Embracing Our Original Innocence with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:01] This is Josh Reeves and you're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. Hey, Saturday, June 20th, 10am, John Pierre is coming to speak to us about the pillars of health. Learn how to take care of yourself, support other people as well. It's in our community center. It'll be a great workshop. It's $20. For more information, go to milehighchurch.org. I am talking about embracing our original innocence, and we're going to delve a bit into that innocence that gets obfuscated when we were kids.

[00:00:31] I was thinking about a time many years ago when my son was about four or five years old. He had been going, of course, to the youth programs at my church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and had been involved and knew all of our friends and knew all of my ministerial colleagues. And we had the wonderful, amazing Reverend David Ault come to stay with us because he was going to be speaking at our church.

[00:01:00] And when I introduced my son to Reverend David, I said to my son, David is a minister just like mommy. And my son's eyes got really big and he turned and looked at me and he said, they let men be ministers too. Right? Yes. Total, complete flip of belief systems and ideas about

[00:01:29] life. Right? And it was a refreshing one. And that story reminds me of how children can be, how we get perceptions about things based on our experience as kids. And we begin to contemplate and believe how life is based on what's around us, based on what people tell us,

[00:01:54] based on our inner experiences and our outer experiences that have to do with our family and our culture and our religious upbringing. And we all know this. And a huge part of what we are doing throughout most of our lives as adults is dealing with some of those belief systems because many of them serve us and many of them inspire us and many of them push us forward into great things.

[00:02:21] And many of them keep us from experiencing the truth of who we really are. And that's what I want to look at today. I want to look at that, that aspect of us that is so important for us to reckon with, make peace with, make peace with, that part of us where often we have to forgive people around us for

[00:02:47] giving us misinformation about the nature of life or the nature of us, where we get to challenge the belief systems and structures that have permeated our awareness often for years. And it can be a challenge. And as I was working on this, I was remembering that many years ago there was a very,

[00:03:10] powerful man who was an author and a theologian and a speaker named Matthew Fox. And some of you may remember that Matthew started to speak out around traditional religion and the notion that we're all born out of sin or from a negative space in some way, shape, or form. And Matthew was booted out of his faith

[00:03:36] tradition and silenced by his faith tradition. His belief was at our very core, we are all sacred, worthy, and whole. And for that he was silenced. Now that was sad to me when it occurred. And what I

[00:03:58] think might be happening for many of us is that inside of us there's a voice just like Matthew's that is saying to us, oh, at your core, you are sacred. You are holy. You are whole.

[00:04:21] And my question to you today is, are you silencing that voice? Have you got belief systems from a long time ago about the nature of life and the nature of yourself? Belief systems about what's possible. Belief systems about what's not possible. Belief systems that are keeping you from that full

[00:04:44] expression of wholeness. Because here's what happens when people are able to do the sacred and holy work of healing those voices and belief systems and ideas about themselves that obfuscate that wholeness,

[00:05:05] there is an energy and a life force and a presence that is palpable and that allows someone to begin to become into alignment with the true nature of who they are. What I think begins to happen for many people who rediscover this voice of wholeness is that things like anxiety and depression and deep sadness

[00:05:33] go away. When we're able to forgive finally and let go of the experiences that we've had that we think make us less than whole, we are filled with a life force and an energy that deals with the fatigue and the resistance that we might have felt up until now. And we're able to then at that point live the life we came here to live. And it seems to be the game that is afoot for all of us.

[00:06:01] It's not just some people, it's all of us. The game afoot is the rediscovery and the reclaiming of that sacred innocent self that often is connected to that inner child. That part of us that's this magical presence, creative and joy-filled and has wonder and curiosity and open-heartedness

[00:06:28] and wholeheartedness at its core that's connected to the God self that we are. But we may have been pushing it down, trying to be mature, trying to be an adult or whatever it might be that we've been trying to be. Today I want to invite us into a reclaiming of that. But sometimes we have to heal

[00:06:52] the wounded inner child. So I was thinking about a way to list some of the ways we could know if we might have a wounded inner child that needs healing. And suddenly I was giggling to myself thinking about the David Letterman show. And remember how we used to do the top 10? And they were always so wonderful. So I decided to work and work for a few weeks on creating my own top 10 reasons that you may need

[00:07:20] to heal your inner child. So here's my list. You may need to heal your inner child if, number 10, you still believe a gold star sticker is a legally binding contract for love. Number nine, you say, I'm fine, but your nervous system is writing a three-act tragedy in the background. Number eight,

[00:07:45] someone says, we need to talk. And you immediately start drafting a resignation letter from life. I'm out. I'm out. Number seven, you buy snacks like you're packing for summer camp, then guard them like a tiny dragon protecting its treasure. I know that might resonate for some of us. Number six, you apologize to furniture after you bump into it and then feel guilty that the furniture might be upset.

