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Hi, it’s Chaplain Michele. Thank you for joining me for this segment of Transformed a podcast by Chaplain Michele. Release the practice of release. There’s something that I’ve learned to do over time. It’s taken a while and I confess I’m still not where I want to be, but I’ve made a lot of progress and that is called the practice of release. When we understand that we are spiritual first, everything is spirit first, including us, and we begin to operate in a way that allows our spirits to flourish and to thrive, then we will. It doesn’t mean that everything around us all of a sudden is changed and becomes magical, and we’re skipping through lily fields. What it does mean is that there’s an opportunity then for us to make the adaptations and adjustments necessary to contribute better things and to be better people within the circumstances and environments in which we are placed.
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And we talk about a lot of different things from the concept of wellness, wellbeing and spirituality. But one of the key things for our personal wellbeing and to address the issue of allowing our spirits to breathe, allowing our spirits to thrive is the practice called release. When we are fearful, what we tend to do is we draw things in, we pull things in closer to us, and that’s not necessarily the best practice because along with every person, place, or thing that we pull into us, whether we consider that to be good or bad is not the issue. Whether the rating, how we rate it is not important. It’s the impact that it has on us. I can absolutely like, love, dislike someone, something, some place. So it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not. When I pull the thing that I don’t like or the thing that I love close, what’s happening is I’m not only restricting that thing, but I’m pulling in with it. That spirit, that energy, whatever is being flowing through that. So now that’s also impacting me, and this is something that we don’t understand about spirit and spirituality, which is a big comes, gets very confusing when it comes to talking about God and other things in terms of faith. So this is why we have to understand this because we can’t have clear pictures about God or a higher power or a higher being unless we understand this at this level.
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So when we pull things close, we are also pulling in the energy of the thing, whether good or bad, whether we perceive it as good or bad, which means now we are trying to harness that we may not even need to be associated with. So I’ve learned the practice of release when I feel myself getting anxious or overwrought or frustrated or annoyed, first of all, those are feelings I don’t want to have. Those are emotions I don’t want to experience. Those are things I don’t want to feel meaning. It doesn’t mean that they don’t happen. It doesn’t mean that those things don’t come. It means that that’s not where I want to spend my time here on earth. I don’t want to spend my time angry, annoyed, frustrated, irritated, aggravated, depressed, suppressed, oppressed, any of those things. But I have to also be able to recognize where those spiritual and emotional forces are originating from.
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And generally as a standard rule, we have to start with us, okay, what am I doing? What am I saying? What am I thinking? What am I believing? What am I valuing that could be contributing to this state? And if we can’t identify within ourselves, if we’re asking ourselves the right questions, the questions might be hard, but you only get the best answers if you ask the hardest questions, even if they heard a little bit. So I’ve learned the practice of release because I learned that I was pulling in some things, even things that I love dearly, that were bringing energy, that were bringing spirit that I don’t want to be associated with. That’s very difficult. It’s very challenging because we tend to look at the exterior, we look at the person, we look at the relationship of the person to us, whether platonic, familial, romantic or other professional.
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It doesn’t matter. So we tend to look at the transaction, what is the connection? And the connection is always spiritual, but because we don’t understand our own spirituality, everything is spirit first including us because we don’t understand that then we don’t have the right discernment, the right spiritual discernment concerning the people, places and things that we are associated with or that we associate ourselves with. And so we end up bringing in things that keep us from seeing objectively we can love and not be associated. We can love people and not be associated with them. I mean most of the people in the world, if you are in the faith so to speak, in many faiths, we are to love humanity. We are to love one another, but most of those people in the world or that have ever existed, we will never see. So I can love but not be associated.
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It’s harder when the people are closer to you by relationship, but it can still be done. And even when you have those times when you are in proximity, you can still set boundaries, spiritual boundaries. The reason many of us have challenges with setting emotional boundaries or other boundaries because we haven’t set the spiritual boundary yet. So we have things flowing in and out of our lives all the time, creating these situations and circumstances. But because we have not properly discerned it and determined whether or not that’s something we want to associate with spiritually, not the person spiritually, everything is spiritual first, including us, which means that someone that you love dearly, a person, place or thing can also be something that you have to set boundaries with in the spirit because they might not be at the same level of growth or in the same place on their journey. They may have things going on that you want to help them through, but you still have to set a boundary. So I learned the process of release.
