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Hi, it’s Michele. Thank you for joining me for this segment of Chaplain Michele. We know too much for our own good pain avoidance. On pain avoidance. We spend a lot of our lives, and I’ll speak for myself as I usually do. I try not to speak out of anything that I haven’t experienced and observed in great detail, but we spend a lot of our time trying to avoid pain rather than trying to resolve pain. And those unresolved traumas, pains, offenses are what cause the traumas we currently experience. So what’s happening is if a situation is not resolved in our lives, spirits, soul, or body, we think we can push past it and push into it. But our bodies are smarter than that. Our spirits are smarter than that, and really our souls are smarter than that, although ego is constantly fighting against those things. So we have both within us, we have the power to do good and as we know the power for evil both within us, the reason that we have intellect is so that we can learn and distinguish. The reason that we have intuition is so that our spirit can guide us into the right places.
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As human beings, we come in as innocent to some degree innocent people, human beings who are placed in certain situations and circumstances, not of our own choosing necessarily. That’s neither good or bad, it’s just we don’t have a choice in that matter. We are born into it. The process of growth is supposed to be such that those experiences help us to leverage the good, the instruction that we’re given, the family support, the love that we’re given. This is the ideal. I understand that everything doesn’t go this way. I’m talking about all things being equal. The ideal is that regardless of circumstances, situation, we are born into loving environments, compassionate environments that teach us how to navigate challenges and situations on our own that we will face later in life. But we know, as you know, that doesn’t always happen. I am blessed in that way and I understand that some of you weren’t, and I’m sorry for that. I can’t resolve that. But the point is that regardless of whether we consider our experiences to be good or bad, good or evil, love or hate, that the universe is always smarter than we are. That there’s always something greater at work than we are. And so what we do, we come out of this age of innocence, so to speak, supposed to be in a manner that’s supposed to be or have equipped us to be the best possible humans we can be.
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So it’s from birth onward. The trajectory of our lives is supposed to be upward, meaning we grow into our humanity. We come in as human beings, but we are supposed to grow into our humanity. Love, joy, peace, compassion, empathy, self-regulation, understanding, forgiveness, wisdom. And so there’s a lot of talk in the world of psychiatry and psychology about those childhood experiences and how they later show up in life and we all see it. We’ve all had to experience it. We’re all human. We’ve all had to go through it. And again, it doesn’t matter. We’re not rating the experiences.
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It happens to all of us and at some point we have to make a decision about what kind of person we are going to be. It’s called differentiation. At some point, we make distinct decisions about who we’re going to be, who we’re going to become, and so that’s the question. But what happens is once we experience pain, unlike the child who is definitely on an upward trajectory provided they have not been interfered with in some way, provided there hasn’t been trauma, tragedy or some other developmental issue, children are generally, they’re fearless about their growth. They’re fearless about their growth.
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It’s built into all of us to be fearless about our growth. Notice I said about our growth. We need someone to steward that process. When we are babies, infants up to a certain age, but even as early as two, some distinctions are being made naturally about what we will and won’t do. We call it the terrible twos, and I don’t like categorizing and I don’t like labeling because we also pigeonhole ourselves in each others by doing that, but that is a natural. The reason there’s such a thing called the terrible twos is because that’s a natural occurrence that we don’t control. It’s built in to us. There’s something that happens in us around that age or stage that begins to express itself in a different manner, whether we taught it or not. One of the many signs that we are not in control, but that child is fearless about their growth, they’re fearless about their expression, and that’s why the stewardship of childhood and infancy has to be such that the child understands what keeps them on a growth trajectory in a good way versus what could lead to pain.
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And the question we have to ask ourselves is as adults, how much of our pain avoidance is creating issues for us? We don’t have control rather than living the lives we’re supposed to live, we’re trying to control everything. I’m guilty of it. I’m still in recovery over it, meaning I have to learn. I am still learning, had to learn and still learning that I don’t control everything, that I have no control. The things that I know of that I can control, I try to do that. If I know I have a job or responsibilities or whatever it is, then I have to take care of those things. But I also have to understand that even in the best laid plans, there are nuances, there are things that I don’t know at any given moment in time, we might know a lot, but we don’t know nearly everything, so we don’t know everything that those decisions and those actions are impacting at any given point in time.
