Awestruck
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.
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Lost No More
12/31/2024
Lost No More
Garish, your caricature Perish the fair at your Ceaseless libations and Peace-less privations Absent, your poets While present - all-know-its Whose knowing is depth-less Ne'er sensing the breathless All wonders surceasing Misunders e’er fleecing You of your true nature For what? Nomenclature Flatlander, look up. Definitions took up And away founts of splendor Until counts surrender Beyond all reduction A grand introduction To your ground of being To laughter - to seeing Let truth and spirit meld Transcendent joy beheld Reverie, mystery Every bliss for thee But first you must let go Of this-that and yes-no Of dual divisions That dull mystic visions Of purpose and meaning Of rapturous gleaning Of music forgotten Of soul-light begotten Now come to your senses Not those five - essences Divine resonation Oh, numinous station! Metamorphosis realized Birthed again, alchemized Lost no more, I now attune My soul to One, in bliss, commune
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The Sound of Music
12/31/2024
The Sound of Music
You brought music back into the house. I had forgotten. These are the words spoken by Captain Von Trapp in the 1965 musical The Sound of Music. He utters them to Fralein Maria moments after his miraculous transformation from angry and militant to warm and joyous. And it all happened because he heard his children singing in the house - singing he had silenced with insatiable demands for order and obedience. Our deepest desires call us to the transcendent, and yet we too often conflate the fulfillment of those desires with earthly trappings in which the futile search for them exists on a spectrum ranging from aggresorial austeria to bedlamic bacchanalia. Yet both of these, and everything in between, still exist on a plane of existence that excludes the divine. Music, nature, art, sacred texts, poetry - all of these are spiritual languages that call us to transcendence - to fly high above the draconian Baconian single-vision prison we have voluntarily locked ourselves into. Like Captain von Trapp was before he heard the sound of music, we are trapped in a wasteland devoid of spirit, of joy, of wonder, of meaning, of purpose, of love and of mercy. This reductionist flatland of the scientific reality principle is a disease that affects all of us. It is a way of thinking that we have accepted as the only lenses with which to discern what is real and what is not. And it compounds another disease that has existed from the beginning: selfishness. In selfishness we see people, places, things, and systems of thought as utilitarian - they are for us to cultivate and harvest pleasures and tools that benefit us most. In many parts of the world, especially the West, theology, so-called, has surprisingly drifted and deflated into the flatlands, and Churches and Christians with it. We have traded the experience of loving God and loving others for the study of God and of the heresy of others that will justify why we do not love them. It is time to bring music back into the house of God. We have forgotten. Source Scripture ; Connect X: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Age of Exploration
06/25/2024
The Age of Exploration
Discovery begets truth. Begets transformation. And discovery begins with exploration. The impulse to explore has largely been stunted in our time by the erroneous assumption nothing remains to explore. We’ve mapped the earth. We have GPS systems to tell us exactly where we are at any given time. We’ve been to the moon. We’ve sent probes to Mars and even beyond the edge of our solar system. Our telescopes now give us glimpses of the furthest shores of the Universe. Microscopes have deconstructed the atom and beyond. We have relinquished real exploration to the experts, and we wait for them to sift through the discoveries and highlight what might be meaningful to us in our morning papers and Sunday sermons. And in so doing, we have lost the experience of discovery, settling for filtered reports from the frontiers’ edges. This lack of experiential exploration has left us yearning for something more. Something that the information and technology revolutions have failed to give us. The call to explore whispers still, beckoning you to begin a new age of exploration - one that takes you on a captivating journey that leads beyond everything you think is true and into the truth itself. A journey that leads to discoveries that topple deep-rooted paradigms and cultivate a framework that can lead to total fulfillment that transforms your life into one of meaning, beauty, love, joy, peace - into everything you long for and everything you hope to be. A journey that leads to the center of you. And what you find there - who you find there - is the greatest discovery of all. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Know Doubt
01/20/2024
Know Doubt
Doubt is mostly viewed as a negative trait or as even as the opposite of faith. We think this way largely because we imagine doubt and faith in still life, or rigidly defined - devoid of motion. Such attempts at crystallization lose sight of the inner dynamics and play when we struggle with doubt. When we doubt, a number of forces arise within us: curiosity, fear, urgency, to name only a few. These forces compel us to know - to experience - and to do so we act. We move. We seek answers. We position ourselves to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears. Doubt drives the struggle - without it we would never see potentiality give birth to actuality. This is precisely why God does not present himself as an irrefutable fact. He wants us to struggle. He wants us to be curious and to move toward Him. He wants us to pursue him until, like the moth whose new wings are strengthened by its endeavor to escape the cocoon, we emerge transformed into a new creation that exchanges the rigidity of an earthbound life for the boundless skies. Today we will rediscover the nature and purpose of doubt - and how to allow it to serve as a positive force for transformation. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Welcome Back to Wonder
