Field Trip for the Soul with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] Hey so happy to have you here at our Mile Hi Church Podcast. Are you feeling some awe today? Well, we are and we're having the wonderful expert on awe, Mr. Dacker,

[00:00:12] Kelpner with us in one of our renowned speaker events on Friday, November 1st. He knows about it. He studied it. He's a scientist. It's going to be great.

[00:00:22] Early bird tickets are on sale for in-person sales right now through July 7th. Go to Mile Hi Church.org to get your ticket. Love to have you with us. My message title today is called Field Trip for the Soul. We've been

[00:00:37] doing a whole kind of school theme here in the month of June and I was here, let's see. It was the first Sunday of June. I was here to speak and then now it's the last Sunday of June and I'm

[00:00:50] back again and on June 2nd I announced that as of tomorrow I am taking a brief sabbatical. I uh, happy sabbatical Eve. And so I'm going away as of tomorrow to do some interwork, some deep relaxation,

[00:01:06] some prayerfulness and today as I prepare for that I want to take y'all with me. I want to I'm going on a field trip and I'm inviting you to join me on that field trip in some specific ways.

[00:01:18] And I used to love field trips when I went to school. It was an opportunity to step out of the normal routine of school and all that came with it and get on a bus and go on some adventure

[00:01:29] and go to a camp or a museum or go to the science museum or something to see something new and learn something new and deepen. And I feel like life is beckoning to us. When I think about this

[00:01:44] I think that I want to remind us that life is always beckoning to us. It seems to me that what happens here on this planet is that we all get born into these families of origins that

[00:01:58] often start out right away presenting us with opportunities for what it means to be human and it can be challenging and loving and joyful and fun and impactful and all sorts of ways.

[00:02:11] And we get born and have spiritual amnesia. We forget who we really are and all that goes on in the world of forms sometimes can affirm that forgetting this and we grow up into these adults who

[00:02:25] get really busy and keep forgetting who we are. But if there is a mantra that the universe is speaking to us, a mantra being an affirmation or a statement that calls us back to our truth.

[00:02:39] For every being on this planet I believe the spiritual mantra of the divine is come back to the truth who you are. Come back to the truth who you are. Yes I know it's challenging. Yes I know

[00:02:53] you've had a hard road. Yes I know you've had your heart broken. Yes I know you've had a disappointment. Yes I know that wasn't exactly what you've played come back to the nature of who you are.

[00:03:05] Oh yes and even when you don't want to come back to the nature of who you are, come back. That is the mantra that is surrounding each of us and folding each of us. The mantra of ourselves,

[00:03:18] the mantra of our heart, the mantra of our souls calling us back. And sometimes we can hear it in our quiet moments when we are about spiritual practice. Sometimes it comes into our awareness when we

[00:03:33] least expect it. And by and large what I notice about myself and most of the human beings I share this life with is that the number one thing that keeps us from hearing the mantra and tuning to it

[00:03:46] and listening to it is we're just too busy. We're too busy doing all this stuff that's out there. We're too busy caught up in all the stuff we see and all the stuff we can do and where we can go

[00:03:58] and who we can be and what we can work caught up in it and where we to busy, we're busy busy busy. Sometimes busyness is born out of some of the stuff we heard in our childhood. Many of us probably

[00:04:11] heard. Don't just sit around and do nothing, get some chores done, stop sitting there day dreaming. Oh there's a child in front room who looks at somebody like, yeah, did somebody say that

[00:04:21] to you recently, I'm sorry if they did. There, there sometimes is this feeling like we got in school like we weren't worth anything. We weren't making a difference. We weren't earning our keep. We weren't doing our part. We weren't contributing enough to life if we were just sitting

[00:04:37] around doing nothing. If we were just sitting there being quiet daydreaming or thinking or contemplating or drawing or writing, we've got to be about doing something to make a difference and so sometimes

[00:04:51] we grow into this adulthood thinking that I am what I do and I'm only as valuable to the tune that I get enough done. I don't want to tell anybody that I don't want to do anything because

[00:05:03] then they might think I'm useless and so the quiet times, the person who lives a life of leisure is criticized sometimes or we judge that person or we think what's wrong with them that

[00:05:15] there you're better not doing very much in life. You have to do, do, go, go, go, go. And it's a challenge here in our American culture for us to maybe find time. It's an addiction, a busyness

[00:05:27] addiction, a work of holism that we might have and there's also this element born out of a lot of that cultural stuff that tells us that the busiest part people are the most important. If you're really busy you're really important. You're really making a difference.