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That’s why we have to understand that in the chain of humanity, we don’t know everything and we have to consider the fact that just what I’m going through somebody else is going through in some other way. Just because we don’t come in looking alike in the same place, doing the same things doesn’t mean we’re not still human. We’re all still human. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is of that. At the end of the day, spirit and soul, not physicality, dictate who we are. Doesn’t mean we don’t take care of the container in which we are placed, the vessel in which we are placed, the human suit in which we are placed, but humanity becoming humanity, becoming growing into our humanity is really about spirit and soul that then dictates behavior. We look at behavior, we look at external things to determine who we are and who someone else is, and that is not what the universe sees. I’ll take it a step further for me, that’s not what God sees.
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We are supposed to transcend the negative circumstances of our lives by helping each other through the process, not by continually placing each other in demeaning, negative, derogatory, degrading circumstances. We think that we can separate ourselves, pain avoidance. If I can get this, then I don’t have to deal with them. I don’t have to deal with that. I don’t have to deal with it. I don’t have to deal with you. We are constantly using profanity and curses against one another thinking that because I hurl it at you because that vitriolic speech is projected at you that it doesn’t impact me, but because it’s coming out of and I’m going to say now I don’t do it. I used to. I don’t do it so it’s not, I had to recover from that as well. Understanding that just because you’re hurling it, the first person that it hits is you in your house. From a spiritual perspective, you can’t separate yourself from your behavior. You can’t separate yourself from your actions. You can’t separate yourself from your speech just because the systems of the world aren’t balanced in such a way to necessarily hold us accountable for every single thing that we do. Neither is it built in such a way where we are appreciated for our value, so we got to go both ways. Don’t think that you’re separating yourself either by your socioeconomic status, your heritage, any of those things.
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You’re still a human being born into the world the same way each and every single one of us came in and you will transition out of the world just the same way each and every one of us will. Not only that, you didn’t pick when you came in, you don’t pick when you leave. That’s a time and date stamp that none of us knows either coming in or going out, and so to the degree we continue to exclude ourselves from each other. By the way, we are designed for connection. We are puzzle pieces to be fit together, not fabric to be ripped apart.
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Any of our puzzle experts can tell us that you might get a million pieces, but somehow or another they all fit and that’s where we’re supposed to be dedicating our energy, this thing of pain avoidance and me and mine, and I’ve got mine, you got to get yours. That has nothing to do with humanity. That is ego telling you that you are the one that controls everything and the fact of the matter is you do not. There are certain things within all of our scopes of responsibility, our spheres of influence that we are responsible for. Responsibility though is not control and avoiding the pain of interaction. It’s not to say we know we can’t interact with everyone, but there is no distance in the spirit. We cannot physically know every person, but there is no distance in the spirit.
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If you distinguish yourself in a manner that makes you inhumane, then you’re responsible for that and you’re responsible for every person that you impact because of that. Likewise, if you set your heart, your spirit and your soul on becoming, growing into your humanity, becoming more loving, more compassionate, more joyous, more appreciative, be part of the solution rather than the problem, understand that we’re splitting this pie, so to speak. We’re leveraging the negative, right? We’re splitting the difference rather than leveraging what we have in common. That’s just not how it works. We don’t understand some basic spiritual principles and it’s costing us all of us. You know why we’re so upset and frustrated and aggravated because we don’t know how to leverage what we have in common for the good of the whole. I’m not talking about agreeing on everything. That’s not going to happen. We’re imperfect, but there is a level of agreement I can decide to agree even if there are nuances within the situation that I may not have handled the same way. You can do the same, but we are so limited and so deficit minded.
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People that want to exploit humanity do a great job of it because they understand the scarcity mindset, but I’m going to challenge all of us to operate in an asset-based strength-based, abundance based mindset where when we can get over our own need to avoid pain, I’m not saying that any of us wants to go through it. What I’m saying is that we can’t control it. What I’m saying is we have to live in a way that is fearless without being reckless. We have to live in a way that is loving, loving while also understanding the dynamic of human interaction. What I put in is what I’m going to get back, not because I’m manipulating the situation. We are so big into control and manipulation that we don’t understand that certain things are naturally reoccurring, and so even if it looks like we’re controlling something, that means we are cheating ourselves out of abundance.
