Welcoming God
Hey spiritual seeker! My name’s Sarah Haykel and I’m the host of Welcoming God, a podcast for spiritual seekers.
In this podcast, I’ll be sharing the goodness of Welcoming God back into my life after years of rebelling against the God of my Catholic upbringing and years of honest seeking on a personal spiritual path. I’ll share my consistently evolving understanding of God and what I’m learning on the path, to help create a God accessible to the every day person.
We’ll have honest and sometimes hilarious conversations about how to go from being a “spiritual” person to a God-loving person. Understanding God as a benevolent guide. What does it mean to have a relationship with God? What does it mean to surrender to God? Cultivating a spiritually mature understanding of God. Learning how to discern God’s truth and will for our lives. How to cultivate the most important relationship you’ll ever have, with God, on a daily, moment to moment basis.
Come along on this spiritually rEvolutionary journey where we get to know God.
This podcast is marked as explicit because there may be swearing or content appropriate for mature audiences in some of the episodes.
Welcoming God
Second Half of Life: Growing Up Personally and Spiritually
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We're back after a two-month hiatus with the start of our four-week summer season. Recent unexpected changes and life experiences have felt challenging and prompted reflections on personal growth, trauma integration, and the journey towards personal and spiritual maturation.
In the first episode of season two, I'll discuss:
• Moving from the first half of life (focused on success and achievement) to the second half (internal journey and becoming a wise elder)
• Exploring Richard Rohr's concept from his book Falling Upwards and the call to grow into elders both spiritually and in the world
• Questioning how we process challenging feelings, thoughts, and experiences
• Tools for feeling, dealing, and healing through difficult life moments
• Accountability practices for maintaining spiritual health and personal reflection
• Examining our relationship with Higher Power/Source/ the Divine
Also, I'm working on a free Welcoming God ebook coming August 1st for email subscribers - sign up at WelcomingGod.com to receive your copy. The ebook contains open-ended questions to help integrate teachings from the first season of the Welcoming God podcast.
Music by Song Channel Music. Listen at SongChannelMusic.com
Go to WelcomingGod.com to subscribe to our email newsletter and receive updates about all things Welcoming God.
Check out Thomas Hubl here.
Check our Richard Rohr's book, Falling Upwards, here.
Check out Douglas Tsoi here.
Welcome Back After Hiatus
Speaker 1Hey everyone, sarah here, just to let you know. Sometimes I do use swear words in these episodes and we may at times discuss adult content, in case you happen to be listening around, little ones or people that won't appreciate that. Thanks so much for listening and let's get right into it. Hi, and thanks for joining me on Welcoming God. Hey everybody, sarah Haeckel here, your host for Welcoming God. It has been a while. We have not been together for some time now and this is the beginning of our four-week summer session season.
Unexpected Life Challenges
Speaker 1I am curious about what's been going on for you, I know, since May end of April, through May gosh and into June it has been an interesting journey. Some things happened that I didn't expect. I felt challenges in ways that I didn't expect and challenged by things that I didn't expect. I felt some rough patches and felt some hard, difficult moments and experiences that I just did not expect. And I found myself asking again like how am I here? How am I dealing with this stuff? Again, how am I here, how am I dealing with this stuff? Again, like I thought I did enough work to process through some of these difficult, challenging feelings, thoughts, experiences, impulses, fears, etc. And what I'm realizing.
Second Half of Life Journey
Speaker 1I work with online teacher whose name is Thomas Hubel and I'm in his mystic cafe and he talks about how, when we really integrate trauma, when we really integrate something that's happened in our past or in our lives that felt really challenging, we don't go back there anymore. We don't have to go back there and what I am experiencing now is a maturation of myself as a human being and that God life is really calling me to grow up and to be my full self as a full grown adult. And that may seem funny, you know, because I am not in my 20s anymore, 30s even but it's true, and I'm actually also listening to Richard Rohr's book Falling Upwards, which is all about the two halves of life. Calling Upwards, which is all about the two halves of life. The first half of life, which is really about our success, financial success, our success in the world, making a name for ourselves. You know, all of those things that we really work towards in that first half of life is where and I also read this in Douglas Soy's email newsletter about Richard Rohr's book, where he framed it that you know the second half of life is where we're supposed to become elders and grow up and mature and begin to live out a different purpose than in the first half of our lives, where we're just generating and accumulating and growing things and a lot of outward things. In the second half of life, it seems like it's more an inward journey, an invitation to go deeper into ourselves and go deeper into what is really there for us, what's really present in our experience.
Questions for Reflection
Speaker 1So I am definitely experiencing this right now and I'm wondering how you're doing, what's come up for you in the past two or three months. I know we finished the first season of Welcoming God at the beginning of May and it's been almost two months since then. So what have you been up to? What have you been up against? How have you been feeling? What are some of your tools to process, feel, deal, heal? I heard that somewhere and I love that.
Speaker 1What are some of your tools to feel, deal, heal? Where do you get your support from and how's your relationship with your higher power, god source, krishna, allah, buddha, life force, energy, universe, whatever you call it? How's your relationship going with that one true source? So I think we'll leave it at there today as an inquiry to walk away with, and the life coaching part of me will ask you some accountability questions.
Ebook Announcement & Closing
Speaker 1How will you hold yourself accountable to checking in with yourself, answering these questions that I've offered, or other questions that might come to mind that support you on your journey to feel heal and deal, to mature and grow up into the full adult that you're here to be, to become the elder that you are being called into? When will you reflect on this? What time of day? How many days in a row? What do you need to remind yourself? So these are all ways that we hold ourselves accountable to, or can hold ourselves accountable to, doing something that is helpful for ourselves, is healthy for ourselves. For myself, how does this affect my own personal wellness, health, mental, emotional, spiritual, et cetera, well-being, wellness in general, with the work that I'm doing in the world, with the rest of the world, with the wholeness of life? How does committing to taking time to check in with myself and see how I'm doing on the path support the well-being of myself and all of life? So I'll leave you with this today. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Welcoming God, and I have an e-book coming out for Welcoming God. All you have to do is sign up for the email list. Go to welcominggodcom and sign up on the email list and that ebook will be coming out by August 1st that will be my goal date to get it out and you will be emailed a copy of that book. And basically it's a simple ebook that goes through the first season of Welcoming God with some open-ended questions, so that you can re-listen to those episodes and really take some time to digest and integrate those teachings and learnings, to create more of a spiritual life for you and move forward on your path in a good and healthy way that's sound and truly connected with a higher power, for the greater good of all. So keep an eye out for the Welcoming God ebook and I will see you on the next episode next week. We'll do one episode per week for the next four weeks, so stay tuned and I look forward to talking with you then. Take care for now.
Speaker 1Hey everyone, sarah Haeckel here from Welcoming God, a podcast for spiritual seekers. This is a legal disclaimer to say that this podcast is not a substitute for therapy or professional help. I am not a trained therapist. I also have not studied theology in a formal setting. This podcast is professional, purely for educational, inspirational purposes, to share the goodness of welcoming God back into my life and all of the things that I'm learning on this journey. So thank you for joining me here and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Welcoming God. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, and consider leaving us a review, as it helps more people find and benefit from this show. Music by Song Channel Music. You can listen and hear more at songchannelmusiccom. Until we meet again, aloha nui loa, take care and God bless, thank you.