[00:08:15] Yeah. This is a big one. Number five, you hear the word authority and your inner eight-year-old whispers, we ride it. Number four, you can receive a compliment, but only if you first file a formal rebuttal with supporting evidence, right? Number three, you think rest has to be earned and relaxation

[00:08:42] feels suspicious like a trap set by productivity. Yeah. Number two, you keep waiting for an adult to show up and handle everything. And then remember you are the adult and briefly consider hiding behind a plant. And number one, you treat your worth like it's on a subscription plan. One missed payment and it

[00:09:08] gets canceled. Yeah. Resonate for anybody? Yeah. Now, if any of these felt a little familiar, please know it doesn't mean that something's necessarily wrong with you. It just means maybe that something tender in you is still yearning to be seen and to be heard, to be acknowledged, maybe even to be loved and healed.

[00:09:34] These aren't signs of being broken necessarily. They're just signs that something within is inviting us back into our wholeness. And that's what we get to do. We get to see our life as feedback and understanding that if everyone is going through this, it seems as though we all get born into this life, then we all start to immediately experience spiritual amnesia. And then we spend our life searching for ourselves. It's like a huge game of

[00:10:04] where's Waldo, but insert your own name, right? Looking, looking, looking, where am I? Who am I? What am I? What's true about me? And the truth is our inherent wholeness. And so we have to then deal with the things that have gotten in the way. How, what are the constructs, the belief systems, the things we've done to build

[00:10:28] build an identity that isn't connected with our wholeness. So we start with a long, long held notion about how we do this, the psyche that we develop. And I want to look at Carl Jung's notion of our shadow today. Because I think that's a really beautiful construct for how it is that we begin to come to

[00:10:55] conclusions and create ideas about ourselves that can fall into the category of shadow the way that he expressed it. And many modern thinkers and thought leaders, psychologists have taken on this notion and have used it to help people to really rediscover themselves. One of them is Dr. Rachel Naomi Raymond,

[00:11:21] who says to us, shadow is the wound that a culture inflicts on its people. A diminishing of innate wholeness through a collective judgment or disapproval. Every culture diminishes wholeness in its own way. All people born into a culture find approval for certain aspects of their own wholeness and suffer

[00:11:46] judgment for certain other aspects. It's only human to trade our wholeness for approval. I want to say that again. It's only human to trade our wholeness for approval and share then in the collective wound. Some of us are more deeply wounded than others, but no one escapes. No one escapes. We all have

[00:12:13] these aspects of ourselves, just like my son's belief that only women are ministers. It's not necessarily the truth, but it's what we believe. And not all of them are damaging or hurtful, but many of them are. And when we reclaim ourselves in wholeness and play and dance with this shadow aspect of ourselves,

[00:12:37] we find so much more of us is available to us. Jung said the shadow is everything in us that we reject, deny, hide from other people. And as children, he said, we thought the safest thing in order to belong often was to push aspects of ourself aside, to hide them, to keep them from

[00:13:04] expressing so that we could feel love. This is about learning what's acceptable and what's not acceptable or what we believe is acceptable or not acceptable or what people tell us is acceptable or not acceptable. Now, the interesting thing about this though, is that we can't just have a part of us just go away and never express. So even though we may push this part of us down, it's still there

[00:13:30] in the depth of our being. Searching for expression, desiring to be expressed. It doesn't just go away or disappear, but we push it away and deny it for so long, ignore it for so long that we think it might be gone. And we begin to live from that shadow version of ourselves. That shadow version of

[00:13:53] ourselves isn't what's wrong with us. It's what we've had to hide in order to feel loved. Parts of us, we felt we felt we had to hide. And so the shadow also, it's important to note, isn't just the negative beliefs or the challenging or damaging beliefs. Jung said, it's the gold also. It's the creativity.

