TRANSCRIPT:
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Hi, thank you for joining me for this segment of Transformed: A Podcast by Chaplain Michele. On character. We don’t talk about character a lot anymore, at least not in the most edifying and encouraging ways. It seems that we know when someone has good character or bad character, and yet we still find ourselves in situations and circumstances individually and collectively where we don’t openly discuss why we believe a person’s character is one way or the other. Even more to the point is why we attempt if we know right from wrong light, from dark, good, from evil, if we know those things, what is it about our own character that makes us try to justify either our bad behavior or someone else’s? It’s a valid question, one that not only do we not ask ourselves enough, but we don’t ask another each other enough. What is it that we expect to gain long term, not short term. We have myopia when it comes to power and control and advantage and privilege, but we are here playing the long game. We are in eternity. We’re not headed to it. We are in it, and so what’s the long game? What do we think the universe is expecting of us? If you believe in a higher power, what does that higher power expecting of you? Because we all know the difference between right and wrong, whether we choose to believe. It really determines how we fare not only in life, but in any sort of afterlife.
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Now, that might be going a bit long and deep pretty quickly, but I think that it merits, I’m not doing this podcast or even sharing some of these things because it’s cute or because it’s trendy. I’m sharing it because there are lessons here that whether you believe them or not are going to impact your life and you’ve got to get a clue that this is not a reality TV show. We are not here just to play games. This is serious business, and so when we talk about our individual existence and the state of humanity, what is the human condition and the human conditioning? What is it that we really believe and why? What are we hoping to gain and why? What do we hope to accomplish and why? And what does that mean in the light of eternity?
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What does it mean when you are away from the noise and it’s just you? If you can stand to be by yourself? Some people can’t. That’s not a good or bad. Some people just can’t. They haven’t learned how to do that yet. I had to learn how to do it so I can talk about it. There was a time in my life when I couldn’t stand to be by myself. I was too afraid to be by myself. I felt like I was inept and couldn’t really function without other people around me. Whether those relationships were healthy or not didn’t matter, and some of you might be in that place today, but I have learned to be by myself and to be very productive.
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It doesn’t mean I’m always by myself, but I can be. I’m a born introvert. I have learned to be ambivert, so once I understood, not just, and I learned that after I learned how to be alone, but what is it that we’re trying to do? What are you trying to do with your life? What is it that you really want? Because when you are alone, when you have an opportunity to ask yourself these questions, what answers are you getting? I love a good mantra in saving as much as anybody, but that still doesn’t get me where I’m going. Acute saying unless it becomes a great doing does not mean anything.
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It means we’re entertaining each other with cute sayings, but at the end of the day, when you transition out of here, what do you want to be able to say that you accomplished? That aligns with the universe because the principle of good character doesn’t go away. Just like gravity does not go away just because we choose to do something else. We were born. We are here in this place at this time because there is something specific, several things actually specific that we are supposed to do individually to contribute to the greater good. That means good, something that can help everybody, that can help every human.
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That’s why we are here. If we could do this alone, guess what? We’d be the only ones here, so we have to, on the one hand, stop acting like we don’t need people. We do need people, whether we consider them good or bad, whether we consider them human or non-human. Why? That’s even a discussion. I have no idea, but we need them here or they wouldn’t be here, but we have to determine what are we doing with this? What are we doing with this? Are you using the dirt to make a garden? Are you using what’s thrown at you to strengthen your muscle? The muscle of good character and one of the greatest disservices, let me just say this. I
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It’s everything in moderation. Everything in moderation. Why am I saying that? Because one of the greatest disservices we have done is that we’ve taken the concept of work and we’ve made it people sitting behind desks, one, that’s not good for your body. We tend to look at things, body, soul, spirit, if that, but it’s really spirit’s, soul, body, the purpose of work, good work, people that want to work, not people manipulating and controlling other people and treating them. However, we know ways in which people have been treated at work, in work to work, but work in and of itself, whether you are working for yourself, working for someone else who’s treating you well by the way, or at least attempting to, I’m not talking about exploitative exploitative labor or exploited labor. I’m talking about something where everybody understands farming, by the way, is a noble profession working the ground. I have always admired and respected. There are several professions that I admire and respect, but always admired and respected farmers for two reasons. One, because that process aligns with the universal process. Seed time harvest aligns with it. They understand it. They know what has to happen. They are on it day and night, night and they understand that what they can control, they can control, but they also understand that they cannot control the weather.