[00:05:44] But what if that's not true? What if that's actually the opposite? The people who make the most difference are the people who can go into the silence, who can go into their own nature, who can go

[00:05:55] into that place where they hear that mantra and they are motivated by that inner call of the most high. So this is why we take vacations, this is why we take breaks often, this is why we do spiritual

[00:06:09] practice but even on our vacations we tend to be very busy, we got to see everything, go everywhere, do everything. It's important for us to have quiet time because we are overloaded. I found this,

[00:06:20] I was looking at cartoons about sabbaticals as I was looking for humor for my message and I found a cartoon by cartoonist Elden Dedeanie who says, I'm beginning to think I need a 3 million years sabbatical from humankind to recover from my health. 3 million years is kind of long.

[00:06:36] I'm not taking that long. Thank goodness. But I am going to be away for a while to break this cycle of busyness and to go with in. And I noticed that some of our spiritual traditions, if we look at the

[00:06:49] Judeo-Christian Bible in the Old Testament, one of the commandments is to honor the Sabbath. And that's not just about hey take a day off. Watch some television have a good quiet day. It's about honoring the Sabbath, the Sabbath, the Holy Day. It's about the invitation by

[00:07:10] those initial spiritual leaders to say, hey look, your spiritual life has to take high priority in your downtime. You have to find time for that because it's who you are. It's the core of who

[00:07:24] you are and if we stay so busy that we never access it, or we glide right over it, we get anxious, we feel disconnected, we might get depressed, we don't enjoy our life and there is much. We have

[00:07:38] got to find time to nurture ourselves in this way. Roman poet Ovid says, take rest, a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. So I'm here today to suggest what if taking a field trip for your

[00:07:56] soul, whether it's along with me while I'm on sabbatical or at some point here in the near future, makes you and me a more bountiful person. And when I say bountiful, I mean, more able to feel spiritually

[00:08:10] connected, joy filled. And I think able to withstand the challenges that we might face in our life with guidance and wisdom. Whereas if we're just always glossing the surface, caught up in the

[00:08:24] world of form, all we can really do is react, react, react, react, react, react, react versus being in that deep and space of the most high and not always liking what we see or what we experience

[00:08:37] or what happens but being able to respond from a spiritually grounded place, know what's mind to do, know what choices I need to make, know where I need to go, know what serves me and serves all around

[00:08:54] me. It might take taking a field trip for the soul. Now I had an a ha recently, I had chosen a certain number of days to take this sabbatical and then through some conversations with board members

[00:09:08] and leadership and a change in the schedule that occurred in August, we all agreed that I would extend it a few more days. And when I did, I counted it up and it turns out I'm away for 40 days.

[00:09:22] Yeah, is that an interesting number? And I thought, hmm, fascinating. So I did look up the incidents of 40 days, which is a significant number that we hear in spiritual sacred texts about going away

[00:09:38] for 40 days, about all sorts of things that include 40 days. And I went specifically to look again at those words and the new testament where we know that Jesus went away for 40 days and 40 nights.

[00:09:53] And according to the gospel he was tempted by the devil over and over. Now we, we don't believe in the devil here in this teaching. We believe that any talk in any spiritual tradition about a devil

[00:10:05] or about evil or about a temptor like that is all about the temptation to fall into separation, that evil or that people do things out of their belief in separation that are not the most

[00:10:22] productive in human life because they forgot and who they are, they forgot and the truth about themselves, they forgot and the truth about them. And I also believe that this world of form

[00:10:34] that seducers us so much into thinking if I'm not out there doing everything as fast as I can I'm missing the boat, I'm not doing it right. It is a temptor for each one of us. So these verses are

[00:10:45] very significant. The first part that I noticed is that it's math, I like the Oxford Bible by the way, there's lots of versions of the Judeo-Christian Bible in case you want to wear that, the King James

