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
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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
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Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
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Recommended TikTok User: @PonderingWorshipper
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
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
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras