Trusting The Flow

Michelle Medrano shares her message on Infinite Flow live. It is one thing to begin to believe there is an Infinite flow; it is another thing to learn to trust it. Trusting the flow builds, attracts, and expands its effectiveness in our life. Trusting the flow allows us to experience it!

Transcript

So today we're talking about trusting the flow.

Last week we talked about stepping into the flow.

What are some ways that we can consciously and purposely step into that flow.

And today we're talking about what keeps us from really trusting the flow.

I know that what keeps me from trusting in life in general,

In anything or any realm or any kingdom,

Is usually that I have felt my trust violated in some way.

I'm a pretty trusting person,

Pretty innocent,

Optimistic,

Willing to trust people.

And if I feel that my trust has been questioned or has not been fulfilled,

Then I tend to get a little bit nervous and I back off.

And what I've noticed about people,

Including myself,

I am a person after all,

Is that when life is good and relationships are good,

And my health is good and money is good,

And opportunities are good,

I'm a lot more trusting.

But when things get challenging,

Somehow I feel my trust in life is betrayed by the very existence of a challenge,

Of something not flowing,

Wanting to figure it out,

Wanting to get to the bottom of it,

Wanting to understand why am I being kept from my good,

And my trust can start to wane.

Who I'd really rather be is that trusting,

Optimistic,

Innocent person,

Even in challenge.

But I admit fully that I'm not always able to get there,

Not always able to do it.

I've also found over the years that as I've worked with people and seen people in my personal life,

My friends,

Family and loved ones,

I've watched as people from all walks of life and all faith traditions sometimes find themselves challenged like this.

For example,

Have a very fervent trust in God,

A trust in Jesus,

A trust in Allah,

Or a trust in whatever they believe.

And the minute that great challenge comes their way,

Some people find themselves even surrendering a lifelong faith because of the pain that they feel.

Almost like if there is a God and I'm feeling this pain,

Maybe God doesn't exist,

Or God's a bad dude or dudette because it's allowed me to have this bad experience,

How could that God allow me to suffer like this?

And so our faith can be challenged and even broken apart into pieces when life gets really hard.

And I think we've been through some hard times.

That collective pain can also create a lack of trust.

If God is so good,

Why do these shootings have to keep happening?

If God is so good,

Why is there so much violence in Ukraine?

If God is so good,

Why are children on our planet still homeless or starving?

If God is so good,

Why did that person I love have to die?

If God is so good,

Why am I having to experience this health?

Why did we have to go through a pandemic?

Couldn't God,

The all-knowing,

All-creator,

Protect us from that and keep us from that?

And so our trust becomes challenged and violated in many ways by the collective experience of the human condition and of the situations that show up.

A very wise saint wrote extensively about this.

Saint Juan de la Cruz or Saint John of the Cross wrote about the dark night of the soul.

He wrote a very long,

Intense poem about the dark night of the soul.

He defined it as,

It is most commonly used with certain Christian traditions to refer to an individual's spiritual crisis in the course of their union with God.

And that's sometimes the dissonance that shows up.

We who are committed to a relationship with our God and committed to experiencing that experience of union and oneness find these painful moments or when life just keeps coming,

Pain after pain after pain,

Find that they can cause us to experience this kind of dark night.

Now,

I'm not going to read his poem.

It's a language from his time.

He was a 16th century Spanish Roman Catholic mystic.

But I am going to bring some words from a modern mystic that many of us are familiar with to talk more about this.

Eckhart Tolle,

The great author,

Speaker and teacher says that this is a term to describe what could be called a collapse of perceived meaning in life.

An eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.

The interstate,

In some cases,

Is very close to what is conventionally called depression.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

There's no purpose to anything.

Sometimes it's triggered by some external event or maybe multiple ones.

Someone perhaps dies close to you,

That could trigger it.

Premature death especially,

Especially if a child dies.

Or you had built up your life and given it meaning and the meaning that you'd given your life,

Your activities,

Your achievements and where you're going,

What's considered important and the meaning that you'd given your life for some reason collapses.

And we find ourselves in this dark place,

Discouraged and unable to feel the joyful presence of life or even God.

So,

For me personally,

That has occurred in my life.

I have been through a dark night of the soul.

Certainly,

It started at the beginning of 2020 with the pandemic,

I would say,

As that impacted so many of us,

Impacted my personal life,

As watched people get sick and watched the death toll rise on this pandemic.

And then it impacted our church significantly,

This ministry significantly,

As we wanted to continue to be of service to our community in great times of,

How do you do that?