[00:10:56] and the Loms of Bible, I like the Oxford Bible. And this happens, these passages occur in Matthew in chapter 4 and their verses 1 through 11 but right before that what I had forgotten is that Jesus

[00:11:12] has just been baptized by John the Baptist. He's just gone down to the river and John has baptized him and in these passages right before he goes away for his 40 days it says the last lines and when

[00:11:26] Jesus was baptized he went up immediately from the water and behold the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and a lighting on him and low a voice from heaven saying,

[00:11:39] this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. That must have felt great don't you think? I mean, Jesus. That must have felt really good but then right after that it says that

[00:11:57] Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. What a bait and switch right? Hey, I love you the best thing on earth here's the devil to tension now all right?

[00:12:10] That kind of surprised me I didn't had never really put that together so clearly and it says that he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights I'm not doing that. No. And then it says, and afterward he was hungry.

[00:12:25] I'm petty was. That was like duh. And then the temperature came to him so this is the first time that the and this is part of the the wonderful way that when you read sacred texts of any

[00:12:41] tradition you can't take them literally you have Jesus taught in parables. Much of what he taught was not meant to be taken literally and much of what we read in these passages most of it actually

[00:12:54] is meant to be a metaphor for the soul to look deeper into the words and images so here's his first temptation according to the writer of this gospel and the temperature said if you are the son of God

[00:13:08] come on these stones to become loaves of bread. So in other words if you're so special to some of your magic stuff you do that'd be like you coming to me saying okay Michelle if you're so

[00:13:20] magical do a prayer and heal me right now show me, prove it and Jesus answers the temperature by saying it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the

[00:13:32] mouth of God and so he says I'm not being tempted by this the word of God I am the word of God not being tempted. So then the temperature says it says then the devil took him to a holy city

[00:13:44] and he put him on a pinnacle of the temple way up high and he says if you're the son of God throw yourself down for it is written he meaning God will give his angels charge of you in other words

[00:13:57] throw yourself off this high place if if you're really the son of God God will save you have we felt that before that feeling of like if God loved me why did this bad thing happen to me

[00:14:09] if God loves me why did I get thrown off the temple why did my heart get broken why did things not work out for me I thought God loved me but I'm feeling all this pain and Jesus

[00:14:19] answers very similarly again he says he will he says on their hands they will bear you up oh excuse me he says again it is written you shall not tempt the Lord your God

[00:14:30] I know who I am you know I'm not tempted you don't need to tempt me I know who I am and lastly the devil took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world

[00:14:43] and the glory of them and he says all of this I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me now they're all give you power if you will just worship separation if you will worship evil

[00:14:57] if you will worship darkness and then Satan or Jesus says to him be gone Satan which you've heard before some of you probably said it before be gone Satan for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God

[00:15:10] and him only shall you serve then the devil left him and behold angels came and ministered to him he met the challenge and here's what I know every time I have stepped into a time of silence

[00:15:24] a time of spiritual work a time of working on myself oh the temptations are huge the last time I went on a spiritual quiet time like this it was it was here in town and I kept

[00:15:39] wanting I kept feeling the urge to call my husband to say let's just go have dinner let's go to a restaurant let's go do something fun and I had to just keep breathing and remind myself over and over again

[00:15:53] I'm here to hear that mantra of the divine as me the temptations on a social being I love being with people and I went away and removed myself from the people that I love and I will do the same this time for a

[00:16:10] number of days and the temptations to step out of it are huge and so I'm seeing this as a field trip for my own soul and an opportunity to know that I can meet these temptations by just going back

[00:16:27] to center going back to center hearing it again and again as these passages teach us and as I was contemplating this I remember to time years ago where I was blessed to be able to

[00:16:41] with a man named Stuart Wilde who came to speak here at Mile High Church he was an author and a speaker a very compelling man and he would do workshops around town that were not connected to Mile High

[00:16:53] but because I knew him and he knew me and some of the people who volunteered I got to work as events and so I got to attend his workshops and at one point he proposed something that I did in my own way

[00:17:05] that his part is born out of what I'm inviting you to join me to do today because right now you might be thinking I'm not in a profession that gives me an opportunity to take a sabbatical I can't do that