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We’re cheating ourselves out of love and every human being needs love the universe is made of love, and so every opportunity that we have to forgive and we don’t forgive what’s happening is we’re complicating and making it more complicated. It’s complicated. We like to say that. Yeah, it’s complicated. You know why? Because that’s what we want it to be, because we don’t want to deal with the situations that can bring healing. We don’t want to have the interactions. We don’t want to forgive, and every act of forgiveness doesn’t mean a reconciliation. It just means that you release yourself from the spiritual tie to that situation so that you can continue to grow so that you can grow into your humanity so that the trajectory of your life continues upward, not downward in a spiral.
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Generationally speaking, we talk about DNA, we talk about ancestry, we talk about all these things. Do we talk about the spiritual nature of those things? Because some of the things we’re experiencing, a lot of the things we’re experiencing right now have to do with issues not being resolved generationally from a spirit, soul perspective, not just body. Body is the last of the three. Spirit is always first, always has been, always will be. So what’s going on in your spirit? What’s going on in your soul? If you’re living in your feelings, you’re living in the wrong place because feelings might tell you what’s happening, but feelings are not supposed to govern.
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What do we believe? Who are we really? And I say we, but I mean you. Who are you? Who am I? There is no we without us getting ourselves together. So we need to stop hiding behind certain groups and affiliations to dictate who we are. At the end of the day, you will be accountable for you just like I will be accountable for me, spirit, soul, body. It’s not easy, but it is simple and it’s necessary for it to be uncomplicated. We have to be willing to do some deep work, some challenging things in our selves.
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No one else can solve it for you. By the way, what you associate with is what you become accountable for. We don’t understand spiritually, right? Spiritually, not talking about religion, spiritual, you are a spirit. We are spirit first. Spiritually, what we associate with, what we willingly associate with is what we’re accountable for. There is no distance there. That’s where the soul comes in, the emotions, the intellect, the decision-making capacity, the psyche, the psychology, the ego. What am I willing to do? And once I decide that’s what I want now I’m accountable for that. That’s who I want to be with. Now I’m accountable for that. So even if we don’t specifically have a physical hand in an activity of behavior, whether good or bad, when we associate with that thing, that’s what we become accountable for as if we did it. We are missing so much because we don’t understand the spiritual principles associated with our existence.
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Pain is physical in some way, yes, but there’s also spirit pain. Pain in the spirit, soul, spirit. We have a number of mental health, mental wellness challenges that have to be overcome because of pain from a spiritual perspective that’s projected into the soul and then manifests in the body like everything else. So if we have joy manifesting in the spirit, then that’s rejected into the soul and then it comes out in the body. But don’t be mistaken, regardless of which you choose, that’s what you’re accountable for. See, if we look at external systems to dictate accountability, spiritual accountability is the greatest accountability there is because we are spirit first, and so when you associate yourself good or bad, I’m not making a judgment or a rating. I’m saying understand the principle because it’s costing you or it’s benefiting you in one way or another. You might be able to fool other humans just like you might be able to bless other humans, but what you do is what you’re going to get back. What you don’t do is what you’re going to get back. What you are giving is what you’re going to give. That’s how it works. A farmer, and I’ll talk more about this in another place, talk about the process of farming. I have such respect for farmers because they are living out the life process. Farming agricultural work in its truest purest sense is representation of the lifecycle of humanity.
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Study it. Look at it, a seed is sown into ground and left there. The farmer who puts the seed in the ground, the farmer knowing what seed they’re sowing, they have knowledge of the crops. Why do they have knowledge of the crops? Because they know the dirt, so they know what to put in there. They know it’s going to grow. They know it’s not going to grow. And then after they’ve done the work of breaking up the fallow ground of understanding the soil that they’re working with, they have to wait after that seed is planted. Sure they have to irrigate, but they don’t control the weather and at some point, given again all things being equal, they will produce the harvest of the seed they sowed, not the harvest of something else.
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The harvest that comes up is the one they planted, the one they put in the ground, the one they prepared for, the one they took care of to the degree that they could. They did their responsibility, but they don’t have full control. So I salute farmers, pure hearted farmers, trying to do the right thing for themselves, for the economy, for their families, and we need to salute them just like we need to salute our military. We should never take any of this for granted, but the farmer in particular, that process represents the lifespan. We come in as a seed sewn into ground placed in a place where we don’t control the weather, so we think very erroneously. I might add that we can just do stuff and there is no harvest that we can exclude ourselves from the harvest of the seed that we actually sow.
