Building Your Spiritual Spine

Sometimes the most difficult part of spirituality is learning to stand firm in your truth. In this episode, Glenn explores the process of building your spiritual spine! If we practice when it's easy, it makes the harder times more manageable.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey everybody,

Welcome to the show.

Today we are talking about a spiritual spine.

You've got to have a spiritual spine,

Man.

What does that mean?

That means not backing down,

Standing in your truth,

Really standing firmly in your spirituality.

You know,

It's a lot of times we get caught up in the learning aspect.

I talk about this a lot.

We get caught up in the learning about spirituality,

You know.

There's so much information out there.

We listen to all these teachers and there's tons of wonderful,

Amazing,

Awesome teachers out there.

And there's so much free content,

So price isn't an issue.

And then when you start putting in money and start getting these really in-depth courses,

I mean this stuff is addictive because it's quite frankly the secret to life.

This is the stuff that can give you the life that you've always dreamed,

The joy,

The happiness,

And even the success which follows that in so many ways,

You know,

Financially,

Materialistically,

All kinds of other ways if that's your thing.

But like this is the most exciting topic literally in the entire universe.

You are jazzed about this.

Well,

Spirituality is the most important topic in the universe because we're literally discussing universal law.

We're discussing how the universe works.

And when we're in alignment with that,

It brings us everything that we want and it's how we experience happiness.

So,

Of course,

When people start stumbling across it and start opening,

It's exciting,

You know.

I mean you see a good movie and you tell 10 people on average.

I mean what happens when you stumble across the key to life?

So,

It's very exciting.

But a lot of times people get so addicted to taking in information because it feels good.

It feels like you're doing something for yourself.

When you do anything that's good for yourself,

Your body gives positive feedback.

When you take a breath,

If you pay attention to how you feel,

When you take a breath and hold it,

There's a pleasurable sensation.

So,

When you're bringing positive food into your brain,

You get positive feedback.

Your body can sense that you're doing something that's healthy for it.

The problem is that we can get addicted to feeding that and just bringing in information and not actually implementing it.

And implementing it is really where your life changes.

That's really where you reap the benefits and that's where the spiritual spine comes in.

Because you have to stand in your truth and you have to actually live it.

This is why we're spiritual beings having human experience.

So,

There's basically like two of us and we're vibrational beings.

So,

The whole point is to bring spirituality,

Bring the higher vibration,

Bring the vibration of love into our human experience.

Well,

How do we do that?

By action,

By actually living it.

When you look at a stranger and smile,

That's action.

And when you're feeling love inside yourself and you smile at a stranger,

That's literally bringing love into this transitory experience,

This transitional place.

It's actually bringing love in and that's what shifts our vibration.

Because we are energy,

We are vibrational beings here.

So,

Every time we take an action out of love,

It shifts our vibration to a higher vibration of love.

So,

The bigger action we take,

The larger the shift that takes place.

So,

When you're sitting there,

You know,

For me one of the biggest things,

One of the biggest shifts was spending 10 years in family court,

Getting my ass handed to me half the time.

And getting yelled at by judges for no apparent reason,

Just for showing up and having the audacity to try to see my son more.

After all that experience for 10 years,

Then all of a sudden going for custody and realizing like,

I have fear about this.

I have fear that I'm going to get my ass handed to me again or yelled at.

So,

I need to shift this if I want.

I just need to shift it period.

And if I want any chance of things going well,

I really should shift it.

So,

When I realized I was giving my power to the court system instead of where it belonged to my higher power,

I realized I needed to shift that.

So,

I shifted it and I realized that universal law determines what happens.

In my personal opinion,

God determines what happens,

Not the Rhode Island court system.

So,

I think God's more powerful than the Rhode Island court system in my world.

That's just how it is.

But,

You know,

Unconsciously I was giving my power to the Rhode Island court system.

So,

Once I put it back into my gut,

All of a sudden the fear dissipated.

And when I could stand in that and go through a year and a half process,

You know,

Fortunately my son came home with me the first day.

But then it was a year and a half process to stand in that and actually have it anchored down as permanent through all the court procedures that followed.

For me to do that,

I needed to constantly recenter myself and stand in what I believed to be true.

Did I do it perfectly?

No.

But fortunately,

The fear crept in at times.

But,

You know,

Fortunately all we need is the faith of a mustard seed.

It doesn't need to be perfect.

We just have to do the best we can.

And that's what I did.

And in standing in that situation,

My vibration shifted dramatically because I actually stood in it.

You know,

I had the spine to say,

This isn't a game.

This isn't some theory in my head.

This is real life stuff.

And this is a real life situation that I have tons of emotion around.

And it's really scary.

And I can't sit there and go,

Yeah,

I want to be a spiritual,

Happy,

Enlightened being.

