You Live, You Learn with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to the Mile Hi Podcast. So happy that you've joined us if you're liking

[00:00:05] the content that we have, you're going to love our guest speaker who's coming to Mile

[00:00:09] Hi Church on April 26th. Koot Blackson is coming to speak about his great book The Magic

[00:00:15] of Surrender. You can purchase tickets and be with us live by going to our website

[00:00:19] and you can also join us via live stream. We hope you'll be with us. Thanks.

[00:00:24] So I'm going to lean into now. You live, you learn. You live, you learn. Beautiful music

[00:00:30] of a Lannis Morissette. Here's a picture of a Lannis that we have. I've loved her music

[00:00:35] because I love rock and roll and I love spiritual concepts in music and she does what I think

[00:00:40] is spiritual rock and roll. You heard divinity, you heard all sorts of words in just the songs

[00:00:46] we've played so far today. And not only that, I saw that she was doing a benefit concert

[00:00:53] a number of years ago for a guppe and I thought she's one of us. And so I delved more deeply

[00:01:03] into her music and discovered that I think that she is definitely a very spiritually centered

[00:01:08] person. I don't know if she still attends there or not, but I think that her music makes

[00:01:14] me really think more deeply and more profoundly about myself and about my journey. And so here

[00:01:21] are some concepts I want to start out with here. Nirvana, enlightenment, heaven. These

[00:01:33] are concepts that a spiritual seeker might be familiar with because they tend to represent

[00:01:39] to us a place we're trying to get to spiritually. Venosa in the Buddhist teachings that if

[00:01:46] we let go of attachments enough and if we practice the way of the Buddhist teachings

[00:01:51] that we will experience Nirvana and be released from our karma and released from this world

[00:01:58] is a very powerful notion. The idea in many spiritual circles that if we just keep doing

[00:02:06] our spiritual work will eventually be enlightened. And in many realms that if we live our life

[00:02:13] and we live it well will end up in heaven. Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven,

[00:02:19] manifest on earth many times. These things lead us I think at a subtle level to often believe

[00:02:27] that as a spiritual seeker if I just do the right thing, I'm eventually going to get

[00:02:33] there. I don't exactly know where there is but I'm going to get there, right? And then

[00:02:39] we have along with that education, the notion that we have especially here in the United

[00:02:48] States and the Western world, North America and many other countries, school, the notion

[00:02:54] that as a being we go to school and we move through various grades and lessons and then

[00:03:01] we graduate and we're done. And years ago we used to have these events called the dimensions

[00:03:08] of mind symposiums, a bit many of you remember those. We had a number of speakers come at

[00:03:14] what used to be the Regency Hotel and we would spend all day there listening to all of these

[00:03:20] powerful speakers and one year Joseph Chilton Peer showed up. I had not heard of him before.

[00:03:27] He is most well known for having written the book Magical Child. He wrote a lot of story

[00:03:31] or books about children and eventually about consciousness, about raising children consciously.

[00:03:38] When he talked to us that day about something that I had no clue about, he said did you realize

[00:03:44] that the educational system that was formed and fashioned here in the United States was

[00:03:50] all built on the same notions of the industrial revolution. It was the notion that we could

[00:03:58] create an end product by taking some material, creating a machine that we put that material

[00:04:07] in and if we engineer the machine correctly that that which goes through it will come out and

[00:04:14] you'll get the same widget every single time. The same measurement, it will perform the same unless

[00:04:20] there's something wrong inside the mechanism that needs to be fixed, pop, we'll get the same result.

[00:04:28] And so that notion was put into place when we said as a country let's create this system they

[00:04:35] start here and they go through and they get ahead and then pop, out comes this perfectly educated

[00:04:42] little being. I don't think that's happened do you? I think that might be flawed because he said at

[00:04:50] the time part of why it's flawed is diversity a human being, a little being is diverse in their

[00:04:57] very nature, their life experience, their genetic makeup, their neurology, their neuro experience,

[00:05:05] everything about them so we can take little kids and put them through the same educational system

[00:05:11] and they're going to come out with completely different ideas and visions for themselves,

[00:05:15] things that they were more interested in than another. And not only that what he said was one of

[00:05:20] the biggest flaws is that education is wonderful and we need it, it's not that we don't need it but

[00:05:27] I don't know if you notice but when I graduated from school there's a lot of stuff they didn't tell me.