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Now this is different from forgiveness. This is me getting myself together. This is you getting yourself together, right? This is before we get to what we have to do related to the other people. This is what we have to do to make sure we are operating from as clear a place as possible. We have to be able to make the assessment. First of all, embrace the understanding that everything is spirit first, including us. We are spirit. First. Everyone wants to talk about manifestations. We are manifestations of something spiritual. We are the great idea of a higher being, a higher power, and every idea has to manifest. Everything that’s spiritual must manifest. And the place that we are manifested is in the earth. The earth is the planet, the world is the people.
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So I get frustrated and I learned this when I was depressed, so I can speak from a place of experience and knowledge. I don’t want to say expertise, but I have the experience and I know from once I speak, I try not to speak from any place that I haven’t experienced, but I had to learn. I feel like I’m coming out of depression, but I’m still feeling things that I know or not helping me thrive. They’re not giving me life. We like to use the terminology, but we don’t really understand life either. That’s another segment. They’re not really helping me, not really. It’s driving me down. It’s draining my energy. It’s making me feel some kind of way. I don’t like the colloquialisms or the terminology, but so be it. There’s something that we can all relate to at this point in time. So the practice of release is simply this one.
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We have to acknowledge and embrace that everything is spirit first, including especially us. And I keep saying that because we don’t get that. That’s why our lives sometimes often look like whole messes, whole hot messes because we don’t get this piece and we’re trying to manage on the X outside what can only be managed inside. We’re trying to manage physically what can only be managed spiritually. So we’re backwards in it. When you have a vehicle and the vehicle is worth less than you owe on it, it’s called upside down. We’re upside down in life. We’re upside down in the journey of life because we are trying to do things from a physical perspective that can only be managed, right? We want to improve the outside, but the inside is okay. So the practice of release is simply this.
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I recognize that there are some things that I’m feeling that I’m experiencing, that I’m thinking go down the list. I may not be able to identify all of them, but I know that what I’m feeling right now is not conducive to what I believe I should be experiencing in terms of life. And I’m not talking about being out of touch with reality. This isn’t about fantasizing. This is about practical ways of dealing with spiritual things, even emotional things because your emotions are part of your soul, spirit’s, soul body. So your emotions are housed in your soul, which also is driven by spirit. What you believe, what you believe is driving everything. Belief drives behavior, but in between is the conductor called the soul. So I recognize there are some things even as I record this, that I’m feeling that I’m not. No, I’m not going to, no. So I have to release everything out of my spirit.
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I release it now. I do believe in God. I do believe in a higher power. I do not believe that humanity is autonomous the way we like to think. So in the context of my own belief, then I release out of my spirit everything which is not giving life everything which is not, which I should not be attached to right now. Everything which is trying to associate with me or that I’ve drawn in that I shouldn’t have drawn in every thought that I’ve had, that I really shouldn’t have had. I need to release it because our tendency is to want to control it, to fix it, to manipulate it. We want to take our way to try to fix things that can only be fixed starting with us. They can only be fixed when we deal with ourselves first.
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So I have to release it. It doesn’t matter what it is. And so for me, that looks like me saying there’s a woman of faith, right? Okay, God, I’m releasing this to you. I have no idea what’s going on right now, but this is not what I’m sensing, what I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing. I don’t know what the cause is. I don’t know what the root is. I don’t know what the origination of it is, but I know it’s spiritual, and so I’m releasing these things out of my spirit. Once I do that, then I can continue to move. I’m not bogged down anymore and it might take a few minutes. I’m not talking about this as magic, I’m not talking about this. It’s some kind of spell that you cast over yourself. I’m talking about practical application of spiritual principles, things you have to work at, so you may feel it again, come back in a few minutes, but part of this is the practice of the practice.
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We like one and done, but the reality is that’s not how life works. That’s not how spirit works. It’s a practice. You develop the muscle. You don’t go to the gym one time or some of us might. I don’t go to the gym at all. I do my workouts. I will do my workouts outside or in my home, but the principal is the same. If I’m looking for long-term results, then I have to be engaged and invested long-term. Same thing with your spiritual health. You don’t eat once and then expect to thrive on that meal for a lifetime. How much more than in the spirit, which is the reason you exist to begin with. So we have to practice the practice. One of those practices is release. So whatever within the space of your belief, I release things out of me that are contrary either to the direction I should be going.