And go,

But this is,

But not this.

This is just too hard.

No,

Even this.

You know,

That became my mantra.

Even this.

Because it's easy to stand in your faith when you're doing something simple.

Oh,

You know,

I hope I get the right,

I hope I get a parking spot right in front of the store.

Oh,

Look,

There's one.

God loves me.

That's easy.

But can you stand in it when crap is really hitting the fan?

When you're really getting knocked around.

Can you stand in it then?

Yeah.

And your brain wants to go,

Well,

Yeah,

But this is,

Even this,

This is really big.

This is really scary.

Yes,

Even this.

Yeah,

But you don't understand the core system and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Not even this.

And standing in it,

Even in this,

Even in the worst of times.

You know,

Which is kind of funny because our brain,

You know,

When we're not in a real difficult time,

Our brain goes,

Well,

Yes,

You know,

We build our faith so we can make it through the hard times.

Then when we're in a hard time,

Our brain goes,

Yeah,

But this is too big.

Like,

I mean,

How am I supposed to have the faith for this?

This is ridiculous.

And it tries talking us out of it.

And it's like,

No,

Even this,

Even this,

When you stand,

When you,

When you lean into your spiritual spine and you stand in your,

In what you hope to believe,

And we're not going to believe it perfectly.

We're not going to do it perfectly.

So don't wait until you think you have enough faith to do it.

Don't wait until you feel 100% confident that you can do it because you ain't going to get there.

That place doesn't exist.

So don't wait for that.

Do it even though you do have doubts.

Do it even though you are scared.

Do it even though it seems too big.

And when you,

That's really living in faith.

That's really where your spirituality goes to a whole nother level.

Boy,

I had to get that out,

I guess.

Apparently.

That is,

But that's so tough though.

Like,

Yeah,

I'm glad you hammered that home for so long because,

Man,

That is,

That is a ridiculously tough thing to actually do.

And,

You know,

I know.

And it bears the greatest fruit.

Yeah.

I personally have been going through something that was incredibly difficult.

And it's hard.

It's so hard to actually have the faith that everything is going to be okay.

When you have so much fear around it,

You know?

Right.

And I think that's an important piece because like the,

One of the reasons why it's so hard is because we determine what it looks like when things turn out okay.

Right.

You know,

Like in my situation,

Like,

Of course,

People,

You know,

I like to say this when it comes up because it's important and I forgot to mention it earlier.

The people think that when I put my faith in God for my son's custody that I was like,

Okay,

Well,

And I got custody,

That that means it worked.

No,

It worked even if I didn't get custody.

And that was the point.

When I asked,

When I put my faith in God,

I didn't say God,

I know God will give me custody of my son.

No,

That's not what I said.

I said,

You know what?

No matter what happens,

I know that it's going to be in mine and my son's highest good.

No matter what happens.

If he comes to live with me,

Then that's going to be in our highest good.

If I lose and he doesn't come to live with me,

Then there must be something that I need to learn,

That he needs to go through.

It's in our highest good in some way,

Even though I can't see it.

That's,

You know,

So we can't have an attachment to a specific outcome because we have minimal perspectives.

I don't know.

Like it looked like to me that if he moved in with me,

It would be in our highest good.

That's why I tried to get custody because I thought it would be the best thing.

But I have limited perspective and I need to understand that because that's when people lose faith in God.

When they say,

God,

I'll put my faith in you if you do something that where it turns out the way I want it.

You know,

It happens a lot.

It happened with I'm not going to get into who,

Because I don't need to.

So many people have been through this scenario.

But like somebody I knew like five years ago,

Somebody I know was going through a situation where somebody was dying.

You know,

They got diagnosed with cancer and it was going very quickly.

And of course everybody's praying for them.

And this person died shortly after.

And I was talking to this person.

They said,

Oh,

You know,

Well,

How come God didn't answer our prayers?

I said,

Well,

God did answer your prayer.

It's like,

No,

We prayed for this person to be healed.

I said,

Yeah,

They are healed.

He said,

No,

They're not.

They're dead.

I said,

Yeah,

That's healed.

Just because they're not suffering anymore.

They're fine.

They're on the other side.

They're fine.

They don't have cancer.

They're peaceful.

They're happy.

Everything's good with them.

So just because the healing didn't look like you wanted it to look like your type of healing.

That's a limited perspective.

You know,

So we need to trust if we're going to trust in God,

It can't be I'm going to trust in God.

As long as it turns out the way my limited perspective thinks it's supposed to turn out.

We don't know what's best for people.

You know,

What if that person did get healed from cancer and then something else happened?

They suffered for the next 30 years because you wanted them to be healed.

You wanted them to stay on this planet longer.

Like,

We don't know.

I don't know what's best for me.

