How Healing Changed Me And My Interior Journey

EPISODE 102 | HOW HEALING CHANGED ME AND MY INTERIOR JOURNEY

The season of healing and then deepening was just like deeper and deeper repairs being made. And although it was very uncomfortable going into that season, after a while, you finally find a sense of equilibrium in being that deep season of silence and healing. And when I was beginning to really soak up the delight of being in that deep solitude, every now and then, in prayer I would feel like the Lord was just reminding me, remember a ship is not meant to stay forever in the dry dock and in repair. The ship is created to be out at sea.

[00:00:31] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:01:08] Good morning, everyone. In today's video, I am going to be talking about healing, okay. Specifically, I'll be sharing how healing has changed me and how it has changed my experience of the interior journey. So, this is actually in response to a question that came in and I want to thank the person who asked me this question.

[00:01:36] It really gave me an opportunity to reflect a little deeper on my experience and it's often my experience of this journey that my listeners and followers of my content often feel they benefit from both. So, thank you for the person for asking this really good question so that I can recollect and share.

[00:01:55] So, today is day 27 of my 30-day IG Live challenge. Just a few more days to this challenge. I can't believe I've lasted this long. It has been challenging and has been tiring but also really fulfilling.

[00:02:08] HOW HAS HEALING CHANGED ME AND MY INTERIOR JOURNEY?
Okay, so, the first one I want to start with is, "How has your healing changed you as a person and in your interior journey?

[00:02:19] So, how has healing changed me as a person and how has it, I guess, changed my interior journey and what's one thing that someone must do to start healing.

[00:02:30] Okay, so, how has healing changed me as a person? Well, I sometimes don't know where to begin when I think of all the things that have changed. So, I'll just start off by saying I am a lot more self-aware of just generally how I'm feeling physically, emotionally. I am a lot more aware of when I am going into not a very good space or if I need a break, compared to in the past where there basically was no awareness at all.

[00:03:09] I was just very reactive, right? Everything was very reactive. So, I'm a lot more self-aware. I'm a lot more compassionate to myself, first of all. I don't have that kind of unrealistic expectations on myself as I used to. It's still there sometimes, because it's a script, you know? It's a very old program.

[00:03:32] So, it still runs in the background sometimes, but it doesn't have as much power as it used to hold me trapped. And I'm a lot more aware when it acts up. And I'm just a lot gentler on myself. Okay, so, first of all, on myself. But, flowing from that, I'm a lot more compassionate and a lot more gentler on other people.

[00:03:53] Now, whether or not I'm directly relating to that person in my life, or if it's somebody that I'm not relating to but, you know, just someone that upsets me. Maybe, let's say, a leader or something is done and I get frustrated and angry because I think that they've done something really badly, for example, or they've done something really wrong.

[00:04:13] One, I know now how to hold myself through those emotions to feel my feelings. And then when I come back to centre, I'm also more able to see, kind of like, put things in the right perspective, which is that oftentimes, unfortunately, as poorly as things can be executed and conducted, as crappy as situations can be, a lot of times people are just where they are and they are doing the best that they can based on what they know, based on what they have experienced.

[00:04:45] MORE AUTHENTIC
I say this from my own experience because when I look at my younger self, when I look at myself just maybe 8 years ago, right - eight to ten years ago, I was a very different person then. And on one hand, I can say I regret a lot of the things that I did back then, and the people that I hurt who are often the people that I wanted to help and people that I loved, I cared about. I caused a lot of harm while intending healing, while intending caring for people, right?

[00:05:23] And then, I would beat myself up for it. I mean, back then when I realized that that was what was happening, but now I can have a lot of compassion for my younger self as well, because I realized how traumatized I was. I realized how many of those things I was acting out of compulsions.

[00:05:37] I really couldn't have done better. And I needed the time all these years and I needed the healing and the resources that I have been blessed to avail myself to, to reach the point where now, I won't do the same things the same way anymore, right. But I couldn't have done it back then. And I'm aware that a lot of the people right now that I am upset with, that I am angry with and frustrated with. They could be in a sense, like, where I was earlier in the journey and just doing the best, and feeling very misunderstood - feeling maybe, maybe being very self-critical behind the scenes.

