Episode 29 - The Wall: A Defining Moment in the Journey of Faith
Summary
The discussion centers on the pivotal experience known as "the wall," which represents a significant and often challenging juncture in one's spiritual journey. This experience is not merely a phase, but rather a profound encounter that compels individuals to confront their perceptions of faith, productivity, and self-worth. As I delve into this concept, I emphasize the importance of recognizing that one's journey may not follow a linear progression through stages, but rather involves overlapping phases where personal crises can catalyze deeper spiritual insight. We explore the emotional turmoil that accompanies this experience, including feelings of abandonment, anger towards God, and existential doubt. Ultimately, the conversation invites listeners to understand the wall as an opportunity for genuine transformation, urging a relinquishment of control and an embrace of one's intrinsic worth as defined by divine love, rather than by societal expectations or personal achievements.
What do you do when everything you thought was true about your spiritual walk with God gets shaken by life experiences, or a traumatic event in your life, or a crisis? We have some very important choices to make, but how do we make them when we have never visited this "place" in our spiritual journey? No one seems to be able to help us and our usual strategies don't seem to work. What now? This is question that we need to answer more than any other. Listen in to get a clearer understanding of what we are experiencing and how we navigate this experience we are going through.
Show Notes
In this enlightening episode, Dr. Ray Mitsch delves into the profound and often challenging experience known as 'The Wall,' a critical moment in the spiritual journey that many may encounter. This phenomenon is presented not as a linear stage but as an intricate experience that serves as a catalyst for deeper self-discovery and transformation. Dr. Mitsch emphasizes the significance of self-awareness and the necessity of understanding one's spiritual location prior to attempting to guide others, thereby underscoring the importance of experiential knowledge in spiritual leadership.
Throughout the dialogue, Dr. Mitsch draws from the framework established by Janet Hagberg and Robert Gulick in their exploration of the Critical Journey stages. He illustrates how the Wall often emerges during times of crisis, where individuals may grapple with profound feelings of abandonment, unworthiness, and anger towards the divine. By sharing personal experiences and referencing scriptural narratives, such as those of Job and Elijah, Dr. Mitsch articulates the universal aspects of this challenging encounter, shedding light on how it can lead to significant spiritual growth and transformation.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a compelling invitation for listeners to reflect upon their own spiritual pathways, encouraging them to engage with the complexities of their faith amidst the inevitable challenges they face. By confronting the Wall, individuals are offered the opportunity to forge a more authentic relationship with God, characterized by trust, acceptance, and a deepened understanding of their inherent worth, regardless of their productivity or achievements in the realm of spirituality.
Takeaways:
- The concept of 'the wall' signifies a pivotal experience in spiritual journeys, representing a crisis that often leads to deeper self-understanding.
- Navigating the wall requires recognizing the difference between productivity for God and being rooted in personal faith and authenticity.
- Individuals encountering the wall may feel abandoned and question their worth, highlighting the need for acceptance and love as they are.
- The wall serves as a convergence point for faith and psychology, revealing the necessity of embracing vulnerability in one's spiritual journey.
- Many resist engaging with the wall due to the fear of confronting their flaws and past traumas, which ultimately stifles growth.
- Experiencing the wall can lead to profound transformation, inviting individuals to trust in God's love beyond their perceived failures.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Janet Hagberg
- Robert Gulick
- Saint John of the Cross
- SGI Media
Transcript
You're listening to the outpost podcast with Dr.
Speaker A:Ray Mitchell.
Speaker A:Welcome, everybody, to another edition of the outpost podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Dr.
Speaker A:Ray Mitch, your host, and I certainly hope that you are or have, are enjoying St.
Speaker A:Patrick's Day.
Speaker A:It's an odd holiday because the guy that we're celebrating was beheaded for the faith.
Speaker A:That sounds very fun.
Speaker A:And so we celebrate it with Guinness.
Speaker A:I don't get it.
Speaker A:I don't understand.
Speaker A:Well, I do get it, but that's really not the point.
Speaker A:So, anyway, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker A:You're listening into the Outpost Podcast.
Speaker A:It's a place to bump into Jesus in a way that is portrayed in scripture.
Speaker A:And you get to meet him as he is, not as you've been told him to be, or he stereotyped or caricatured for you, or even in our culture, for that matter.
Speaker A:And really, this is really good.
Speaker A:Hopefully I want it to be a place where people can be known and accepted as they are, not as they should be.