And so that was present.

And then at the end of 2020,

In August of 2020,

We were away on a little vacation with two of our close friends,

Named Jerry and Tara,

When we got word that suddenly a woman that Ken and I,

My husband Ken and I had just had dinner with a few nights before that,

Had passed away suddenly.

The Reverend Dr.

Kathleen Lenover,

One of our ministers in our movement.

And it shocked the heck out of us that she was suddenly gone like that.

And we went into grief and we were very sad and we went through that.

And then a few weeks later,

We were scheduled to have dinner again with these good friends.

And Ken and I have known Jerry for about 40 years.

And Jerry didn't show up for dinner.

And we went to go see where he was at his workplace and found that he'd been working alone all day and had passed away.

And we found him dead.

And so we went through that big shock and trying to make sense of all of that and got through holidays.

And then right after the holidays,

Ken's aunt passed away suddenly.

And then in March of 2021,

My sister passed away suddenly.

And then my father in July passed away suddenly.

His uncle passed away and my stepfather.

And all of this death,

And it wasn't just the death,

It was also the chaos that came with it as these lives that went on into the next plane left their trails of my sister left a son that we wanted to support and details of estates.

And my father left a whole apartment full of stuff that I had to deal with.

And all that came with it was very overwhelming and very shocking.

And I spent a lot of time just not knowing how to respond or what to do.

And it was a dark time.

And what I found happened for me is that I got into this very dark,

Sad place,

Of course grief,

That is natural and it felt like I would just start to kind of come out of it.

I would just start to feel like I was awakening out of it and then boom,

Someone else would pass away.

Some other challenge would show up.

And so then I would be plunged kind of back into it.

And I am a very faith-filled person,

But I just kept feeling like I couldn't quite get my bearings.

And then I did something that I'm sure none of you ever do,

Which is that I made myself wrong for not being able to get more balanced.

Because after all,

I'm a practitioner and a minister and I should know better,

Right?

Thank you.

See,

There's practitioners down here telling me that.

You should know better,

Michelle.

And even if we're not a practitioner or minister,

If we're at all spiritual,

If we all have it all a concept of God that supports us and we can't quite find it or grasp it,

We can also double down on ourselves and make ourselves wrong because well,

I'm not happy right now.

I'm not in my happy place.

I must be a downer.

And so I could feel that temptation to remove myself from life and from people because I didn't want to show up to parties or activities and be Debbie Downer,

As they say.

And yet the truth was I was sad.

I was grieving.

I was feeling lost.

I was exhausted.

I was confused.

I was really struggling with how do I find my balance in all of this.

And then I was having challenges in a very important relationship in my life where there was conflict and pain and suffering that needed resolution and just to quelch any rumors before they start.

It was not my husband and it was not Reverend Josh.

We're fine.

It was no minister.

It was no one in this church actually.

But it was another kind of cherry on the cake,

If you will,

Of challenges.

Dark night of the soul.

In it,

Fully in it.

Fully in it.

Seeking resolution.

How do I get out of this?

And so what I know about pain and what I will say today is that I think pain has a bad rap.

It really does.

As hard as this was,

I think that there is purpose in this pain.

I believe fullheartedly in a God that has given us free will to move about our life and experience all of the realms of living on this planet.

The greatest joys and the deepest pain.

I believe that there is no God out there that doled this out to me.

Or that took my loved ones,

That they deserve to die or anything like that.

I believe fullheartedly that pain has its purpose in our living.

But here is the challenge.

Through whatever systems we've got going on this planet,

And you could point to family systems,

Cultural systems,

Spiritual systems,

Whatever it might be,

Gender conversations,

We still think that when life gets painful that we should do our best sometimes not to tell anybody,

Not to share it,

We need to hide it,

We need to pretend it's not there,

We need to push it down because after all we've got a job to do,

We've got kids to raise,

We've got things to do,

And by and large we also feel shame that we have pain.

And I know that's not working for us anymore.

That's the crap that's causing people to go out and get guns and shoot each other.

It's unresolved pain,

Isn't it?

Yeah.

And I don't want to be a part of that.

It's like we've grown up believing that when you have horrible pain,

Just rub some dirt on it and get on with your life.

But that's not who we are or what we're meant to do.

Our hearts are more profound than that.

And humanity and humans have the capacity to take some of the deepest,

Darkest nights of the soul and use them and be with them and transmute them into their lives such that those of us who will have the courage to stand in that pain and work with it and move through it will have a deeper experience of the divine.

And we want it to go away.

We want the pain to go away.

