TRANSCRIPT
(00:02):
Hi, it’s Michele. Thank you for joining me for this segment of chaplain. Michele. Let’s talk about today. Um, the currency of appreciation, the currency of appreciation. One of the things that is severely lacking in our society, in us as human beings. When I talk about society, the world, um, if it’s, if I’m speaking, it may sound as if I’m speaking to an object when I’m really speaking to us as individuals, uh, the, our, our individuality as well as our collective existence. Um, when we talk about things that are lacking. And so I talk about a lot, uh, a lot of, uh, unconditional love a lot. Why? Because it is the only thing that gets us as humans into our destiny. It’s not what we do, although our activity has a lot to do with it, but not to the extent that we think. So when I talk about the currency of appreciation, I’m talking about an aspect of unconditional love because we don’t fully understand love or because we classify love inappropriately, you know, so there is, there are different classifications of love.
(01:16):
We know that. But the highest form of love is unconditional. It’s the love that is not based on sex. It’s based on valuing a person’s individuality and their humanness, their very existence. So when I talk about the currency of appreciation, what I’m talking about is an element of unconditional love that is in that in fact, fuels or it undergirds the process of learning to love unconditionally. One of the most important things we can do, you know, we talk about debt, um, financially, because we’re very focused on money. We’re very focused, small mindedly focused on money and resources. Do not get me wrong. I wanna be able to pay my bills as much as you do. I believe in, uh, making sure that we have certain needs, desires fulfilled as you do. So that has nothing to do with what I’m saying. I’m trying to challenge us individually and collectively to think at a higher level about our existence. So please do not take anything that I’m saying as demeaning or diminishing something other than that which does not contribute to our transformed transcended existence. We are not put here to not do anything. We are not put here not to grow. We are not put here to stunt, stunt each other’s growth, although many of us have taken that on as a full-time job. However, the universe is watching, and I wanna remind us of that. But for
(02:58):
Those us who are truly attempting to walk into our destiny by helping other people walk into their destiny, appreciation is going to be or is the foundation for unconditional love. Why? Because in order to have unconditional love, I don’t have to like it. I have to appreciate it. I have to appreciate the fact that from these various perspectives, from my perspectives, from someone else’s perspectives, I can appreciate certain things because at the essence of who I am as a person, you and I are not very different. And there is something about who you are, what you can do, what you do, what you don’t do that I can appreciate, even if I don’t like it. Now, I can say there must be a reason for them doing that or not doing that for them, saying that or not saying that, not as an excuse, not as a crutch for us not to grow.
(04:05):
But I can appreciate it because in me appreciating it, that will make sure that I keep myself on the course of unconditional love. I can appreciate art without wanting to buy it and put it in my home. It’s something inside me that has to be expanded through appreciation of others that is essential to unconditional love. From a spiritual perspective, we are spirit. First. We are a, we are spirit. Spirit. What we believe, what we are fueled by spiritually illuminates our souls. The seed of our government, the seat of human government for an individual is the soul. That’s where the intelligence is, the psyche, decision making, processes, emotions, all of that. So what unites or what disconnects my beliefs from my behavior and my speech is the soul. That’s where all of that happens. My ability to choose, your ability to choose takes place in the soul.
(05:24):
That’s the seat of government. Now, we like to talk about government. What we don’t like to talk about is our own lawlessness. When it comes to the universe, all of us are being held accountable by the seat of government within us that is illuminated by the spirit, which is not seen. Our souls are not seen except in our behaviors and our speech. And even then many of us, since that’s not a cohesive process, since we are flawed and broken, we can say something and mean another. We can do something and mean something else, or we can be right on target.
(06:15):
We can say we love when we hate. We can say we hate, but we love, we are not that good. But we can. We can be, we can be better, be better, not do better. We will only do better if we are actually becoming better. So we can stop with the cliches, because if we’re just giving lift service to it, the universe is holding us accountable. The universe knows whether or not we’re growing or if we’re just trying to perpetuate the myth of growth, the appearance of growth, whether we’re trying to uphold an optic or a politic. The universe knows the difference, and many people do too. It’s just that we think in some cases that people are, are either not paying attention or not spiritually discerning.
(07:08):
Some just want to buy into certain things. And so they try to dismiss it as, oh, well, I didn’t know and I didn’t think it. No, you know, the first person that you have to be honest with is yourself. And if you’re not honest with yourself, then you can lie to anybody. But everybody won’t believe you. Only those that are also lying to themselves will believe you. In order to appreciate, we also have to be of authentic. We have to first be able to identify and admit to our own flaws. And I don’t mean that that necessarily publicly. We have to have safe places and safe spaces to go.