[00:06:19] We may not see it, but they could be beating themselves up. So, anyway, just in general, I realized I'm a lot more compassionate, okay. I just, yeah. And I'm also a lot more relaxed. I never even realized, in the past, how tense I was all the time and I'm still dealing with that.

[00:06:36] My body is often very tense. I hold a lot of tension. I'm very sensitive to emotional stress. I think all that is kind of like the legacy of the complex trauma in my nervous system. I'm still in the process of healing. But compared to before, I'm already a lot more relaxed. Not so fast when things don't go according to plan or when there's failure or when there's disappointment.

[00:07:04] You could say I pick myself up a lot more easily when I fall. So, I'm not so afraid of falling. So, hence more relaxed, right? I'm a lot more authentic. I wouldn't say I've ever been in a sense consciously false or inauthentic. Authenticity has always been something that's very important to me. But because there was so much fear in the past, so much - you could say - subconscious fear of being rejected by others.

[00:07:32] So, there was always this need to perform or to do things that it would please the other person, right? So, it's not that I was being inauthentic. It's just that the coping mechanism that comes from the anxiety of being rejected or being criticized, etc., would get in the way of me being able to really be me.

[00:07:52] And I wouldn't often even be really aware of it. Okay, because that was like the automatic script. So, now that that fear has a lot much lesser hold on me - it's still there in the background, but a lot less power over me. And again, when it does come up, I'm a lot more able to recognize it and I know what to do to come back to centre.

[00:08:11] So, I’m a lot more authentic. I dare to show up as myself a lot more. I'm less afraid of what people may think. Because honestly, if I couldn't do what I do, if I was still as fearful as I used to be - so, because I'm more relaxed and more authentic, I am also - because I think I'm a lot kinder to myself, I'm a lot more joyful and more loving - much more capacity to be loving.

[00:08:35] MORE SAFE
Even in challenging times, life is just less of a battle than it used to be. In many ways, it still is, right? So, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there are no more struggles. There are always struggles and there's always the cross. But I recognize now that before I've gone through all this healing, there was a lot more stress and struggle that I added on unnecessarily, right? Because I would strive. 

[00:09:03] I was a lot more fixated that things had to be a certain way. And that caused additional stress and additional frustration at others. Now that I am more accepting, I'm more relaxed, I'm also a lot more aware as to who I am, what I can do, and who I'm not and what I can't do. And I'm more accepting of that.

[00:09:22] A lot of that tension and that additional stress in the past is gone, right? It's like I finally have this base that I can come back to that I know who I am. I can't begin to describe just how much relief that gives me how much more safe I feel in my own skin, in my own body. That's what healing has done for me, right?

[00:09:47] HOPE
So, because of that, I think the one word, when I was thinking of like, what is that word if I want to choose one word that is really describe my transformation because of the healing I've gone through. It is hope. It is hope because the world is as dark as it's always been. If anything, we can say that maybe it's gotten worse.

[00:10:06] I mean it feels like that sometimes, the difficulties and the challenges in my own personal life, in my own family, and what I see right around me, the things that affect me, they haven't gone away. It gets scarier, actually. It gets scarier. But yet, I can say that I have a lot more hope now than I did before.

[00:10:25] Because, I think because the journey that I've gone through made me realise, just the fact, for example, that I could have made this journey up to this point, and I'm not done, I'm far from done, I know that. But there's just so much has transformed that I could never have imagined was possible before, for me.

[00:10:44] That has given me hope. That has been evidence, right, of the Lord's faithfulness and love in my life and not just in my life. It has opened my eyes to see His hand in other people's life as well. And I keep seeing it too in the work that I do. So, there's a lot more hope. I've learned that whatever the reality may be, the issue, so to speak, is not to try and fix the problem or to fix the reality, but to really find a way to enter that reality with the fullness of our presence, the fullness of the power of love in us that flows from the Lord.

[00:11:27] That is often what transforms, and it may not be easily seen with human eyes. It may not be an immediate effect or immediate result. But over time, you see the fruit and it's like a new kind of vision. And so, that new vision has given me hope, right. And I was talking to a client recently and she described her experience with going through this healing journey as now feeling that she was moving from a two-dimensional world to a three-dimensional world like she feels in her own life and herself from 2D to 3D.