But I promise one thing,

Pain does not go away by pushing it down and pretending it's not there.

It just festers.

And then when it festers,

Here's what happens.

Our relationships fall apart.

Our work starts to suffer.

Our health starts to suffer.

Our ability to be a happy,

Connected human starts to suffer.

All because we've been unwilling for whatever reason,

The messages we have,

The cultural ideas we have,

We've been unwilling to have the courage to look squarely on at the pain that we've experienced and endured and say,

I see you and you are causing me many tears and heartbreak and I'm going to find ways to help to smooth you out.

Whether it's the pain of my past,

The pain of my present,

The pain that we're going through collectively,

What I know is that we are here to have it all.

And so we get a chance,

I got a chance to say,

How do I then bring myself back into the flow by trusting the flow of life again,

Even in the midst of this pain?

I began to notice as I set that intention of trusting the flow of life again,

That even in my darkest moments,

I could look up and I could see that there were children playing.

I could see the children here in the CEC that we have here,

Our Children's Enrichment Center out on the playground having a great time every day.

I could see little Nancy June,

Reeves,

Running around here,

Running around our office,

The sound of her little feet running through the office.

It sounds like that.

You hear that sound?

You can hear her coming,

Man.

And in the midst of my pain,

Little things like that,

At first it was like a raw nerve.

I thought,

How can people out there be laughing and be happy because I'm in pain?

How selfish of me.

Like it's all about me.

And rather could say,

How could I be in my pain and keep seeing the beauty of the children of nature,

The people that are still here in my life?

How could I dedicate myself to saying this pain that I've gone through is calling me to love the people in my life more fiercely than ever before?

Because what I learned through this is you just never know the last time you're going to see someone.

So we get to love each other.

And it called me into an awakening.

And I started to do some things purposely out of a dedication to trusting the flow.

I began to remember that I gave a talk a few years ago where I shared about the Japanese art form called kintsugi.

It's the beauty of imperfections.

It's the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted with or mixed with powdered gold,

Sometimes silver or platinum.

And they say that to repair with gold,

The art of repairing pottery with gold lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Could that be me?

Could that be us?

Could that be life?

That there are times when the peace,

When the life we're living is more beautiful because we've been broken and we've chosen to bring all of the parts of ourselves back together again and stand even in the pain and the fire of that pain and walk forward.

And I began to see that image of that pottery.

And I realized that while the pain that I was experiencing is uniquely mine,

It's not unique that all beings have walked through pain.

And I began to hear the stories of people who were also losing one person after another.

There was some mass exodus that still seems to be continuing of people stepping off this earth plane.

And so I did some things to call myself back to shifting.

I took two sessions of the grief workshop here at Mile High Church with Dr.

Patty and the practitioners here.

I began to use our self-care initiative to practice good self-care,

Especially here at the beginning of this year,

To rest and to take care of myself and heal.

I spoke openly to family and friends and my prayer partner about the pain I was in.

I journaled.

I gave myself,

This was important,

Permission to feel my sadness,

To cry when I needed to cry,

To feel angry when I felt angry,

To be with my emotional life.

And I began to feel a reawakening little by little.

And I'm inviting us today to ask ourselves about the pain we may have experienced,

Especially in these last two years,

And to pay attention to where we've gotten out of touch with the flow,

Where we're maybe not trusting,

Where we are challenged to step forward and begin to trust,

And to do what I'm calling trust the flow each day,

To recognize that I can facilitate myself in continuing to slowly and gently move forward through my pain.

And I keep hearing the words of the wonderful Terry Cole Whitaker,

A motivational speaker,

Saying,

You know,

If you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

Don't pitch a tent.

Keep moving.

And so in that regard,

Trusting the flow every day is an invitation to allow ourselves to get into that space again with the divine.

Because I notice that sometimes the more pain I was in,

The less I wanted to meditate,

The less I wanted to be with God.

Was like I was kind of thinking,

Yeah.

And I really had to,

Number one,

Challenge myself to say,

Okay,

I know the truth about death and that is that every soul is on its perfect journey.

I do not have any say about a soul's journey.

Anyone who's died and gone onto the next plane,

It's their journey.

I have to surrender,

Feel my feelings about it.

I have to heal my grief and get through my pain,

But I don't get to control that.

Souls are on their own paths.

I had to be willing to understand that there is not a God out there to get me,

Punish me,

Challenge me,

Teach me lessons by taking these people away from me or do horrible things to me.

That there's no God like that.

That every soul is on their journey and I am too of learning to deepen.