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It doesn’t work that way from a spiritual principle regardless of belief system. It doesn’t work that way. That is not a spiritual principle. You don’t have to believe in gravity. It’s gravity. That is a spiritual principle. There are spiritual principles. You don’t have to believe in them. That’s the principle. You can try to find all the loopholes and circumvent the process all you want to. At the end of the day, the spiritual principle will have the last word, so you can’t either intentionally or arbitrarily be using your life, spirit, soul and or body including your words and hurling them as seeds to others thinking that you’re not going to reap the harvest and that generations after you are not going to reap the harvest of whatever it is you’re doing in thought, word and deed. See, but that’s how we live and that’s why we are so angry and depressed because we don’t get it. We are connected.
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We’re all placed in this place, and the best thing we could do for each other is learn how to love. The universe is made of love. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t need it to survive, and we do need it to survive. Even though because of pains we may have experienced, we have taught ourselves or told ourselves, well, I don’t need love. I don’t need a man. I don’t need a woman. I don’t need another person. I don’t need a partner. I don’t need anybody. That’s what we say, but that’s not true. Spiritually, that’s not true. There’s no such thing because if you didn’t need anyone, you wouldn’t be here with everyone.
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Both of those cannot be true. Now, we may not want to interact with, we may not want to see talk to that’s different. That’s interaction encounter, but need is different. We all need love. Even though, as I said, because of pain, we may have convinced ourselves we don’t, but the universe is made of love and if we didn’t need love, love wouldn’t exist at the level that it exists and we haven’t experienced it at the level that we need to experience because we are too busy wallowing in the dirt. When the trajectory of our lives should be growing into our humanity, which is love, we are to be love, become love, become abundance, become joy, become a compassion, not just do it.
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We are to represent a beautifully germinated seed that produces a harvest of life that not only do we benefit from, but just by virtue of our presence, we don’t have to go around talking about it. We don’t have to go around just by virtue of our presence. People are drawn in. People then become, they’re inspired. It’s a naturally occurring process rather than something that’s manufactured and manipulated. So I don’t want to let you know today that love is present, love is here, and it’s your decisions just as mine that determine the level at which we access love. Even if at different places in our lives love has been denied or withheld from us, those situations and people were not in control. At the end of the day, the spiritual principles will have the say. Love is like gravity. It’s always present in this place and space in which we exist and the degree to which we access that. Now, lemme tell you the interesting thing. Even in pain, you have to give love because love is what overcomes the pain. Even if you are in pain, here’s another mistake we make. We say, well, because I’m in pain, because I didn’t get it then I can’t give it.
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But in fact, the opposite is true. Your pain, whatever you might, even if you’re in joy, it is still we are the givers of love. We are supposed to be at a frequency, at a level of understanding and wisdom in our lives at some point where we recognize the only answer to this is to give, give love. What does that look like? Making sure everybody has food, making sure everybody that is unhoused has housing, even if they can’t sleep on a public street, making sure our children are safe and protected, making sure that all of our older populations are protected and safe, that those who have worked diligently and supported industry and this nation in various ways retire in peace, not poverty. It’s looking out for each other in ways that we want to deny. We want to act like we are in control, but we’re not because the spiritual principle will have the last say, and even if it’s at our last breath transitioning out of here, that’s what’s going to come back at the end of the day is how did you, you become love while you were here? Did you grow into your humanity?
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Did you come in as the seed planted in soil, not in control of the weather? Did you deliver a harvest of life and love and peace? Did you become love and peace to others or did you become something else? Because understanding, this is everything. Understanding this will shift your life on a dime. If you’re in a place right now where you don’t know how you’re going to make it, understanding this, and just even if you don’t feel it and that’s the danger of your emotions, I don’t feel it. Nobody asks you to feel it. That’s not what this is governed by. Feelings are just an indicator of something, but when you apply a spiritual principle and begin to take steps in that direction, guess what? It will override those feelings to bring you into a place of agreement with the principle itself. Love is always present, and the challenge for us, it’s not to spend so much time in places of just despair and negativity. Well, if you have a wealth mindset, no, because the wealth mindset means I have to be spiritually wealthy first. Everybody’s not going to have the same amount of money. They’re not going to have the same things. That doesn’t make us less than, and the test is that we don’t have the same things. The test isn’t that we all have the same thing. The test is that we don’t. The test isn’t that we don’t all look alike. I mean all look alike. The test is that we don’t.
