EPISODE 94 | WHEN YOUR INTERIOR JOURNEY FEELS DISCONNECTED WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD

At some point though, we hit a wall and we realize that what we know up to this point is not enough to bring us further. And usually, there is a spiritual kind of revolution that happens. It's a conversion experience, okay? So, it's a conversion experience. And conversion experiences often feel like a paradigm shift, right? Underlying assumptions that you have subscribed to before the conversion no longer applies and you need to develop a new set of assumptions that fit into the new paradigm. And the thing is, for interior journey pilgrims who continue to make the journey, this isn't a one-time thing. We will have multiple paradigm shifts in our journey. 

[00:00:47] 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. 

[00:01:24] Good morning, and welcome to day 19 of my 30-day IG challenge. I think my tongue hasn't warmed up yet. Okay, so, today, I'm going to be talking about something that is very real, a very real experience for those of you who have made it to a certain juncture of the interior journey.

[00:01:49] Okay, so, I haven't yet really broken down during this 30-day Live, what the stages and the seasons of the interior journey are, but I have made some mention of these stages in previous posts and previous videos. You can go and search and look them up, but I will revisit this today because I had a question come in yesterday, from someone who asked a really heartfelt question.

[00:02:19] So, this interior pilgrim says, at times, I experience loneliness and a sense of disconnectedness with the exterior world and my relationships when I'm on the interior journey. A bit like I'm in a kind of purgatory. It feels like growing pains. For example, like being aware, growing out of old norms and patterns, but not quite where and who I want to be. Right, so, kind of like I've left something and not arrived in another place yet. And I have to resist the urge to fix myself. So, there's a sense of feeling disconnected and displaced, right?

[00:03:02] And the question continues. I heard in one of your episodes or Lives that this was the case for you too, and that it's to be expected in the interior journey. What does one do? Or how can one be to keep on this journey when it gets so tough and lonely? And how can I keep, or how can I continue to engage with the exterior world when the interior is so raw, so wounded and more easily triggered? 

[00:03:35] Okay, so this is a deep question, and I'm going to try and do my best to respond to it. I will say straight off, that I wouldn't be able to do full justice to this question in this Live, okay? In a different context, if this was within a coaching container, for example, and we had more time, I can break this down a lot more for you.

[00:03:56] But just to give you a sense of the lay of the land and how to begin to look at this. I am pretty sure I can actually cover quite a bit even in this Live, all right. So, I'm going to address primarily why is it that we feel disconnected or why is it that you're feeling disconnected and it is normal.

[00:04:15] And part of what helps is to have a bit of understanding of why that sense of disconnectedness. Okay, and then I'll briefly look at the practical thing about what can you do to continue to engage with the exterior world when the interior is so raw and so wounded and so easily triggered.

[00:04:37] STAGES OF THE INTERIOR JOURNEY
Okay, so in order to answer this question, I need to redirect you to one of my earlier posts and also one of my earlier videos. In fact, I believe this is one of the videos that is pinned on my Instagram profile, okay. I explained in that video, I explained the four seasons of the interior journey. Okay, so, it's important for us to understand that our interior journey happens in stages, and that within the different stages, there are also cycles of seasons, okay?

[00:05:15] So, imagine that, let's say, one stage for example, takes place over let's say three years or four years. Okay, and each year there are four seasons now, loosely speaking. Okay, not talking about calendar year. So, one stage may take us through cycling a few a couple of seasons, a couple of cycles of seasons. And over time, if we continue to intentionally make this journey, we will begin to find that there's a pattern to the interior journey.

[00:05:47] All right, so I'm calling your attention to the seasons of the interior journey. I'm not going to go into detail there, here. Okay, but you can refer to my old post on my other video, but there's healing. There's a season of healing. There's a season of deepening. There's a season of being equipped. And then there's a season of being sent.