12/04/2023
Welcome Back to Wonder
We have unwittingly exchanged the active experience of being alive in the present for living in a dank library filled with atomized facts that we read not with just our eyes, but with our whole physical bodies. We willingly plug ourselves into a matrix of technology and information that, given the right combination, can summon fleeting fulfillment of our selfish desires: popularity, prosperity, pleasure, and power. These four pillars serve as the supports that bear the table of lifeless and soul-less reductionism where we spend our lives attempting to put together the one-million piece puzzle from the box of pieces that, even if accomplished, would result only in a flattened and ghoulishly carved representation of the real world that awaits us in plain sight - if only we would just turn around, leave the puzzle behind, and embark on a journey of adventure, purpose, and meaning. We live in blueprints rather than homes. We exchange the territory for the map and the symphony for the sheet music, both of which can be neatly tucked into our day planners. We have abandoned the rapture of a starry night for a lifeless book where the front cover has faded under the white-washed sky of light pollution, the back cover boasts of the data contained within, and the pages between them offer not stories, but columns and charts, distances and densities, enormity and expansion. We have stripped sacred symbols of their resonance and reduced them to tokens and trinkets to buy, sell, or appropriate for monetary gain. Two-handed scrolls enchant no longer, now lost to mindless single-handed scrolling. Pythagoras marveled at meaning in mathematics, envisioning the number one as the symbol for unity and ten for perfection. He found astonishing connections between music and ratio. But now hear the name Pythagoras and all we can muster is a-squared plus b-squared = c-squared as a formula to conquer algebra tests and solve occasional problems. Mathematics are now mere means to ends. We have wandered from wonder, only to wonder why we wander. Today, we delve deeply into the hope that this wretched wasteland in which we wander is not our home - the hope that we may yet wake up and rise up and return to reverence, recapturing rapture and seizing the sublime. Welcome back to wonder. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Real Ones
11/19/2023
The Real Ones
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, not light them for themselves; for if our virtues did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike as if we had them not. William Shakespeare Such words capture the essence of a latent power within us, awaiting the spark of purpose to ignite. From our first breath, we are cradled in potential, but our world orbits around primal needs, each cry a beacon of dependence. Yet, as the veil of infancy lifts, the tender choreography of growth and guidance train us to wield the sword of power. And once trained, we are free to choose how to fulfill our potential. The easiest path, perhaps, is to mold power to the whims of desire, where the ego eschonces itself as the unyielding center, its gravitational force gripping all it covets. As we grow older, the spectrum of power broadens—intellectual, political, social, occupational, extending its tendrils into the vast garden of human endeavor. And with every strand of authority entwined around it, there emerges a dichotomy of choice—will we use our power be a vessel of selfish craving or a conduit of collective good? The news often paints a grim tapestry of power misused—a teacher betraying trust, a politician trading integrity for gold, a city council weaving webs of defamation, a police badge morphing into a shroud of fear, a shepherd fleecing his flock. Yet, amidst this gloom, rays of hope pierce through— a policewoman’s badge shining as a shield of protection and service, a school principal crafting a haven of learning and respect, a city council sowing seeds of prosperity, a politician being the voice of the voiceless, a pastor trading earthly gold for the treasure of service. In this grand theatre, the power of choice orchestrates every act. It's the silent custodian of all other powers, holding the potential to either plunge us into an abyss of self-indulgence or elevate us to beacons of hope amid the encroaching shadows. The path we tread in wielding this primal power echoes the essence of today’s passage—the reverence of recognizing a power beyond ourselves, an authority rooted in the heart of divine love. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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I See You
10/07/2023
I See You
To see is to discern with clarity what is… C.S. Lewis addressed what he saw as the oncoming blindness to what is in his book The Abolition of Man. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her. Reason, both C.S. Lewis and Plato insist, follows a natural conformity to the existing harmony of the Universe - to what is. To see is to recognize this, much like a beginning piano player must strain to learn the existing workings of the piano and how dancing her fingers across the keys can create something beautiful. To see and know what is, then, precedes reason. Reason flows into us once we take in the wonder - the splendor - of the true nature of being. Today’s episode is a review of the previous six episodes, where Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount as a revelation of the true nature of being and then proceeds to immediately fulfill the deepest desires of a man gripped by suffering to be restored to his true nature. And in all of these episodes, all the while as Jesus is opening our eyes to us what is, he is also peering directly into the depths of our souls to reveal our longings, our needs, and our blindness to the truth and whispers to us, “I see you - and I want to heal you.” Source Scripture ; ; ; ; ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Axis Mundi