Speaker A:And if the online community actually continues to grow, then we will certainly be able to launch in the next kind of phase of growth, growth, some online groups for people to attend to have that opportunity to meet other people that are having very similar experiences.
Speaker A:So we want to look at the intersection of faith and psychology and spiritual formation for people.
Speaker A:And that's really what this whole series is all about.
Speaker A:We've got quite a bit to go yet.
Speaker A:We are only about halfway through.
Speaker A:And I am basing a lot of my comments and narration, if you will, around the Critical Journey Stages in the Life of Faith, a book that was written by Janet Hagberg and Robert Gulick.
Speaker A:I give them all the credit.
Speaker A:They are just a launching point for my comments and perspective on some of this stuff.
Speaker A:Some of this I share just from my own spiritual journey and what it's been like.
Speaker A:And there's a lot that we've already covered in for the first three stages.
Speaker A:And like I've said before, and I'll say it again, the stages doesn't quite cut it because it tends to tempt us into thinking in terms of stage one, stage two, stage three, check, check, check.
Speaker A:Now I'm good to go.
Speaker A:And that's not it.
Speaker A:And it's really more of a phase that overlaps with one another where we will have these, what they call stages collapse down on each other, and we'll be at two phases at the same time.
Speaker A:I think that's probably a more reasonable perspective on it.
Speaker A:But we had just finished talking about stage three, and that's often referred to as kind of the productive life.
Speaker A:Now, the thing I will highlight for you in talking about this is that we're heading into a pivotal point where we move from a life being built to a journey being engaged in.
Speaker A:Just to give you some perspective, we're not there yet.
Speaker A:And what we're going to cover today is something that is often referred to as the wall.
Speaker A:And it's not a stage, it's not a phase even.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:It really is an experience that people often will hit somehow.
Speaker A:And how they.
Speaker A:How they navigate this is pretty key, partly because of what their spiritual journey looks like thereafter.
Speaker A:And so two key principles that I started out with at the beginning, and I'll just mention it again each time, is, is the.
Speaker A:You can't move anywhere if you don't know where.
Speaker A:And that's really why I'm taking all this painstaking time to talk about this.
Speaker A:So you can't move anywhere if you don't know where you are.
Speaker A:And then secondly, you can't lead someone to a place you've never been.
Speaker A:And that's a key element, even in leadership, is how do I lead somebody to something maybe I've only read about or I've only been told about?
Speaker A:And most of us would hire a guide based on them having had the experience of being to this place that they're trying to lead us to.
Speaker A:And we want to be those kind of people.
Speaker A:We want to be available to people to help them and walk this journey with them.
Speaker A:But we've got to have some idea about where we're heading.
Speaker A:And so we just left stage three, that's referred to as the productive life.
Speaker A:And it has a lot of productivity in it.
Speaker A:I raised the question, is our productivity built?
Speaker A:Is our worth built on our productivity for the church and contributing?
Speaker A:It has a lot of very legitimate places, places for us to visit, if you will.
Speaker A:In terms of our involvement in church settings and in ministry, feeling like we're actually contributing, and that's a very big part of our spiritual journey, is to be able to.
Speaker A:We've been taking in the converted life and in the discipled life, we've been taking in stage three, or phase three, tends to have us look out so that we can help other people and contribute to the overall purpose and goal of the church or the ministry.
Speaker A:And now something dramatic quite happens, and often somebody will experience a crisis through a life transition, an external trauma that they may experience or an internal struggle.
Speaker A:And oftentimes you will hear people refer to it as a dark night of the soul.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's a perspective.
Speaker A:Now, most people that you bump into on the street are not.
Speaker A:Use that phrase, but they've never read the book, which is kind of strange.
Speaker A:And it was written by a ancient saint by the name of Saint John of the Cross.
Speaker A:And Dark Night of the Soul describes a pivot point, a turning point in the old saint's life that he began to realize that all that he thought was how this thing works.
Speaker A:And all the rules that he had established to make life work this way and in the spiritual life suddenly seemed to start to be unraveling before his very eyes.
Speaker A:And sometimes it's a life transition, a crisis of some sort, and that can be anything.
Speaker A:It can be a change in status, like losing a spouse or a loss.
Speaker A:It could be the external trauma of something dramatic happening.
Speaker A:I can tell you from my own life, the external trauma in my case was falling off of a roof and breaking my leg and having a head injury and continuing head pain and all of the things that really went into it.
Speaker A:And I thought I could just get back on the horse and keep right on riding.