[00:06:08] So, I use these terms to describe kind of like what God is doing in us or for us during that season. Now, the reason I want to call your attention to these four seasons is because this feeling of being disconnected with the outside world, it tends to happen in seasons of healing and seasons of deepening, not so much in seasons of equipping and sending.

[00:06:31] Okay, so, transcribed by all these seasons have like a different feel to them and it's helpful sometimes, to kind of locate ourselves. Okay, right now, I'm feeling disconnected. What might that be saying about what season of the interior journey I am in? Now, caveat. This is hard to do just on our own.

[00:06:51] It's very important that you have someone walking with you and guiding you. But in terms of the person who asked this question, I have clarified with her and she is already going through regular spiritual direction and also regular therapy. So, I know that there's someone walking with her, which is also probably why she's at a deeper place right now in her journey. Okay, for us to be aware of the disconnectedness, usually it doesn't happen right at the very beginning when we begin to make this interior journey, okay? But as we've made it for some time and we go a little deeper, we will experience this sense of connection.

[00:07:27] WHY DO WE EXPERIENCE DISCONNECTION?
Okay, so, first, why is it that there is this sense of disconnection? Okay, I'm going to give you just briefly two reasons. Okay, the first reason is when we are on this interior journey, after some time, we begin to have, or we begin to experience a separation and a distinguishing between our inner world and our outer world.

[00:07:56] All right, so, if you recall, I often talk about our life as having three layers, right? The outermost layer is with people and things, our interactions in the outside world, the outside of our lives. And then there's an inner layer, our emotions, our thoughts, our sensations. And then right in the core, is our core, right?

[00:08:17] 1. FRAGMENTATION
So, there are kind of like three layers. When we haven't really made the interior journey, we are not aware of the separation of these layers and we are not yet aligning all these layers to the core, okay? So, our core is fragmented, it's not integrated. So, our experience, the experience of a life often is that it's also very fragmented, can be quite out of control.

[00:08:42] For most of us, we spend most of our conscious awareness on the outermost layer of our life, right? Just reacting to what's happening and the things that we need to do. We are ruled by our scripts and our programs, our coping mechanisms without us even realizing it. We are not in touch with our emotions.

[00:09:01] We're not in touch with our body. Sometimes we can be in touch with our thoughts and when our thoughts are too dominating or like, one of the marks of stress and trauma is often that we can't control even the speed of our thoughts or how busy our thoughts are. So, our inner world feels chaotic, our outer world feels chaotic sometimes, a lot of times, because we're just reacting and we have no sense of who we are in our core.

[00:09:29] Sometimes you can say, or you can imagine like where the core is, we may actually feel it's kind of hollow, right? It's kind of like something that's missing there. So, as we begin to make the interior journey and things start to happen within us. We begin to develop more awareness of the inner layer. We begin to become more aware of how broken we are in our core.

[00:09:55] And also, what begins to happen is, there is a movement towards trying to align the outer layer with the inner layer with the core. Okay, so, part of authenticity is alignment, right? That what is inside me is reflected in my actions and my words, and how I interact in the outside world, and that they're all held together by an integrated core.

[00:10:25] Now, regardless of whether you are an extrovert or an introvert, when you are not integrated, when we're still living a very fragmented experience, the inner world and the outer world, they are not aligned. Okay, whether you're an introvert or extrovert, most of the time what happens is we live out of our personas, right?

[00:10:48] What does that mean? Living out of personas means that, in a sense, what people see, what people experience of you it's putting on a bit of a show, okay? I'm not saying that you're being deliberately inauthentic. I mean, you as in general, it's what we do to survive. It's what we have learned to cope with the stresses of the outside world.

[00:11:08] But when we begin to make this interior journey into integration, when we desire to be authentic, we want to become our real selves, it's like a realignment. Okay, so, something's going on inside of us. Things are shifting and that kind of shifting, which is hard to describe unless you are experiencing it yourself or you have experienced it yourself.

[00:11:28] That's part of what causes the experience of disconnection, okay? Because the old way, the old way that your outside world and your inner world and your missing core are kind of like placed, that's changing, alright? And that gives you a sense of displacement. Alright, so, that's the first reason.