08/28/2023
Axis Mundi
Acceptance - we yearn for it in our inmost being. We long for others to accept us as we are, and yet we are terrified that who we are - which includes our shortcomings, our fears, our secret stories of horror, the terrible things we have thought and done - will repel others and deny us the very acceptance we seek. And so we don costumes, adapting some role that isn't us, hoping to finally earn acceptance. But is it really acceptance if we gain it as someone other than our true self? Maintaining the false self requires exerting so much effort that we then collapse when in solitude and wonder why we feel so empty, lonely, and starved for the very thing we created the false self in the first place - acceptance. Your deepest desires for acceptance cannot and will not be met until your true self can safely and wholly emerge in full view of another that has an enthusiastic willingness to approach, to touch, to wipe away tears, to gently clean away all impurities to reveal the beauty that lies beneath - you. When your desire for acceptance, free of costume, meets and grasps the divine desire to accept you for who you really are - you have reached the most sacred space on all earth - the axis mundi - where heaven meets earth. Where the divine meets - and embraces - you. Source Scripture ; ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I ) Recommended Reading
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It's Time to Strike Out
08/12/2023
It's Time to Strike Out
Our modern way of thinking has created a false dichotomy between truth and experience. We have become obsessed with the reduction of truth into facts: atomic sentences and numbers and equations that we can use as a periodic table of elements. But this obsession holds no real power. No matter how well you know that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to form water, this fact will not help you when you are on your knees in the desert and dying of thirst. Water is life, and your experience of consuming it is vital. Spiritual truths exemplify this need for active participation even more deeply. A sacred text is not sacred because it reveals truth in written form. It is sacred when and only when the truth in the text connects the spirits of both reader and writer and the experience of sacred communion takes place. Facts stripped of truth and immersive experience are lifeless at best and oppressive at worst. But when spirit meets truth - yours and the divine - you lose your mind and find your soul. So if you're stuck in your head and dying of thirst in a land of facts, it's time to strike out on a new adventure. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Ground of Being
07/16/2023
The Ground of Being
Our quest for peace - contentment, rest, fulfillment - is, paradoxically, most often filled with frustration, anger, exhaustion, and even rage. Make more money, acquire necessary things, secure fulfilling relationships, and fulfill sensual desires. Over and over again, great obstacles present themselves. Storms arise. Obstacles roll over us. People thwart us. Disasters destroy all that we have worked for and take away those that we love. And when we find ourselves naked and afraid - when all is lost except loss itself - where do we go? What do we do? We could, like the great phoenix, resolve to rise from the ashes and rebuild our lives by starting over and repeating our quest. Or, perhaps we could reconsider the quest itself and reexamine what it is we seek. If what we seek is peace, which is an inward state of being - a mode of consciousness - then why do we assume at the outset that our quest must be the triumphal conquest of external circumstance? If what we truly desire is an inward oasis, then our quest must be an inner odyssey. The journey to fulfillment lies wholly within. And the deeper we go, the more this truth becomes clear to us, until in our spirit we arrive at the very ground of our being and discover there that the truth really does set you free. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Hocus Focus
06/11/2023
Hocus Focus
Without conscious and concerted effort, our focus will always be on ourselves. What we want. What we need. What we'll do to get what we want and need. This focus reveals our purpose - which, if we are honest, is to bend the world and all that is in it in our favor. We desire to be seen and to be valued, and with this focus we devise actions that will garner attention, gain praise, and earn love. When we fail, as we inevitably will, we become increasingly discontent and grow more likely to reduce others to the role of competitor, ally, enemy, or tool. Such self-centered living is destined to fail, despite our rational thoughts to the contrary and despite seeing those we idolize post their social proof. The human soul is not designed to be selfish - it is designed to serve. It is designed to be a cup that receives divine love from above and pours it out freely here below. Soul-centered living brings freedom and opens the doorway into the kingdom of heaven. Self-centeredness, in its desperation to justify itself, has a way of pretending to be righteous with magic tricks that may fool the eye at first glance. But all that hocus focus cannot and will not ever serve us or others. Today, we'll expose the magic tricks that attempt to make self-centeredness disappear, and we'll rediscover the true meaning of life. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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What Gives?
