The Soul Behind It with Renee Mims

Renee Mims
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“The Soul Behind It with Renee Mims” is where music, stories, and spirit meet. Join author and lyricist Renee Mims for conversations on spiritual awakening, manifestation, self-healing, and living your divine truth. imaginemeinnovation.substack.com

  1. Aug 28

    Life Gets Better. I’m Living Proof.

    Before we even get into this… I gotta tell y’all something funny. I tried doing a couple of these live. Camera on, face out, trying something different. And apparently y’all were like, “Girl… we liked you better when we couldn’t see you.” 😂 Explain to me why I’m sitting at almost 10,000 downloads with just my voice, but the second I put my face on camera, everybody starts disappearing? Okay then. Message received! The face has been removed from the building. We are back to our regularly scheduled programming. And honestly? I’m good with that. There’s just something different about sitting here talking to you. No camera, no ring light glare, no worrying about what my face is doing. Just me, you, and this conversation. Today, I want to talk about something I don’t think I’ve ever put into perspective like this: my life. If you only know me now, it’s easy to get this whole thing twisted. You see me writing books, making music, producing this podcast, laughing, traveling, doing whatever pops into my head next… and you think, “Oh, she’s got it together.” Dude. Come closer. This took work. And I’m not talking about career work. I’m talking about getting-my-ass-through-life work. There are parts of my story I don’t talk about much. I’m not ashamed of them, I just don’t live there anymore. I’ve survived rape, mental health crises, and hospitalization. There was a point where a gun was sitting right in my closet, and I was laying in bed trying every bit of my strength not to get up and grab it. That’s how bad I wanted the pain to stop. I’m not gonna rewrite that moment to make myself sound stronger than I was. I wasn’t strong. I was worn the heck down, hurting, and just trying to survive what was happening inside me. I’ve cried until my chest hurt, and not cute crying either. I mean ugly, swollen-eyed, can’t-catch-your-breath crying where you genuinely ask yourself: Can you actually die from crying? Because it felt like it. I lost my mama young and had to figure out adulthood with no parents to call, no grandparents in the background with years of wisdom. Just figuring it out as I went. And God knows I didn’t always get it right. Some lessons needed a retake. A few needed summer school. Things were crazy from the start. Passed through foster homes as a baby. Later on, knowing what it felt like to wonder where my next meal was coming from. I’ve been homeless. I’ve lived in a shelter with two little babies. Now, that will do something to you. It’s one thing when you’re scared for yourself. It’s a whole different ballgame when two little people are looking up at you expecting you to have it figured out, and you’re looking back like, “Yep! Mommy’s got it.” Meanwhile inside? Girl, Mommy does NOT got it. But you figure it out. I raised two kids on my own. Nobody was coming to rescue me; a lot of times, I was the rescue, even when I was exhausted or needed saving myself. Panic attacks had me by the neck. I remember laying in bed with my chest hurting so bad I thought, “This is it. It’s my last day here.” Looking back from where I’m sitting now? It’s crazy! I wanted to record this episode because somebody listening needs to hear that the hardest chapter of your life does not get the final word. I get it. When you’re drowning, advice from someone standing on the dry shore doesn’t mean much. You need to hear from somebody who’s been in deep water too. Who knows the panic, the exhaustion, and what it actually takes to climb back onto solid ground. I’m not speaking to you from a book I read or a quote I found online this morning. I’m telling you this because I lived it. Back then, this version of me felt so far away I couldn’t even imagine her. Creating for a living felt like another world. Waking up actually loving my life wasn’t even a thought. We forget that when we’re going through it. We think because we can’t see the next chapter, it doesn’t exist. That ain’t true. You just can’t see that far yet. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you everything happened for a beautiful reason. Some things I went through were unfair, painful, and never should’ve happened. I don’t need to make it pretty just because I survived it. But once it became part of my story, what I did next was on me. Pain gave me compassion. Going without made me appreciate what I have. Getting lost forced me to find my voice. Grief showed me how valuable time is. And figuring life out on my own? That made me resourceful in ways I never knew possible. You can be completely tired of everything and still have a little piece of you that wants to keep going. It doesn’t have to be some big, powerful feeling. It can literally just be, “Alright, let me just get through today.” We put too much pressure on faith. People act like you’ve gotta wake up believing with your whole soul that everything’s gonna be amazing. Please. There were days my faith couldn’t lift a paperclip. But it was there. A tiny little string. And I held it. If you are in one of those heavy chapters right now: hold the damn string. Forget next year. Forget next week. Just get through today. If today is too big, get through this hour. A terrible season will try to convince you it’s your whole life. Don’t believe everything pain tells you. If I believed mine, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’m not just alive. I’m living. Your “better” won’t look like mine, but this current moment doesn’t have enough power to write the rest of your story. Whether your heart is broken, you’re carrying deep grief, you’re stressed about money, or you’re starting over from scratch… hold on anyway. One day, right in the middle of living your life, it’s gonna hit you: Damn. I really made it through that. You don’t need to know how it’s all gonna turn out. You just have to stay long enough to see it. When I look back, I realize something else: for years, I thought I was just the person everything was happening to. The foster baby. The mother in the shelter. The woman with the broken heart. Those things happened to me, but they were never all of who I was. Think about this: you can hear your own thoughts. You can notice when you’re scared or overthinking. You can sit there and say, “My mind is all over the place today.” Well… who is the person noticing that? That realization changed everything for me. If I can observe my thoughts, something deeper than the thoughts is doing the observing. Call it spirit, consciousness, your higher self, whatever you want. I just know there’s more to us than this body walking around handling bills, trauma, and whatever foolishness life throws at us. We live in a world designed to make us forget that. TikTok, Instagram, news, notifications, people arguing online… it’s constant. Look here, buy this, watch that, compare yourself to her, be mad at him. You can spend so much time looking outside that you never actually meet yourself. Eventually, I started seeing myself beyond everything I’d been through. I understood why none of those heavy seasons completely destroyed me. They hurt me. They changed me. They damn near buried me. But they never reached the deepest part of me. Pain, heartbreak, and fear are things you are experiencing. They are not who you are. A dark chapter is just a place you’re passing through. I’ve always believed I had angels surrounding me through every part of my life: guiding me, protecting me, and carrying me through things I couldn’t handle on my own. That belief is what inspired the song I’m about to share with you, called “Angelic Attendance.” Life can feel lonely when you’re carrying more than you know what to do with, but you don’t have to walk through it alone. So if all you’ve got left today is that tiny string of faith, hold it tight. Tomorrow is a brand new day! Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Aug 21