[00:11:48] 2. UNLEARNING AND CHANGING
The second reason why we tend to feel disconnected and displaced at seasons of deep healing and also deepening in our spiritual journeys, our interior journeys, is the word that comes to mind is limbo, right? The person in the question earlier, I think she specified that there's a sense of old patterns are changing, but I'm not yet where I need to be, I'm not yet where I think I should be, I haven't arrived.

[00:12:18] So, it's this feeling of I've left one familiar shore, right, and my boat or ship has left the shore, I'm on a journey and I don't yet know where I'm heading to, and I am nowhere near the land, the next new land that I'm meant to land on. So, the sense of, I don't know where I am, right, that also contributes to the experience of being displaced.

[00:12:39] That contributes to the experience of feeling disconnected. So, what made sense before, in an earlier time in our journey, somehow doesn't seem to make sense anymore. That's part of the displacement and the disconnection, right? And when that's going on, there's a lot of stuff going on in our internal world, right?

[00:13:01] It's hard to be present to what's going on in our inner world and at the same time be present to what's happening in the outside world and external layer of our lives, you know, in our relationships and people. So, that's also why you feel that disconnection, right? Because now the energy is being drawn into shifts and healing that's happening at the core and at the inner layer.

[00:13:27] And so, it's hard, especially at the start, for us to be able to be present and attuned to both what's going on inside and what's going on outside of us. Especially when the habitual ways that we show up in the outside world will still tend to be from our scripts and our patterns. Okay, because that takes a long time to rewrite, right? So, that takes a long time to rewrite. So, that's also why that internally you feel this split. 

[00:13:54] Alright, I want to share something, a theory that had helped me understand why there are these big shifts in my own interior journey, okay? And I hope this will be helpful. You don't have to worry. You don't have to go and read the book. You don't have to okay.

[00:14:17] I'm just going to I’m just citing the book so that you know where I’m coming from. Okay, so the book is actually originally written in the 1960s. It's a philosophy of science and history of science book. Okay, it's called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. Okay, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So, why am I bringing up scientific revolutions or the structure of scientific revolutions?

[00:14:42] It's because so Thomas Kuhn's thesis is that scientific practice alternates between periods of normal science, okay, and revolutionary science. Okay, normal science and revolutionary science, meaning that there are long periods of normal science in which scientists, they subscribe to common assumptions, right?

[00:15:02] Common ideas of a large body of knowledge, of interconnecting knowledge, and methods and assumptions. So, there are all these shared methods and assumptions, and these shared assumptions make up a certain paradigm. And so, the development of normal science happens in this paradigm, alright?

[00:15:20] But then there are times in which the current paradigm just isn't sufficient to explain what is being experienced or what is being discovered in science anymore. And then there are times then that there will be these revolutions, okay? So, from normal science, there is a break and there is a period of scientific revolution.

[00:15:42] For an example, the Copernican Revolution, it's earth shattering, right? It's a whole paradigm shift about what's the center of the universe. So, the revolution, the time of revolution, is the equivalent of a paradigm shift. And the paradigm shift, when that happens, is a phase in which the underlying assumptions of the whole field, they are re-examined. You know, underlying assumptions that were accepted without question during the period of normal science, they are now being questioned. They're being tested again. Some of them have been thrown out the window and we need an entire new paradigm. An entire new paradigm has to be established. It's like a new horizon. It's a big shift, right? And then after a revolution, suddenly now there's a new paradigm, we look at the data again, and begin to make sense of the data under this new paradigm.

[00:16:31] And that is the development of science according to Thomas Kuhn. If you look at the history of science, right, there are these different phases, and it keeps moving through these phases. I like this theory, or I'm using this theory because I think it actually helps to explain the experience of the interior journey.