[00:05:32] Lost, they didn't tell me everything. I had to figure a lot of stuff out even in my profession. That's

[00:05:40] the biggest complaint I hear from ministerial students. I bet Dr. Rads heard it too I think he's

[00:05:44] here we'd graduate him and then they'd say they didn't teach me everything in ministerial school

[00:05:50] and we don't we can't it's impossible. And so what we realize is that these things that we have

[00:05:58] revered everything from our spiritual experience to our worldly experience kind of sets up a notion for

[00:06:07] us that we're on a journey that eventually we're going to graduate from and so humans have even

[00:06:12] come up with some spiritual theories like the universe is a big school and you go through these

[00:06:18] lessons and when you get the lessons you don't have to learn the lessons anymore and that there's

[00:06:23] there are things like old souls and new souls and that I might be in fourth grade but some

[00:06:30] own is in eighth grade as far as our souls are concerned and she's much more involved than I am

[00:06:35] and that we we are on our way and then eventually we're going to graduate and I think a lot of us

[00:06:40] feel especially in life and our spiritual journey one day I shall be complete. I shall be perfect

[00:06:50] my life will be perfect everything will go perfectly I will have arrived

[00:06:58] if anyone's had that half of the please come tell me I'd like to know I don't think that's how it

[00:07:03] happens and I think one of the greatest challenges is what Alanis sings in the song you live you learn

[00:07:12] you live you learn life is a constant experience of living and learning and living and learning and

[00:07:18] living and learning and just in case no one's told you this I'm going to say it out loud it's not

[00:07:24] going to stop it's going to go on forever it's going to go on for as long as we're alive yes we may

[00:07:32] accumulate some proficiencies we may get to points where things become easier where we learn the

[00:07:38] lessons quicker and faster I don't believe that the universe is out there doling us lessons and

[00:07:45] saying well I'm going to make sure that you really get this today I don't believe that our teaching

[00:07:50] supports the notion of a God who is specifically taking us through curriculum necessarily but we believe

[00:07:58] that that our evolution is always at hand and that we are always shifting and growing Ernest Holmes says

[00:08:05] the evolution of the individual the unfoldment of personality the enlightenment of the soul the

[00:08:12] illumination of the spirit can come only to the degree that we let life operate through us our

[00:08:20] founder is talking about that notion of being in concert in the dance with the infinite and knowing

[00:08:29] that there will always be opportunities and and invitations into growth and evolution and that

[00:08:39] is being a full on human being and being fully engaged in life and relationships and my experience

[00:08:49] in my body and all that comes with this beautiful thing called human existence it will always include

[00:08:59] the invitations that are issued by our own soul our own essence for evolutionary changes and growth

[00:09:08] and deepening and that we are at a choice point to either resist that and be angry with ourselves

[00:09:16] because what I see happens sometimes is like a spiritual self esteem issue people think they know

[00:09:23] this but then they're angry that I'm 80 years old you think I would have figured this out by now

[00:09:29] right and I'm here to be the voice that says you're never going to figure it out stop trying

[00:09:34] just stop trying just figure out to the degree you can right now what is being presented to you

[00:09:40] the challenges that are in front of you the things that are are yours and yours alone and embrace

[00:09:46] them fully and lean into them and let yourself be evolved through your own soul's journey that's

[00:09:55] the invitation with this today you live you learn you love you learn you cry you learn you lose

[00:10:04] you learn you bleed you learn that's the invitation of this song so there's some things that I invite us

[00:10:11] to do to anchor this in more powerfully and profoundly the first one is stay curious

[00:10:18] one of the things that we tend to lose as we get older at times or as we get more proficient in our

[00:10:27] living is that we lose the ability to be teachable and we sometimes fall into the belief that it's

[00:10:34] safer and better and more impressive for us to be right than to be teachable and so we lose the

[00:10:44] capacity to say oh something's happening in front of me I don't really like it let me be curious

[00:10:51] about it run a brown the great author and teacher speaks about this very poignantly in her book

[00:10:57] rising strong she says choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us

[00:11:04] to surrender to uncertainty it wasn't always a choice we were born curious but over time we learn

[00:11:10] that curiosity like vulnerability can lead to hurt as a result we turned to self-protecting choosing

[00:11:18] certainty over curiosity armor over vulnerability and knowing over learning we can know that we might

[00:11:29] be struggling with this subject a little bit if there are parts of us that worship at the ground

[00:11:36] of some of those words I need certainty the more certain things are the more secure I feel

[00:11:42] I need to know what's going to happen and what's happening the more I know the more secure I feel

[00:11:49] and it allows us to push curiosity away some of the most freeing words I find myself having to