    The Joy Audit

    When was the last time I did something purely because it was fun? No agenda attached. Not a single hidden goal, no side hustle humming in the back of my mind, and zero urge to post proof online. Just straight-up, unfiltered enjoyment. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, specifically how easily we drift away from simple pleasure as we age. When I was around ten years old, growing up in Phoenix, I used to walk across the street into the desert near the mountains. Hours would go by while I searched for unusual rocks, strange trees, or different kinds of cactus. In my mind, every discovery was a treasure. When I think about it, what gets me is my complete lack of fear. Scorpions and rattlesnakes never even crossed my mind. Wild animals felt like something that only existed in books. Without timing my walks or trying to achieve a goal, I was just out there having fun. Drawing was another passion of mine. Whenever something beautiful caught my eye, sitting down wanting to draw what I saw was exciting to me. Compare that with how most of us handle beauty today. A gorgeous sunset appears, and the first reaction is reaching for our phone. We take a picture, try another angle, grab twenty more just in case, and then walk away. Drawing forced me to stay in the moment. Capturing a tree required real observation, noticing how branches curved, where sunlight fell, and how everything came together. Spending that time created vivid memories that a quick photo on a screen can never replicate. Then adulthood took over. Life filled up fast with responsibilities. People depended on me, work needed to get done, kids had to be raised, relationships evolved, and loss happened. A constant stack of tasks demanded my attention whether I felt like dealing with them or not. Somewhere along the line, fun dropped to the bottom of the list. It turned into an afterthought reserved for “when a free minute opens up.” Except free minutes rarely just float by. The day usually swallows them whole. That realization made me take a close look at what actually brings joy into my life right now. Near the top of my list? Ping-pong. I love playing ping-pong. My skill level isn’t even part of the equation, and for real though, being terrible at it makes the game so much better. Half the magic is just trying to keep that little plastic ball on the table. Put me with someone who struggles just as much, and we’re gonna have a blast. That ball goes flying across the room, we’re reaching for shots we have zero chance of saving, and a hard hit sends us both searching under furniture. After all that, my stomach hurts from laughing. That’s real joy to me. It’s the same feeling I get sitting near water, watching waves for hours without needing anything else to happen. Or when the right song hits my soul, forcing me to move. I don’t have dance routines out here, but rhythm is in my DNA, and that’s more than enough. Dancing alone in the middle of my living room and enjoying every second of it is top-tier living. Moments like that got me reflecting on what it means to be “childlike.” We often use that word to describe someone who lacks experience, but I see genuine power in it. A child doesn’t demand perfection before deciding to have fun. Kids don’t sit down to play and stress over whether time is being wasted. They simply follow what catches their attention. I watched this with my own kids growing up. When my kids found new hobbies, I leaned into it right alongside them, helping them get materials, exploring it, and just being present with them. Then a week later, their interest would shift to something completely different. And that was fine with me! I never told my kids they had to stick with it just because it was their favorite last week. Exploration is how we discover what brings us alive, and giving them room for that discovery was important. So why do we give children full permission to explore, change their minds, and drop what doesn’t fit, while trapping ourselves as adults into a box? Believing every project must be finished, every hobby mastered, and that actions must be tied to a productive outcome is a trap. Certain experiences are only meant for a season, and that is plenty. I still got value out of it. I can buy a sketchbook without intending to become a professional artist or take a class simply because it looks entertaining. Spending an entire afternoon on something that produces zero tangible results still leaves behind a great memory, and to me, that is a solid return on time. That is the core of a Joy Audit. It’s stopping to analyze our routines and asking: Do the things that bring genuine happiness still have a place here? Making space for responsibility comes naturally to us. Marking the calendar, paying bills, answering calls, and handling business are second nature. But joy rarely sends an invitation with a set time, so space has to be made intentionally. I still recognize that ten-year-old girl walking out into the Phoenix desert. She wasn’t looking for a deep life lesson... she saw something interesting and walked toward it, picked up cool rocks, drew what caught her eye, and went home. Just like that. Her spirit shows up when I sit by the water for hours, get up the second a good beat drops, or laugh uncontrollably over a ping-pong ball ricocheting off the wall. Leaving her behind just because of an age on paper makes no sense to me. So my Joy Audit continues. I’m paying attention to what catches my eye today, choosing what I want to try, and deciding what to pick back up without putting pressure on myself to be great at it. There is truth in play and value in curiosity. We’ve spent decades being responsible. We can trust ourselves to have a little fun now. Here is my challenge for you this weekend: run a personal Joy Audit. Pick one small thing you previously loved... or something new that sparked your curiosity, and do it. Forget about being good at it, strip away any need to make it productive, and don’t take a single picture for social media. Just take fifteen minutes to enjoy being alive. Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 16

