MHR EP 2608 - What no longer serves You?

Are you in your own way? What in your life no longer serves you or your progress in life? Why not use the season of Lent to review and eliminate old ideas that no longer align with Scripture or your Spirit’s eternal lessons journey.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Would you take serious life advice from Willie Nelson?

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Well, let's hold on to that thought. What if I told you that there's more to it? That there are benefits and resources from heaven that are available to help you in this life. And you've never heard about them. Are you curious? Well, join Gordon Merrill as he digs deeper into making heaven real in this life.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Welcome back to Making Heaven Real. If you've been following closely over the last couple of weeks, you've been a part of our continuing study as we're kind of circling the compass and also circling around the illustration of an aeronautical airfield. And we started out at north, went to west, south, and east, and started out by comparing how most airfield approach patterns are counterclockwise because the pilot seat's normally on the left, and that gives them the best view below and the airfield, and the best out-of-the-cockpit information to make the best decisions for a safe and appropriate landing. So over the last several weeks, we've been looking at the cardinal direction points from that same perspective and from that same counterclockwise approach. From a spiritual perspective, looking at the fact that yes, we are spirits in a human form, sent here for the human experience, and sent here to learn, grow, and mature. We've also looked at how different sets of people and different cultures look at these cardinal directions and the significance associated with them. We started out with north and introspection and challenges, which for most of us who are here because of having a devastating loss and grief, there's nothing much more than a of a challenge than that. And definitely a time of introspection is required after that. Then we flew on around towards the west and found reflection and endings. But as a part of that ending, we also found that several cultures look at movement to the west as a movement from the outer world or the things around us into our inner world and our spirit and our spirituality. Moving on around, we ended up at the South. Warmth, growth, life. And also encouraging with enlightenment and understanding, representing the journey into truth and goodness from the south with the warmth. This week we go on around to the last of our cardinal positions being East. And I think a lot of that is very special because the East in a lot of cultures depends on the symbolism of new beginnings, enlightenment, hope, but probably more importantly, or at least as important, divine presence. East is associated with the rising sun, and it represents light, dispelling darkness, renewal, rebirth, fresh starts. Spiritually, the East can be the symbol of hope and renewal, which gives us a chance to embrace new opportunities, seek higher awareness, looking for new things or a new way of looking at things to energize us and help us set the intentions for our day. The East is the universal symbol of light, renewal, and divine connection. One of the things I think is also interesting that this comes up at this particular time on our calendar. Because in preparation for Easter, many religions observe a period of Lent. And Lent, by definition, is a season of spiritual renewal. Kind of goes along with our discussion of East. A lot of what you'll see with Lent is taking a serious look at your life. Taking a serious look at your spirit? Taking a serious look at the things you've learned or the things that you hold as important. To see if they're still important. Do some of the things that you've learned or been taught over and over growing up, do some of them just really have no more meaning or importance or need in your life now? Things that are not directly associated with your spiritual growth or your human experience as a spirit to learn, grow, and mature may no longer hold reason or purpose in your life. And that's where the season of Lent is very important because we can kind of move those out, brush those aside, get rid of those to make room in our heart and life for those new things that will provide better direction, better meaning, better support in our growth and our learning. So Lent is a very good time. And Lent is also a very good time to match with this particular discussion. Because when we're looking towards the East and we're looking for divine knowledge, and we're looking for wisdom to emerge from our search, that gives us the ability to grow, to change, to self-discover, and put those things in the space that we just cleared out and made by getting rid of those things that no longer have purpose or meet our need. We started a bit way back at the beginning in some of the early episodes talking about you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know it because nobody bothered to teach you about it. But we also talked about some of the things that you may have been taught may not be completely, totally representative of the original text of Scripture. Those are some things you might want to look at seriously during this time of Lent, or seriously look at during this time of facing the east. If it's not serving a direct purpose for your spirit to learn, grow, and mature, it may be time for some house cleaning. It may be time to put that aside for a little bit. Just like the East has all of the metaphors and the pictures of the sun coming up in the east and