Speaker A:And what it ended up doing is really kind of throwing me into a crisis of.
Speaker A:I thought I had it figured out.
Speaker A:I thought I had the playbook of dealing with and relating to God and being productive and mattering, if you will.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And so in a lot of cases, and what Hagberg and Gulick talk about here is hitting the wall.
Speaker A:And the wall, like I said, is an experience.
Speaker A:It is not a phase.
Speaker A:It is something a lot of people feel and experience in their spiritual journey.
Speaker A:It is a defining one, very much of a defining one, in terms of what's coming next, if you will.
Speaker A:So during this period time, people oftentimes will feel very abandoned.
Speaker A:They will feel unloved, they will feel unworthy.
Speaker A:They will feel angry at God for not coming through, which, count me in that number that I did everything I thought I was supposed to do, I did everything I thought you told me to do, and this is where it leaves me.
Speaker A:And I don't.
Speaker A:I don't understand.
Speaker A:And so the crisis itself has a way of stripping away all of the trappings of our faith in Christianity.
Speaker A:And we realize there's not a whole lot underneath it.
Speaker A:And we begin to realize how inauthentic our journey has become.
Speaker A:Now, that doesn't mean it hasn't been before, that it's been inauthentic the whole, you know, the entire time up to this point.
Speaker A:No, that's not the case.
Speaker A:That is that oftentimes times is our temptation to think in all or nothing terms, or to think of, I'm back to square one terms, which is not the case either.
Speaker A:So what really ends up happening here is our wills come face to face with God.
Speaker A:And God essentially is saying, I don't want what you can contribute to me, I just want you.
Speaker A:And quite honestly, I don't think we believe that.
Speaker A:We say, you know, I am not enough.
Speaker A:I'm not enough.
Speaker A:And this is a real key point in some of my teachings with shame is this is where our language of scarcity not being enough versus abundance, which is what God is offering us.
Speaker A:And that embeds itself in our thinking.
Speaker A:And so we think, well, there must be something else I need to do, or just me alone can't be enough.
Speaker A:I have to add something to it.
Speaker A:I have to do something else.
Speaker A:And we keep doing really.
Speaker A:And so in a lot of cases, this whole idea of my will, I can center myself, I can focus my efforts, I can focus all of my willpower and discipline in being the best I could possibly be for God.
Speaker A:And that's what God wants.
Speaker A:What we forget to kind of remind ourselves is God accepts us as we are all along the journey, no matter where we are on the journey, he accepted us as we are in the very beginning.
Speaker A:So somehow we get this notion that the more we grow, the more we contribute, the more we do stuff, that this is an added value to us for God.
Speaker A:It's like, oh, so God's going, oh, yeah, wow, that's really good.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's so much better than the one I accepted at the beginning.
Speaker A:But what we forget during this whole process and the stages leading up to this place is that he's accepting us all along.
Speaker A:All the flaws, all the mistakes, all the stumbles, all the potholes, all of that, plus all of the victories.
Speaker A:Victories and all of the, the accomplishments and all of the high points in our faith and everything he is accepting all of it.
Speaker A:And so it's during this time that our we come face to face with God and we recognize either we recognize that I've got to rethink what this relationship with God looks like rather than this doing for God looks like.
Speaker A:And we're invited to relinquish and let go of our egos for one and our wounds for another.
Speaker A:Because by this point, at the very beginning of our conversion, it has a way of kind of covering over all the stuff that I talked about during the converted life.
Speaker A:We bring all of our stuff with us into the journey.
Speaker A:And we can be very busy for God, and so busy for God that we can completely distract ourselves from the things that are going on in our lives that haven't stopped.
Speaker A:They were part of the pre conversion life.
Speaker A:They haven't stopped.
Speaker A:They continued on.
Speaker A:They've just been covered over and they have been distracted.
Speaker A:We've been distracted by the busyness, if you will, of growing spiritually, which is it is something to engage ourselves in very authentically and powerfully and very significantly, all of that.
Speaker A:But we begin to realize that we get more invested in the trappings of our faith than our faith itself.
Speaker A:And slowly but surely, it is almost embedded in our broken spiritual DNA to become more and more Pharisee like so that I begin to contract with God.
Speaker A:I will do this for you if you will bless me.
Speaker A:And we may not even identify it, but when this point in our spiritual journey happens, it is shown in bright lights to us.
Speaker A:And we've got a really hard, hard decision to make.
Speaker A:And we begin to recognize that all the wounds and all the other kind of history and things that we had all along now begins to have a significant impact on us along the way.
