The Root System, Part 2

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sage Hill is a social impact organization that helps people see who they are made to be so they can do what they're made to do. The following podcast was recorded at this year's Sage Hill training, an in-depth experiential training that helps people bring their heart to what they are called to do. To learn more, you can visit sagehilltraining.com. What the spiritual root system does, it turns a person's world upside right. Did I say that correctly? I know your way you hear upside down. But see, this is turning the world upside right because people who aren't awakened to how they're made 18 inches below their foreheads and able to live out of that are upside down. And they're calling it normal when actually it's just common. We literally are living backwards and calling it normal when it's just common because everybody else is doing it instead of becoming normal, which makes us unique, which will make us misfits because you're no longer in a crowd, you're in a minority. So are you willing to become yourself, which was gonna put you in a minority? And I say that because at least in America America, we live a a nation as an addict. Fix it. Make the pain stop. Mood alteration. Do something to make this go away. And that thing that the people are trying to make go away is the heart. So we become a culture that is directed charge of our society in many cases, whether it's stamina, self demand, mood alteration, whatever. So and the body actually can only, if it's in charge, can only lust. The body is a biological seeking machine. The body is is basically a great white shark. It just swims and eats. It's there to simply and very appropriately serve itself, keep itself alive. Okay? Detached from a leader, all it can do is lust. What's the nest next thing that can create a homeostatic condition for me? What's the next thing that can reduce my anxiety, alleviate my depression, and make me feel comfort, make me feel not threatened? See, because the body basically is driven by fight, flight, or freeze. It's about a reduction of anxiety or threat or trauma or, you know, creation of what it calls safety. Do you know? Nothing's wrong with that. That's not a bad thing. It's just that it's not a good thing when the body's in charge of your life. K? So if the body's in charge, that means that the brain becomes a hunter. If the body's in charge, it lusts and then the brain has to hunt for food. And the brain is saying, what do I gotta do to get the food to make this sense of fight, flight, or freeze go away to reduce adrenaline or to heighten adrenaline or to do something to make where I am different. Because if you sit with yourself long enough, do you know what you're gonna find? Discomfort or you or both? If you sit with yourself, you're gonna begin to experience discomfort, irritability possibly, helplessness, powerlessness, thoughts, memories, regrets, wishing, the the thought of you're not doing what you need to be doing right now, and if you don't get up and start doing something, something's gonna get you. The need to move is lust. To get away from where I am to fix the loneliness, I don't know what to do with. To get away from where I am to fix the sadness, I don't know what to do with. To get away from where I am to stop myself from discovering what's happening within me, I gotta move. Just out of touch. So the brain becomes the hunter. The soul wanders. Okay? It's just wandering, just out there in a dry and empty land. And the heart, it, at best, becomes satiated with junk. But it's like eating cardboard. Like, do we have a processed food addiction in this country that's amazing. And it works beautifully because we produce in abundance and people get fed. And it's wonderful. And the more we have, the less we'll need. And scarcity is terrible because it does put us in a condition of needing to kill each other. Happens in marriages all the time. Destroying each other in marriages because of, what we see we don't have and they're not giving. Scarcity. You see, when we can't take ownership of ourselves, we're demanding that somebody else do it for me. I can still remember I remember saying to Sonia, you, you, you, you. And she says, look, Whatever you're looking for, I don't have. So you gotta go to God. You gotta you gotta go somewhere. And I'm like, yes, you do. You just start trying. She said, you gotta go to God. I said, God didn't have any arms. God didn't have a voice. I remember it's literally I remember it's literally going into the bathroom and just with a legal pad, just sitting on a commode. You know, I mean, I was just sitting on the top of the commode. She's just like, you don't have any arms. You don't have any you don't do anything, god. You don't do anything. How would I need you know, but just you know, I was in my discomfort because I had been released by the person who was gonna try to fix me. She said, don't destroy me anymore. I'm not going to be destroyed. And I'm not going to buy into you, an illusion that I can do something for you I can't do. I'm willing to fail. So she was admitting failure in the world of grandiosity that says your job cure through caring. It's called parenting. It's called marriage. It's called a whole lot of things that we get mistaught about love. See, because once once you get your heart back, you awaken to the cult you've been living in and all the shoulds that go with it. And what happens is if you wind up having yourself, then you've let go of control, which means you've also let go of of whether or not somebody's gonna choose to love you. See, because in the culture of control, love is something you control too. You make people love you. And therefore, love is not really a gift. It's just something you've gotten through your performance. So love isn't actually love anyway because there's no grace and mercy in it because you earned every bit of it. So this is what almost all of us who don't know the heart and don't know our neediness have done. But how we're really made, when this is what the spiritual root system does, it returns us to how we're made so we can become who we're made to be, do what we're made to do, and have what we're made to have. In other words, you're gonna put your lap on the table. You're gonna say, this is what I this is what I know to be so. This is what I witnessed. This is what this is what I'm after. This is what I'm living like. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is all I got, but I'll give you what I have kind of things like I'm in. Okay. So here's how we're made to live. The heart is alive, awake. And I say fulfilled, I'll put that word there. I'm a put quotes around it, quotation marks around it, because fulfilled is actually a strange experience to the heart. Because if you've got something worth willing if you're after something worth willing to be in pain for, you're fulfilled on this earth. See, passion is a willingness to be in pain for something that matters more than pain. It becomes the thing you can't really stop thinking about. You're compelled to be in it. Even when it's hard, you find yourself not leaving it. Very important to have in a relationship with children, in a relationship in a marriage, in a relationship with vocation. And, you know, the word vocation comes from the word call. To call, to be called. Your vocation, you've been called. And that's Then that phrase you've heard, to be called, is is what we normally associate with people who go into the pastorate. Right? But everyone's called. You're called. So I want you to know that the heart's fulfillment is actually having passion. Passion is not something you discover, it's something you surrender to. Now, lust is nothing but an impaired expression of how you're made to crave. Lust is an impaired expression of your neediness. You need to belong and matter. You're not made to not wanna matter. You're made to wanna matter. So this isn't like, well, I gotta get rid of self. I gotta get rid of me so I can be everything I'm made to be. What? No. No. No. No. No. No. That's back to Buddhism and stoicism. That's between five and five again. No. You gotta be willing to live all of you, your whole self, and bring it all and then give it away. Bring it all. Because once you get a big fat self, you can't help but want to spill up on people. I mean, you're the guy on the airplane that's really big and it's like, excuse me excuse me excuse me. Do you mind if I have the middle seat? K. You know, you're right. Do you wanna sit by me? I may be taking a nap. Y'all don't mind me. See, when you get a big fat self, you can't help but sorta spill over onto other people. You can't help but share yourself, even unintentionally. Because wherever you are, there you are. Wherever you go, there you are. You take you with you wherever you are. And you're not the teacher, You just know it takes a lifetime to live, so you're living. And then, well, as you're living, you can't help but talk about where you've been, what you've done, where you got, where you got there, and what, you know, what happened. And then once you learn boundaries, you learn the wisdom of, like, the thing called knowing when. So the heart is alive, fulfilled, then the mind is engaged. The mind wakes up every day saying, hey, hey, hey, hey. What do you wanna do? What do you wanna do? Hey, hey. What are we doing today? What are we doing today? And the heart says, we're going after the dream. We're gonna have to dream today. First, we're gonna pick up the milk, then we'll go get cereal, and I gotta get the dog food. And then I'm gonna clean up the garage, and after that, I'm gonna go on a date. And after the date, I think I might get some ice cream. And wait a minute, that's that doesn't sound like very grand. No. Mind is engaged in living, and the heart is engaged in being fully alive. Not as the next experience of entertainment, but whatever it's after. If you're gonna have passion, you better know well how to rest. If you're gonna have passion, you better have an RE life, which means you know how to regenerate, replenish, find redemption. The word restaurant comes from the word restoration. You go to the restaurant to be restored. Oh, rest you see? To be refilled, all those kinds of things. So your mind is engaged on the dreams of the heart. Your mind is actually being used to articulate the stutterings and stammerings of the dark region. The stutterings and stammerings of that which you've been trained to not talk about. And no matter how much you talk about it, you're never gonna find the full definition of it anyway. If you get into your heart, you're gonna wind up in the ineffable. You know what ineffable means? I think it means I ran out of words. I don't know anymore. Spoken. And I just wonder if, for Christians especially, it becomes the utterances and the groans, life seeking itself within us on an emotional spiritual level. So anyway, the mind is engaged. Okay. Engaged in whatever the heart is doing. The soul is contented. Now, it doesn't mean the soul is finished and content. It's the soul is contented. We're going where we need to go. We're going where we need to go. And then what happens is the body is directed. The body is the tool and the organism that carries all that other stuff around until it's done. It really does take a lifetime to learn how to live. How many of you like that? Uh-uh. No. It's like, she but it's a great permission if you become a person who's a work in progress from now till you're done. Once you've given up perfection and happiness, and you see something beautiful that's almost like it's made to be completely, you can glory in it like a maze because it's, like, almost there. It's not perfect, but it's it's just sweet to get to see it, to get to touch it, to get to be a part of it, to get to participate in it. You can have a thing called joy. Alright? And then happiness becomes gratitude, which is like when the serendipities of our worlds occur, we go, oh, I'm so thankful for that. It's like it's something that came to you instead of something you produced. So once you're a work work in progress, then all of a sudden, it turns out that takes a lifetime to learn how to live. It's like, good. Good. I mean, I don't like how long it is, and having to be so failed, but I sure like creating amidst this mess.

This is Stephen James, the executive director of Sage Hill Counseling. Thanks for listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. If you're interested in learning more about the power of our core eight emotions, I encourage you to check out Chip's book, The Voice of the Heart of Paul the Full Women.