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We need to honor farmers. We need to honor teachers. We need to honor our medical professionals. I’m a little bit off base, but not much. It takes character for farmers, farmers, their families, to put in the time, the energy, the resources that are needed to create food for us, resources for us to use, and then have that wiped out because of some act. We like to call it an act of God. It’s not always an act of God. If that’s the case, then we need to call everything an act of God, character building activities. What are you doing that builds your character?
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What do you want your character to be? Because that’s tied to your intention. It’s tied to your belief. Spirit illuminates soul. I didn’t say whether that light, that illumination was light or dark. What your spirit illuminates, your what you are tied to spiritually, what you believe spiritually illuminates your soul, your thought process, your psyche, the seat of your individual government is your soul. That is where your decision-making capacity is. That’s where your emotions are. That’s where your psyche and your mentality are, your psychology and your personality. Then that from that place, the soul, the seat of the soul, the seat of your individual government, how you govern your speech, your thought process and your behavior comes out of your soul, and then if you tell me what you’re thinking, I can tell you how you’re going to behave and you should be able to tell yourself. And so a lot of the situations we’re in is because we haven’t examined not just spirit, but what that means in terms of our character. Work is designed to build character.
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So sitting behind a desk all day, it doesn’t matter what kind of work you do, well, it might, but I’m not judging or even attempting to judge what kind of work you’re doing. I’m saying you have to do something that builds your character. We all need a paycheck and if we were serious about this, then our pay would keep up with inflation. That’s just a side note, but we’ve got families, and I will admit, I’m actually speaking out of a bit of privilege and I’m grateful for what I have, but I also recognize that there are people who can’t keep up with inflation because we’re still having discussions about whether or not they should be paid a living wage. That is a character issue in and of itself. The fact that we’re still having that conversation that we want to be paid and taken care of for life, but we don’t want that for someone else. I promise you one thing, we have to decide who it is. We’re going to be individually because when we transition out of here, we’re not going with whoever we associate with even the closest person to us, there is a spiritual accountability that is going to take place and you have to be able to stand in that on your own.
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You don’t have to believe everything. That’s why we have free choice. Remember that we have free choice. We were given that, so nobody gets to take it away. Don’t let anybody take your courage. Don’t let anybody rob you of your character and don’t let anybody rob you of your choice. That is a God given. If yes, I did say that, however you believe we came with free choice and that free choice is somewhat deceptive because it makes us think we can do whatever we want when really we can’t. We were given free choice to make decisions to help us align freely with the laws and principles of the universe, and one of those is you reap what you sow, which means that everything you intend for someone else, good or bad will land on your doorstep and in your house at some point, and I’ve shared this before, either on another segment or at another speaking engagement if you want, we think that blessing people we don’t like or forgiveness or all of these things, they hurt me, so what’s happening is we’ve bought into that process.
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That means that that unforgiveness and what we have desired for someone else is going to stay in our house or land in our house, so it may look like we are pushing something out to someone else, demeaning them, degrading them, diminishing them in some way. This is all character by the way, and in that moment we may do some damage to that person depending on who they are and where they are, their proximity to us and how much they really consider us because there’s no damage that can be done if I don’t consider certain things, but anytime someone diminishes humanity, a character issue and they think, oh, well, they really, that is the intent of your words will reverberate throughout eternity and karma. You reap what you sow, whatever you want to call it. Seed time harvest is going to find its way back to your house, so be careful.
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Bless that even that you do not agree with or understand why, because you want blessing in your house, and when I say house, I mean the entirety of your household, not only limited to just yourself, the entirety of your household for generations to come, so you may get a leg up every now and then character, whether you exploit it, whether it’s you do it in an exploitive, manipulative way or whether that’s just the nature of your good at what you do, you care about people so you’re expanding because you have expanded others. It can go either way. The person that manipulates can have achieved just as much as the person that didn’t manipulate. However, the way they got there is what’s coming to their house. The way you get where you’re going is hot. What’s going to be in your house. If you want healing, then you need to pray healing or ask for healing or bless others.
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Bathe your life in blessing and gratitude because every person that is here on this planet at any given moment in time, at the same time, we are all contributing to some aspect of life for somebody else. The goal is for us to develop the kind of character that says, I may not know this person. I may not like them. I may not agree with them, but I understand the laws and principles of the universe to the extent that number one, I’m going to forgive. If I’ve been hurt, I might be still hurting, but I’m going to do my best to forgive. Even if I’m crawling on my face in the dark with shades on, I am going to forgive until I get to a better place because I do not want unforgiveness to stay in my house.