[00:16:50] Okay, because we, in this interior journey, also have the experience of phases where we start working with certain assumptions that are handed down to us, whatever it is that we learn. And we want to make progress. We want to come to draw closer to God, right? We want to draw closer to Christ and we want to understand ourselves more.

[00:17:09] At some point though, we hit a wall and we realize that what we know up to this point is not enough to bring us further. And usually, there is a spiritual kind of revolution that happens. It's a conversion experience, okay? So, it's a conversion experience. And conversion experiences often feel like a paradigm shift, right? Underlying assumptions that you have subscribed to before the conversion no longer applies and you need to develop a new set of assumptions that fit into the new paradigm. And the thing is, for interior journey pilgrims who continue to make the journey, this isn't a one-time thing. We will have multiple paradigm shifts in our journey.

[00:17:51] One of the signs that your spiritual life is alive and well is that it's dynamic. And that every now and then - it could be a few months, could be a few years - you'll experience that something is shifting. You'll experience that something is shifting and what worked before doesn't work now, right? And every now and then, as we cycle through the seasons of the spiritual journey, you will experience that disconnect.

[00:18:21] Okay, so, to give a sharing of my own experience of that kind of disconnection that the person who asked this question had described earlier, that during the interior journey, sometimes there's a sense of being disconnected with other people or with relationships or with the outside world.

[00:18:39] So, my experience of growing disconnection happened at a time when I was actually very, very busy and very, very active at work and in ministry. 

[00:18:48] So, the seasons of the spiritual journey. I had previously gone through some healing, okay, not very much deepening yet at the time, but I jumped into kind of like a season of sending, and then I was really busy, really, and trying on the job training kind of thing; trying to equip myself, and serving, serving, serving. And during that, I think God was beginning to draw me slowly into a new season of healing.

[00:19:11] Okay, exposing things, wounds inside me that I didn't know was there. So, as He began to draw me into that season of healing, I began to experience that disconnect. Okay, that it felt like there were two realities going on at the same time. There was the outside world that didn't stop; the busyness of my ministry and my work that had to keep going on.

[00:19:35] And there were also new wounds that are being inflicted, new stresses that were being affected both at work and in personal life. But at the same time, there's growing awareness of like a parallel journey going on that 's in my inner world, that nobody really knew what's going on, and it felt very strange.

[00:19:51] And I think this is what the person who asked this question, is referring to, about that sense of disconnect, you know? And feeling like you can't really pay equal attention to both what's going on inside and what's going on outside. So, you try, right? I mean, for me, I tried. So, the daily times of prayer I had to increase the amount of time of silence, of solitude, in order to have space to process these two parallel realities that were happening, okay?

[00:20:25] SILENCE AND SOLITUDE

[00:20:25] So, what do you do during this kind of phase? So, earlier the question included how do I continue engaging with the exterior world when the interior is so raw and so wounded, right? what do we do when it gets so tough and lonely? Okay, so, there are multiple, the different kinds of answers that are possible for this.

[00:20:45] So, in today's response, I will focus on what can you do with yourself, okay, with yourself that can help during this kind of season where you feel very disconnected. 

[00:20:57] It's very simple. Not easy to do, but simple. Prioritize silence and solitude as much as possible. When you're going through seasons of healing or deeper healing or deepening, it's like an incubation season.

[00:21:15] Okay, like really an incubation season. It's like a gestation season. There's something new that is being birthed in you. There's something very new, very young, very vulnerable, and it needs to be protected. Too much noise and disturbance, not enough interior silence, will prevent this new life in you from growing.

[00:21:37] Okay, so silence and solitude must be prioritized as much as possible within the reality that you have. But... If you are already very committed to the interior journey, my experience is that people will find ways, okay, that you will find ways, creative ways to increase the capacity for silence and solitude.

[00:21:56] Look at where space can be created or how. So, like I said, when this started for me, it was a very busy time in my life, right? It wasn't a sabbatical season. But during that period of time, so how did I carve out space and silence? It's not just about being physically away. In a silent space, I barely watched any television or any movies during that season, okay?