06/07/2023
What Gives?
What gives? The sun gives light and warmth. A mother gives milk and hugs and nurture. Birdsong brings smiles. The forest offers solace. The moon and the stars above give a sense of awe and perspective below. Friends provide comfort. Children bring joy. Trees bear fruit. Sheep provide wool. What takes? Light pollution takes away the splendor of the night sky. Thieves seize what is not theirs. Accidents, war, and disease take loved ones. Litter takes away beauty. Thorns take blood. Wolves take life. We are attracted to what gives. We are suspicious at best or terrified at worst of what takes. Knowing this natural law of attraction and avoidance, some costume themselves as what gives, but behind the mask is a liar. A thief. A murderer. Today, we learn how to identify these masked marauders - particularly those who claim to give goodness and truth and guidance when in fact they are only after what they can get out of us. To take is human. To give, divine. Let's open our eyes to the divine to see what gives. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Gate Expectations
05/07/2023
Gate Expectations
To attain what we desire most, we mistakenly believe that we must move forward, acquire more, learn much, guard relentlessly, achieve fame, win awards, and stockpile power. And yet, our true desires are never met by our effort, ingenuity, or winsome charisma. Our true desires - the ones that emanate from the ground of our being and refuse to quiet their call until we fulfill them - are found through simple, quiet, effortless means. Finding fulfillment in this life does not come by learning, but by unlearning. It does not come by grasping, but by releasing. Not by pursuing, but by surrendering to being pursued. Not by leading, but by following. And not by demanding, but by accepting. The gateway to paradise - the kingdom of heaven - exists on this side of the grave. It stands open for all who would enter. Finding that gate....is the focus of today's episode. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Divine Path of Desire
04/06/2023
The Divine Path of Desire
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 ; ; ; ; ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Golden Rule of Engagement
03/19/2023
The Golden Rule of Engagement
We long to be seen and celebrated for that which is deeply good and worthwhile in us, and we long for a love that is strong enough to contain our frailty and sinfulness. Something in us knows such love is a transforming power. - Ruth Haley Barton When Adam and Eve hid from God amidst the trees of the Garden of Eden, clad with fig leaves sewn by trembling fingers, they for the first time in their lives feared being in the presence of God. Before the fall of paradise, they were unashamed to be fully seen and known. But now, they lived with a new reality: to be fully known came coupled with the horrifying dread of rejection. And as they shuddered in the shadows, God called to them. He came to them. And though their shame was as much their own making as their fig leaf coverings, God gently took away both - covering them with love and the skins of of the first creature to ever die. God’s love enveloped both their worth and their failure, held in the tension between the curses of Paradise Lost and the promise of paradise regained through a future descendant of Eve. We live in that fallen state - it infects us today. We long equally to be fully known and fully loved, yet we believe the former inherently negates the latter. This leaves us in a terrible state, for we see the love really want on one horizon and who we really are on the other. Trapped in desperation of a world of our own making, we hopelessly run toward one or the other. To run toward love, we believe, we must cloak and costume our true selves, leading inevitably to a false version of love for a false version of ourselves. And when we can take no more of this, we turn back toward the other horizon, back to ourselves. But, where is this place from whence we came? The landscape looks different now than when we left. We are lost. We search desperately for who we really are, but in so doing the more we discover leads us farther and farther away from the love of anyone who could ever embrace what we find. And yet, what we do not see or grasp as we run back and forth like little flatlanders who can fathom only two dimensions, a divine voice cries out from above in love, asking the same question asked of Adam and Eve. Where are you? God’s love seeks us. It searches us out. God is love, and He is capable of loving us fully and knowing us fully, awakening us to and rescuing us from the torturous, writhing, fallen state of forever believing we must choose between experiencing love and being seen for who we are. Once rescued, we find paradise regained. All we ever desired returns to us. And then - we find ourselves with one new desire - the desire to do for others what was done for us. This is the golden rule of engagement. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Whetting Your Appetite
02/19/2023
Whetting Your Appetite