[00:12:01] And I thought that was a very, very apt description. I actually resonate with that. Like, she was talking about how, you have all these scripture verses, or in worship songs. And it's like, like for example, "the joy of the Lord is my strength". In the past, I understood that on a one level, in a 2D way, two-dimensional way, right?

[00:12:18] Yes, the joy of the Lord is my strength. But now as she gets more healed, she is experiencing it in a three-dimensional way. She's experiencing what it means to say the joy of the Lord is my strength. I actually feel it in my body. I feel it. I experience it at a deeper level and a dimension that I didn't even realize was there before. Right, so, those would be the ways I would say that healing has changed me, has really impacted me personally.

[00:12:46] So, the second part of that question was, how has healing changed my interior journey? Right, so, that was how it's changed me. How has it affected my interior journey? And for me, when I embarked on the interior journey at the very start, it was always about that lived relationship with Christ.

[00:13:02] UNDERSTANDING THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ASPECTS OF THE INTERIOR JOURNEY
I used to only understand the interior journey from a spiritual dimension. So, one thing that has definitely changed is that as I healed, as the Lord led me on my healing journey, I realized that the interior journey is much more multi-dimensional. It isn't just spiritual, that it really, really also is emotional, psychological, mental, in terms of our mindset and all that.

[00:13:28] And then only more recently, in like the last three years, it really hit me. As to how the interior journey is very, very necessarily incorporates the whole of the body, not just as an incidental thing. But as an essential thing, right? So, one way that healing has changed my interior journey is the even the way I understand interior journey. And then therefore so, the way that I approach the interior journey or appreciate interior journey, okay. Another way that it has changed, the way that I make the interior journey would not be so much from the understanding, but the whole lived approach and experience, okay. 

[00:14:11] When I started out taking my interior life seriously because I wanted to be close to God, I wanted to have a personal relationship with God, right? I was still very stuck in all my scripts. So, I was very driven. I was very ambitious. I totally get this, as a catholic. I don't know - this may not be so much an issue for let's say, non-Catholic/Christians, but for Catholics, there's this saying, "be a saint". The greatest thing - kind of like the greatest ambition can be, is to be a saint.

[00:14:35] And I was all for that. And I approached that with ambition and with drive. And also, with anxiety because I brought into my interior journey my perfectionism, my needed to do everything well, to get an a plus from whatever, like my spiritual director, my confessor - all this was not conscious, okay.

[00:14:57] I mean at the start it wasn't conscious. It was just there, right? Over time as I got more healed, I became more aware that that was what's going on. I could see myself, all right. So, it was like that. I approached the interior journey with drive, with impatience, with zeal. And I didn't have very much compassion for myself.

[00:15:19] I didn't have much compassion for others. When I failed, I would feel really dejected and sometimes kind of like, very discouraged because it's like, I would have this expectation that I should be further along by now. I just want to say, now, right now, most of the time, almost always, I'm never surprised when I realize I'm earlier in certain aspects in the journey than I thought I was.

[00:15:44] Now, that's the norm, okay? That's the norm. I'm probably a lot earlier because as I make this journey, I realize the journey is so much deeper, wider, multifaceted, and longer than I ever thought. But so, as you gain perspective, you realize just how little ground you've actually covered, but at the same time, that doesn't faze me anymore.

[00:16:03] MORE PATIENCE IN MY JOURNEY
It doesn't actually upset me. It actually makes me more hopeful because when you realize that you're only just at the beginning, even though you've already done a lot of work and even though you've already done this for a long time, it gives you hope when you realize just how well how much of a beginner you are, right, when you realize well, okay - no wonder no wonder I’m still flailing. No wonder, I’m still the way that I was etc., etc.

[00:16:31] The hopeful thing is that there's still a lot of ground to cover. So, slowly, slowly, right? So, the interior journey - now, I'm able to be a lot more patient because I have the perspective of just how long and far and deep and wide it is.

[00:16:45] And I no longer drive myself because I know I can't drive myself into holiness. I can't drive myself into wholeness and healing. I have to be held into healing. I have to be loved into healing. I have to be seen and heard and loved into, into life, you know? And I have to be set free.

[00:17:06] There are many things that I can do in cooperation. There are many things that I need to do in cooperation for my healing, but I'm not the main actor in that sense. I'm not the one that holds the power or initiator. I respond to the grace that's given to me.