[00:22:20] And that season was quite long when I, when it, when it started, there was this inner need. I could feel this drawing into silence. My soul needed to be still. My soul needed to be silent. Something important was happening inside of me. And so naturally, when I found that, if I watched, let's say, a movie or TV or something like that, I could feel that silence being disturbed.

[00:22:44] Imagine a pond and the pond needs to be still every time something noisy enters into my sphere apart from, you know, the necessary noise from work and in relationships and all that, for example, it feels like pebbles are being thrown into the pond and the surface of the pond keeps getting rippled, right?

[00:23:05] So I began to notice. What are the unnecessary pebbles that I can prevent from hitting the pond? The stillness that I need, that my soul needs. So, during that season, I hardly watch any television or any movies. Or even music, would think that maybe instrumental music would be. better, right? There was a time when I really needed the silence that I didn't even listen to instrumental music or chants or Christian music because nothing can replace silence.

[00:23:35] If you If you have entered this phase of your interior journey, you know what I mean. Okay. There is a drawing to silence and nothing can replace that silence, which meant that on commutes or let's say when I was driving, I didn't listen to anything. It was just silence. And I wasn't even necessarily talking to God.

[00:23:57] I was just being in silence with him. There is something that happens in silence. That is in the incubation of your soul that's happening that you don't understand and you don't need to really talk about Okay, this silence and this stillness somehow gives space for what's growing the new life that's growing inside of you.

[00:24:20] Okay, so during that period of time I was also very selective in what I read now. I love reading. I love books. I really love books and When I'm in seasons where I can read a lot, I really read a lot. I love learning Right. And a lot of the books that I was reading for the interior journey, maybe it was spiritual books, spirituality books.

[00:24:39] You know, I was learning good things. Right. But when I entered the season of healing and deepening, when I began to feel like I needed all the energy really for the gestation, so imagine, imagine if you will, like, you know, really like, like, you know, pregnancy, right. Or an egg that is.

[00:24:59] It's been incubated. All the energy has to be drawn, a lot of energy has to be drawn from the outer into the inner, right? To feed what's growing within. So, during that time, even the books that I read, I didn't read as much as I did. And I was very selective. When I read something, if it didn't nurture where I was right then in that season, I gave it up.

[00:25:25] Oh, I, I didn't finish the book, you know whether and whether it was whether it's podcasts or, or courses, I also didn't really attend a lot of courses. I was very selective because you begin to develop a sense as to what helps to nurture the new life that's growing inside you, the new spiritual life that's growing on inside you and what is disturbing it.

[00:25:47] Now, this is very important. And spiritual masters, like even St. Teresa of Avila, actually talk about this in a different, in a different language, right? But she says if we're not sensitive to the stages of the journey that we are in, we can do something that damages, causes damage to the journey. Because Teresa of Avila also would say that, you know, what worked at an earlier phase of prayer, for example, can actually be harmful in a later stage of prayer development.

[00:26:13] Right, and hence the importance of having wise guides that can, that can journey with you and kind of like show you the way and help identify for you, especially when it's new to you and you're not able to identify yet. Whether it's one of these times when there's a huge shift of paradigm and you need to relook at all the assumptions and all the tools that you have.

[00:26:35] Right, so that sense of disconnect. from the outside world is actually an invitation to withdraw. Now we are not hermits. I mean, especially, I mean, you know, we're, we're lay people. We can't just withdraw to the mountain. I mean, most of the time, but there are other ways of withdrawing. So, I've just given you some examples of how I did the withdrawing, right?

[00:26:56] Watching less TV, listening to less things, even reading fewer books really, really discerning the process of is this, for me right now. Okay. Another way that you can carve out silence, and this is quite counter cultural. This is challenging, especially if you haven't learned to establish boundaries and that would be cut down on social engagements.

[00:27:22] Okay. I realized before I really became a very intentional on this interior journey, how much of the social engagements I have It's like on autopilot, you know, when, when you get asked to attend something or you're requested to be here or there, as long as there's a gap in my calendar, I don't have anything scheduled.