Maybe what's best for me is leaving this planet tomorrow.

I don't know.

So I'm not going to pray for a specific outcome.

That's not faith.

Opening up our hearts and saying,

Whatever happens,

I know that you're guiding it and I will trust you.

That's faith.

So when I was going through my situation,

My exercise was to get really clear and feel okay if I lost.

I needed to be honest with myself and make sure that I was going to be okay if I lost.

Once I made peace with that possibility,

Then I could really open up and give my faith over.

And say,

Hey,

Whatever happens,

I know what's your will and I thank you.

So that's really such an important part.

Man,

This is a lot deeper of a podcast than I thought it was going to be.

Well,

I mean,

I would love to give you a hard time by saying it's spirituality.

Of course,

It's going to be deep,

But I get what you're saying.

Yeah.

No,

It's true.

This is what having a spiritual spine is all about.

It's really standing in it,

Man.

Now I get why you were so jazzed about this at the beginning.

This seems like a pretty straightforward topic.

I don't know why he's so excited about it.

It doesn't seem any more juicy than anything else that we've talked about.

Just from the name alone,

Because that's all I got.

We didn't really talk about it beforehand.

You were just like,

Spiritual spine,

Let's go.

And I was like,

Okay,

Let's go.

And I didn't know where we were going.

Well,

I didn't either.

The only reason I was so jazzed up is because I knew we were a little tight on time and that was the next one on the list.

So I was like,

Glenn,

Don't think about it.

Just go into it.

That's why I didn't know we were going to go into this either.

And that is seriously some of the deepest stuff that we've ever talked about in 160 something episodes of the podcast.

Yeah.

And that's it.

We have to live our spirituality.

We have to implement what we're learning.

It's not so much about learning.

I tell people that we get so caught up in learning and it's so addictive and it's so tricky.

Because everything in this world is linear.

You learn addition,

Then subtraction,

Then multiplication,

Then division.

Then you can do geometry.

Everything is so linear that our brain is so used to functioning that way.

And spirituality isn't like that.

I had the most profound and abundant spiritual awakenings when I was completely spent from drugs and alcohol.

I mean,

All I did was surrendered because I was beaten down to a bloody pulp and surrendered.

I didn't have these huge,

Profound spiritual awakenings because I learned the right stuff.

And then I knew when I was this intelligent being and all this crap,

I could barely form a sentence.

I wasn't capable of anything when I had my most profound spiritual experiences.

And I understood the mysteries of the universe in three freaking months,

Man.

And I wasn't even really dealing with outside teachers.

I never even heard of Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra and these people.

I didn't learn anything.

So it's not about that.

It's about living it and standing in it.

We talked about huge situations,

But if you're not in one of those huge ones,

It's day to day.

People are always asking me what should they do to change their life.

Just look around,

Man.

Look around.

Whatever's in front of you,

That's what you do.

If you're sitting there at work and this coworker has been getting on your nerves for two weeks,

That's your spiritual lesson.

So work on that.

Try to figure out how to perhaps set a boundary or open up to be more loving or forgiving or whatever you need to do.

That's your classroom.

Our life is our laboratory.

Wherever you are,

If you're in a relationship,

If you don't have anything to work on in your relationship,

Wait a week.

There's bound to be something.

If you have children,

Open up.

There's going to be stuff that you can work on right there.

If you're driving down the road,

There's going to be spirituality that you can work on to not get irritated with other people.

It's all around us.

So you can always look around and implement whatever you're learning in a life situation at all times.

Because the universe wants you to open up more spiritually.

So that's why all those scenarios are there.

Because it's sitting there giving you opportunities to stand in your spiritual spine and implement this stuff multiple times a day.

Yeah.

I shouldn't have had that second cup of coffee.

Did you have two cups of coffee this morning?

It's very apparent.

It's like that movie Airplane.

He never has a second cup at home.

This is an insane episode of the podcast for me because you've gone on three diatribes now,

Three big monologues at different points in the show,

Where I feel like you've covered mostly everything about it.

You talked about building faith and how you use the little things to build the big things.

And you talked about how,

Like,

No,

But it's the big things.

And then you hammered that home in one of the best monologues you've ever given.

And then you talked about,

Like,

Do what's in front of you right now.

That was good stuff,

Wasn't it?

Now that you lay it all out there like that.

Yeah.

It sounds like information is flowing through me today.

I don't really know where to go right now.

I don't have a ton of questions about this because you've monologued the heck out of it.

Yeah,

I hear you.

I think the only other thing I want to touch on,

Or who knows,

Maybe there'll be something else.

But what's coming to me is just the fact that it is the faith of a mustard seed.

This is a podcast we did before.

You can't think yourself into better acting.

You have to act yourself into better thinking.