the sun rays having associated with that pictures of divine blessing and guidance and shining light and all of that. I mean, if nothing else, look at the picture for making heaven real. We have a single person on a path where heaven is sending a light and illuminating their path and providing them guidance, direction, and knowledge. So when it's Lent, when you're reviewing things during the days of Lent, when you're figuring out what things don't serve a purpose anymore, let's push them aside and make room for those things that do directly affect our path as a spirit to learn, grow, and mature. So we know that there's all kinds of things about East that allow that to happen for us, that provide us with that opportunity. You know, if you look at it from the element perspective, East is linked to the element of air. Interesting. We're talking about airplanes and air approaches, and here we have the direction of east linked to the element of air. But not just air. In several cultures, it's associated with intellect, communication, and even the breath of life. Those are the kind of things that we want to focus on as we're trying to get the best connection possible so that we can produce the best outcome possible for our spirit on this life plan. East is also a reminder of constant cycles of life, the chance for renewal and the hope for a brighter future. Those three statements right there, I think, encompass a lot of what we've been talking about from the very beginning. Unfortunately, a lot of us are here because of the constant cycles of life and one cycle that took somebody from us. But there's the chance for renewal. And there's also the hope for a brighter future. And that hope is really wrapped in the idea of allowing our STC to guide us, to navigate for us, to take care of things for us. So, yes, the East is a symbol of newness. It's a symbol of divine help. It's a symbol of light. It's a symbol of renewing. All things that we are really importantly focused on right now. With this current season of Lent on the calendar, also fits right in perfectly with our view of the cardinal direction east. So, what has gotten us to this point? We've reviewed navigation using an airline or airplane and airfield analogy through all of this. We've discussed how navigation and assistance and safety is all taken care of for most airplanes by air traffic control or ATC. We've directly compared that to navigation and control and safety for our spirit with our spirit team or STC. We've reviewed all four cardinal directions. North with its introspection and challenge, West with its endings and reflection, but also pointing us to our inner world and our inner spirit. South with its warmth, growth, and life. And now we're looking at East and how it helps so much with direction, self-discovery, growth, with the divine knowledge and wisdom that emerge from the East. We've looked how we navigate this compass counterclockwise. Because that gives the best view for the pilot. Now what we're looking at with the STC is not so much going counterclockwise, but we're also looking at how it's providing information, navigation, and support with the best view for the pilot. But I think one of the points that we've made that I think encompasses a lot of this discussion is the pilot, no matter whether it's to a controlled airfield, uncontrolled airfield, controlled by STC, or visual flight rules and flight following or not. Because the pilot must always be alert, must always be engaged, must always be looking over his shoulder for a frame of reference. Your eyes are always outside the cockpit. Your eyes are always looking, scanning the horizon, you're looking for other traffic in the area. You're always alert. I think that's one of the concepts that's kind of a little underemphasized in our spirit journey. We need to be alert. If we're learning and maturing and growing, the best way to do that is to be alert. I know my grandfather years ago told me if you want to learn something, find somebody who's awesome at that task. And crawl in their pocket until you know it. The only way that has any support or substance is because you're alert. You're watching, you're learning. One of the other things about navigation in an aircraft is you're always realigning your tools. An aircraft especially has regularly scheduled mandatory maintenance schedules. And all of your navigation devices have regularly scheduled mandatory realignment and recalibrations. But if we're traveling with ATC and we're flying an aircraft, ATC knows our flight plan. And if you're trying if you're flying a instrument flight rule IFR flight plan, they keep track of you from takeoff to landing and watch everything in the middle. They'll navigate you around storms, they'll navigate you around other traffic that may or may not have a radio. They're there to take care of you, watch you, and make sure that you have the best, safest, most expeditious route to your destination. For us, STC is the same thing. They know your life plan for this lifetime in its entirety. They have it in front of them. So if you're headed for an obstacle, they'll either work to remove the obstacle completely, or they'll fly you around it. They're there to take care of you, to keep you safe, keep you on course, and arrive you safely at your destination. But what if you're an airplane and you're in flight following, and all of a sudden you decide to go do your own thing. So you call ATC and say, Yeah, I'm gonna vector off to the west and uh I'm gonna just drop flight following. They'll let you. But what ends up ends up happening? You don't have the navigation support. They don't know where you're going now because you've dropped your flight plan. They'll still monitor