[00:27:38] My default is like, yes. So, in the season, when I became a lot more intentional about my interior journey, that changed. I realized I have to be very intentional, even about prioritizing my, and any kind of engagement. I really essentialized, I really discerned what to take up and what to say no to. So that's another, that could be like another topic altogether.

[00:28:01] How do we essentialize and discern what to say yes and what to say no to, but that, that can actually carve out a lot of time when you start being intentional about your social engagements and you, but you have to be okay. Because part of doing that and drawing that boundary for the longest time, I felt weird.

[00:28:17] I felt like, oh, will people, will people think that I'm antisocial, you know, kind of a thing. So, there are all kinds of those thoughts and worries, right? The scripts and the insecurities in me, but, when that new life in you is a priority and right now what it needs is silence and solitude for me That's not it's not it's no question.

[00:28:36] Okay, so I made those cuts. I essentialized I said no to a lot of things and then I looked for also pockets of time where I can be alone longer So, again, I'm addressing the season of healing and deepening when we need more pockets of solitude and silence, more than the usual, or more than the norm when you are in a season of equipping and sending, okay?

[00:29:00] So when in healing, in seasons of healing and deepening, we need More pockets of solitude and silence. So, we really need to actively carve out that time. If you can't go away on long retreats So for me during that period of time was a few years annual retreats were not enough Okay, waiting once a year to do like a week of silent retreat was not enough silence For me and even carving out the time that I mentioned earlier by reading less not watching tv, you know all that sounds quite radical right cutting down social engagements.

[00:29:33] Even that was not enough You will have a sense that I still need more silence to stabilize So here's a here's a trick that I did look for shorter windows to do like days of recollection. Okay. So instead of a long retreat, if you can book yourself into a retreat house, sometimes it doesn't even have to be a retreat house, especially when you're a little bit further on.

[00:29:59] You just, if you can find a space away from your usual work, away from home, close to nature, right? Whether it's just one day, like from morning to evening, or if you're like me and I need, I need more time to kind of like calm down when life is so busy. I need time to wind down and to enter I would do like a 40-hour retreat.

[00:30:23] Okay, 40 hours kind of like basically it starts in the evening On one day, on day one, so that I can have the evening to wind down and then the next morning when I wake up, I'm in the retreat house or I'm in, you know, the chalet or the, you know, whatever space I've decided to book myself in. So, from waking, I have a full day, right?

[00:30:44] Morning, noon, I'm into the evening. And I don't have to worry about packing or leaving yet because I have one more night. Right, one more night and one more sunrise. For me, I'm a morning person, so sunrises are very, you know, precious. So, this kind of 40-day, 40-hour, sorry, kind of retreat gives me two sunrises.

[00:31:04] I still have another morning and then I leave after breakfast. Right, so you, this may seem like, it may, it may sound like it's very short, but when you have begun to intentionally build in silence in smaller pieces into your life, and you also are committed to, let's say, doing like an annual retreat, Trying to put in a short day of recollection, maybe once a month or once every two months, maybe over the weekend or on your off day, it begins to make a lot of difference.

[00:31:37] And you'll find over time that you need a much shorter time to enter into the silence, like the, the runway to enter into silence and then to, to come back out into the world. It becomes smoother. You don't need as much time to enter and to come out of silence. Doing this, doing what I suggested, gives you more regular and kind of like a bigger store of silence and solitude.

[00:32:09] That's what you want to build in this kind of season of growth. You want to build a larger store. of silence and solitude because you're still active in your life, right? You're still busy with working and all that. But when you have this larger store of silence and solitude to retreat in, it will give you more inner space with which to intentionally engage the outside world and then to come back in to be silent.

[00:32:37] Okay, to just rest. You don't have to really actively process everything that happens in the outside world. That's another thing to bear in mind. When we are interior pilgrims, who are first and foremost, that's the disciples of Christ, a big part of the interior journey is mystical. Okay, a big part of the interior journey is not within our, our, our awareness, it's not within our intentionality, within our control.