[00:11:58] utter at times as a human being include I don't know it can be very hard I don't know why this is

[00:12:07] happening I don't know what to do I don't know what that means I don't know how to fix it

[00:12:14] those words can be challenging and yet curiosity allows me to say I don't know but I'm really

[00:12:22] fascinated by it I'm really curious about it stay curious my friends sound familiar

[00:12:30] nobody got that one I don't understand okay you got it all right good good okay

[00:12:36] so staying curious then we go into something that Brenne points to which is allowing ourselves to be

[00:12:43] embraced by the unknown but mr. Fuller said the more we learn the more we realize how little we know

[00:12:53] and that is a place of opening in our consciousness the more we learn the more we realize how little

[00:12:59] we know and so it's about letting go and of the need and the almost addiction to certainty

[00:13:08] I would theorize and suggest today that no matter how certain you or I are or how certainly

[00:13:15] we create our lives let's say we're somebody who does the exact same thing every day gets up and

[00:13:22] does the exact same thing every day out of a desire for certainty and control and here's what I know

[00:13:30] is so there's still way more uncertainty in that life than there is certainty and in your life

[00:13:38] in my life there is way more uncertainty than certainty no matter where we are no matter what

[00:13:46] we're doing even if we do the same exact thing every day and show up to the same Starbucks with the

[00:13:53] same barista for the same coffee who knows whether the beans will taste the same that day they might

[00:13:58] be a little more sour a little more bitter who knows who else will be in the Starbucks we never know

[00:14:04] there's always uncertainty a foot and the human who makes friends with uncertainty will assure

[00:14:11] themselves a happier more open life and I think we'll usher in that energy that Holmes is talking

[00:14:18] about that allows us to evolve and to shift and to turn our lives around and then the last thing

[00:14:27] we can do is allow challenge to be our teacher I pointed to it a minute ago but sometimes I think in

[00:14:36] this teaching we think that if we're really practicing science of mind right our life should not

[00:14:44] have any challenges this should be perfect because then I've got good consciousness on thinking

[00:14:51] positive thoughts right I've even know people who in the midst of their greatest challenges don't

[00:14:58] want to show up to classes or to church or to their small group or to a group of people like this

[00:15:04] because I don't want to bring everybody down they're so happy and positive there I don't want to be

[00:15:08] so negative and I want to say boldly and brightly out loud if you're having one of those days

[00:15:15] this is the place you need to be if you're having one of those days a group of people who can

[00:15:20] love you and see you and support you that's where we want to be we want to be surrounded and

[00:15:26] unfolded by other people who can see the truth of us and stand with us and support us and that this

[00:15:34] church is a place where we are not expected to be perfect beings perfect humans on the path of life

[00:15:42] otherwise how in the world would I be here getting to speak to all you kind people that just

[00:15:47] would not be the case and so we all get a chance to walk our imperfect hearts home together to

[00:15:56] support each other to journey together to walk the path of evolution together and to support and

[00:16:03] stand with each other the Dow in Lao Tzu says in the Dow in the pursuit of learning every day

[00:16:10] something is acquired in the Dow in the pursuit of Dow every day something is dropped and so

[00:16:18] learning growing evolving is about that dance it's about the invitation to constantly be

[00:16:27] learning and growing and evolving and being kind and gentle with ourselves understanding that

[00:16:36] if that's happening for us we fall in what we call the realm of normal that we are normal nothing

[00:16:44] is wrong we are not broken we are not defective we are not dysfunctional we are normal evolving

[00:16:53] beings right now I've got the honor of digging into the book spiritual economics a little bit

[00:17:00] and we did a book study in the store outside in the lobby on Thursday and Butterworth says occasionally

[00:17:06] a student of truth will say I have worked so very long and hard to develop understanding how long do

[00:17:13] I have to work at it until I arrive at the place where it just automatically works for me

[00:17:18] the thought is so understandable yet so naive he says ask the great athlete or the concert pianist

[00:17:25] or the successful actor if they have arrived at the place where they need no further practice

[00:17:31] they will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance the greater

[00:17:37] the need for practice you will note that even Jesus went regularly up into the mountains to pray

[00:17:44] to practice the presence of God he's talking about that notion that even if we are what we might

[00:17:51] call an expert in our field we still need to learn and grow and have practice years ago in his book

[00:18:00] outliers Malcolm Gladwell talked about the concept the principle of expertise and theorize that if

[00:18:09] you've been doing something for 10,000 hours or more you are then considered an expert at it

