Your brain is sitting inside a closet (your skull) and has zero idea what’s going on around it, except that it has your bodily senses feeding it signals. Those signals, like photons and vibrations in the air, mean almost nothing to the brain EXCEPT that your brain has past experience about what those mean. Everything you experience, everything you know, all that you think - these are all reconstructions of reality. These are guesses that your amazing brain is making about “what is” based on your senses and, especially, on your past experiences. There’s SO MUCH information hitting your brain every second that it has to ignore most of it and guess about the rest. That’s great but it means that we make a lot of assumptions about “what is.” With some skill, you can start to sort through your thoughts and emotions anc pick up on interpretations that are not necessarily accurate and are not helpful. Creating that skill is a big part of the empowered life.

Resource

Lisa Feldman Barrett podcast interview by Dr. Andrew Huberman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeRgqJVALMQ

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Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150.

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Do you find yourself often thinking in terms of getting cooperation from your unconscious mind? Or learning how to give it great instructions so it can support you easily? We have all had the experience of “deciding” to do something (like a New Year’s resolution, hmmm?) and then, a few weeks, or days, later - it has fizzled out. You had decided to do the Thing. But you didn’t. You consciously wanted the Thing. But unconsciously, you weren’t convinced. Ultimately, the Thing didn’t happen because you lacked cooperation from your unconscious. If, however, you know how to get your conscious and unconscious mind ALIGNED, then you will get the Thing done. And many things done.

Resource

Jonathan Haidt: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom - Haidt coined the analogy of the Rider and the Elephant to explain how the conscious and unconscious mind cooperate (or not) with each other. He gives many examples and reviews various brain functions to point out some of the sources of conflict.

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Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150.

Email us: EmpCatholic@gmail.com

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Christmas! Perplexingly, we were inspired to talk about those genealogies that are part of the Christmas story, like in Matthew where there’s a list of Jesus’ ancestry. t It turns out that reflecting on what it means to be part of a lineage means a lot. We are part of the nativity story because God has brought us into the lineage of Jesus and Abraham, and the entire story of God and His Creation. It is a profound thing. Listen and enter in. Merry Christmas!

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Empowered Christian. Empowered Catholic. Empowered Person. Yes. Yes. Yes. Empowered is a state of being that addresses the whole person. Because God acts on the whole person. The Spirit leads us and prompts us, as Christians. Yet we have a huge role to play in seeing, hearing, feeling, and responding to these prompts. Grace builds on nature. If you are being prompted to improve your health, you will be called to action. That’s your part. Yet you might resist the action you “know” you need. We all have had THAT experience, right? Your human nature is showing up! How to work with it effectively? Our nature is a multilayered mystery. We invite you to consider the dimensions of this human nature in its many layers. We paint a picture of empowerment and invite you to consider what could happen if you stepped into it.

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Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150.

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We are now The Empowered Catholic Podcast. Why? And Why “empowered”? These are big questions! We have increasingly been aware that we are being called on to breathe some bigger themes into the Church and the world. We started seeing patterns and key themes in our work and podcast. We are on a journey of empowerment as persons and as Christians and invite you to join us. Empowerment is just one word; listen to this episode to understand why we chose this word. And learn why we are inviting you to put on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical attributes that create empowerment so you can serve God and the people around you more faithfully and powerfully.

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Text us: The Empowered Catholic Podcast: 612-208-9150.

Email us: EmpCatholic@gmail.com

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Revelations 21 beautifully and dramatically describes a new heaven and a new earth, with the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, and God coming to dwell with His people. “Behold, I am making all things new.” Our ideas of the end-game, the point of it all, the final-final Where All This Is Going matters because it has a big impact on how we live now. You are destined to live in eternity in a (new) earth seamlessly integrated with a (new) heaven where God will come down to dwell with all His people. Once you get your imagination around that, it will change your perspective. Yes, it will change your perspective on everything. What a contrast this vision is with the mistaken idea that life is something we have to simply suffer through, to get over with, to endure, to just sweat it out because all this world is going to be annihilated anyways. Life requires forward momentum. Your imagination about where you are going - your vision for the future - starts to create your future because starting NOW, picking up the thoughts, habits, and way of being that you WILL have after your vision becomes true is a powerful driver for change. We have a destiny as the people of God. Let’s step into that now.

Resources:

Revelation for Everyone: 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide. N.T. Wright

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Text us: The Catholic Midlife podcast: 612-208-9150.

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St. Paul and the writers of the gospels make some cultural assumptions when talking about FAITH and when talking about GRACE. We miss a lot of what they are writing about because modern people are oblivious to these cultural assumptions that were common in the ancient world but are absent from the modern mindset. The patron-client relationship is one of these cultural assumptions. This relationship was omnipresent in the ancient world. This relationship involved a basket, even a whole shopping cart, of implied but unstated behaviors. The client would receive kind favors from a patron without meriting them. Then the client would, of course, respond with gratitude, praise, loyalty, trust, (unequal) friendship, and availability to help the patron to the (small) extent possible for them. We spent the last episode explaining about the web of expectations that surround the patron-client relationship. In this episode, we look at some scripture stories through the lens of the patron-client relationship and have very surprising insights to share.

Resources

Richards and James, Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World. InterVarsity Press.

Wheatley, Patronage in Early Christianity: Its Use and Transformation from Jesus to Paul of Samosata; Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 160. Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

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Text us: The Catholic Midlife podcast: 612-208-9150.

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The Bible makes assumptions about what you know because in the ancient world, there were some things that everyone knew and took for granted. They were so basic, it was hard to explain. That’s why Westerners and modern people often misread the Bible. It’s because we are importing our own cultural assumptions into our reading. Think about stories you’ve heard where a traveler dealing with another culture makes hilarious and embarrassing mistakes because there was something they didn’t know about the culture. A missionary in Indonesia said he was no longer surprised when he woke up and found people he didn’t know cooking a meal for him, his family, and themselves in his kitchen. His kitchen wasn’t a private place. St Paul and the writers of the gospels use certain analogies when talking about FAITH and when talking about GRACE. If you don’t understand what these assumptions were, you don’t understand what Scripture means when you read those words. Listen to find out what you’ve never heard about faith and grace.

Resources:

Richards and James, Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World. InterVarsity Press.

Wheatley, Patronage in Early Christianity: Its Use and Transformation from Jesus to Paul of Samosata; Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 160. Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Contact Info

Text us: The Catholic Midlife podcast: 612-208-9150.

Email us: TheCatholicMidlife@gmail.com

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Website: https://thmlcoaching.com/the-catholic-midlife-podcast/