Today’s podcast explores how the healing work, which is the resolving of our fallen experiences, sharpens our spiritual tools and deepens our confessions. There is a unique synergy between the healing work and repentance. Examples are covered as to just how the healing work deepens our repentance and therefore our confessions.

Today’s podcast draws upon the scripture verse in which Jesus tells us, “to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove”. We are called to do no harm, but that does not mean to be gullible or naïve. We are called to be discerning. There are many souls out there who feel hurt and taken advantage of by individuals. However, there are many who have been hurt by unhealthy or dysfunctional systems. It is important that we raise our level of awareness of these systems in order to protect others and the church.

Today’s podcast reflects on the Leave-taking of the feast of Pentecost. We often acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit, but miss encounters with the Holy Spirit due to our own impatience, lack of trust, and our own denials. Today’s podcast offers an exploration of what we need to do to have real encounters with God through the Holy Spirit.

Today’s podcast answers a question from someone who has been going through somatic experiencing therapy. They are concerned that it is not rooted in the Orthodox Faith and does not overtly guide on Orthodox principles. What this type of therapy is and whether it is safe or not are discussed.

Today’s podcast discusses three ways in which we may often violate the spiritual boundaries of another without realizing it. When this occurs, it is often due to an inability to self-regulate emotionally, being egocentric, or struggling with codependency. It is essential for the spiritual life that we have a strong sense of where we begin and leave off and where others begin.

Today’s podcast talks about a most beautiful inheritance that we can all leave our children. As parents we often worry about leaving a financial inheritance. However, we often overlook the universal inheritance that all of us leave our kids. We leave our children an inheritance of either simple grief or complicated grief, depending on how we have parented and how well we loved them. This inheritance of simple grief is also a form of generational wealth, as it gets passed on for generations.

Today’s podcast answers a question from someone who has come to realize their sense of self is damaged. This part of the healing work is often overlooked due to it being so close or detouring it due to us being nervous about the concept of “self”. If we have a damaged sense of self, it means we believe that we are unlovable, not worthy of love, and simply not good enough. This can predispose us to looking to external sources for validation, which can endanger us spirituality and set us up for more grief and shame. Self-abandonment leads us further away from God, self-denial brings us closer to God.

Today’s podcast speaks on the topic of paralysis. Specifically paralysis in which a part of ourselves goes off-line and shuts down as a result of some fallen experience. There is a steep cost for this in the form of regret, which can make insight a bitter pill. We can be paralyzed by fear, guilt, shame, disappointment, and even by the ego. Second chances are always available. How to go about reversing paralysis, and even protecting ourselves from future paralysis, is discussed.

Today’s podcast uses the liturgical space of this week being in between the Sunday of the Myhr-bearing women and the Sunday of the paralytic as an opportunity to highlight the role of humility in the healing work. When humility has not been established, we set ourselves up to be re-traumatized and for more rejection experiences. Humility clears those dangers away so that we might heal in a more efficient manner.

Today’s podcast focuses on how trauma and painful experiences shrink and narrow our perception of the world. There is discussion of the concept of our “perception box” which gives us something concrete to focus on in our spiritual lives. Learning to expand our perception box, to let all the data in, can help stop the process of past painful experiences being super- imposed on the present. Rather than constantly repeating the past, suddenly we are living a life free of it.