We're constantly waiting for us to feel ready to implement something.

You don't get there,

Man.

You're never 100% confident.

You're never ready.

There doesn't come a day where you're like,

Yeah,

Okay.

And if that day does come,

All it is is enthusiasm.

You're not actually more ready than you were the day before.

It's just you're pumped up for some reason.

It's so cool.

Don't get me wrong.

Take advantage of those days.

But just don't wait for them because they may not come.

It doesn't take what people think it takes.

It doesn't take perfect faith.

And faith is just trust.

That's all faith is.

When you say the word faith,

People think it's like God touched you on the head and they're one of the ones that have faith.

No,

It's just trust.

It's built through experimenting by implementing things and handing things over and seeing how they work out for the best.

And after a consistent time,

You trust more.

So you have more faith.

But don't wait to have perfect faith.

The universe works on intention and an open heart.

It works on you trying to be a better person.

It doesn't wait for you to be the better person and then you get the results.

It's just is this person trying to be a better person?

Are they trying to implement faith?

Good.

Then they win.

You win.

Congratulations.

Because that's all it takes.

The game is rigged in your favor.

It's not about being able to do anything perfect.

When I recovered,

I was explaining this to one of my friends.

When I first got sober,

Everybody was going like,

Wow,

That's amazing.

You're so strong and what you did was so wonderful.

I was getting all this praise and I didn't understand.

After a while,

I stopped one of my friends.

I'm like,

I don't understand why people keep praising me.

He's like,

Well,

What you did was really amazing.

And I'm like,

I didn't do anything.

He had seen me at the end.

My friend was actually the one who talked to me into going to detox the first time.

And I was like,

You saw me at the end.

Did I look like I had any power to do anything?

Did I look strong to you?

Did I look like I could pull myself up by my bootstraps and give it that old college try?

And he was like,

No,

You're a blabbering idiot.

I was like,

Right.

I had no strength.

I had no capabilities.

I had no intelligence.

I didn't have what everybody thinks it takes to get what they want.

I didn't have that.

What I had was surrender at the end of the day.

I had enough suffering where I was finally able to go,

I give.

And then this power came in and did for me what I couldn't do for myself.

So that's how it works.

We don't have to have doubt is going to creep in.

Fear is going to creep in.

We just do our best and our best is good enough always,

Every time.

Yeah.

I mean,

You got nothing,

Ben.

Ready?

Ready?

If you're not watching the video right now,

I just took my microphone off of the stand and I'm going to,

Since Glenn doesn't have one to drop.

Mic drop.

Yeah.

There we go.

That's,

Dude,

Seriously.

I don't,

Like I have nothing to add because you just- I don't either,

Man.

We're going to have to wrap it up because I was just- That was great.

I was in the flow.

For real.

For real.

So that was awesome.

That was one of the most impressive podcasts that I've witnessed.

And I say witnessed because I don't feel like I added a lot to it.

I feel like I did four,

Five to eight minute monologues.

Yeah.

And I mean,

I think this is why I'm sharing the same enthusiasm that you have because I'm thinking back over it going,

Wow,

That was really good.

And the reason I think that is because I don't feel this is how I always am when I'm doing podcasts or working with clients or anything else.

I shut my brain off and allowed information to flow.

So I don't feel like I directed those monologues.

Yeah.

I get it.

You were in that higher level of thinking and it was just creative inspiration coming through.

Yeah,

Exactly.

For sure.

And that's why it was so good because I was less in my head than ever.

There you go.

Yeah.

All right.

So check out,

Well,

First of all,

Glenn is the first guest on my new podcast,

Own Your Life.

We talk about a ton of stuff on there.

You can check that out anywhere you find this podcast and maybe we'll put a link up to it or something.

And everything,

Glenn Ambrose can be found at glennambrose.

Com,

Blogs,

The email list.

You can get five questions with Glenn and obviously all old episodes of the podcast.

Life coaching,

Glenn's accepting a couple of new life coaching clients right now if you're interested in that.

And the book.

Yes.

Get the book.

The book.

Go order the book.

Digital paperback,

Online,

Amazon,

Barnes & Noble,

Wherever.

Wherever.

Anywhere in the world.

People all around the world are ordering it.

So order it and please leave a review if you like it.

Should I put that caveat in there?

Yeah.

Take care.

Awesome.

But that'll do it.

Thanks for listening,

Everybody.

And we'll talk with you soon.

Glenn is available for life coaching sessions.

To book an appointment or for more information,

Go to glennambrose.

Com,

Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or click the link in the description of this episode.

Reviews

ACTIONS of love raise our vibration. This is where the rubber meets the road, thank you!!!

WOW! Thank you for your insight - such a great amount of information 🙏

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I agree with Ben! Best podcast yet!! Thank you 😊