Desire is so fundamental to our nature that we often overlook its significance. Its guiding force. We are created - designed - to desire and to be satisfied. Desire and satisfaction were part of Paradise before the fall. When God created the world and saw that it was good, he rested. When Adam and Eve worked the garden each day, they would stop in the evening and walk in the cool of the day beside the divine God of the Universe. And when they were hungry, they found satisfaction from taking the fruit of any tree in the garden. Except one, of course. The serpent injected venom into Eve's desires and bent them toward the forbidden. Forget God and what He said, the serpent suggested, and become like him by eating from this tree. Eve, having then entertained the idea of going against God's guidance, looked at the fruit of the tree. The Scriptures say she saw three things that she desired: she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom. And so, in an attempt to satisfy those desires, she took the forbidden fruit. And ate it. And then gave some to Adam, who was standing next to her. Adam and Eve abandoned their natural, divine provisions that would naturally meet their desires and grasped for something outside the realm of God's desire. And yet, though we call this event the Fall - or Paradise Lost - what we find is God's desire only beginning to reveal itself. God came to the garden in the cool of the day to find Adam and Eve, desiring to walk with them. He called to them when he could not find them, desiring their presence. And once they confessed their sin, He covered their shame with animal skins that he sacrificed, desiring to relieve their shame. He handed down discipline and ejected them from the garden, but left them alive and well, desiring to continue to be a part of their lives. And the rest of Scripture is the story of God's divine pursuit - his holy desire - to win us back from doing the same thing over and over again - trying to gratify our desires with anything other than Him and His provision. God's desire is us. And when we loosen our grip on the forbidden fruit and take our eyes off its deceptive appearances, we find that what we really desire ourselves is God. And when God's desires and ours converge, Paradise is regained. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Breadcrumb Trailblazing
02/04/2023
Breadcrumb Trailblazing
Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world. Theodore Roszak The prevailing mode of consciousness today might be captured in the word materialism. Philosophical materialism suggests that all that matters is matter, and everything that occurs does so strictly within the material world. Practical materialism, which flows from its philosophical wellspring, focuses on the acquisition, manipulation, and removal of material objects based on their usefulness. A better term for this prevailing mode of consciousness that is rooted in philosophical materialism might be objective consciousness. In layman's terms: Where's my stuff? I want stuff. I need stuff. But not that stuff. Objective consciousness limits us to see, live, and act only within the physical world of stuff. Of things. Beyond the stuff of earth, however, is a realm of awe and wonder. The spiritual world. The plane of existence where we experience love, joy, peace, gratitude, hope, and communion with the divine. The membrane that separates these two worlds can only be permeated by shedding the entirety of the material world, including and especially the center of it all - the self. To the self, this appears as a mythical fantasy at best or suicidal mission at worst. And so, any invitation to cross the threshold is met with dismissal or attack. So how does anyone trapped in the prevailing consciousness of the material, objective world ever see the truth of what lies beyond? There is one - and only one - spiritual substance that can penetrate the physical world and shine light that illuminates the path between these two world And that substance is the focus of today's episode. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Cross Beam
01/09/2023
Cross Beam
One of the most harmful and yet least examined impulses of human nature is that of judgement. In silent milliseconds, we can observe a fellow human being and decide if he is worthy or unworthy, right or wrong, good or bad. And with that judgement, just as quietly but more deadly, we condemn. We From our judge's chair while draped in our robes of black, we pass one of the many sentences available to us in our play book. Rather than turn the other cheek, we turn our back. Rather than go the extra mile, we force them to. We hurl insults. We raise our hands in obscene gestures. We steal back what is supposedly ours. We open the floodgates of rage into our hearts and with our minds we justify the mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that we heap on our accused. And as we pass judgement and condemnation on the other, we silently and often unknowingly hold up our get-out-of-jail-free card - the one we earned by being right, righteous, good, better. We choose to be our own judge, and we always find ourselves innocent. At stake here is not who is right and who is wrong. What is at stake is you - your state of being. The desire to set the world right is a God-given desire implanted in us. It is etched in the imago dei of our souls. But the fulfillment of that holy desire does not and cannot come from judgement. Judgement arises from egoistic pride, arrogance, entitlement, and a withering connection to the sacred. It is time to bring the oft-overlooked act of judgement into the light and let it be judged for what it is. It is time to acknowledge and take the beam out of our own eye. The good news is that we have a Judge who is willing to both forgive us and to teach us his way of forgiveness - freeing us to walk this earth in peace and love. To err is human, to forgive divine. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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A Most Auspicious Occasion
12/30/2022
A Most Auspicious Occasion