[00:17:17] I can barely even get my vacation in for gosh sakes how am I ever going to do a sabbatical and that's where I was in my early 20s I was working here at Mile High Church on staff

[00:17:26] I was going to college I was going to school and working on getting my degree and I was busy busy but something about this invitation really called to me and what Stuart really wanted people to

[00:17:41] do was to take four weeks and retreat from life like a sabbatical and because I couldn't do it I thought a lot about it and I came up with my own thing and that's my invitation to us today

[00:17:52] no matter how busy you think you are, no matter how impossible it might be I'm inviting you on a field trip for your soul and I'm telling you right now you're going to meet

[00:18:01] the temptations that will keep you out of it the temptations that say I can't do this this is too much I can't I can't possibly but I believe it's well worth it because what happened in the experience

[00:18:14] of Jesus what happens to many people who go away temporarily is that deepened walk in their divine nature and so I did four weeks and you could do four weeks, four seven day sections or

[00:18:31] one or a ten days at a time and you could do them separately or connected the point is intentionality it's the intention to step back from life and really have quiet time

[00:18:48] so what I did those many years ago is I told my family and friends I am taking a month and during any time that I am free from my job I am dedicating it to my own spiritual work,

[00:19:01] to my own deepening I'm not going to go out with my friends I'm not going to go hang out and do things I'm going to just go to work and go home my mother was not particularly happy

[00:19:12] she didn't really want me to do it because we're close and we were connected as we are now and but it meant I said no I want I'm going to be completely away for this time and then I dedicated

[00:19:23] those chunks of time with clear intention as Stuart suggested so the first week that I went away I dedicated it to my mental focus and by that I think we have to start with our mental atmosphere

[00:19:38] this honestly is not the order that Stuart suggested it but in my years of doing it I think that this is really the best order it's about mental focus it's about looking at what I'm thinking

[00:19:49] I carried around a piece of paper with me at that time and I wrote down every negative thought that I had throughout the day about myself about anybody about life I wrote it down

[00:20:01] and then at night when I go home or on the weekends I spent time flipping those negative thoughts saying what would I rather think? What would I rather my mental atmosphere be so that I

[00:20:13] could begin to contemplate and have new ideas? During that time the reason I think that we should start with a mental is that I set intentions for myself what is it that I really want to get out of

[00:20:25] this time a deeper walk with the divine a deeper sense of myself as an expression of God and love and joy a sense of connectedness with my deepest self what is it that I want to get out of this so I

[00:20:37] spent time contemplating that and then every day I read spiritual stuff I withdrew from the world of movies and television and news I did not do any of that and I won't do that this time either

[00:20:54] back then this was the ancient there's when there was no cell phones or this thing called the interweb right right wick there was no interweb and so I couldn't I didn't have to deal with that

[00:21:07] but this time I'm going to deal with that by putting my phone on airplane mode by having the disciplined lock it away and not look at it just to be disconnected so being disconnected and

[00:21:18] attuning to my own mental atmosphere became the first chunk of time that I spent and got myself connected to intentionality then the week the next week I did physical focus I focused on my body

[00:21:34] temple I focused on trying to feel into what is it that my body is yearning for in terms of does it need to move more does it does it need more vegetables does it need me to stop

[00:21:47] having alcohol or sugar or what it might be to really listen to my body and begin to remove those things or add those things into my physicality each day do I need to stretch but

[00:22:00] tending to and loving and honoring and listening to my body temple and feeling the physicality of being this being of life and not just ignoring the body temple and hoping that if I ignore it

[00:22:17] it will just do its thing but rather tend to it consciously lovingly listening to it the third week was all about my emotional health I tended to some of the issues that that still caused me pain and suffering or I got very emotional about certain relationships

[00:22:38] this time that I'm away since I was teaching the class on the Edwin Gaines financial prosperity laws one thing she suggested that I'm going to do is a forgiveness inventory that is where you go through your whole life starting from when you were born and you write down

[00:22:59] the name of every person you still need to forgive and then you go about doing it that should take me at least 40 days I'm getting no no I'm just kidding I don't think it'll take

[00:23:12] that long but I because I've been working for so many years but I'm totally willing to go back and see what needs to be let go of because I'm absolutely clear that resentment and unforgiveness