Speaker A:And so there are a variety of examples in scripture of people that have hit the wall.
Speaker A:One of the most profound ones, and one of my favorites actually is Job.
Speaker A:And Job hits the wall.
Speaker A:And the wall was what?
Speaker A:His property was taken, his children were all killed.
Speaker A:Everything was in shambles and dust, basically.
Speaker A:And even his wife was saying, kill yourself and curse God and kill yourself.
Speaker A:That would be better that way than what you're in right now.
Speaker A:And so he hits this wall and his friends come to see him.
Speaker A:And this is something really important to keep in mind if you're walking along, somebody who's experiencing this, is that his friends come to see him.
Speaker A:And we're told that they.
Speaker A:They don't even recognize him from far off.
Speaker A:And these are friends of his.
Speaker A:And so they come and they are awestruck by what he looks like.
Speaker A:He's got boils from head to toe.
Speaker A:He's scraping, scraping it in order to itch his skin with broken pieces of pottery.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:This is a broken and devastating, devastated man.
Speaker A:And we're told that his friends sat Shiva with him, which is a tradition within the Jewish faith of sitting silently with a person who is grieving, who is in the midst of all of this agony and misery.
Speaker A:And sitting shiva is silence.
Speaker A:It's silence.
Speaker A:And his friends did their best work in the first seven days because they said nothing.
Speaker A:They said absolutely Nothing.
Speaker A:They were stunned, first of all, but they said nothing at all.
Speaker A:Then when they finally got sick of the silence, they opened their mouths and it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Speaker A:They were not helpful.
Speaker A:And all of the things that they suggested to Job are the worst things to say to somebody who's in the middle of a wall type of experience.
Speaker A:It's the worst things to, like, what did you do wrong, Job?
Speaker A:That's one.
Speaker A:Or, you're just so arrogant after all, you think that we can't speak to you.
Speaker A:That's two.
Speaker A:And there are a number of different kind of angles that they took, all pointing out their perspective of God to Job.
Speaker A:So they take their best understanding of God, and then they impose it on Job's circumstances and say, there, I'm helpful, right?
Speaker A:And Job goes, no, you're not helpful.
Speaker A:And you guys are blowing hot air.
Speaker A:And Job is saying, look, even though he kills me, and this is the nature of his faith in God, even though he kills me, I will still believe in him.
Speaker A:And I know.
Speaker A:And this is from Job.
Speaker A:He says, I know my redeemer liveth, and one day I will see him face to face.
Speaker A:So he still is looking forward in the midst of all of this agony that he's in.
Speaker A:But his friends were not being helpful.
Speaker A:And so there's Job.
Speaker A:That's one example of a wall kind of experience.
Speaker A:Another one, a really good one, this one I enjoy, too, is Elijah.
Speaker A:And Elijah, you know, has predicted this drought and famine, and it's gone on for three years.
Speaker A:And then he finally gets fed up, and he challenges the priests of BAAL to a showdown on Mount Carmel.
Speaker A:And he has the showdown and kills them all.
Speaker A:And God shows up and big things happen, wonderful things happen.
Speaker A:And the Queen Jezebel, which is just, you know, a name that means evil, I can't imagine anybody naming somebody Jezebel because of that very thing.
Speaker A:But she is unimpressed by all of this, and she puts a warrant out for his head to get him killed.
Speaker A:And he literally runs to a cave on Mount Horeb.
Speaker A:And the imagery is so great because here's a guy who said, I did all it, all that you told me to do.
Speaker A:God, look what showed up.
Speaker A:And now I'm still on the run, and I'm marked for death.
Speaker A:What good is this, right?
Speaker A:And that's when the famous occurrences happen, of hearing God's voice.
Speaker A:Not hearing it in the whirlwind, not hearing it in a thunderstorm or an earthquake, but hearing a small, still voice.
Speaker A:And that's another wall experience.
Speaker A:Oftentimes we feel like we are so isolated and we're waiting for God to show up in big, huge ways, and he shows up in very small, gentle and even quiet ways instead.
Speaker A:And we're saying, no, no, no, that's not good enough, God, I need something big here.
Speaker A:I need some way of doing this so that people can know that you and I are on good terms again.
Speaker A:There are innumerable places where David talks about this as well, saying, why are you so forsaken my soul?
Speaker A:That tells you a little bit about where he is.
Speaker A:And the last one I'll mention out of the New Testament is Peter.
Speaker A:Think about it.