The ruthless elimination of worry is key to peace in the present moment. We worry when we direct our focus to something we want beyond our current grasp of control. We cannot abide the uncertainty of achieving our goal, and this state of consciousness produces anxiety. We then believe that to overcome anxiety and find peace, we must create methods and procure resources that provide us with the right amount of power and control. The curious state we now find ourselves in is one of double anxiety. To get what we want, we must first get something else, and we worry about the prospect of obtaining both. If we do not question this default approach to living, we will succumb to its relentless grip on our soul and live in either the anxiety of either acquiring control or preserving it. The present moment will remain elusive as future concerns usurp it. Worry is the enemy of peace. Of shalom. Of bliss. Worry aspires to be hope, but falls far short because it has no one to hope in beyond the self-centered ego. When we are free of worry, we experience the bliss of of what really matters: the present moment. The naked now. We find ourselves trusting in God’s providence, resting in his promises, and able to experience the joy of His presence and the presence of others. The present moment is a most auspicious occasion, and with it today we will pursue the ruthless elimination of worry. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Money on the Floor
12/15/2022
Money on the Floor
Within us is a yearning to experience being - life in its fullest capacity. This divine desire propels us on a quest to find - to seize those experiences that bring us closer to true being. And yet, too often in our haste to experience the fullness of life, we conflate the spiritual well that activates and actualizes being with tactile, temporal offerings. The call of rich, meaningful, inner experiences of being available to us drowns in the cacophony of materialistic voices without. And the more we lose touch with ourselves, the deeper we wade into the waters of materialism until eventually the riptides of greed and lust pull us ever further away from the shore of our own soul. Our materialistic pursuits, though they vary in tone and texture, all converge at this apex: money. Money becomes the well from which we draw in order to satisfy our materialistic goals. And without even realizing it, we have now strayed so far from the shore that we cannot even see it, choking on saltwater in a futile effort to slake our thirst. We have conflated our desire for being with the lust for material things, and we have further decided that to have what we want, we must have money to get it. In most cases, we don’t question this mode of living at all. At best, we comfort ourselves by donating a small percentage of our money to what we deem our worthy causes. At worst - we are at our worst - slaves to the master of money as we plod forward in our erroneous belief that money buys things and attracts people that will fulfill our innermost longings. But you can’t smell the roses when you’re lost at sea. The only way we escape the clutches of money is to return to the shores of our soul and begin the trek inland, exploring the true, rich, fulfilling, divine experiences of being that await until they enrapture us and we forget all else - including and especially money. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Sight Unseen
11/22/2022
Sight Unseen
As the science vs. faith battle wages to determine who is right and what is real, what each can miss in this philosophical tournament is the opportunity to lift up their eyes and see beyond the coliseum that hosts it - and walk outside, leaving the weapons and armor of the game behind and embracing the search for being. Science creates rules that govern and limit how we see. Faith, a term which once meant something much more, finds itself reduced by modern Western thought to nothing more than another set of rules, creeds, and systematic theology - a flattened version of what it really is. Faith, in its essence, is not a set of rules. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and the assurance of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1 Faith is knowing that the deepest, truest desires within us are real. This means that our longing for love, transcendence, meaning, purpose, acceptance, and connection to the divine is not an unrealistic outlook. Faith gives us confidence that these desires are the most genuine thing about us. And faith is the assurance that these longings, which cannot be seen with the eyes of objective consciousness, can be trusted to lead us to their fulfillment. And they can be trusted precisely because the divine, transcendent God who created us planted these inherent desires within us. He designed us with these invisible desires to seek Him so that he can fulfill them all in communion with him. And all we have to do is to see this truth in our spirit, accepting it by faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6 Source Scripture ; ; ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Lens Flare
11/10/2022
Lens Flare
When our inner being is filled with divine light, our eyes emanate that light, and help us navigate this life in truth and love. But when our inner being is full of darkness, our eyes will be equally dark, and everything we do will will be nothing more than stumbling in that darkness. Today we focus on the connection between being and doing, and keeping the inner fire burning so that we see clearly to light the world. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I ) - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
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The Heart Wants
10/22/2022
The Heart Wants