[00:33:06] Even within what we're called to respond to. It's just a sliver in which we're called to respond to. That feels a lot for us already. But there's a lot more that is going on. In fact, the most powerful and deepest stuff that's happening, usually we have no idea what's going on. And that's where silence and solitude is very powerful and very important.

[00:33:22] It allows us to just be still, and let whatever God is doing happen inside us. Okay. By doing this, by prioritizing, sorry, by prioritizing silence and solitude, you will find that that experience of being disconnected from the outside world, over time, you, you can navigate it a little better. You will accept it.

[00:33:51] It's part of a, it's part of the norm, okay? In the seasons deepening, you will kind of like feel like, I'm disconnected. And that's a good thing, because the invitation is to solitude, is to silence. So that's what I can offer you. The final points of how much and when that's the day-to-day ongoing discernment and you know, that you need to make maybe with your spiritual director, et cetera.

[00:34:16] Okay. Rest assured that because our journey happens in seasons, when you come out of the season of deepening, when the Lord begins to draw you into a new season of being equipped, getting ready to send you out, that feeling of disconnectedness decreases. Okay? Because then what is needed in that other season, the next season, is being reconnected to the outside world.

[00:34:40] Everything that has been built up in your internal store During that season of a lot more silence and solitude, right? It's like god it has been building something new inside you and then in the season of equipping that gets strengthened and becomes a bit more externalized you begin to See and make it more tangible what has grown inside you and then in the next season of sending usually Which is a season where?

[00:35:03] You are going to be more actively engaged with the outside world. You will find that you don't, you don't feel that disconnected most of the time, but there will still be pockets where, because the internal life is still, interior life is still happening, the interior journey is still happening, that you will feel that disconnection.

[00:35:21] But slowly you become more skilful at knowing how to make space to protect that, even as you're in a season of being, you know, sending or being sent out. Okay, so that's a lot. Today's session is actually quite deep. It's actually targeted, I think, really more for people who are past the very beginnings of the interior journey.

[00:35:43] Okay, so, if what I said resonates with you, I that may mean that you've already been experienced what I'm talking about and you haven't quite heard before how you can respond to that feeling of disconnectedness and I hope this helps you. If you're someone for whom what I've said doesn't quite make sense. You don't know what I'm talking about yet. And for some reason you're still watching this video. I mean, that's really great I do that sometimes too. It's more of a have a sense that something like this is going to be there further down the road for you Okay, that feeling disconnected at some point because of the healing and deepening that's happening inside you It's a normal thing.

[00:36:23] There's no need to be Worried or scared but do pray that the Lord leads you to the right people, the right resources, the right spiritual director for that season, so that you are not alone. Okay? I can't go further in right now talking about, so what do, you know, how do, how, how do you feel less alone?

[00:36:43] Maybe at another time I'll talk about the dimension of that aloneness when you are feeling disconnected, okay? but Okay, maybe, I don't know, maybe I don't need to too much because, I'll end off with this, because solitude and silence is what is needed by the soul in these seasons, that feeling of aloneness is part of the invitation to seek solitude, okay?

[00:37:08] So you really just need during this period of time. one or two people that can be your touch points who can be your guide, who makes, who can make you, can reassure you, you know, somewhat, okay, that you're on the right track. Apart from that, just accept that. This experience of being really alone, that the people around you, your normal friends, family, or even community members, do not understand what you're going through.

[00:37:37] That is a normal part of the journey. It's a normal part of the journey. Okay? Alright So, no questions today. I know this is a Sunday morning, so I think not many of you are here live. I hope this helps, and I will come back tomorrow. to Maybe respond to another part of another question that I have received Okay, and if there's anything any questions arise from this video, please Just send me a direct message.

[00:38:07] Okay, and I would love to continue this conversation in another Live. Bye!

[00:38:13] 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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