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I set the boundaries I need to set, and you may or may not see immediate results. So I’m not even going to set that standard because this is not what this is about. Every single moment of your life, you’re going to have to make choices like this. You’re going to have to engage with people and you have engaged with people. It’s just that you’ve handled them probably the wrong way. I have. You want to handle them in the flesh because you want to get it done and get them out of your way, and you want to keep moving, and that’s not how it works.
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When you learn this, you can learn, you will be more objective about discernment. You won’t look at someone and say, oh, they look a certain way, so they must be X. Your spirit will tell you. We like to call it intuition. That’s spirit, and a lot of times we ignore that because we can’t see it when in fact, that is the greatest conductor and director of your journey that you can possibly have. For me, it’s holy spirit. For you, it might be something else. This is not a conversation about religion or faith. This is a comment, a conversation about spiritual practice that we all need to engage in because we are spiritual beings first and foremost, and our lives are jacked up altogether or in certain areas because we don’t get this thing right here, not just the release piece, the spiritual piece. We are spirit beings with a soul in a body or earth suit, as some people might call it. You don’t send astronauts to space without a spacesuit. We weren’t put here without earth suits.
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So acknowledging I’m a spirit. What is feeding me? What is nurturing me? What is growing me? What is guiding me? What is directing me? What is leading me and what am I withholding or bringing into my spiritual space that is not conducive to me being transformed, being transcendent or me reaching and attaining my destiny? We like to talk about purpose, but part of purpose is this thing that I’m talking to you about right now. Many of us can’t walk in purpose because we are not acknowledging our own spirituality. The nature of our existence is spiritual first, so release has to be part of the practice. Even if we don’t feel anything wrong, sometimes it’s just good to say, I release anything out of me right now that is not aligned with love, with purpose, with destiny, with hope, with joy, with peace, that’s life. All of those things are life, and we all know it because when we have felt those things, we know it’s life, we know how life feels. We are just not good at reproducing it because it doesn’t originate from us, but then also we do things to smother it. Yes, it’s true that we will encounter people that will not give it to us, but that’s where we set the spiritual boundary. Okay? That’s not I love you and this isn’t something you would even say to the person. See, we think in this society, well, I need to tell. No, you don’t. You set the spiritual boundary. You don’t need to say anything.
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And we’ve gotten in trouble because we run our mouths too much, but we neglect our spirits to our detriment release. Whatever’s going on today that is not aligned with love. Those things I desire in my life for my family, for my children, for my friends, for my loved ones, for my coworkers, even for people. I don’t like what I pray for one, I pray for all. If I desire it for me and mine, then I desire it for you and yours. We don’t have to know each other. I don’t need to know your business. We don’t have to be that closely connected, but the interdependency of who we are as humanity is what ties this whole thing all together. That’s why division is a no-no, because we can’t thrive collective if we’re not also asking everyone else to thrive. We can’t thrive individual if we’re not also believing that others can thrive as well. Spirit is greater than that spirit is not petty. That’s one thing. Spirit is not.
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It’s one thing. Holy Spirit is not. So let’s talk about, continue to talk about the practice of release, and I encourage you and I challenge you to begin it in your own life because once you start to get this and you begin to set spiritual boundaries, even if you come in contact with people that are not operating in a spirit you choose to associate with, you’ll find yourself being able to interact with them, but being less impacted or affected by them. You are spirit first. Everything is that chair you might be sitting on. It was an idea first, we were an idea first, everything is a manifestation. We talk about it like it’s something special. It’s a spiritual principle, and it’s not just to get money. That’s not even the primary purpose.
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The primary purpose is for us to be able to be love, joy, peace, or to move love, joy, and peace through us so that it gets to other people. Is provision part of that being able to take care of our homes and our lives and our families? Yes, it’s part of it, but that is the least of it. The greatest part of it is us becoming the best human beings that we can be. And so through spiritual health, through spiritual wellness, we can help to nurture one another, but first we have to be able to spiritually nurture and feed our own selves, or at least to interact with the higher being who is responsible for ensuring that we have everything that we need to become the best individuals, the best humans we can be, so that when we transition out of here, back into spirit, back into the spirit realm, then we are better. Not only are we better, but we can truly say that we have left a spirit, soul, and body legacy that advances the cause of all humanity in the best possible ways. My name is Chaplain Michele, I agape you. I love you. I appreciate you. I’m grateful for you. I bless you, and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye bye.