Created things pull us outside ourselves. We fix our attention on objects, and so our mode of consciousness becomes objective. We assume that the pursuit of the external will, in return, bring us reward as the objects of our attention come to us. And yet, no matter how hard we try, the external cannot cross the threshold into our inner being and satisfy our real need. Possessions can go no further than an ephemeral caress of the ego. And this maddening tease drives us to toss aside one failed object for the next, leading us on an endless and fruitless pursuit. Saint Augustine awakened from objective consciousness, from his madding pursuit of created things, to discover that looking outside himself for meaning only drew him away from himself. And the way back to himself was to yield to the divine call that comes only from within. Today, we turn our attention away from created things out there - letting go of objective consciousness - and look toward the treasure that lie within, where the Creator of all things calls to us. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I ) - Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
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Fast On, Fast Off
09/30/2022
Fast On, Fast Off
To fast is to return our attention to ourselves - our spiritual center - our souls. Its easy to lose touch with our center when we allow the outside world to seize our attention with its sensory, sensational, sensual offerings. And when we focus on these things that couple only with our physical selves, we become self-centered. Egocentric. And, let's not forget, we have real physical needs: hunger, thirst, human connection, and much more. We are not bifurcated creatures whose physical and spiritual sides can be separated - not until death, anyway. We are whole beings. Each of us has a soul and a body, woven inextricably together in the Imago Dei. Even the Lord's Prayer, as we saw in the previous episode, has a line devoted to asking God to provide our daily bread. So why would we ever spend one or more days shunning that divinely created need? Fasting has many benefits, but today we will focus on one in particular: that of re-centering - living from the soul. Fasting is a discipline that in the moment may seem pointless, but in the end is a training exercise that yields spiritual strength. So let's slow down, and fast. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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The Great Exchange
09/11/2022
The Great Exchange
Our modern ears interpret the word pray as ask God to give me something I want or need. But the word pray used in the Greek text of the Bible means, literally, to move towards the will of God - so that our will might be exchanged for his. We see this meaning in play as Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done. This is, perhaps, the most enchanting possibility available to those of us with free will - to choose to to relinquish our will in exchange for his. This is the purpose of prayer. Today, we will see the purpose of prayer unfold before us in The Lord's Prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples - and to us. And the walk through that prayer is awe striking. Source Scripture ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Creative Generosity
08/13/2022
Creative Generosity
Creation is an act of generosity. Generosity is an act of creation. To create is to gather the resources available to us and shape them into something new and wondrous for others to experience. To be generous is quite literally the same thing. And yet, how many times do we cheapen and pollute our works of creation by scribbling our name all over it? Rather than create for the purpose of inducing wonder, we hastily mix a stew of popular and unhealthy ingredients and tempt others with the result. And our only motive is payback through attention or money. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, wisely explains to us that altruism is creative and permeated with light, while selfishness is destructive and lives in darkness. Generosity is a creative force that moves outward from the self. Selfishness is a destructive force that collapses in on itself. And any attempt at mixing the two so that the self - the ego - gets the credit, only destroys that creation. Is it any wonder that God's first known words in history are let there be light as he creates all that is, generously giving us all a place to live, and move, and have our being. Today, we explore DMLK's definition of generosity as creation in contrast to selfishness as destruction, emphasizing Jesus' words when he said, It is more blissful to give than to receive. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Stage Presence
07/27/2022
Stage Presence
The ego longs to be seen and admired, and all those who fall under its narcissistic spell see the world as their stage. Abandoning their true selves for the sake of thunderous applause, they live their lives in performance. But, as with all performances, the script has an ending. The actors take their bows. The audience goes home. The stage falls silent, and the performers go back to the dressing rooms, remove their costumes, masks, and makeup, and go home as themselves. The Greek word for such a stage actor is hypokrites. In English, we transliterate that word as hypocrite, and we use it to refer to a person who acts as if he is one thing on the public stage, but lives as if he is another thing entirely in private. None of us wants to be known as a hypocrite. None of us wants to be seen as a narcissist. We just want to be seen. Noticed. Accepted. Loved. The problem is that we are afraid that people will not accept us for who we really are, and so we fashion costumes that hide our true selves in hopes that we will be seen as the performer's persona and receive the requisite rounds of applause that go with it. And the longer we play a role, regardless of how much recognition we receive, our true selves will continue to grow restless until we are seen and known for who we really are. Today, we will wrestle together with the natural tendencies to fall into narcissism and hypocrisy and discover the rewards of being true to ourselves. Source Scripture Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Perfect Union