[00:14:20] It's the joy. It's the expression of artistic talents or gifts or all sorts of expressions that we felt for some reason were unacceptable. And so we push them aside. We push them away. We don't just suppress anger or fear or negative qualities. We might suppress confidence, brilliance,

[00:14:46] or our own voice, our own truth in this process, in this game that we play. And we lose our sense of wholeness. It doesn't go away, but we lose our connection to it. And we must find it. So the other thing about the shadow is what we don't own, what we don't allow ourselves to see

[00:15:09] or to express often gets projected onto other people. So if we haven't allowed ourselves to project or to see, excuse me, to see our powerful creativity, then we come across someone who's creative in ways we'd like to be. And we can appreciate it, but maybe it's like over the top, like, oh my gosh,

[00:15:33] that guy's amazing the way he does art. Is it some projection of a part of us, the artistic self, that knows who it is and never let itself express? And sometimes we project negativity onto people too. In fact, Jung would say the way to know if we're doing that is very strong reactions that we have

[00:15:58] to other people. The shadow can run our life and can be this unconscious aspect of ourselves. So we're looking out the world thinking everybody's judgmental and everybody's so angry and everybody's so this or so that or so unloving or so unsupportive and everybody's so this when all the while it's because we've got a wounded aspect of ourselves that's saying it's time to heal that part of you.

[00:16:26] And so we just project it onto everybody else. So it's important to pay attention because these moments can help us see where we're hiding from our wholeness and we have a chance to reclaim it because he says until we bring it into the light of awareness, the shadow will live our lives for us. And so what we're seeking today as we are embracing our original innocence is a return

[00:16:54] to that wholeness. And I want to stress that it's a return to wholeness, not perfection. We're not seeking to be perfect. I just would like to say in case no one has ever told you this, you're not perfect. You never will be. Now your spiritual perfection, you're God in perfect expression,

[00:17:18] but in terms of your human side, you're not perfect. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna mess up. You might say the wrong thing occasionally or do the wrong thing. You might hurt someone's feelings every once in a while. You might step on someone's toes. There's no one who doesn't. You're not perfect. So we're not seeking for a perfect kind of human that never makes a mistake or does anything wrong.

[00:17:45] We're seeking for wholeness. We're seeking for that original wholeness within us that is always within us. It's not about eliminating that shadow. It's about integrating it. See, then it's about accepting I'm not perfect and I'm gonna have compassion for myself when I'm not. I didn't do everything right and I'm gonna have compassion for myself anyway. I didn't understand everything correctly as a child and I'm still gonna have

[00:18:15] compassion and love for myself. Our innocence is never lost, but parts of us have gone into hiding and healing is simply welcoming them home. A few weeks ago, the first weekend of May, I was blessed to be able to spend the weekend with our ministerial students here from the Denver campus and we went away to a retreat in Loveland and there's a labyrinth on the grounds there and one of the activities is that we went

[00:18:41] out in silence one morning to walk the labyrinth. And I went into the labyrinth and we, of course, were invited to set an intention for going into the labyrinth and I set an intention for healing and wholeness and what happened was really interesting because the more I walked the labyrinth, the more I noticed on this really beautiful sunny morning that there

[00:19:03] were occasions when I was walking the labyrinth and I could see my shadow. I was wearing a coat. There's a picture of me on the labyrinth. I was wearing a coat. I was all bundled up, but I could look down and I could see my shadow and it was like the labyrinth was speaking to me or the energy was speaking to me that it's not about walking this labyrinth and not bringing that part of me with me. It's about bringing the whole self into the

[00:19:30] labyrinth so that that intention can be realized and can be fulfilled. And it was a very powerful moment and I would walk around and sometimes the shadow would disappear because the sun was in its position, but then I would get to the place where the sun was behind me warming me and I could feel it and I felt so nurtured by it. But there's my shadow right there with me. And I made a decision in that moment.

