Awestruck Brian Shipman

Awestruck Podcast is a hero’s journey to the center of you.
Have you ever been awestruck? We were meant to live in this transformed state of attention, not just long for it or experience it rarely. It is the real. It is what makes you real. To be spellbound, captivated, filled with wonder, held in aesthetic arrest, awestruck. 
It is in this state of wonder that we find our ability to find ourselves. To be real. And to accept real truth that transforms us into everything we long to be.
Sources
Saint Luke's Prologue: Luke 1:1-4
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)
Read the fascinating story of the scientific examination of Saint Luke's bones in Padua.
In the book of Acts, Luke mentions 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 Mediterranean islands. He also lists 95 people by name, 62 of which are not named elsewhere in the New Testament (Metzger, 171).
In addition, Luke is intimately familiar with the constantly-changing political conditions of the Roman world. References to Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Quirinius, the Herods, Felix, and Festus are recorded. In not one of these citations is there a mistake. (Source)

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.  - Author Unknown
Grasping this - and learning to live by its truth - is what we'll call soul-centering.
An ego-centered life is like a black hole - everything is pulled towards itself. Nothing escapes. Not even light. It's pure darkness.
A soul-centered life is more like a star - everything is radiating outward. There is only warmth. And light. This is how we're meant to live.
Source Scripture An Angelic Encounter: Luke 1:5-25
For Further Study
Living from the Center: Galatians 5:16-18
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)
 

Attachment is conflating a true, soul-centered longing with an ego-driven desire for gain.
We conflate joy with pleasure and become addicts to people, places, or things.
We confuse peace and contentment with a state of mind and emotion and spend the day discontentedly manipulating the outward circumstances trying to arrive there.
Before we realize it, we are living our lives attached, or let's just call it what it really is, shackled to these conflations that we are miserable.
And the only solution is letting go.
Source Scripture A Young Woman's Beautiful Example of Non-Attachment: Luke 1:26-38
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)
 

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. - Joseph Campbell Joy. We all want it. We chase it. We devise formulas to reproduce it. We do our best to seize hold of it.
But where is it?
Ask the wrong question and you will never find the right answer. 
Joy is not something we chase, or concoct, or grasp. It is something to which we yield. In order to experience it, we must let go of what thwarts it. You don't find joy. You yield to it and it flows through you. 
Source Scripture
Joy Flows When Souls Connect: Luke 1:39-56
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify) 
Brené Brown on Joy as Vulnerability

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. - Albert Einstein
Wonder is a quality of attention that rises above and outside normal rational thought. And once we have wonder flowing through us, we find ourselves with access to its tributaries: love, joy, peace, gratitude, and many others.
Today, in Wide-Eyed Wonder, the goal is to get us through the wilderness of ego-driven attachments to that river. There, we can not only experience wonder in the present and future, but we can also reframe our past in a way that lets us reinterpret even the most painful moments through new lenses.
Source Scripture Newborn Wonder: Luke 1:57-79 Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)
JJ. Abrams Mystery Box (Ted Talk)

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. —Albert Einstein  Presence is what happens when we choose to bring the full attention of our soul to the soul of another - and the other does the same. In that moment, the two souls come together, creating presence: a tangible flow of spiritual intimacy.  Creating and maintaining presence is not easy. It requires the full attention of our soul, - not our ego or any of its attachments.
The ego is full of self-promotion, self-defense, hidden agendas, hideous masks - and a host of other things only break presence. But the soul is raw, authentic, vulnerable, full of love and acceptance. You might say presence is what is birthed when two or more souls come before each other in only naked truth in the naked now.
The goal of today's podcast is to help us open our presence to others, and, taking it a step further, to assist others in unfolding their own potential to open their presence as well.
Source Scripture
Preserving Presence: Matthew 1:18-25
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist 
(Apple I Spotify)