(07:47):
Even if that’s in private to our respective gods, we have to be able to unload that. So you can’t lie to somebody else and tell me that you’re being honest with yourself. It’s not possible. The laws of the universe make it impossible. And while we don’t like talking about absolutes, that doesn’t mean those absolutes don’t exist. The currency of appreciation undergirds our ability to love unconditionally, because we have to be honest. While being authentic, while being loving, I can appreciate you and not agree with you because why? Because I’m not trying to be like you. I’m not trying to get you to be like me. I’m trying to convey to you that we’re all human.
(08:43):
So even if it’s only from a human standpoint, knowing that we have goods, bads, highs, lows, successes and failures, brokenness and healing, I can appreciate you. I can appreciate you, and I do appreciate you. When we learn to value each other, the value of every life becomes increased. I don’t do what I do for me. I do what I do because I believe with everything in me that me sharing love, that me being authentic, that me dealing with my own junk first is what helps me to help other people, which is really what I wanna do. And when I say help, I don’t mean enable. I don’t mean existing codependence. I mean appreciating the fact that the human race is interdependent. So you can’t discount me without discounting yourself. You can’t dehumanize me without dehumanizing yourself first, without also understanding that there is a greater or higher power, whatever, however you want to classify it, that we are all accountable to. And at the end of the day, when I put my head on MyPillow, the thing that I have to give account to is the God that I serve and the God that I believe in. And you have to do the same.
(10:04):
But we have to also know that there we don’t. There’s no discrimination in unconditional love. Human is human. The distinctions that we make as humans in our respective beliefs, we, they might validate us on earth in some way, but the universe doesn’t look at it that way. Unconditional love exists to give everyone a place, to give everyone a safe place and a safe space. We are all accountable to undo unconditional love. Whether we walk in it or not. I’m accountable to unconditional love. Whether I receive it first, I have to receive it in order to give it. We say it all the time. It’s amazing to me how many cliches we use. We love living in quotes and cliches. We don’t like living them because that takes courage and that takes work.
(11:05):
You can’t get what you don’t have, right? And we can’t not in, not in truth. The currency of appreciation is one of the things. If you’re in business, the currency of appreciation with your workforce will drive productivity and decrease employee dissatisfaction. It’ll improve employee engagement, employee satisfaction, it’ll improve morale and it improve productivity. And when you do all of those things, you automatically get more pro profitability. We work so hard to demean and to diminish people that we are literally, and I’ll say this in the business sense, when you do that as a business person, I don’t care what your organization is, you are automatically undercutting. You’re not only your profit making potential, but your profitability in the moment.
(12:03):
So if you wanna talk about life, life as a business, the currency of appreciation will drive personal productivity and personal profitability. The profitability, the more that I can appreciate, then that opens me up to greater experiences to help people, to connect with people, to help us all get to our respective finish lines, because we all have one. What is currency? Currency is is fluid, right? I can appreciate something today that I didn’t appreciate yesterday. It’s part of the process of maturing in this life. A lot of us get old, not all of us. Mature. Maturity is not only emotional, it’s spiritual first.
(13:03):
Well, why are they acting like this? That’s all. Why are they acting like this? Because they’re, they’re not mature. They’re still children. That is a fact. That’s not something cute to say. There is a spiritual component there. There is something in the soul that is still childish, even if the body looks adult. That’s why you get childish behaviors out of people. But from a visual standpoint, a physical standpoint still appear to be not mature. It should, don’t be surprised by it. We get surprised by it because we don’t understand spiritual things. But if you were to take the human experience of personal growth from the time of birth forward, and you look at it from a biological perspective, we would all think something is wrong if the child does not grow, continue to grow physically as it gets older. But the standard is set in the spirit. Well, yeah. You know, Michele, you know that Michele, she is what? She’s so emotional. She’s so this whatever, you know, I, I got over a long time ago thinking that I needed, uh, affirmation <laugh> to be able to believe what I believe. I don’t know everything, but what I know, I know. And you don’t need to diminish me just because you can’t appreciate me, right?
(14:51):
We get tired. People get tired of feeling like they have to be someone else just to be loved. But we also have to recognize that I can’t just, I’m gonna say for me, I also recognize that I can’t just act any old way. I’m accountable to the universe first. I’m accountable to God first. And there’s a lot of people walking around here talking about God and all of these things, but they’re not acting like it. And I don’t wanna be that person because they are still an accountability that has to be given. And even if I don’t see it, even if you don’t see it, when we transition outta here, just like we were, we were here and trusted with other lives. And I don’t mean just our children. Every person that crosses my path, if I have an opportunity to help them and I don’t, I missed it, I might get that opportunity again. But we are here. We have been entrusted not just with natural resources, which we don’t do a good job with. We prefer to argue about them because it’s profitable. We can make money off of death, hell and destruction rather than making more money off of helping each other succeed and replenishing the earth. That the way that we should with the natural resources, what we take, we should be willing to put back.