Speaker A:Peter left his home, left his marriage, left his occupation to be with Jesus, even kind of climbing the pinnacle of his.
Speaker A:His awareness of who Jesus was by declaring him the son of the living God.
Speaker A:And Jesus saying to him, on your testimony, everything will be built.
Speaker A:And then he's standing in the courtyard near a fire and he denies Jesus three different times.
Speaker A:And those three days between Jesus crucifixion and Jesus resurrection must have been excruciating to Peter because he had left everything.
Speaker A:He had bet everything on this, on this preacher from Nazareth.
Speaker A:And he knew in his heart of hearts who he was.
Speaker A:But here we were.
Speaker A:It was the silence of the three days which we're coming up on in a couple of weeks.
Speaker A:So in the Divine Comedy, Dante says, midway along the journey of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.
Speaker A:Another example in poetry of this wall type of experience.
Speaker A:So what happens is we move from being productive to being fruitful instead of doing something for God.
Speaker A:We are the fruit of God.
Speaker A:And so not every journeyer, when they reach the wall, and this is key, not every journeyer, when they hit the wall or are kind of thrust into it, do they negotiate the challenges.
Speaker A:As a matter of fact, it is the kind of thing that would they just turn tail and run back into the productive life, because then they at least have got evidence that they're doing something for God.
Speaker A:They know that they're doing something for God, right?
Speaker A:And so many find the invitation for soul work, which is part of what the wall is an invitation of, is just too difficult to undertake.
Speaker A:And so they turn themselves back and pretty much camp out at that part of the journey that we talked about last time in stage three.
Speaker A:And so the one of the authors said, basically has said the wall is the work of the heart, but not for the weak of heart.
Speaker A:And that's why we find so many clever ways to avoid it.
Speaker A:And we do.
Speaker A:We do.
Speaker A:We run.
Speaker A:We taste it.
Speaker A:We taste the difficulty of it and all the uncertainty of it.
Speaker A:And we say, thanks, but no thanks.
Speaker A:I'm tapping out here.
Speaker A:I'll go back to where I can at least know where I am and how I'm supposed to do things, and I can follow that.
Speaker A:So the thing that's so key about the wall is it is a place where the two that I have been talking about in this podcast come together, where psychology and faith and spirituality can be.
Speaker A:And it is right at that intersection where they converge that we're talking about and I have been talking about on this podcast in so many ways is that's where they show up.
Speaker A:That's where they.
Speaker A:They converge.
Speaker A:That's that intersection that I talk about so often.
Speaker A:So the Wall is a key, important part.
Speaker A:It is a pivotal point.
Speaker A:We've kind of got a decision on our hands as to which direction we're actually going to go.
Speaker A:And up until this point, one can be religious, spiritual, or fruitful and not be healed of the wounds that we bring with us into our spiritual journey.
Speaker A:Now you can say, well, maybe I don't have any wounds.
Speaker A:And that may be true.
Speaker A:I hope that's true.
Speaker A:But the thing is that this experience has a way of revealing that maybe we've gotten the psychological healing but not the spiritual development.
Speaker A:Or we've got the spiritual development and not the psychological healing.
Speaker A:And the last I checked, I don't know about you, but the last I checked, we were all raised by flawed, loving, important people called parents.
Speaker A:And that inevitably leaves scars.
Speaker A:And those scars can have an impact on our relationships, not only with ourselves, but with other people and with God.
Speaker A:So we need.
Speaker A:That's what this does, is it strips away all of these things that we thought we were supposed to do, and then we're left with.
Speaker A:It feels like nothing other than just.
Speaker A:It's just me and God.
Speaker A:And it's like, you're okay, God, but I'm not so sure about me.
Speaker A:And I think I need to do some more work here before I have this meeting.
Speaker A:And see, it's during this point in time where people often will taste something that the ancients called contemplation or contemplative prayer.
Speaker A:It's sitting in God's presence and not doing anything and just being present with God in that moment.
Speaker A:And that is so hard for us to do.
Speaker A:Our brains run at mach speed and trying to bring those RPMs down enough to allow Ourselves to simply be silent in our spirit, in our soul, in our hearts, to be able to hear God in that soft, quiet voice, which I think oftentimes is more frequent than not.
Speaker A:There.
Speaker A:There are, you know, some.
Speaker A:Some glaring, obvious things that.
Speaker A:That are there that show God, but there are lots of other times that.
Speaker A:That they are just very, very subtle in.
Speaker A:And if we're not looking for it, we won't see it.