[00:17:21] Right, and that also is very liberating to know that in a sense, I am not in charge, ultimately, of my own interior journey. I am responding, I am following, but I'm very active. It's not a passive thing, right? I'm actively responding. It's a joyful response to the divine physician who is healing me.

[00:17:43] And what I've realized, what has changed is that this process of being held, being seen, being loved into life - it's not something that just happens when I'm being prayed over or having some inner healing session or when I'm in a retreat kind of a setting. Oh, it happens every minute, every of every day, every second of every day.

[00:18:02] It's something that has become a daily reality. That is also what healing has affected in me. That I don't just make kind of leaps in the interior journey during set aside times, right - official kind of like times. But it happens on a daily basis. I suppose like with anything else, when you become more seasoned in something, when you become more skilled in something, you incorporate it into your daily life, right? You no longer have to just rely on somebody facilitating an experience for you. So, that's another change.

[00:18:35] HOW TO START HEALING
So, the third question on that slide earlier was, "what is one thing that someone must do to start healing?" Okay, what is one thing that someone must do to start healing? Okay. So, first I want to specify that healing is a word many people, when they hear it, they think of very different things, right?

[00:18:56] AWARENESS
So, I'm responding to this question with healing being defined in the broader, deeper, wider way that I was talking about just a little earlier. Okay, and so, healing that is spiritual, that also ties into emotional, psychological, right, and even physical and embodied, integrated kind of healing. Well, the first thing that you must do, although it's not something that I think you can necessarily choose to do, is to be even aware that you need healing, right, that you need to realize that you need it.

[00:19:30] Because if you don't realize how you need it, and you don't want it enough yet, I don't think you're going to do anything. I have seen, not just in my own experience, but in other people around me - my gosh, like when it's time when somebody finally realizes just in what bad shape they are and in how much of help and healing they need. Suddenly, no matter how busy they are no matter whatever, like lack of resources they may think that they had initially - suddenly, all that doesn't matter anymore and they do whatever they need to do to get help to get healing, right, to start healing. So, I think the most important thing, in a sense, that has to happen is you have to realize how much you need it and you have to really want it. Okay, you have to really want it. That's the first thing that really has to has to happen. 

[00:20:17] And then you need to, in terms of what do you do then: find external help, please. I mean, like, there are levels of readiness and there are levels of readiness. But usually, I would say, that before someone reaches the point where they're really fully ready, that's when they begin to grow in readiness and awareness.

[00:20:31] SUPPORT
They may be reading up, listening to podcasts or watching, like say, videos like the one I'm doing, like a Live, like what I'm doing now, to get a sense of what is this thing? How do I know whether I need healing? And then, when they are ready, when you actually need to do something, you really need to find external qualified help to support you in that healing, okay, and invest in it.

[00:20:53] Remember, I'm talking about healing in the deeper, wider, broader way, in the context in which I grew up in. Like I said earlier, when I first started interior journey, I only understood it in a spiritual dimension. I didn't realize there were so many other layers.

[00:21:07] So, the only times I availed myself to so-called inner healing or healing, would be charismatic kind of retreats or praying over or workshops, or healing masses - healing masses, inner healing masses. And I would go and I would go up and have hands laid over me and I'll be prayed over. But I was never aware that there were more things that needed to happen outside of that.

[00:21:31] And I know that many, many people still don't know or still don't realize that there's a lot of things that has to happen outside of those moments where you go for praying over. You know, you go for retreats or healing masses and all that. Okay, it's like an analogy. If this was a physical health issue that you're talking that we're talking about, I think you would understand it easier, right?

[00:21:52] You can go for healing, praying over and masses, but you still got to watch your diet. Maybe change your diet according to whatever condition you have. You may still need to go for physiotherapy or healing. You may still need to go for surgery or treatment. They are not mutually exclusive, right? And this is even more so. I'll say, it's even more so for the interior journey.

[00:22:12] It's just that it's not so easily seen, right? Because it's inside, it's interior. So, if you really want to be well, if you really want to heal, the journey is, like I said, deeper, wider, longer than you think it is. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. You take the steps from where you are. We always begin where we are and we just take one step at a time.