    Phones Died. Curtains Fell. We Kept Talking.

    Well… about that LIVE. 😂 First, I owe everyone who showed up expecting to spend the evening with Kenya and me an apology. We tried. Y’all, we TRIED. Kenya couldn’t get connected. We switched devices. Her phone died. Got it back going. It died AGAIN. 😭 So we finally said, forget the live. Let’s just record the conversation. And apparently the universe said, “Oh, you thought that would fix it?” The whole curtain rod fell down during the recording. 😂 Meanwhile, I had cue cards everywhere, lost my place, got completely out of order, and somewhere along the way the beautiful little program I had planned became two women trying to have a meaningful conversation while technology and home décor fought for their lives. It was ROUGH. 😂 But after sitting with it, I realized something. The conversation doesn’t have to be perfect to matter. Kenya is the reason The Soul Behind It has its name. She knew me when I was little. She witnessed pieces of who I was becoming long before either of us understood where life would take us. And she recognized something in my language that I hadn’t even recognized myself. That story still deserves to be told. So I cleaned it up, edited what needed editing, and I’m releasing the recorded conversation. It isn’t the polished first LIVE I imagined. It’s our first one. And somehow, that feels a little more appropriate. Because sometimes the soul behind a thing is found in everything that didn’t go according to plan. 💜 The Soul Behind It Podcastwith my first special guest, Kenya Macon Edited version ✅ Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Aug 14