[00:23:26] live in our system exactly as people have said it's like drinking poison and helping the other person will die right it's toxic it's not allowing me if I have any of it to be fully present

[00:23:43] it is not the nature of God in me and as me to resent anyone for anything and so I'm going to spend time cleaning that up and that will be a huge support to my emotional body as well as any

[00:23:58] other crying I might need to do journaling I might need to do and if I need help from a practitioner or a therapist or a friend I might reach out but mostly I'm going to tend to my own emotional body

[00:24:13] the last week when I did this the first time I did go away for the final week the spiritual emphasis I went all by myself another thing my mother wasn't thrilled with to Mexico and sat on a beach for a

[00:24:27] week and meditated and prayed and stared at the ocean and during the emotional part I also recommend highly balancing out the maybe the pain or suffering that comes up with beautiful emotional things like reading spiritual poetry by Hafiz or Rumi or reading a spiritual literature

[00:24:51] that just lights you up listening to music or going to a museum or dancing the dance and affirming the presence of God right where we are allowing our heart to just burst open to life

[00:25:07] so that we're poised for that final week of spiritual work where it was about finding spiritual practices that really continued to keep me open and allowed me to feel connected

[00:25:21] and when I was through I re-entered my world as I know I will this time a little bit more connected a lot more connected more able to meet the challenges of the day as I perceive them in my own life

[00:25:37] and in the life that we share, able to see what is happening and see clearly through it to the life and the presence that God is this I believe is the ultimate yearning that each of us has

[00:25:53] we may think we yearn for more this or yearn for a lot more that or wish we had more that and maybe we do but the core of who we are the game that is a foot for each one of us

[00:26:05] is be the presence be it feel it live it express it in and through everything even the challenges of life and the joys of life that the opportunities abound for us to anchor ourselves

[00:26:26] into this truth and be it this is the field trip that is a foot for us this is my invitation and I close with a quote from our founder Dr. Ernest Holmes who says to us in the silence of

[00:26:40] the soul's communion with the great cause of all being into the silence of the absolute into the secret place of the most high back of the din and the ceaseless roar of life we shall find a

[00:26:55] resting place and a place of real spiritual power through the silence through the stillness what will your field trip be like? maybe it's a few days, maybe it's a few weeks, maybe it's a month, maybe it's 40 days. Join us for that field trip now. I invite our

[00:27:18] practitioner prayer partners to stand with me as we pray together and remind us all that at the end of our service they're available right down here in the front to receive anyone who chooses

[00:27:29] to be lifted up in prayer and we stand together in that preiffal consciousness right now and just breathe breathing ourselves into center reminding ourselves that we are anchored in the presence that God is right here and right now that that presence that exists in every nook and cranny

[00:27:54] of this universe and every cell in every body and every relationship and every activity is a guiding force that is absolutely sharing itself communicating itself, calling all of us back into total conscious alignment in it with it as it. We have the wherewithal, the power, the intentionality,

[00:28:21] that can allow us to hear that call and choose to step back in. And so I declare that this moment of prayer is a part of that intentional field trip for the soul and that out of this time that we

[00:28:37] share together each of us is inspired into our own journey with regards to this opportunity. We feel the call, we feel the pull it's like a magnet that is pulling on us all my beloved return that secret place of the most high. Maybe you forgot

[00:29:02] maybe you got too busy no matter what this voice, this love, this light is always beckoning us and we hear that call this day. We hear it clearly and out of that hearing I accept

[00:29:20] an affirm that what is emerging now for each one of us is a clear path for our own journey that allows us to embrace that profound quietude that reminds us of who we are.

[00:29:39] We can let go of the shore, we can recognize that wherever we are God is we can step into that holy sacred place we can lead ourselves back to the truth that unites us all and we do. We do.

[00:29:57] I give thanks that each one of us does this in our own way, that each one of us tends to our soul this way, that each one of us is about this beautiful, beautiful journey together.

[00:30:08] We take a stand for God for life, for the love that lives in us now. I release this prayer with great love and light knowing that as I do all that I've spoken is done and I let it go

[00:30:21] and I let it be. And so it is. Amen. Thanks for listening to the Mylhi Church podcast. This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you to make a donation. Please visit MylhiChurch.org.