[00:22:33] But it helps to remember or to be aware, even if you're very early on in your journey, that the journey incorporates or includes many streams or dimensions that you may not be aware of. So, for example, if you're someone like me, whose awareness of the interior journey and of healing starts off as only being very spiritual, well, do not just rely on spiritual resources for your healing journey.

[00:23:03] It's good, it's okay to start with that, but when spiritual resources, spiritual healing resources are not well integrated, it's not balanced with emotional, let's say psychological healing and with science and all that, sometimes, there are risks and there are dangers to that as well, okay? The same goes either way.

[00:23:23] Okay, but my background as a Christian as a Catholic-Christian - the dangers that I was warned of tend to be more on the secular side of things, right? Like, beware, be careful of psychology and all that. There are some things that may be contrary to your faith. But I've never heard the warning come the other way, which is beware of the dangers of spiritual bypassing, of over spiritualizing everything. Or not recognizing how sometimes the way we talk about healing in just purely spiritual terms can actually be traumatizing or re-traumatizing to people.

[00:23:54] That actually it could make things worse. I never heard that, right? So, but both are true. That's the thing. Both are true. So, which is why it is very important ultimately, to avail yourself to not just one dimension of this healing. You need different dimensions. It doesn't have to all happen at the same time.

[00:24:13] Like I said, you know, it's - just think of it. It's a long journey. And slowly over time, you will cover a lot of ground, okay? But just find something that is okay, doable for you right now, as a start. So, just as there are different levels of healing, or different dimensions of healing, there are different corresponding resources to those levels, okay?

[00:24:39] Again, I won't go into the details now, but I just want you to have that awareness and I wanted to cap off this part of my response to like, what I mentioned earlier, just before this, how sometimes when we don't have that knowledge or the experience, for example, that spiritual bypassing or what spiritual bypassing is, or how just really spiritualizing things can actually hurt us more.

[00:25:13] We do what we think is good for us and it kind of harms us, right? One thing that I pray and I wish, that on the spiritual side, actually both sides, counselling in psychology, therapy, as well as in the spiritual direction - or just in general, the discussions and the way things are, people are pastored - could be more trauma aware. It's a relatively new thing.

[00:25:39] And by trauma aware, I'm just saying to be aware of what complex trauma is and how that actually really impacts people in our lives and how it affects our capacity to love. It impacts our freedom, our ability to do a bunch of things. Without that awareness, we beat ourselves up a lot more.

[00:25:57] We beat one another up a lot more. What we intend to be good can actually often make things even harder. Okay, and so many things. So, just give you an example, one example, one tiny example with people who are struggling to remain in church, people may be leaving the church or struggling to come to church or remain in church.

[00:26:23] Many of them, what they're struggling with, if you had the lens of trauma, if you had a trauma aware lens, it would make a lot of sense what they're struggling with, and why the usual responses or the usual things that are said to these people, to try and get them to come back to church, come back to mass, as logical or reasonable, as rational or as true as you may think it is, actually will push them further away, actually is making it harder for their healing.

So, just in a very practical pastoral sense, right, to be trauma aware can do so much for everyone. But it's a new thing and I'm not expecting that suddenly there will be this huge wave of change yet. But speaking to you as an individual, to each individual who is listening to this, who may be, yourself, struggling, you can be aware that not everyone that you go to might be aware - I'm using the word aware a lot - might be aware of the trauma in your life and you can consider adding this to your list of when you go to a spiritual director or a counsellor, do you feel safe with this person?

[00:27:31] Do you feel that your story is really seen and held by this person? Okay, and if it is, fine. If not, if you feel somehow unsafe or re traumatized, then trust that instinct. That person may not realize it, but trust that instinct, okay? Okay, so, that's for that first set of questions. Now, the second question I wanted to respond to today.

[00:27:54] SEASONS OF THE INTERIOR JOURNEY
Okay, so, this question is "how does the soul feel like when it's in the season of equipping and sending?" Like more specifically, "are there any signs in transition from deepening to equipping? Is it simply the desire for stillness and quietness becomes less intense and the shift goes to more skill development?"

[00:28:14] Okay, let me just bring up for context so that the rest of you know what this question is about. I speak about the four seasons of the interior journey. 

[00:28:26] So, the first season is of healing and the second deepening and then as equipping and sending. And in some, I think in another earlier Live, I was talking about how in the seasons of healing and deepening, we are often drawn deeper into solitude and into silence, right?