    MAMA IS COMING BACK

    I have a question. And before anybody gets nervous, reaches for a Bible, or starts typing in all caps, just think about this with me. Who decided God was a man? For real though. Who signed off on that? I’ve been studying nature, history, biology, spirituality, and looking at things I’ve experienced in my own life, and I have questions. Most of us were introduced to God as He. That’s interesting when we’re talking about a Divine Source that doesn’t have a human body. It’s even more interesting when you consider how human life actually enters this world. Through a woman. Every king, president, preacher, pope, and man who ever stood somewhere declaring what women should be had to pass through a woman to get here. That doesn’t mean God is biologically female. I’m asking why humanity became so comfortable imagining ultimate creative power as male in the first place. Historically, that wasn’t always the case. Ancient cultures had powerful representations of the sacred feminine. Goddesses were connected to creation, wisdom, nature, healing, fertility, death, and renewal. Feminine divinity wasn’t a strange idea hiding in the corner. It was woven into how people understood existence. So what happened? Over time, societies changed. Religious institutions gained authority, laws favored men, property moved largely through male lines, and women were denied access to education and positions of influence. Rules governed what women could own, where they could go, what they could say, and what they could do with their own bodies. Women with knowledge became threatening simply because their wisdom existed outside the structures controlling society. And when women couldn’t be easily directed, we found plenty of words for them. Difficult. Wild. Hysterical. Witch. Labels like that get thrown around when someone encounters a presence they lack the capacity to stand beside. I know that from my own life. I remember a man trying hit me and to talk down to me once. I didn’t yell or threaten him. Something inside me simply locked into place. I stood straight, looked him dead in the eye, and became completely calm. The whole interaction changed. He backed down. I remember thinking afterward, what in the world was that? Anger doesn’t mean losing control. At times anger shows up when you realize you’ve been tolerating something that should have ended a long time ago. That day, mine didn’t make me destructive. It made me clear. There is something powerful about a woman becoming absolutely certain about where she stands. Women carry an energy that is way more powerful than most of us realize. Once you step into it, you can move mountains. You speak, and things happen. I’ve felt that power in myself. Psychology, adrenaline, spiritual authority, there may be truth in all three. But I know what happened in that room: I changed, and the energy coming toward me changed with me. That’s why I’ve become interested in what women experience later in life too. Spiritual teacher Dr. Christiane Northrup talks about this exact thing when she looks at women’s anger during perimenopause and midlife. She explains that the rage women feel during this time isn’t crazy, it is a biological and spiritual wake-up call as women reevaluate relationships and circumstances they’ve tolerated for years. That fascinates me. What we call rage is clarity arriving without its manners on. You reach a certain point and start asking questions you should’ve asked years ago: Why am I still doing this? And that one question rearranges your entire life. Then there’s the rib. Oh, we’re going there. I grew up hearing that woman came from man because Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I’m not here to tell anybody what they have to believe about Genesis. I’m simply saying I was taught that woman came from man, yet every man I’ve ever met came through a woman. A woman was never created to sit under a man or be silenced. We were made to stand right beside them, work together as equals, and build side by side. Once I noticed that reversal, I couldn’t unnotice it. Then I started looking at nature. Let’s talk about lions. The male lion gets the mane, the photographs, the statues, the whole MGM situation. Meanwhile, lionesses do much of the cooperative hunting and raising the cubs within the pride. Sir, congratulations on the hair. The ladies have a meeting. And yes, male lions have important roles. That’s actually my point. Acknowledging female power doesn’t require making males useless. Nature doesn’t seem nearly as obsessed with that competition as humans are. And nature gets even more strange. Some animals can reproduce through parthenogenesis, where development begins from an unfertilized egg. It’s been documented in certain sharks, snakes, lizards, fish, and birds. Before anybody gets excited, human women cannot go home, light a candle, put on some Sade, and make a baby by themselves. But I find the biology fascinating because it challenges the assumption that reproduction throughout nature always operates exactly the way we were taught in basic biology class. Genetics gives us another beautiful piece of this story. A son receives his X chromosome from his mother. We also carry mitochondrial DNA that is inherited overwhelmingly through the maternal line. Your mother received hers through the same maternal line, stretching backward generation after generation until eventually you’re staring into ancient human history. There’s something almost poetic about that. Part of the biological story inside every one of us carries a maternal trail. Then I learned about the Grandmother Hypothesis, and this might be one of my favorite parts. Granny made it into evolutionary theory. Researchers have studied whether grandmothers helped shape human survival because older women could contribute knowledge, food, and care long after their own childbearing years ended. Think about what that says about the value of an older woman. She wasn’t finished because she could no longer reproduce. She knew things. Having already survived seasons the younger generation hadn’t seen yet, her experience helped keep another generation alive. Traditional cultures understood the importance of elders long before anybody gave it an academic name: Keep Granny close. She remembers. And that brings me right back to where I started. Women aren’t discovering some brand-new power. We’re remembering something. I want to be clear about what I mean because this isn’t an argument against men. I respect men. I don’t want women standing on men’s necks any more than I want men standing on women’s. Domination has had a very long trial run. The reviews are terrible. Power doesn’t require somebody underneath it. That’s what we’ve gotten wrong. We turned leadership into hierarchy and somehow convinced ourselves that somebody had to be lesser for somebody else to matter. I don’t believe that. What I am questioning is why femininity became so closely associated with obedience. How did confidence become unattractive when a woman possessed it, female anger become instability even when she had a damn good reason to be angry, and instincts that protected women for generations become something we were taught to distrust? And why would a woman need anyone standing between herself and the Divine? That last question is the huge one here. My relationship with Source is direct. It doesn’t require an okay or an interpretation from another person, and nobody gets to tell me that God can speak through a man more clearly than God can speak through me. That’s part of the veil I think women are removing now. And I’m not talking about a literal veil or anybody’s religious clothing. What I’m speaking of is inherited beliefs. Some women before us survived by being agreeable, keeping family matters inside the family, and knowing when speaking could cost them dearly. I don’t judge those women. They survived their time. But I don’t live in their time, and I don’t have to inherit every rule they needed to survive it. That’s where I believe the sacred feminine is showing herself again. This isn’t about women trying to become men, seeking revenge, or establishing superiority. This is about becoming less willing to abandon ourselves. That’s the awakening. I don’t need God to be a woman to question why God was presented to me almost entirely as male. Source is beyond sex altogether. What we call masculine and feminine are both expressions of something far greater than either one. I can leave room for that mystery. What I can no longer do is automatically associate authority with masculinity. History raised the question. Nature added another layer. My own life made it personal. And I suspect women everywhere are beginning to ask their own versions of the same question: Who would I be if I stopped believing I needed somebody else’s validation to fully become myself? That’s where this gets powerful. Somewhere a woman is realizing that what she spent years trying to tone down is actually one of her greatest strengths. And once she knows that, convincing her to go back becomes impossible. Divine energy is rising whether anyone likes it or not. She is coming back with a fierce hand and an authority that is going to shake the whole world. So get ready. Mama is coming back. And honey, that is exactly why I created the album, Sermons I Never Heard in Church. Because this right here….is definitely a sermon I ain’t heard on Sunday morning. sn: don’t say nothin bout my makeup 💄 I ain’t no makeup artist 😂 but I so could’ve done better here 🤨 Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Jul 24

