp that quality of attention – once we are awestruck – it opens the door to the journey. The hero’s journey to the center of you.

Why do we call it a hero’s journey? And where is this center of me of which you speak? And what’s this business about needing to be awestruck to begin? And where in the world is this podcast going?

In today’s episode, I will attempt to answer all of these questions.

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)

Letting Go

July 5, 2020 by in Contemplative Christianity, Spirituality, Uncategorized Post Comment

Attachment is conflating a true, soul-centered longing with an ego-driven desire for gain.

We conflate joy with pleasure and become addicts to people, places, or things.

We confuse peace and contentment with a state of mind and emotion and spend the day discontentedly manipulating the outward circumstances trying to arrive there.

Before we realize it, we are living our lives attached, or let’s just call it what it really is, shackled to these conflations that we are miserable.

And the only solution is letting go.

Source Scripture

A Young Woman’s Beautiful Example of Non-Attachment: Luke 1:26-38

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)