[00:18:15] so some of us are expert warriors for example we do it every 10,000 hours but it was interesting to

[00:18:22] note that his assertion was challenged a little bit and if you dig into the research actually 50

[00:18:29] years ago Herman Simon and William Chase suggested they were chess players and they'd been playing

[00:18:35] they were expert chess players and they've been playing for 10,000 to 50,000 and they asserted

[00:18:41] that to be an expert at something you have to work that long and hard but they also asserted

[00:18:46] you're still growing and learning researcher John Hayes looked at 76 classic composers and discovered

[00:18:52] that most of them not all of them did their finest work after 10 years of doing what they were there

[00:19:00] to do so expertise is a challenge that even as we're hearing from Eric Butterworth even the experts

[00:19:09] have lots of growth and work to do by this definition I added it up I've been a minister now for

[00:19:15] almost 33 years and that would mean that if I worked in ministry at least six hours a week I made it

[00:19:23] I'm an expert I'm an expert yay woohoo what does that get me? Nada

[00:19:31] every day around here there's still things that go on that I go huh what every week there's new

[00:19:38] things to learn there's new there's new thresholds and new horizons that are afoot no matter how

[00:19:46] expertise you how much expertise you or I have at anything we always must remain teachable

[00:19:53] growable open-minded open-hearted and to understand that a person who is growing is the person who

[00:20:05] is evolving what if we have it wrong we look out in the world and we think well the perfect people

[00:20:12] are the ones that need to be like what if I need to be like the imperfect people the people who don't

[00:20:18] always get it right if you will make mistakes but they're honest about it and vulnerable about it

[00:20:26] and are willing to share and are willing to grow through it I think that's what it means

[00:20:31] to live to learn to evolve to grow to deepen and that at the end of our lives if we've done that

[00:20:40] we will be happy we will have said I did good I am good

[00:20:45] and so as I close out today I invite us to join together in prayer and I'd like to read some words

[00:20:51] from John W. Gardner who was the former secretary of health and education and welfare it's from a

[00:20:57] speech that he gave when he was working in Lyndon Johnson's cabinet and I invite you just to go

[00:21:03] within with me or if we have our practitioner prayer partners who'd like to stand with me as we do

[00:21:08] this prayer that would be fine I invite them to do that and we just take a deep breath being open

[00:21:14] minded to that learning that growing opportunity that is right here right now for us Mr. Gardner says

[00:21:22] the things you learn in maturity aren't simple things such as acquiring information and skills

[00:21:28] you learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior you learn not to burn your energy

[00:21:35] in anxiety you discover how to manage your tensions you learn that self-pity and resentment are

[00:21:42] among the most toxic of drugs you find that the world loves talent but pays off on character

[00:21:49] you come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you they're thinking about

[00:21:55] themselves you learn that no matter how hard you try to please some people in this world are not

[00:22:02] going to love you a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing

[00:22:09] and so we relax into this this reality of who we are indeed what I accept and affirm is that

[00:22:19] the infinite light and life that God is has no capacity to abandon us no matter what we're going

[00:22:27] through there's no ability for this universal presence to leave us to desert us any more than

[00:22:34] gravity can leave or desert us because it's unhappy with how we move about the planet

[00:22:42] God the infinite essence is a principled presence that exists through us in us and as us and

[00:22:49] it is always seeking for our journey in it with it and as it of growing and evolving

[00:22:57] and allowing more of it to be expressed indeed what if there's nothing to gain but only

[00:23:04] that which we need to let go of such that more of the love and the light that God is as us may have

[00:23:10] its way in the world in our life in our relationships in our bodies in our hearts and so this day as

[00:23:19] we pray together we are yes for that reality we say yes to that infinite light we allow it to move

[00:23:28] through us and we choose to recognize that the the lessons the journeys the experiences that we

[00:23:36] have had that have taught us that have deepened us that have evolved us are blessed moments that we

[00:23:42] can give thanks for and the ones that were currently in the midst of are blessed moments that we can

[00:23:49] give thanks for and the ones that are yet to be our blessed moments that we can give thanks for

[00:23:55] and we do right here and right now for we know at the core of us no matter what is going on

[00:24:03] we are good we are God we are light we are love we are the fullness of the infinite in expression no

[00:24:12] matter what we give thanks for this recognition of truth that goes with us now and that has its way

[00:24:20] through us now as we release this prayer into that law that makes it so we let it be we let it go

[00:24:27] and so it is thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast this podcast is made possible by

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