    Reality Doesn’t Decide. It Reflects.

    You know, I was thinking… have you ever noticed how certain patterns in life have a way of tracking you down? Different people, jobs, cities, sometimes even different decades, but somehow the exact same lesson shows up wearing a new outfit. For a long time, the assumption was that life was just happening to me, that if I could fix the right circumstance, make the right move, meet the right person, or catch a dang break, everything would finally click into place. But after life’s repeated lessons, I pondered an idea that completely flipped the script: What if the screen was never the problem? Let’s go to the movie theater for a moment. The lights go down, you have your popcorn, and suddenly a scary, stressful movie starts playing. Something you did not expect. Your heart starts racing and you just want it to end. So what do you do? Of course nobody is going to jump out of their seat, run to the front, and start splashing paint over the screen. That would be hilarious to watch because everyone knows the screen is not where the movie comes from. It creates nothing on its own; it just holds whatever light gets thrown onto it. If you want a different movie, you leave the screen alone, walk upstairs to the booth, and swap out the film. This image is vital to me because I caught myself arguing with my own movie screen. I changed jobs, shifted my environment, reworked my plans, and even tried becoming different versions of myself just to make life cooperate. Still, the same script kept playing. Life wasn’t creating the movie; it was only displaying it. Look at your social media feed for a second. Have you ever wondered why it seems to know you so well? The algorithm doesn’t care what you claim you want. It just pays attention to where you leave your eyes. Pause on a post, and it takes notes. Feel a surge of emotion, and it takes notes. Scroll through the same kind of content every day, and it serves up more of what you pay attention to. Our subconscious mind operates in that exact same receptive way. It is not sitting around trying to make things hard; it is just responding to whatever gets fed into it every single day. Your mind gets crazy good at finding proof to back up whatever you dwell on, simply following the exact input it receives. At one point, fear, scarcity, and self-doubt became the default setting. Not out of choice, but because those ideas felt familiar, and familiar can trick you into thinking it is the truth. The beautiful part is that the same mind that absorbed those old patterns can take in new ones. That is where so many people get tripped up. They start leaning into a fresh mindset, telling themselves they are safe, worthy, or free, but two days later nothing looks different, so they’re done and throw their hands up. Reality doesn’t move instantly just because a new thought popped up. It acts way more like an echo. Imagine standing at the edge of a massive canyon, taking a deep breath, and shouting that you are free. At first, total silence. Then a moment later, your own words come bouncing back across the rocks. The canyon is not playing games; it is just reflecting your voice. What shows up today is rarely a sign of where you are going, but rather the lingering echo of old assumptions. Having a clear understanding of this changes everything. Old circumstances lose their power to make you panic when you recognize them as yesterday’s echo finally reaching your ears. Real internal shifts show up in a very specific way. It is not about money suddenly dropping in, or someone coming around to apologize, or every circumstance lining up perfectly. True change is when an old trigger pops back up and it simply cannot touch your peace anymore. That is how you know the projector changed. Think about a computer. You can wipe down the monitor all day, buy a bigger display, or upgrade to something fancy, but if the hard drive inside is running an outdated operating system full of corrupted files, the screen can only display what is stored inside. To get a fresh output, you have to swap out what is running underneath. So much energy gets wasted polishing the screen while ignoring the internal hard drive an operating system inherited along the way without realizing it could be upgraded. I said all that to say this: What is actually running inside the machine? The movie screen is not fighting you, the algorithm is not out to ruin your day, and the canyon is not holding back. Everything is honoring its design, reflecting the input it receives. Walk into the projection room, pay attention to the data being fed into the system, and clear out the old operating system. When yesterday’s echoes drift back, just let them pass. They do not get to call the shots, because reality does not dictate who you are; it just catches up to who you are becoming inside. Whether you are just waking up to this today or you’ve been doing the inner work for months, give yourself some grace. That old programming didn’t get loaded into your system in twenty-four hours, so it’s not wise to expect the feed to refresh by tomorrow morning. Real realignment takes patience. It takes showing up for yourself every single day, even when the old echo is still bouncing off the walls. Don’t give up. Be consistent, hold your ground, and trust the process. You are actively rewriting the script, and reality has no choice but to catch up. May you be surrounded by love, anchored in truth, and gently reminded today that you are far more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. Much Love, Renee Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 15