[00:28:44] So, now, this question is, what's the experience of the soul when we are moving into the season of equipping and equipping and sending? All right, and is it just a lessening of that drawing to stillness? So, if anyone finds this new, please go look for my Instagram post. I have a video as well as a static post that goes a bit further about these four seasons.

[00:29:12] Okay. So, the question was, "are there any signs in transition?" Yes. Okay. So, speaking from my experience, my last season of healing and deepening was very deep, okay. These seasons, just like the four seasons, right? Like winter, spring, summer, autumn. I feel like it tends to happen in cycles. But every time the cycle is a little different, right?

[00:29:38] SILENCE AND SOLITUDE
And in the interior journey, it's kind of like a spiral. It keeps going deeper. So, the last time I was in the season of deepening. It was actually quite long and it went very deep. And as an extrovert who last time was so afraid of being alone and solitude, I really was able to enter very, very deep into interior solitude.

[00:29:57] So, it's not that I didn't meet anybody, okay. But interiorly, I went very deep in solitude with God and there was a lot of silence. And actually, on hindsight, what was incredible was that the first I think the first year or so, when I was in that season of deepening, hardly anyone, no one actually looked for me.

[00:30:15] Like no one looked for me to give any sessions or do any retreats. I didn't announce to anyone that I was in this season of deepening. But it was almost like God kept everyone, everything at bay. So, that I had this undisturbed, very deep silence and solitude. And the image that corresponds to this, and I've shared this in other podcast episodes before, I think, is that of a ship, right, that was out at sea and now it's come back to shore. It's come back to the harbour and now it's been put in dry dock so that it's dry. It's not even floating, it's not sitting on water so that deep repairs can be made, right, it has to be completely dry.

[00:30:54] And so, for me, the season of healing and then deepening was just like deeper and deeper repairs being made. And although it was very uncomfortable going into that season, after a while, you finally find a sense of equilibrium in being that deep season of silence and healing. And then it was very delicious.

[00:31:13] As you know, for a while, it was very delicious. And when I was beginning to really soak up the delight of being in that deep solitude, every now and then, in prayer I would feel like the Lord was just reminding me, remember a ship is not meant to stay forever in the dry dock and in repair. The ship is created to be out at sea. So, it was almost like, I would get these little reminders now and then enjoy the season now, but it's not going to be forever. You know, the reason all this healing and repair is happening is so that you can go back out to sea and in fact, there was a sense that the next time I go out to sea I would be going even further than I had before. 

[00:31:50] So, in terms of the how the soul feels the when the season started shifting, actually, there were several smaller shifts along the way, but I could begin to feel that a drawing into also maybe meeting up with people and sharing a bit more. It's like you can feel the shift that I still am enjoying that deep solitude most of the time. But a greater readiness, right. Before the healing, I was just so burnt out and so hurt and wounded I didn't even know what I was wounded by there were so many different things.

[00:32:25] I just didn't have anything in me to give, right. But now, at this point, I began to feel a shift like, oh, I'm rich again. Rich in the sense that I'm filled up, I'm getting filled up more and more again. I feel like there's stuff that I can share. So, that was one shift that I experienced.

[00:32:41] And then at the same time, requests started trickling in again, to give a session here and there, to give talks, to give a workshop, to conduct a retreat, but they were spaced out. They were very spaced out. So, which was great because I was still in the season of deepening. Maybe at this point, was kind of like slowly coming out, right. And then after a while of this, I began to have this thirst and this hunger to learn. Okay, so, that's where it's kind of I guess what the person had mentioned earlier.

[00:33:12] Like maybe is it skills development? Yes, but it's not just specifically. I began to have that hunger again to learn and not just learn at random, but to learn - one, more about what I can do to help myself hone my discernment of my own vocation discernment. Because for me, that's always the question, right?

[00:33:37] I want to be more and more sharp and specific at where do I spend my time? Where do I spend my energy? What am I created for? So, I learned for myself. So, it's like equipping for myself. I went for some courses, workshops, training. So, that was also when I got my Myers Briggs certification training, my Motivation Code certification training.

[00:33:58] When I went for those training, actually, my husband went together with me. It really wasn't yet because I wanted to use those certificates. It was because I was exploring. I really have done those for myself and I found them very helpful and I wanted to understand what would it be like to be equipped to use those instruments for others?