Speaker A:And so it is not uncommon for people on the journey to recycle stage two and three.
Speaker A:Remember, two is the discipled life and three is the productive life.
Speaker A:And even the wall.
Speaker A:And I can identify certainly in a number of places where I have revisited the wall, I've had to kind of recalibrate.
Speaker A:And I've gone back to that place.
Speaker A:We hate it.
Speaker A:And I hated it for sure.
Speaker A:Because the uncertainty and the thing that we miss is it's calling us to trust instead of calling us to do more and trusting enough that we have to establish ourselves as being loved as we are.
Speaker A:You've heard me say this so many times before.
Speaker A:I'll just say it again.
Speaker A:Is we have to establish and come to trust that we are loved as we are, not as we should be, because we'll never be what we should be.
Speaker A:The should be is images and appearances and projections of things that are seeking someone else's approval or somebody else's approval rather than just being me in God's presence.
Speaker A:Just that's it.
Speaker A:And we're saying, yeah, but there's got to be something else.
Speaker A:I mean, there's got to be something else.
Speaker A:And it's like, I wonder if.
Speaker A:And I know God doesn't have a face, but it's just like, really, I thought you were enough.
Speaker A:I loved you as you are.
Speaker A:Maybe you might have to learn to trust that.
Speaker A:And that's more often than not.
Speaker A:That's what we're always being called to, is we're being called to trust.
Speaker A:And we miss that all the time.
Speaker A:So the thing that's interesting about this is that the one author that I read said the people who have passed through this dark night of reorientation, or the dark night of the soul are the most free people because they're firmly planted and believe and trust that they are loved as they are.
Speaker A:And the thing is about us as humans is we are always in need of calibration.
Speaker A:We always need to kind of reorient, recalibrate back to that because we fall out so easily.
Speaker A:We are immersed and marinated in so much shame that it's easy to lose our way.
Speaker A:And as Dante said, you know, from the straight path.
Speaker A:And I found myself off, off the path.
Speaker A:And so the one thing I want to mention in terms of importance of how we handle and how we get here and ultimately how do we resist the wall and instead of actually navigate it and engage it and probably one of the first things, first things that is can be identified as resisting the wall in that experience is just a strong ego being very driven by controlling outcomes.
Speaker A:And we sincerely believe that we are in charge and by being or doing good, we can use our talents to control our own lives.
Speaker A:All for the glory of God.
Speaker A:Okay, always put that on there.
Speaker A:All for the glory of God, but we're still controlling.
Speaker A:And we're controlling people, we're controlling outcomes.
Speaker A:And as I have been known to say many times over, trust and control cannot coexist.
Speaker A:If I am going to try to control everything, then I am loudly shouting how much I don't trust what God's up to in other people's lives even.
Speaker A:And so strong ego is the first one that is a resistance to, to engaging in this is I want to do it myself, I want to do it my way and God, you just need to rubber stamp it and we'll be good, okay?
Speaker A:Second resistance that we have is being what you call self deprecators.
Speaker A:And so by the way this works is by putting ourselves down and not accepting God's free, deep and enduring love, we continually try to measure up to unrealistic expectations.
Speaker A:As a matter of fact, they're not unrealistic even they're perfectionistic expectations.
Speaker A:And why does that get in the way?
Speaker A:Because you think, well, that puts me deeper into the wall, right?
Speaker A:No, because we are still very much self deprecators are every bit as driven by control as the strong ego people are, except that the control is turned on themselves.
Speaker A:Turned on.
Speaker A:They are always trying to measure up.
Speaker A:So the strong ego people are controlling things to measure up.
Speaker A:These folks are putting themselves down thinking that by putting themselves down it will feel bad enough that they'll want to avoid that.
Speaker A:And that way then they can achieve what God actually expects of them.
Speaker A:And that there it's a fundamental rejection of God's free love and enduring love for them.
Speaker A:It's a fundamental rejection of that because they keep saying I'm never good enough.
Speaker A:And there's that good enough again, right?
Speaker A:That whenever you hear that good enough or that word enough, we're talking about a scarce resource rather than an abundant, overwhelming, lavish resource of God's love.
Speaker A:So there's that self deprecators are another one.
Speaker A:Third one are the people that are shame ridden.
Speaker A:It represents very painful and unwelcome memories.
Speaker A:Oftentimes these memories are found in devastating, shame ridden, shameful events connected to the church, the organized church, or with our family, or during our early years, our past.
