 Hey, friends, you're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio, but today we're going to talk, we have a Q&A show today, we're going to talk about, you know, feeling stuck in the interior life, how to grow, how to get unstuck, Why is it beneficial? How to deal with negative emotions, you know, all of that sort of stuff. But before we jump into the show, I want to tell you about a few things going on. We have one seat left on our pilgrimage to Spain next year. Wow. Right. And I'm so excited. I can't wait. It's got a Fatima extension. Yes, very. It's going to be very cool. The, we have a webinar coming up November 2nd. So that's short term at 7pm Central with me and Monsignor Pope. And we're going to be talking about purgatory, purgatory purgatory. And I think that's all I'll talk about for the moment. There is a course you might want to check out at the Avalon Institute by one of my favorite professors and don't tell the other ones I said she's one of my favorite. But that's Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell. Did you want to say something about it? No, when you finish that, I want to add something else. Masterpiece of the Divine Art of St. Edisstein's artistic vision of God and exploring the concept of beauty and sanctity in St. Teresa Benedicta of the cross. Really amazing thinker that you and Elizabeth Mitchell is fantastic. So it, but the deadline there is 10 days from now. So go to Avalon Institute.org to check out that course. So as I was walking from the retreat house across to where our studio is in the Avalon House, I was freezing. Yeah, it's cold. And you know what cold weather means? Yeah. Means we've entered into fall. Yeah. Which means it's almost Christmas. Oh, yeah. Right. I just want to tell the guys out there that your Christmas list has got to be worked on. You can start now. And I have an idea for you because yours truly along with my spouse, my beloved spouse Dan Burke. We are going to be leading a divine intimacy in marriage retreat in February. Before Valentine's Day. And we have only, I think, 12 couple spots left. Okay. It's over half full. We keep it small. Relatively small. So we can get to know everybody. And it's at the shrine of the blessed sacrament, which is amazing. Yeah. And so if you want to get your Christmas out of the way, like right now, and you want to hit it out of the park with your wife. And you want to cover your bases with Valentine's Day as well. Check out Divine Intimacy in Marriage Retreat at our events page, spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. And you are one and done. Cool. Big points inventory recovery. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and jump into the show. Questions and answers today. You ready? Mm-hmm. Any markets that go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. You're a radio haven of rest. Permittage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us to navigate the narrow way of eternal life. It's an important way. It's the only way. That's right. Amen. It's the only way. All right. So today we're going to answer questions. Before we do, I just want to give a shout out of gratitude to EWTN for allowing us to do the show on their airwaves. And for all that EWTN does for the church. I think people, you know, they've been around a long time. It's always easy to criticize the guy that's been around for a while. But if you look at the contribution of EWTN comparably to anything else in terms of keeping the church in the U.S. doctrinally sound and stable. I just can't think of another institution aside from the church itself that has helped the church more than EWTN. Yeah. So we're grateful. Yes, absolutely. All right. Let's jump into the questions. I feel stuck in my spiritual growth and I know you have talked about how dangerous this is. What can I do to get unstuck? So we're either going forward or we're going backward. There is no such thing as status quo. Is there like a WD-40 to get people unstuck? What's the WD-40 for getting unstuck in spiritual life? Unstuck. You know, it's interesting. The first thing that comes to mind is you and I were recently in Costa Rica. Yes. Visiting family. We went up on a hike with my aunt and uncle Tina and Evie. Very adventurous couple. They're always getting us into dangerous situations. And we went walking and for whatever reason, I was, I took good sandals, but they were slick on the bottom. And the mud in the jungle in Costa Rica is super slick. And so we're walking through there and I'm just dying because I think I'm going to fall off into oblivion. I don't want to fall. I don't want to get hurt. Yeah, it was steep. It was steep. It's drizzling and raining. There's mud everywhere. It's gorgeous. It's exquisite, but it's dangerous, right? And so when we first started out the walk, you know, it was dangerous. And then after a while, Abby got walking sticks. Like he, he got some sturdy branches and he gave one to Tina and myself to walk because everybody else had good shoes except moi, me. And I had not planned well because the bottom of my shoes were, weren't, didn't have enough traction on them. So we came to those one part and there was all these roots coming up and there's mud and it's slick and there's moss growing because of the conditions. And it occurred to me that this walk we were on could be likened to the journey to God. And we have to be prepared, right? We have to be prepared. The road with the moss and the mud and the dangers and the roots sticking up and the rocks and the difficulty in the incline is the journey itself, right? It's not easy. There are many trials that are coming on. And I thought, well, so what, what could we like and say the shoes to, you know, decent shoes. Well, you need to be grounded in the scriptures of the church. You need to be grounded in the sacraments. You need to be grounded in all that the church provides, right? The sacramental life gives us all that we need in order to remain in a state of grace, right? If you're not in a state of grace, things get slippery and you can end up falling. A fall causes you to step out of grace. And then, you know, one little step can lead to a big tumble. It can lead to broken bones and shattered lives and shattered families, shattered health, you know, all kinds of things due to sin, right? So we need to stay grounded, good shoes, good tractions firmly grounded in the church. The walking stick that occurred to me was like spiritual direction. And that's that walking stick gave me a little more support. It added another point of balance for me and it could provide support in areas that I couldn't reach that I didn't necessarily understand. Like at this moment, I'm going to feel unsteady, but this walking stick is going to cost me to be steady. So it was a support underneath me that provided like a third leg as it were to give me some more support, made me feel more stable, gave me some clarity, made me feel a little more courageous and strengthened, right? And then the perseverance that it takes to get yourself