Awestruck

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. So let's get started.

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

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

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

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.

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

JJ. Abrams Mystery Box (Ted Talk)

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

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify) 

Brené Brown on Joy as Vulnerability

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.

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

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.  - Author Unknown

Grasping this - and learning to live by its truth - is what we'll call soul-centering.

An ego-centered life is like a black hole - everything is pulled towards itself. Nothing escapes. Not even light. It's pure darkness.

A soul-centered life is more like a star - everything is radiating outward. There is only warmth. And light. This is how we're meant to live.

An Angelic Encounter: Luke 1:5-25

For Further Study

Living from the Center: Galatians 5:16-18

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

Awestruck Podcast is a hero’s journey to the center of you.

Have you ever been awestruck? We were meant to live in this transformed state of attention, not just long for it or experience it rarely. It is the real. It is what makes you real. To be spellbound, captivated, filled with wonder, held in aesthetic arrest, awestruck. 

It is in this state of wonder that we find our ability to find ourselves. To be real. And to accept real truth that transforms us into everything we long to be.

Sources

Saint Luke's Prologue: Luke 1:1-4

Connect

Twitter: @AwestruckPod Email: [email protected]

Extras

The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist  (Apple I Spotify)

Read the fascinating story of the scientific examination of Saint Luke's bones in Padua.

In the book of Acts, Luke mentions 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 Mediterranean islands. He also lists 95 people by name, 62 of which are not named elsewhere in the New Testament (Metzger, 171).

In addition, Luke is intimately familiar with the constantly-changing political conditions of the Roman world. References to Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Quirinius, the Herods, Felix, and Festus are recorded. In not one of these citations is there a mistake. (Source)