your safety. But without flight following, they're not gonna talk to you unless there's an emergency. So what happened there? You as a pilot made a free will decision to brush them aside and do your own thing. Now we've talked several times about the effects of our free will decisions on our life. We started out with a very bold statement that the only way we can limit God in our life is by our free will decision to not allow Him full control. We've also discussed how free will decisions that you make will have downstream effects not only on yourself, but also in others. And how those free will decisions can trigger far-reaching effects downline. For the purpose of this discussion, I think the one that we're most concerned about is how our free will decisions can also limit our chances to successfully complete this life's plan. If RSDC knows everything that's on our life's plan and everything that's on the syllabus, quote unquote, for this particular class, which is this lifetime, if we suddenly decide we're not going to come to class for a couple weeks, or we're not gonna turn in an assignment for a couple weeks, when the time runs out for the class, we may not have fully completed everything that's required to pass the class. That's part of a free will decision to deviate from our life's plan, just like we made a free will decision to deviate from the flight plan filed with ATC. So while we have yeast that gives us the ability to connect with divine intervention and connect to enlightenment and connect to the inspiration that will help us to go forward. Are we getting in our own way? If we are spirits in human form that are here for a human experience to learn to grow and mature, who's in control? Is our spirit in control of what we're doing this time around? Or is the human? 2007 there was a song that was released, and it's called I Release, I Let Go. Some of the lyrics there apply to this so well. It says, I release and I let go, I let the spirit run my life, and my heart is open wide. No more struggle, no more strife. With my faith I see the light. I am free in the spirit. How freeing would it be to let go and let the spirit or our spirits or our STC take control and run a life force? Now quick example I think will make a lot of impression on this point. Years ago when I was working with the Air Force, we were on a mission in Florida during the height of the wildfires down there. So smoke was so heavy and so thick, a lot of times certain areas didn't hardly even see sunshine. You couldn't see the sun peering through the thickness of the smoke. When we completed that part of the mission, we had to fly from there back to another state, which was home base at the time. But the smoke was thick. I'll never forget sitting in the back of that aircraft. Thankfully, there was a pilot up front who was a Delta pilot, had instrument flight rating, was able to file an IFR flight plan with ATC. We took off for that airport and said, vector this direction at this speed and this altitude, and we took off. It wasn't two minutes after leaving the airport that we were in smoke so thick and so dense. I could no longer see the wheel on the landing gear outside the window. No idea where we were going, had no way of navigating by anything we could see. We were in smoke so thick we couldn't tell if we were about to run into somebody. But what got us through that entire process safely is because the pilot was trained in letting go and letting ATC control where he went, how he went, what direction he went to keep him safe. Not only did he keep him and everybody in the airplane safe, thankfully, but brought us to our destination safely. But because it was an Air Force mission and because it was an instrument rated pilot, commercial pilot, ATC was able to navigate us safely. So what if we let go? What if we let our spirit team, our STC, navigate us, point us in the right direction, keep us safe, and deliver us safely to our destination. Now, I started the episode asking if we would take life advice from William Nelson. Well, in 2022, Willie Nelson wrote a song, Energy Follows Thought. And part of those lyrics go, imagine what you want, then get out of the way. Remember, energy follows thought, so be careful what you say. The next part is if you hear spirits talking, their wisdom cannot be bought. Apply it to your thinking because energy follows thought. So now if we are going to take away any wisdom or direction for our life from Willie Nelson, this would be where we would would have to come from. You know, we've heard of the saying for years, get out of your own way. We talked about that briefly when we talked about Lent. What kind of things have we learned years ago that no longer apply that are getting in our way? What kind of things do we need to brush aside and say, nope, this no longer applies? We have to look at those things that will help our spirit to learn, grow, and mature while it's here. Who better to do that and guide us through that than our STC, who has the entire plan in front of him? So can you even imagine, as Willie Nelson suggests, what would happen and how much you could accomplish on your spirit's life's plan if we could get our spirits' way and hear our spirits talking to us. That would definitely make heaven real in this life.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

We hope you learned something new about God's love and his resources during our time together. Please like and subscribe so you don't miss out. You can find our social media links and our contact info in the show notes. When you're commenting, please reference the episode number. Join us next time as we again search out the ways of making heaven real in this life with Gordon Merrill.