(16:19):
That is personally, that is professionally. We are stewards of what we’ve been born into. We didn’t create it, but we are stewards of it. The fact that it existed before we did means that there’s going to be an account for how we handled it. While we are here, whatever that process looks like for you, there will be an account given because eternity, what we call e eternal will always exist. And it exists to elevate. There’s no such thing as unconditional love without elevating the human race. And yet we continue to fail to do so. It is more convenient and more profitable for us to have people suffer because there will always be a way. Use other people’s pain to make money. Is that what you want people to do for you? Is that how you wanna be treated?
(17:22):
Do you want people to profit off of your pain? Really? If not, then you shouldn’t be doing that to anyone else. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have pain, and that doesn’t mean that they, we don’t have viable solutions. But those solutions should not be for profit. But solutions should be able to help many people. We shouldn’t exploit people’s pain. We should be willing to find solutions even if we have to give those solutions away. Appreciation. The currency, the fluidity of appreciation undergirds unconditional love drives our ability to love unconditionally. Because I have to learn something. I have to learn that me not liking does not equate to me not loving.
(18:14):
You have to learn it too. The currency of appreciation. I appreciate you whether I know you or not, because we have something in common more than we might ever, ever recognize or admit. As human beings, we’re all in the same boat. We may not all have the same path, but ultimately all are on the same boat. And the boat is earth, the world, the atmosphere. We have the same daily habits. We all have to breathe the air around us. But you wanna look at me and tell me what I’m not or what I can be. You want somebody doing that to you. If not, stop doing it to other people. The currency of appreciation.
(19:13):
And we have hard conversations, but we don’t have the right hard conversations. Please do not talk to me about another courageous conversation. If number one, you’re not being courageous, and number two, you’re being disingenuous. The purpose of the courageous conversation is to bring healing. Granted, working through that might be painful because we all have to face things we don’t necessarily wanna face. But the purpose, we have to agree that the outcome of what we call courageous conversations is healing, not more destruction. That means I have to be able to relate to your pain as much as you relate to mine. I have to be willing to hear as much as I, as be willing to listen, as much as I want to talk, I have to be willing to comfort you as much as I might want you to comfort me, but I also have to be willing to celebrate you as much as I’m willing to, as much as I might have want you to celebrate me.
(20:14):
We need to stop talking about things and giving things. Name, names that we have no tension, intention of living up to. What is the intention? What is your intention? We all wanna hide behind an organization or a group of people or a group of thought thought, uh, leaders. What is your thought? How do you feel? Because when you transition out of here, you’re not gonna have your posse. You’re not gonna have your political organizations, your religious organizations. You’re not gonna have your buddies from school or your girlfriends from school or from work. You’re not gonna have your drinking buddies. It’s gonna be you standing before the tribunal of the universe having to give an account for how you handle the resources, mainly the human resources that we would, that you were entrusted. What are you gonna have to say? What are you gonna say about how you treated the earth? How many trees did you plant? Did you recycle even one bottle? And we think these things don’t matter, but the universe is watching the currency of appreciation.
(21:32):
We’re losing. Things are being depleted and diminished because we don’t appreciate them, right? If I give you some money and I tell you to invest it, you are gonna expect appreciation. But if, but in on, on the, so if we talk about money, everybody understands appreciation. We talk about treating each other with some decency and some respect. Nobody’s, everybody’s all of a sudden gets amnesia. What is that? We are here to help each other get better. We are born into brokenness, but when we leave, when we transition, we should be a million times better individually and together because we helped each other along. The currency of appreciation drives unconditional love.
(22:24):
You might be afraid to say that you want love. I used to be like, it doesn’t make a difference anyway. We still be still gonna get the same, right? Self-fulfilling prophecy. Watch it. Stop feeding into the thing, because that’s what that spirit wants to happen. We’re spiritu first. So spiritually, the goal is to get you not to believe anything good so that you stop trying. The currency of appreciation, however, is what says it’s gonna be some hard days. There’s gonna be some challenges, but keep going. You can do this. We can help each other. We’re better than this. Be better. Not just do better. Be better. Our identity, who we are dictates what we do, we try to do to make us something. Our do will never be anything without us actually becoming better. The currency of appreciation. My name is Chaplain Michele, thank you for joining me for this segment. I hope I see you next time. Bye-bye.