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Bathe your life in blessing and gratitude. Thank you for the sunny days and the rainy days because they both contribute to the perfect day, the kind of day we like to go out and it’s just the right weather and these are character things. People with bad character think they can just push their way around, throw their weight around is what we like to say, but at some point, that same intention coming from another place, I’m not saying another person is going to land, which you intend by your character for others is going to land in your house character. We’ve got to be intentional about it. Is it easy? No. Nothing is meant to be easy. We need to stop talking about easy.
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It’s not easy, but you will find that when you align yourself with the universal principles of giving and blessing, guess what? It becomes. You think less about it. It’s not as arduous. We’re in a process. There’s no way, there’s no hack. There’s no way to hack yourself out of the process called life. We were put here to be on an upward trajectory from a spiritual standpoint because we know the body is going to fall off at some point from a spiritual standpoint, we have to be on an upward trajectory. Consistently doesn’t mean perfect. We seek excellence, not perfection, an upward trajectory that leads us into our destiny.
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Our destiny. We’re not here to hurt other humans. We haven’t learned that lesson yet, but that’s not why we’re here. Some of us may never learn that lesson, but guess what? The universe will hold them accountable for that that will land in their house. What are you doing every single day? People like to have this conversation about, I’m tired of being the bigger person. Okay, we’ve all gotten tired of being the bigger person. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do it. There are a lot of good things we get tired of. Why? Because it takes work. It takes pushing up against things in your mind that don’t make sense. Why am I having to, and they don’t have to. It’s never about them. It’s about if you were transitioned out of here today and you got asked by the super powers, the creator, the higher powers of the universe, what did you do or what did you not do?
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That’s what this is about. The spirit and soul edification that will stand the test of eternity. Character. We’ve all made stupid mistakes, some of us still making them whether we realize it or not. If we recognize it, hopefully we stop doing it, but some things we just don’t know until we run into the brick wall. That’s where discernment comes in. What spirit are you operating in? Do not think this is just about you. If it was just about you, you’d be here by yourself, but there is a conveyance of something with all of us here together. We are supposed to use our character, our human intelligence to improve the human condition for all, so the universe is looking at us while we’re down here doing whatever it is we are doing and thinking they’re not getting it yet. Why is there still homelessness? How many humans does it take to solve homelessness? Clearly, we don’t know yet.
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How many humans does it take for us to make sure that every person eats Clearly, we don’t know yet, which is sad because what it means is that the resources that we have been given, we are using improperly, and I’m not just talking about the physical or financial resources. What I’m talking about is our spiritual resources, our human intelligence spirit, soul to devise solutions rather than anti solutions or non solutions. Where are the cures character. It takes character to do the right thing when you don’t want to do the right thing, and that’s within all of us.
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It’s about decision making. It’s about intention. It’s about what is informing you and who you want to be at the end of the day, not just how do you want to be remembered, but what do you want to have to give an account for because it’s coming you. We all got to do it. Be intentional regardless of where you are, and for some of you, you’re at a place where you don’t feel like you can do it. I’m promising you, even if you can just think the words, you can do it. I’ve been there. I don’t challenge you in anything. I even, I either am not going through or haven’t already gone through. I promise you. I had been in a place where I couldn’t even move my mouth to speak, so I just had to close my eyes and to the extent that I could muster up any nano anything of energy, just say, this is what I believe in my spirit and whoever you ask or whoever you pray to help me get there.
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Character building. You shouldn’t have to be going to character building classes. I’m glad they have them because at least the dialogue is continued there. The narrative of that is continued there. We want everything to be about they and them. Blame is not a principle of the universe. It’s not it’s, it’s never about they not saying Understand. Let me be clear. I’ve said this before, but for those that like to take things out of context, it doesn’t mean that other people weren’t involved with whatever the thing is. It just means that the universe isn’t holding they accountable. It’s holding you accountable. It’s holding me accountable for working together, for developing character, for forgiving, for blessing, for gratitude, for all of the things that we do. The question is, what are you doing to intentionally build your character? How are you making sure that the things you desire for your life and for those after you, because generational isn’t just physical, there is spiritual, not regeneration, but spiritual generations as well. What are you leaving? What is your legacy? We are so in love with money. Nothing wrong with money. We’re just not supposed to be in love with it. It’s a resource. It’s currency, but the spiritual currency is love, and so character building has everything to do with unconditional love. What are you doing to build your character? My name is Chaplain Michele, thank you for joining me for this segment of Transformed a podcast by Chaplain Michele. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.