    0 Hz

    Our attention has become one of the most valuable things we own, and everyone wants a piece of it. We pick up our phones or turn on the TV, and we’re handed another reason to worry, whether it’s the ongoing presidential drama or the news constantly spreading stories about sickness going around. It’s just so much fear being pushed at us, and it’s easy to forget that none of those things have the authority to decide what’s happening inside of us. We are in charge of what we feel. Fear is a choice we can either feed or refuse. That’s where this message is coming from. It is coming from a place called 0 Hz. Scientifically, 0 Hz represents zero cycles per second. I respect the science, but I’m more interested in what that idea represents in our everyday lives. To me, 0 Hz is the place underneath everything else. It’s the part of us that existed before fear or expectations had anything to say, long before we spent years trying to understand who we were through everyone else’s eyes. There has always been something within us that life could never erase. The world can influence, challenge, and shape our experiences, but it cannot touch the deepest part of who we are unless we allow it. That should change the way we look at everything. To understand why I see the world this way, you have to go back to my childhood. Growing up, my mom had an old-school record player, and every Saturday morning she would put on a record by the Clark Sisters. My sister and I weren’t allowed to listen to what they call “secular music,” so gospel was the music I grew up on. If you know the Clark Sisters, you know they are a gospel group who can harmonize like no other. Their voices alone make you feel absolutely everything when they sing. There is one song, my favorite, called “I’ve Got an Angel.” One line from that song has stayed with me all my life: “I’ve got an angel watching over me, keeping me from all hurt, harm, and danger.” That lyric was something I chose to live by, even when I was little. I’ve always had a vivid imagination. Back then, I would picture actual angels standing around me, protecting me. Now I realize that even though my wording has changed, I still feel exactly the same way. One day I found myself thinking about an invisible field surrounding me, a space where any harm, ill will, or negativity trying to come against me simply bounces right off. I live by this every single day. Whether I’m driving or walking into a crowded room where I feel nervous, I count on that field being there to protect me. That invisible field is exactly what inspired this song, 0 Hz. The origin of frequency. Before birth. Before our soul entered this world. We were already whole. Whenever I receive a message this important, I always think, Man… I need to embody this for real. So I turn it into a song. Music is the art of sound, and when a message is wrapped inside a song that sounds good, you want to put it on repeat. Every time you press play, that message sinks a little deeper into your mind. Without even realizing it, your mind and your soul begin to accept it. You start embodying the message naturally, just by letting it play. So always be mindful of the lyrics of the songs you’re vibing to. I really feel like this message and this song were given to me to hand to the world right now, to remind us that peace is still available. That is what happened with the lyrics to this track. One of my favorite lines says, “Before my first breath, You knew me.” Another says, “Nothing enters that was never mine. Nothing leaves that love has claimed.” I love that because it shifts the conversation completely. We spend so much of our lives trying to hold on to people, outcomes, opportunities, identities, and even worries that aren’t our responsibility. There’s a profound freedom that comes from realizing not everything deserves access to your heart. Some things simply pass through, while others remain because they were always meant to. Creating 0 Hz mirrored that lesson. I didn’t build this song inside an elaborate studio with endless equipment. I created it with simple tools, a lot of intuition, and a willingness to trust what kept showing up inside me. That experience reminded me that creativity has very little to do with having everything. It has everything to do with using what’s already in your hands. The same is true for peace. It’s not waiting somewhere else, and it’s not attached to a destination, a relationship, a paycheck, or a future version of yourself. It’s available the moment you remember where home is. For me, home is a state of being. The lyric that probably says this best is, “I no longer ask to be surrounded. I am the surround.” When I wrote those words, I realized that for years I believed peace had to come from the right environment or the right circumstances. Then one day, after going through the fire, I understood that peace isn’t something I receive. It’s something I become. As the world continues changing, things may get even messier. That’s why it’s so important for us right now to learn how to embody peace no matter what’s going on around us. When you become that peace, the world can keep spinning and life can continue doing what it does, but there’s a place within you that remains untouched. And it’s in your control. That’s what 0 Hz means to me. It’s not about escaping life. It’s about remembering myself. Today, give yourself a few quiet moments. Turn your attention inward. Notice what’s truly yours, release what’s not, and return to the place that’s been there from the very beginning. When you’re scared or lonely, imagine that invisible force field surrounding you, protecting you. Return to the knowing that you are everything. Return to the place beneath the chaos. Return to the place where you have always been. Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 10