Speaker A:So shame ridden is, as I've said and mentioned before, shame is about my being, but guilt is about my behavior.
Speaker A:So shame ridden is distracted by all of these things, either the past or how we've been treated by people in the church, or the things that have been communicated to us by people in the church.
Speaker A:I spent some time early this year talking about toxic Christians and that's very much a part of that.
Speaker A:And so the tolerance of themselves or the tolerance of others ultimately will be the major healing for us in this search.
Speaker A:And the tolerance, maybe a better word to put would be acceptance of self is the path of healing.
Speaker A:And that's why it throws us into this wall experience.
Speaker A:Because acceptance is so foreign to us.
Speaker A:We are sure that by accepting ourselves we are settling for mediocrity.
Speaker A:And the irony is I can't move beyond mediocrity if I don't accept where I am and who I am at this point and even accept the fact that I'm loved as I am.
Speaker A:And that's all part of it.
Speaker A:So the shame ridden is very much a factor.
Speaker A:And I think it shades and colors all of our view of what could go on in the wall.
Speaker A:And oftentimes it ends up becoming a very kind of painful, self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker A:I knew I was going to land here because I'm such a schmuck and I don't do anything right and I'm never good enough.
Speaker A:So this makes sense that I'm here.
Speaker A:And then we see the wall as punishment, as self punishment.
Speaker A:So that's another one.
Speaker A:Intellectuals, the people that tend to intellectualize everything, who rationalize and analyze it that way, is another resistance to the wall.
Speaker A:We think so much that we assume the wall thinks too, and we can reason with it.
Speaker A:And so I'll reason my way out of it.
Speaker A:The reality is even the wall experience strips away are powers of reason because it's about experience.
Speaker A:It's not about just logic alone.
Speaker A:And so the logic that God has is a logic of love.
Speaker A:It's not a logic of human reason, which is very limited anyway.
Speaker A:So intellectuals have a real hard time with the wall experience.
Speaker A:And then there's always the high achievers who think they can build a higher wall to jump over this wall, and they build it, they can build it very quickly and effectively, and they work very hard and exert more effort far beyond what is expected.
Speaker A:And they think they can work their way out of the wall and move on to the next steps in the journey.
Speaker A:And what they don't realize is again, that the strategies they use for mastery is really built on their ability to control things.
Speaker A:So there's that one and then another one.
Speaker A:We've got a couple more here.
Speaker A:Another one is the doctrinaire for the doctrinaire.
Speaker A:And I don't care which side of the continuum you're on, liberal or conservative, the wall represents a profound doubt about what we thought we knew to be true.
Speaker A:And people that are thrown into crisis, a lot of times that doubt does it to really shake the foundations of what they thought were true.
Speaker A:And I have met a fair number of people in their mid ages, the 50s and 60s, that have had something happen that shook the foundations.
Speaker A:And they were really struggled with what they thought were true.
Speaker A:And either they double down on what they think is true, or they begin to listen to God's voice and see where he might be leading.
Speaker A:So these doctrinaires, they deal with it by drilling holes in it.
Speaker A:So they try to dismiss it or say that it's not, you know, there's nothing in the Bible that talks about or whatever they use to blow holes in it, trying to kind of weaken it and knock it down.
Speaker A:So the funny thing about that is when they're drilling holes in the wall, they're drilling holes in their own perspectives as well.
Speaker A:And so that's the other one.
Speaker A:And then the last one I'll mention is the ordained leaders of spiritual religious groups among us that have so much at stake in terms of the group's beliefs and causes and everything else that they end up embodying those very causes.
Speaker A:And when the wall hits, it destroys all of those things in terms of their role, their importance, why they are.
Speaker A:And so in a lot of cases, they either demand that the wall crumble or they stand waiting for the wall to finally, and I'm kind of personifying the wall here, but finally wait for the wall to respond to their.
Speaker A:Their demands.
Speaker A:And so because of that place.
Speaker A:So there are a variety of resistances that we can engage in to diminish or contain or master the wall rather than simply live in it.
Speaker A:And that requires a lot of trust that most of us don't have.
Speaker A:So the going through part, which is what the money is here, right, the going through is an example of Spiritual and psychological healing and transformation that occurs through the realization that fixing others over helping them, codependency, excessive enabling of people is not selfless service.
Speaker A:Actually it's service for me to feel like I'm contributing or I'm doing something for God.
Speaker A:And so all of those things tend to have pretty unhealthy roots to them.