[00:19:58] I'm going to embrace all of me. I'm not going to pretend that the shadow's not there. I'm not perfect. I don't always do everything right. I don't always get everything right. I have parts of me that I still need to heal. I have places where I still want to forgive. I have this shadow part of me and it's coming into the labyrinth with me. And it was a beautiful labyrinth walk because of that

[00:20:23] intention and realizing that that was what I chose to do, to bring my wholeness with me into the experience and not just be there and be some perfect version of myself. What's that going to ever solve if I don't bring my wholeness with me? And so it's about learning to do that, that the shadow isn't my

[00:20:45] enemy, my past pain, my past challenges, the places I'm still hurting. It's not my enemy. I don't need to hide it from myself or other people. I don't need to pretend it's not there and I don't need to get rid of it. I need to integrate it. I need to bring it in. So the pattern that we're looking at here,

[00:21:06] the way that it works is essentially we believe we are born in innocence. Here's the steps. We are born in innocence, whole, worthy, divine. We learn to belong. Brené Brown, a modern voice talking about shame and how that impacts our wholeness, says to us we learn to hustle. We learn to hustle and make

[00:21:32] sure that we belong in spaces and that people like us and that we do the right thing and we don't upset our family. We hustle so we can belong. But that means then that parts of us, when we hustle, go into our shadow. We abandon parts of ourselves. So therefore we build a persona. We build a personality that we think is made of the best parts of ourselves and try to present that to the world.

[00:21:57] And then the shadow shows up every once in a while, right? Through reactions and relationships. It's like many of us think we are in a romantic relationship and we are adults now and every once in a while it feels like two four-year-olds having a conversation, doesn't it? Because the shadow shows up. That's why we have conflict or at work. We feel like we're adults having a work

[00:22:23] environment experience and then here comes two eight-year-olds duking it out. And it's like, and we're shocked and amazed that that happens. But that's how it works. The shadow shows up until the shadow is integrated, accepted, and worked with. And so then we see the shadow. If we're wise, we wake up and we see our own shadow, not just by walking in the labyrinth and seeing it in front of us,

[00:22:51] but by seeing our activating points. What really upsets us? What really irks us? What is it that people do around us that get us so upset? Our triggers, as they say, our projections. We ask ourselves wisely sometimes, you know, is it possible that I'm projecting all of that stuff onto that

[00:23:13] person and that's not who they really are? We become wise. We see the game of the shadow. We see the patterns. We see ourselves through this. And then once we've seen ourselves, here's the transition point. We heal. We start to love what we hid. We start to love what we hid. We don't fix it,

[00:23:41] but we learn to integrate it. And our innocence is restored through that process. Not naivete. Not like we're a bunch of little kids running around who don't know what we're doing, but the blend of ourselves is the magical, creative, profound being with all of its creativity and energy.

[00:24:08] Original innocence is not the absence of our shadow. It's the loving presence that can hold every part of us. So if this sounds like something that you're up for, here are some things I suggest. The hows of this. It starts as everything does with intention. Now that we've had this conversation and we understand

[00:24:34] maybe a little more deeply or we've had an awareness today or a reminder even today of, oh yeah, that's how that works. Yeah. I can then consciously set an intention to embrace my original innocence, wholeness. I set the intention. What happens when I set the intention? I choose it over and over again. I write it down.

[00:25:02] I draw it. I've created for myself playlists in my music app that are all songs about loving myself and I play them over and over at times when I really need to do some work on that. I sing it. I dance it.

[00:25:26] I get prayer support from those practitioner people and my prayer partner to help me stay in alignment with that intention because the truth is I can't always have the faith of my intention, but I can have faith in their faith and therefore I let myself be prayed for any way that I can to allow that intention to have

[00:25:53] its way with me. I might affirm something like I choose to live from my wholeness or I see my whole self. So it starts with intentionality, a willingness to say I'm done playing this game of the broken, disconnected, fatigued, depressed, sad person. I'm ready to be healed and whole.

[00:26:21] And I know that in order to do that, I've got to face my shadow more profoundly than Puxatani Phil does. Right? I've got to face my shadow. Then the second step I'm calling get a new view of you. Once we've set the intention, get a new view of you by

[00:26:44] seeing yourself from the inside out rather than the outside in. The whole game of the shadow and of the woundedness is the persistence to say, look what happened to me. Look what they said to me. Look what they did to me. And because of that, I draw a conclusion. Whereas the view from the inside out is,

[00:27:13] yes, look what they said to you. Look what they did to you. Look what happened. Be you. And it's almost like the more I go to that deep place within me and inhabit it in my mind and let it inhabit me, the more I can see myself from the inside out. And I am a glorious thing to behold as you are.