    I Never Heard This Word Before

    Have you seen the movie Disclosure Day? I watched it a few weeks ago, and I’m still talking about the ending. Now don’t worry. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m going to try not to spoil it for you. But I do have to talk about how it made me feel. For almost the entire film, you’re waiting for answers. Every single scene pulls you in a little deeper, and the suspense builds so much that you’re convinced everything is finally about to make sense. You keep expecting someone to step forward and explain the whole mystery. Instead, the final message is delivered in just one word: “Listen.” Right after that, the screen goes black, and we’re all just sitting there like… okay. There was no explanation, no happy ending, and nobody telling us exactly what it all meant. What stayed with me wasn’t just the word itself. It was the feeling that the movie had quietly handed all the responsibility right back to us. It was almost as if it was saying, “You’ve spent all this time looking out here. Now stop. Listen.” Not to another opinion. Not to another expert. Just… listen. I immediately felt the ending was pointing us inward. That’s what I gathered from it. The timing couldn’t have been better. I’d already been focusing on this learning how to be at peace, be quiet, and tune in to myself. I was already paying attention. A few days later, I heard someone mention a word I’d never heard before in my life. Of course I was curious. They said it was powerful enough to heal. I grabbed my phone and looked it up, and the word was Ephphatha(ef-FAH-thuh). I had no idea where it came from or what it even meant. As I started reading, I found myself in the Gospel of Mark, where people brought a man to Jesus who was deaf and had a severe speech impediment. One detail caught my attention immediately: Jesus didn’t heal him in front of the crowd. He took the man away from the crowd. That part seemed important to me. Then the account says Jesus looked toward heaven, sighed deeply, and spoke one single Aramaic (air-uh-MAY-ik) word: “Ephphatha.” Which means… “Be opened.” Instantly, the man’s hearing was restored, and his speech was set free. I can’t explain it any better than this I felt something in my soul when I read that story. It didn’t feel like I was just reading words on a page. It felt alive. It felt true. And I couldn’t walk away from it. Of course the miracle is incredible, but the part I kept thinking about was the word itself. The Gospel writers preserved the original Aramaic word. They easily could have translated it. Instead, they left it exactly as Jesus spoke it. More than two thousand years later, we’re still reading and saying that exact same word. I couldn’t get that out of my mind. Then the ending of Disclosure Day came right back to me. Listen. Then this ancient word: Be opened. I never sat down trying to force a connection between the two. One invites us into stillness. The other invites us into openness. Those two words just felt like they belonged together. I went through a heavy season where everything became unbelievably quiet. It wasn’t the peaceful kind of quiet. It was the uncomfortable kind, where life felt like it had stopped moving. I couldn’t distract myself anymore. I couldn’t outrun my thoughts. It was just me. At first, I wanted that season to end as quickly as possible. Then something unexpected happened. The quiet became one of the greatest gifts I’d ever been given. It slowed me down enough to notice things I’d been missing. It introduced me to parts of myself I’d forgotten. It reminded me that clarity doesn’t shout. Most of the time… it whispers. That season didn’t give me a new identity. It simply helped me remember the one I’d been neglecting. By the time I finished reading about Ephphatha, I knew this couldn’t stay as something I’d simply learned. It had to become music. I didn’t want to retell a Bible story. I didn’t want to explain theology. I wanted to take an ancient word and place it right into a modern conversation. We live in a world that never stops talking notifications, opinions, headlines, algorithms everyone competing for our attention. Somewhere underneath all of that, our own inner voice gets harder to hear. It made me wonder how much of life I’d been overlooking simply because I was moving too fast to notice it. The relationships we’d overlooked. The creativity we’d ignored. The peace we’d postponed. The prosperity that had been quietly waiting while our attention was somewhere else. As I worked on this song, I intentionally placed bells throughout the track. They’re subtle. They’re not screaming for your attention. They simply became part of the experience. This song isn’t asking anyone to think exactly the way I think. It’s simply an invitation. An invitation to slow down long enough to hear yourself again. An invitation to become open. Open to whatever life has been trying to place in front of you. The older I get, the more I’m convinced that some of the biggest moments in our lives don’t arrive with fireworks. They arrive quietly. A conversation. A sentence. A word you’ve never heard before. Something catches your attention. You follow it. Then, before you know it… your life has changed. That’s my story. One movie. One ancient word. One song. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I believe life has a beautiful way of placing exactly what we need right in front of us when we’re finally open enough to notice it. So before you move on with your day, I’d like to leave you with the same word that found me. Not as a formula. Not as a guarantee. Simply as an invitation. Ephphatha. Be opened. Be opened to what you’ve been unable to see. Be opened to the courage you’ve forgotten you have. Receive the peace that’s been waiting for you to slow down. Wake up to the opportunities already finding their way toward you. Step into an abundance that’s so much bigger than money. Open yourself up to your own life. If this ancient word found you today the way it found me, I hope it brings you the same peace, hope, and sense of wonder it brought me. Until next time… Ephphatha. Be opened…🙌🏽 Listen to EPHPHATHA here 🎵 Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jun 17