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That’s the test because the spiritual principle still applies because the universe is saying, so how are you going to treat somebody that’s in a different situation, circumstances you, not only that they believe different than you, they look different from you. They have different things from you. That’s the test, and that’s what love is designed to help us navigate and overcome. It’s to see the humanity that exists between us rather than continuing to harp on the scarcity and negativity, deficit in thinking. You want to talk about mindset, talk about how deficit minded we are. Let’s talk about that. Even the wealthy, because you, we, us. Oh, you can’t have it. I want it. I want it, but you can’t have it. That’s deficit thinking. The universe is fully capable of taking care of a hundred percent of a hundred percent, 100% of 100%. We don’t have a supply problem. We have a distribution problem because there’s deficit thinking. So if I believe not even glass, half full, glass full, oh, there’s more than enough to go around. I may not be able to see that, but when I believe in that and I tap into that spirit of abundance, guess what? There is more than enough to go around rather than tapping into the spirit that says, oh, well, we only have two nickels to rub together, so I’m going to take my nickel, but I’m going to keep you from having yours.
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It’s not going to manifest. You want to know what a miracle is? A miracle is that place where it seems impossible to us, and so rather than speaking into the impossibility, rather than living and leaning into the impossibility, we lean into the possibility that is not yet manifested. We lean into abundance even when abundance is not present. We lean into love even when we can’t see where love exists because it is in that moment that love becomes evident. That abundance becomes evident when we decide that’s what we want and that’s who we want to be, that we want to become better individuals and therefore better people, and therefore better society, a better world for one another. Then that’s when everything shifts. We want to continue to play the games and then expect things to change. It’s not going to happen that way. Oh, it’s getting worse. Oh yeah, it is getting worse because you’re making it worse. Oh, yeah, it is. They, because it’s not you, because not doing your part, and if you understood your own humanity, then you wouldn’t be able to say they, and even if you did say they, you would understand. Well, yeah, I don’t agree with that, but I can kind of see where they’re coming from because if I was making a decision about X, Y, z, I would want my,
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Nobody’s asking us to agree to agree on every jot and tittle of anything. What we’re saying is that I understand humanity enough. I understand your humanity enough based on my own experiences that even if I don’t agree with you, I can at least respect you. I get where you’re coming from and I can allow love to be present in this moment. We might walk away from each other and never see each other again, but I can respect you and I can say, you know what? I love you and I respect you, and I pray the best for you. I believe the best for you. I bless you and walk away and be where love is present, right? We created love in that space,
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So let’s stop talking about pain avoidance and scarcity, and we don’t have enough. The universe can provide for a hundred percent of a hundred percent. Otherwise, we wouldn’t all be here. The test is on us. How are we going to make it happen? Are we willing to trust in not what we can see, but what we can’t see to bring in to manifest those things? We like talking about manifestation. Let’s manifest that. Let’s manifest love. Let’s manifest abundance. Let’s follow and align ourselves with the spiritual principles to ensure that each and every person is taken care of in the right way, in the best way without harm or exclusion, because we’re all going to be held accountable, every single one of us for how we use, what manifest resources we have and the ones we don’t because there are things waiting for us to decide
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To say love. I can’t see it. I can’t feel it. I can’t taste, I can’t touch it. I can’t smell it. It is beyond. It is supernatural. It’s beyond my natural senses. It is beyond what I know. It is beyond what I can control, but I know it’s there. Come on, love manifest in this place. Manifest through me. Help me to get over my own self and you need to be saying the same thing. Too much of us are so caught up in ego. We can’t see the forest for the trees, but your ego is what’s killing you.
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If you could do it by yourself, you would be here by yourself. If you were self-made, you would be the only one here, and so in some way or another, we are all contributing to each other’s detriment or to each other’s wellbeing. I choose to contribute to your wellbeing to the extent that I can. Whatever my part is, I’m going to choose that part. Whatever the part is that gets us on the upward trajectory, leaning into our humanity, growing into our humanity, transcending circumstance, in order for all of us to make it across the finish line in the best possible way, the finish line of this process called life, and it’s not life until we actually start living it. I’m here for that. You need to decide. You need to decide what you’re here for. This is Chaplain Michele. Thanks for joining me for this segment. I’ll see you next time. Bye-Bye.