Speaker A:And they betray a sense of low self esteem, that I'm really not that important.
Speaker A:And that usually drives our sense of control and everything else.
Speaker A:So we can begin to work through the pain of these motivations toward the acceptance and self awareness.
Speaker A:But we're going to need somebody.
Speaker A:And usually the people that we need the most during this time is what would be referred to as a spiritual director.
Speaker A:So, and not everybody is a spiritual director.
Speaker A:And just because somebody's a counselor doesn't make them a spiritual director.
Speaker A:They need to know what they're looking for.
Speaker A:They need to be aware of the movements of the Holy Spirit in somebody's life.
Speaker A:They develop a perspective about this that I think is really very important.
Speaker A:So there are a number of things that we have to be aware of as we're working through stuff like our expectations or our expectations about being close to God and what it actually means.
Speaker A:And the one thing that I think oftentimes comes out of this, which it certainly did for me, is silence and solitude and reflection as the stabilizing force of not hurrying to get out of the wall, but allowing the wall to do what it was meant to do.
Speaker A:And that is to refine and clarify and build up the sense of trust that we have in God.
Speaker A:Built on our relationship with him, not built on what we can do for Him.
Speaker A:Okay, so that's a lot.
Speaker A:I know that's a lot.
Speaker A:I've.
Speaker A:I've hurried a little bit through it because I wanted to make sure that I put it all together.
Speaker A:If I split it up, then it's kind of hard to follow.
Speaker A:So my apologizes, my apologies for overstaying my welcome here.
Speaker A:A couple of things just to remind you of at the end.
Speaker A:Here is at sgi-net.org is our home.
Speaker A:If you've got questions about any of this, feel free to DM me or use the comment box at the bottom of the page.
Speaker A:On the first page, sgi-net so do that.
Speaker A:Subscribe there, join the community, become part of the community.
Speaker A:We're not going to send anything out to you unsolicited.
Speaker A:We will be sending out a newsletter once a month or so just to keep you up to date with what's going on in the community.
Speaker A:So you can do that.
Speaker A:And, and that's what I mean by subscription.
Speaker A:The other thing to keep in mind, and I don't know how many people have availed themselves of this, but the Digital Devotionals, they're available every week.
Speaker A:They help you.
Speaker A:They're called Setting New Boundaries.
Speaker A:And they help you to kind of evaluate some of these relationships that you're in and keeping them healthy and the things to pay attention to within it.
Speaker A:And then that the other thing I'll just mention to you on the fly here is I did the last podcast on Outpost was number I think I'm on 29 here.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:So it was 28 and it was all audio.
Speaker A:And I've decided to branch off and spend more time there.
Speaker A:And so we're birthing a new podcast as part of SGI Media.
Speaker A:It's called Unscripted Collected Wisdom of Life, Living and Sorrow.
Speaker A:And it's as the name implies, it's unscripted.
Speaker A:And so it is all audio.
Speaker A:You can, you can subscribe.
Speaker A:It will show up in the next few days here I think on Apple, Apple Podcasts and other places.
Speaker A:And so you can, you can subscribe to that new podcast.
Speaker A:It is, it is short, succinct, but it is my reflections and reactions and thoughts not only about sorrow and Lamb Lament, which is the current topic, but also just life and living and some other reactions and things that I might have there maybe after doing this podcast.
Speaker A:And then I go into that one with some other reactions that that might be of use to someone.
Speaker A:So you could follow us on all the on three different media outlets, social media, Instagram, GI, underscore international, Ray Mitch and LinkedIn Dr.
Speaker A:Mitch.
Speaker A:You can find us on any of those three platforms.
Speaker A:You can listen to us and subscribe for the podcast on wherever you listen to podcasts, you'll find us.
Speaker A:And if you're interested in partnering with us to continue to grow our scholarship fund to continue to grow even the ministry at large for groups and other things into the future, we would be ever so grateful for your contribution, whether that's monthly or one time.
Speaker A:It's all tax deductible.
Speaker A:All your gifts for that, you just simply make the check out or you donate.
Speaker A:You can donate on our webpage under the Donate tab at the top.
Speaker A:Or if you'd rather send us a physical check, you can certainly send us to that to SGI.
Speaker A:And the address is P.O.
Speaker A: , Eastlake, Colorado: Speaker A:I think that is enough.
Speaker A:Like I said, I don't want to overstay my welcome.
Speaker A:Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker A:I'll look for you next week.
Speaker A:And until that time, love you later.
Speaker A:Bye.