07/08/2022
Perfect Union
Love and belonging is what we seek. And when we fail to experience love, we fail to experience being. We become broken, lost wanderers in a wasteland of desperation, impatience, entitlement, greed, addiction, and emptiness. Our substitutes for love forever fail to fulfill, and we flounder. Conversely, when we experience intimacy with another, we are struck by something beyond ourselves. It is if the energy of being itself suddenly takes hold of us and carries us helplessly toward the other. The woman who you will one day propose marriage in hopes of even greater intimacy. The baby who did not exist one year ago but now inexplicably interweaves itself into your soul. The best friend who gets you. Your best friend gets you because she gets you. Your presence. She is privileged to know you intimately and loves you deeply. With her you have trust and vulnerability and peace. You have being. But how do we find love? Where can we discover belonging? Especially in a world where everyone wants to take and no one wants to give? The answer comes to us as we review the last six episodes of Awestruck, where we see Jesus revealing the culmination of all of the Old Testament Law and Prophets - in him. In his life. In his words. In his actions. And as Jesus weaves together the entirety of the Old Testament into a living portrait of himself, what we see in that portrait is divine love. We see a God whose sole purpose is to bring us into perfect union with him and with each other. Source Scripture See episodes 71-76 Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I )
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Rekindling the Fires of Beauty
06/06/2022
Rekindling the Fires of Beauty
Imagine a reverse wedding ceremony, where the climax occurs as two people stare into each other's eyes and declare for all to hear, I don't. The bride's wedding dress is blackened with soot. Thorns are strewn in place of flowers. Writhing snakes replace candles. On either side of the aisle there are opposing forces who shout at each other. And leading the ceremony is zombie-like creature, who says, "Dearly be-hated, we are fractured here today to part these two by breaking the bonds of love and fueling the fires of fury." There is a reason why we do not see such ceremonies - they are devoid of beauty. Weddings are filled with beauty, and set the stage of hope that love will forever bind two people. Reverse weddings, where two people decide that they are enemies - whether husband and wife, or father and son, two former friends, or perfect strangers who meet on conflicting terms, are filled with darkness. And yet, such ceremonies occur in the privacy of our hearts. We decide that someone in our lives, whether the crazy neighbor next door or the ruthless dictator of another country, is our enemy. We know that they have no good will toward us specifically or humanity in general, and so we feel justified in assuming the same posture toward them - precisely because we are right and they are wrong. And right must prevail. Yet perhaps the real reason that we declare war on this enemy of ours is because they have robbed us of beauty and love. And so, wounded by this loss, we exacerbate the issue by living in hate, robbing ourselves - and the world around us - of beauty and love. We become that which we hate in an effort to extinguish it and hope that beauty returns when the smoke clears. If we truly wish lost beauty to return, then we must stoke its fire - both within and without. Source Scripture Matthew ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I ) For Further Contemplation Recommended Reading by Corrie Ten Boom
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The Best Defense is No Offense
05/11/2022
The Best Defense is No Offense
When we are wronged, we feel out of balance. Our knee jerk reaction is to restore balance with an equal but opposing force. This, we reason, should even the score. Such an approach fits neatly into a broader, largely unquestioned paradigm of living that we will call the quid pro quo mindset. I will give something to you if you give something to me. I will love you if you love me back. I will forgive you if you forgive me. I will ___________ as long as you do the same. The expected result of quid pro quo living is balance and harmony. Everyone does something for everyone else in equal measure and there is much rejoicing. A closer look at quid pro quo, though, leads not to the expected balance in our relationships. Instead, we withhold generosity while waiting on others to give to us first. And when everyone assumes this same posture, frustration sets in. Over time, this frustration crystallizes into jade - creating an unbalanced quality of being. Frozen in this state, we wait for all others to make the first move towards us. And if that move is not in our favor, our internal angst drives us to label it as on offense - whether real or not. Quid pro quo demands that any offense be met with defense, and so we do the only thing we know how. We strike back, whether passively or aggressively, or some combination of both. And when we strike back, they strike back, and on and on it goes, creating an unthinkable, undesirable, unsustainable way to live - a decaying orbit destined to burn us all out. And yet, there is another way. The way of peace. Love. Balance. And it comes not by taking an eye for an eye, but by turning the other cheek. Source Scripture Matthew ; Connect Twitter: Email: Extras The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist ( I ) For Further Contemplation ; ; Recommended Reading by Brant Hansen
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