And I had to recognize and be willing to see that the pain that I'd been through had created a deep well of compassion in me.

Even for people who had lost their own faith through their own pain,

Deep wells of compassion were growing and bubbling up in me.

That the pain,

As I mentioned,

Was allowing me to feel this outpouring of love for people in my life.

To look people in the eye and really appreciate the people in my life like never before.

That there were gifts that were coming from this pain and that I could claim those gifts and feel myself in the flow again.

And as I began to realize this and began to meditate more and get connected,

I also then could feel that guiding voice that has always been with me guiding me out of my own pain and suffering.

Inviting me to do this,

To go here,

To go there.

In fact,

That's the voice that told me I needed to take the grief workshop again.

I realized that I can transcend and slowly move forward with pain on board into greater healing and well-being.

And I thought of one of my favorite teachers on this planet,

Victor Frankel,

Who said,

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,

The last of human freedoms,

To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

To choose one's own way.

He also said,

When we are no longer able to change a situation,

We are challenged to change ourselves.

Here's a man who was in a Nazi concentration camp,

Tortured.

He lost his whole family and everything he had,

Realizing I still have my soul,

My attitude,

My essence,

No matter what life is taken from me.

And I began to call upon that and to remember that and to breathe in and out.

I know it sounds simple.

You're doing it right now.

You must be.

I can see you're all alive right here,

Which is good.

But the reason I think that mindfulness is taking such a huge,

Huge part of our awareness these days is that breathing gets us in the flow.

It's an opportunity to organically step into the flow and trust the flow and listen to that divine flow.

These are things that I'm inviting us into this week to begin to get back into the flow no matter how dark it has been for us,

How much our trust has been violated,

To give back just a little this week.

To give a kind word to a stranger.

To give energy and love.

To look someone in the eyes.

To let people know that you care about them and that you're so happy to see them.

To give back time and be of service.

To give into life through energy and support and money and everything that we have that we just begin to circulate.

Every time we circulate,

Even the littlest bit,

It is our soul saying,

Yes,

I trust the flow.

I trust the flow so much that I'm willing to give some time and energy no matter how much pain I'm in or how hard it's been for me.

I am willing to do that.

I close with Ernest Holmes today,

Our founder,

Who said in his very first book in 1919,

What then are the laws of underlying prosperity?

The first is this,

And we must not try to escape it.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

This me is spirit.

We are then to trust only in the activity for spirit what we need.

By this I think he's saying to us,

We can listen to the needs we have even when we're in pain and be guided forward.

He says our life then is to be governed by spirit.

We need look no further.

It will do for us all that we will ever ask,

Provided we believe.

And why then has it not done so?

The answer is that it already has done so,

But we have not received it.

The spirit may offer,

But we must accept the gift before it can be made.

Behold I stand at the door and knock.

Our trust is to be in receivership of our breath,

Our energy,

Our God,

Our awareness,

Our call to be of greater service to the world and say yes to it.

And then feel that trust.

Bowing us up and lead us forward.

Please join me in prayer now as we do this together.

And we breathe together.

Breathing in the very breath of life,

Allowing ourselves to feel that flow.

We begin there and we recognize that with that breath we are saying yes to the divine.

Yes to the divine energy that flows through our life.

Yes to the divine life that flows through these bodies.

Yes to living full out.

Even saying yes to the greatest joys and the deepest sorrows.

Saying yes to the full spectrum experience of living that every other human being has ever had.

We are saying yes.

We are allowing ourselves through conscious breathing,

Through conscious prayerfulness to be awakened to the flow of life through,

In and as us.

And I accept and affirm today that each one of us does this and that as we go forth,

No matter what is occurring in our hearts right now,

That we accept our pain and we accept our joy.

That we accept the conditions of our living and we feel the wisdom that is within us.

The opportunities to connect and be supported to move forth in this lifetime and experience upliftment.

Experience reminders along the way.

And that there are steps in this that we can take.

It's not a polarity of either happy or I'm in horrible pain.

We can walk forward and be in both.

Both and.

And still be in the flow.

And still feel the call.

And still feel the energy.

And so I accept this for us now.

And I accept a deeper trust in that flowing energy of life right here in this moment,

In through and as us.

A surrender.

A letting go.

A walking forward.

Being willing to be all that we are and live our lives full out.

And with this I am so grateful.

So grateful that this is so,

I simply release this word and let it be and let it go.

And so it is.

Amen.

Reviews

Beautiful talk, authentically delivered with great vulnerability. Thank you Rev Michelle!