[00:34:16] For me, it was still getting the data, right? Doesn't matter. It doesn't mean just because I have a certificate, I'm going to use it, so to speak. So, but in the season of equipping, I found myself becoming more curious and yes, and testing, experimenting, and equipping myself with new tools.

[00:34:34] So, yeah. And I think you also asked about sending. Okay, so I knew, okay. So, my season of sending happened while the tempo was already picking up. Tempo in the sense of requests to do session season workshops begin to pick up again. But by and large, these were all the same kind of asks as before, okay. They were usually church related, community related. Because that was who I was in the last season in my life, right. I was a full-time pastoral worker in a church, I was dealing with formation in just a spiritual kind of sense and dimension. But in my equipping, there was already beginning to be integration from my community.

[00:35:14] All the things that I had learned before, even before that season of just being in church as a church worker, my philosophy training, my psychology training from the past, my training as an academic, because I was actually doing a PhD, I was going to be a university professor. I thought, there's a lot of very useful skills you pick up trying to be an academic in terms of the research, right.

[00:35:34] How do you research? How do you find what's relevant? How do you really hone in on what is useful and what isn't? How can you be really sharp in your thinking? All that makes for good papers, right? All that makes for effective teaching. So, in my season of equipping, I began to experience, seeing myself, how do I draw all these things kind of like together?

[00:35:54] SENDING & DEEPENING
Because these are all the things that I've been led through in my life. So, in 2020, the season of sending for me was very clear. It came around Pentecost when I really felt the call to go and do this, do a podcast, start a podcast. And that wasn't even something that I had ever - I don't even listen to podcasts.

[00:36:14] Okay, I didn't know what a podcast was actually, even just a few days before that. So, in the same weekend that I found out what podcasts were. I literally felt like go and do this and I said yes, without knowing exactly what I was getting myself into because it just felt so clear that this was the next step. And I knew this was different from everything I've done before.

[00:36:39] I knew this was starting a new page because I was convinced by this point that the integration journey of the interior journey and the journey into wholeness, authenticity, and to becoming who we truly are. And I really want that for everyone, right? To be who we truly are. That this has to be much larger than just a spiritual journey and that there are resources needed.

[00:37:01] And I just felt very passionately called to this area, this mission, right? And so, that would, that marked the start of my season of sending. And suddenly it was so, so, so different from the season of healing and deepening, even of equipping, because I was still kind of like half-half. And I think the first year of my season, my current season of sending, I was grieving.

[00:37:23] I had to grieve the loss of the season of deepening. I grieved the space. I grieved, I mean, I grieved the loss of space. I grieved, the loss of the solitude, the stillness, the silence, the wonderful opportunities to have six, seven-hour long conversations with people. Because at that time, I wasn't working.

[00:37:42] I mean, that was my season, right? And I was available in terms of time to meet people one-on-one. And we would have these really, really hours long conversations that could go very deep. And at that time that was the gift I could give people time. I could give time really like, availability to just hear them that that was out the window in the season of sending because that was not the way that God wanted to send me, right. And I had to figure out how to start a podcast.

[00:38:09] I had to start a business. That was also part of the season of sending to do this. Find a way to do this as work. Try and find a way to do whatever it is God is calling me to do professionally, even though there is no set path ahead of me. Just the other day, was one of my clients was just remarking that what I'm doing is something she has never seen before.

[00:38:30] She hasn't seen a precedent before and I said, yes, I think that's quite true in a specific way. I guess that I'm doing it. But I realized I have to figure it out. So, that's part of the sending and go and figure out how I'm calling you to do this. Fortunately, this is very aligned with the design that He has given me.

[00:38:47] The motivational design that God has given me and the temperament. In fact, I would be bored to tears if I could only execute what other people have already designed and planned out. So, the soul, when you ask, like, what's the change in the experience in the soul? In the season of deepening, like healing and then deepening, the soul is called to deep rest. And to deep healing.

[00:39:12] It's almost like being on an operating table, right? You know, you're given anaesthesia. You're sleepy. There's deep stuff that needs to happen and you need rest. You need rest and recuperation. And then you're topped up and filled up. It's into the season of equipping as well, now, with new resources.