    The Future Belongs to the Discerners

    Today I want to talk about how things are getting a little odd out there right now. Every single time I pull up my phone and start scrolling, I look at stuff and wonder, Wait, am I being played here? For real though, we’re living in a time where we just can’t fully trust our own eyes and ears anymore. We’ve got AI-generated images that look completely real. Cloned voices that sound exactly like our friends or family. Entire personalities built strictly from code and pixels. And if that whole situation feels completely overwhelming, I get it. I’m definitely not the only one feeling that way. But I want to find some peace of mind today. I don’t need to become paranoid about everything. And I don’t need to waste my life verifying every single post or turning into a digital detective. We already have something way more powerful than that. We have intuition. That gut feeling. See, there’s a massive difference between basic perception and actual recognition. Perception is just what our physical senses pick up on the surface. Recognition? That’s what our deeper, inner knowing connects with. Technology can easily fool our perception. It can imitate looks, recreate voices, and mimic expressions perfectly. But recognition operates on a much deeper level. That’s why I’ve had those moments where everything looked perfect on paper, but something deep down just felt seriously off. Think about it, we’ve definitely experienced this before where we’ve walked into a room and instantly sensed a heavy tension before anyone even opened their mouth. Or we met someone who seemed great, but that inner voice went, No, something aint right here. Most of us have ignored that vibe before, only to regret it later. We’ve all been there right? That right there is intuition. It isn’t some brand-new skill we have to learn just because AI is taking over. It’s an ancient, built-in system we simply forgot how to tune into and trust. Now here’s the important part: intuition is not a lie detector. It’s a guidance system. It won’t always pinpoint exactly what’s fake, but it will absolutely signal when something deserves a second look. It creates this crucial buffer zone between what we’re seeing and what we automatically accept as truth. That pause where we question things? That’s where the magic happens. Most major mistakes occur when we react on impulse instead of investigating. The tricky part is that intuition dont scream at you. It whispers. Meanwhile, we are living in a society that never shuts up. Notifications, headlines, algorithms, endless opinions, and constant alerts. Everyone is aggressively battling for our attention 24/7. We’ve allowed so much clutter into our lives that we’ve completely forgotten what pure stillness feels like. It’s like trying to listen to an acoustic guitar while standing right next to a jet engine. The music is playing, but the racket completely drapes over it. That’s why strengthening this internal muscle isn’t about exploring new information. It’s strictly about creating space. That means giving myself five minutes of stillness before touching the phone in the morning, or taking a walk outside without putting in earphones. It looks like driving down the highway with the radio off, or just sitting with a challenging question instead of immediately searching for the answer online. Those are small, simple habits, but they completely clear the inner static. Personally, I believe the absolute greatest risk of AI is not that it becomes way smarter than humans. I feel it’s when we stop listening to ourselves. If every single answer we need comes from a screen, eventually we’ll forget how to find the answers that arise from within our own minds. Maybe the future isn’t asking us to become tech geniuses. Perhaps it’s a wake-up call to become more human. More present, aware, and more connected. The more cluttered the world gets, the more valuable stillness becomes. And oh boy that word stillness, that’s a whole nother conversation! The people who are gonna truly thrive in the years ahead won’t necessarily be the ones with the fastest gadgets or the latest software. It’s going to be the ones who know how to stay grounded while everything around us is rushing by in a blur. The ones who know how to hit pause, listen closely, remember that true wisdom doesn’t always stem from downloaded facts. Most times it appears through total quiet. So my goal is to not to stress about what’s coming next. Technology is gonna to keep evolving, because that’s just what it does. But our deepest inner knowing is always available to us, and it always has been. Let’s get outside today. Put our feet on the earth, take a walk, and just watch the sky for a minute. Putting the phone down and breathing is so vital. No matter how advanced this world gets, there is a piece of us that remains completely untouched by the racket. And that might just be the most valuable thing we own and don’t even realize. Song Attached: Inner Radar (Instrumental) not published! Image attached: Texas Skies Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe

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“The Soul Behind It with Renee Mims” is where music, stories, and spirit meet. Join author and lyricist Renee Mims for conversations on spiritual awakening, manifestation, self-healing, and living your divine truth. imaginemeinnovation.substack.com

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