[00:27:43] I am able to behold my wholeness from that place. From the outside in, it can be really hard to behold the wholeness because we get caught up in the drama and the stuff and all the things in the world of form. But in that inner place, I can see the truth. And I can move forward in letting go more powerfully and

[00:28:11] profoundly. That's why so many who teach about the shadow and its healing talk about mindfulness and meditation and the inner journey so that I can heal that perception of me that no longer serves. And lastly, companion and parent, my wounded inner child, the way no one did or can.

[00:28:40] It really doesn't matter if your parents or those who raised you are still alive and in your life or not. If we spend our life seeking to get our parents to be the way we always wanted them to be, we're just doing to them what they did to us, aren't we? Because sometimes they can't do it. They just can't. They've got their own patterns. They've got their own shadow stuff.

[00:29:05] But here's the good news. You and I don't need them to change one iota to be healed. We don't need our parents to finally go, oh my God, you're amazing and I adore you. Even though I know we yearn for it. Some of us yearn deeply for it. But you know what? Even if that never happens, here's the thing. The thing I think we're craving, all of us more than anything,

[00:29:31] is wholeness that can only be sourced from us. We're the only ones who can give it to ourselves. And the question really becomes, when will you stop being stubborn and give it to yourself? When will you start loving and parenting yourself? Speaking to yourself in voices that are kind.

[00:29:53] Giving yourself a break. Doing the holy, sacred work to say, you know, I do have a childlike unwillingness to love and honor myself. And that's what we do here at Mile High Church. All of our wonderful classes and education are all about challenging those ideas and changing our belief systems. All of the wonderful things we do in meditation practice together as a community

[00:30:20] are all about that. And as I mentioned in the announcements, the inner child journey that's coming up in June is a powerful, powerful weekend to really begin to embrace that inner part of us. And it takes courage. Sometimes when people come to the inner child journey, they're scared to death of what we're going to ask them to do in order to let that go. And I would love us to be

[00:30:43] courageous in embracing our wholeness and being willing to walk fully into it. To say, this is my chance to let all that old stuff go and start to parent myself and love myself the way I'm yearning to be loved. And I imagine a world where we all step into this. Imagine that world with me. It would be a changed world. I close with words from our founder, Ernest Holmes.

[00:31:12] He says to us, true non-resistance is the surrender of every arrogant attitude of mind to good and good alone. Those who have made this surrender have found real peace of mind, happiness, and wholeness in the only place it can be found, which is within themselves. Keeping that in mind, let us pray together. I invite you to go within and I invite our

[00:31:37] practitioner prayer partners to stand with me as we stand together in prayer. And in this moment, we just surrender into that space, that holy, sacred space of oneness and connection. I recognize and honor that no matter what our perceptions may be about each other or ourselves,

[00:31:57] there is a pure, sacred space within us where the truth of us resides. It has always been, it shall always been, no matter what has occurred in our life. It is there at the core, the juicy, warm, loving, energizing center of us. And I accept and affirm this day that each one of us is inspired

[00:32:23] in a new way to claim and be and embody that whole self. And that we set an intention to move forward in a way that allows us to let go of any erroneous conclusions, to heal the shadow self and come fully into the light of ourselves and integrate our shadow with loving compassion, joyous recognition, to return ourselves

[00:32:53] to ourselves. I accept and affirm that this is who we are. This is how we are. And this is how we walk forward. Whatever it takes, we allow ourselves to take those steps and to be guided fully by that wholeness within that whispers lovingly to us and helps us to see the way clearly and see the path fully. Oh, what a joy it is to see this and behold this about each one of us and to feel the healing that

[00:33:21] comes into our lives and the healing that bursts forth into this planet through this work. And so I give thanks for this. I give thanks that it is done and I release it now, letting it go and letting it be, knowing full well that as it has been spoken, it is so. I let it go and so it is. Amen.

[00:33:46] Thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast. This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you. To make a donation, please visit milehighchurch.org.