[00:39:29] So, back to the analogy of the ship that was in dry dock. I guess in the season of equipping, it's not just the ship itself that's ready, but it's being stocked up with all the supplies and food and whatever resources that it needs for a long journey and then when the season of sending begins, you leave the shore.

[00:39:49] The soul really feels like, okay, I'm leaving this behind. I'm out again. I don't know where I'm heading into. It feels a little - it feels scary because you don't know where you're heading off to. But at the same time, there's a very clear sense that I am being sent. I'm not just wandering around.

[00:40:04] I am being sent, right? So, for me, because this round that I went through, I guess it wasn't the first time I was feeling that I was being sent and I've been discerning this for a long time. So, it felt very definitive, like this time for me, I knew I had the sense that , this is the work of my life. Like, this time I have much clearer that this is the work of my life.

[00:40:24] I'm not just experimenting now. Earlier seasons of sending, I knew that this wasn't where I would be permanently. Even like for example, when I was working in the parish full time, I knew very clearly it wasn't where I meant to be ultimately, but I knew that I was there for that season. There was something that God wanted me to pick up and to learn.

[00:40:43] And so, I'm there, right. But I hadn't - I wasn't clear yet what my personal vocation was. Now, I feel like this round of sending. I know. So, it really builds, like each cycle goes through every season, it kind of builds. But the sense is definitely, I want to pour myself out, or I'm being sent to pour myself out.

[00:41:04] The energy comes from the giving and the outpouring. And the receiving and the stillness and the contemplation is still very important. But it's not what marks the bulk of this season anymore. You know, you're out there and you have to be out there in trust. And I believe, because like I said, this is cyclical.

[00:41:25] There will come a time when then I will be drawn back. And I'm not exactly looking forward to that because usually, I mean, my experience so far, what brings me into a season of healing, is something very painful. Because it's like what I have up to now meets its limit and I can't do any more than I can. Then that's when the Lord, I find, brings me back into healing to show me deeper layers where He wants to work in me, right?

[00:41:51] And then I'm going to go through another time of healing and deepening, equipping and sending. But I think each time will be different and no one's to say how long or short each of these seasons are. Okay, yeah. So, that's my response. Any questions regarding this, you can either put it in the comment or use the question bubble box.

[00:42:11] So, the topic for this life is on healing, and then on the change in the soul - how I experience the feeling in the soul when we go from healing and deepening to equipping and sending. 

[00:42:21] For those who maybe knew - I won't necessarily say who. If you put it in the comment, it's public, and then I can address you, or I can address you by your username or name, but if you put it in the question bubble, I won't say who it's from. Okay, so, Erica says, " how do we practice not fearing the changes or transitions of the seasons?"

[00:42:46] I think the answer is by living through them. Ha ha! Because it's practice, right? I mean, you can't just rehearse in your own mind, how am I going to be less fearful of the changes or transitions? You have to live through them.

[00:42:57] And the wisdom always comes after. Yeah, wisdom comes when you reflect on what you have experienced, right? So, but each time you go through that, and when you reflect on it, and I'll say, okay, let me put it this way, focus not on the change, Erica, but focus on He who walks with you. At every step of the way, focus on the fact that you're not alone, that God is with you, that Christ is with you. Focus on the ones, the resources that do support you; the people that you are supported by, so that your gaze is not on the changes, and on the fear, but on how you're being attuned to, right, and how you're being supported.

[00:43:45] That helps. So, it's not so much, practicing how to be less fearful. I don't think you can. And I think the more you live through this, the less fearful we can become when you experience how you're not alone in it, right? But the practical thing you can do is to keep your eyes on Christ or keep your eyes on the hope and the love that accompanies you. Does that make sense? I hope it helps you.

[00:44:12] But I understand the crying emoji because all of us wish there was an easier way. All of us wish that, right, there could be a way that we would not be afraid anymore. But it seems like to reach that other side we need to experience all this. But it will come. Yes, it will come. Lovely.

[00:44:40] So, I guess then this is it for today's Live. I will catch you guys again tomorrow for day 28. Oh, just a few days left to this 30-day challenge. And if there are any questions that you do have, you would like me to maybe address, just send it in to me. You can send it in to me by direct message, okay? Alright, thanks, guys. Bye!

[00:45:04] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

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