through the forest and keep going to me was likened to prayer, to showing up every day to mental prayer, to your examine, to understanding how do I get from here to the goal? What do I need to do? I need to draw near to God and he's going to enlighten my mind and my heart and he's going to teach me. And he's going to enlighten my spirit and my mind so that I understand in the day to day, in the moment, every step along that path, I'll know where to put my feet. I'll know when to reach out to you as my husband and say, hey, can you give me an extra hand? When to make sure that I'm keeping eyes around the others around me to make sure they don't get lost, which is what Ebi was doing for us, you know? So that to me was a good analogy of what we need to be doing in order to keep going in the spiritual life, to be growing and not get stuck, firmly grounded in the church, the sacraments, persevering in prayer, spiritual direction, and then the self-denial and self-giving of going to prayer each day and allowing the Lord to feed us so that we're allowing ourselves to be loved and then we are loving others as we should. It's well said and if I could give people a practical kind of, well, that's all beautiful. But how do I do that? So there are a couple of things you pointed to in that analogy. One is what we call the paradigm of ascent, which is a model of understanding all of the fundamental elements necessary for constant spiritual growth. So it's called the paradigm of ascent. And if you want to have, there's a book I wrote that it's in, which is called Devil in the Castle. I just wrote it recently. And the paradigm of ascent is there. There's a course on the paradigm of ascent at apostoleva.org. And our producer will pop up that URL for you, apostoleva. A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E dot work. And so for those on live stream, the producer will pop that up there for you. But on apostoleva.org, if you create a profile, it's all free. There's a course on the paradigm of ascent. Another element that you mentioned was that I regularly held your hand or grabbed your arm or helped you in that treacherous because I had good shoes on and I'm reasonably athletic. So I just generally don't have trouble in those situations. And so I was holding on to you and helping you as you needed it. We had Tina, who's amazing in her walking abilities. And then Ebi, who's even more so. And he's, I know he's quite a bit older than I am, but he's like a mountain goat. So there's this community in that process. Ebi's got a great sense of direction. He had already been there before. He's our guide, you know, all of that. Well, that's a good analogy for community life. We just had a great interview, our last interview before this one was with the Abbot of Clear Creek Monastery. And they have faithful Benedict and Oblates, you know, a third order for laypeople. If you want to get that kind of help in community, we have Apostoli VA, which is more Carmelite oriented community where people are there to help you. There's thousands of us around the world who get together regularly on second and fourth Saturdays to give formation right now. I mean, as of the recording of the show, we're going through introduction to the devout life. And we have never ending formation, never ending, literally never ending formation. 99% of it's free. All of it's free in Apostoli VA. Right. Of course, the Abbot Institute, we have courses for priests, religious and lady with pay professors and all that. But so that that cost, but in Apostoli VA, it's free. And that's pretty normal for religious communities. So if you're feeling stuck, you know, learn about the paradigm of ascent. You know, Stephanie gave you great advice. It was kind of an illustration of the paradigm of ascent. Because I was actually thinking through it as I was describing it. Oh, fascinating. Right. So you're thinking about the bottom of it and each side. Yeah. The sacraments, the daily mental prayer, the exam, and the cesatical disciplines. Yeah. Those will get you unstuck. Really. And then another thing that can get you unstuck is pilgrimage can get you unstuck because it breaks you out of. A lot of times we get stuck in a train of thought. We get in a groove, which can be bad. Sometimes grooves can be good because you can go, you know, quickly. But you can get in a groove and the in pilgrimage can help you get break negative destructive patterns of thought limited ways that you think you encounter the divine. You can encounter the Lord in and through the saints and their permeation of matter across all time and space through going to holy places. We've seen a ton of conversions for people who go on pilgrimage. You don't have to leave the country. You can go to the shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in the Hanseville, Alabama, or you can go. There's shrines in almost every state, Marian shrines. So pilgrimage is another way or retreat is another way. But go ahead. You had another phone. And the other thing is, you know, if if you're on track with the paradigm of the scent, you're doing all those things, right? You've maybe you've been around us long enough to where you understand those things and you're purposeful in them, but you feel stuck. Another thing that you can do that is incredibly helpful is to reach out to our lady to do a novena to our Lady of Sorrows and ask her for what to reveal to you. What is what where the barrier is? What is holding you back where there might be wounding or sin or brokenness or any kind of thing that needs to be brought to the surface to reveal to you how to move forward. And that may be sins that you're not aware of. It may be habits that are hindering your spiritual growth. It may be that there's woundedness that needs to be healed. And there's some wonderful ways to get healing through the JP to Healing Institute. You can come here to our Lady of Mount Carmel retreat center to seek healing. There's things like all kinds of things, all kinds of organizations that help with that. And then the other thing is, is that maybe there's areas that need deliverance. And I know that there's a number of really holy organizations that work in healing and we do too. And helping people to get past the brokenness of their past and do the deep dive in forgiveness and breaking soul ties and all the other parts that are involved in that to make sure that we can get ourselves clean and open to what the Lord wants to do for us. Awesome. Awesome. We get back from the break. We're going to keep answering questions and really Stephanie let it. I gave a great segue into the next question, which is how to deal with negative emotions instead of burying them. So we'll be right back. So we got to go 12, 5 on the next one. Folks, an amazing thing we're doing before we jump back into the show that I really want you all to check out. Is myhighcalling.com, myhighcalling.com. If you are a young man who is discerning the priesthood, religious or diocesan doesn't matter. And you want some direction in how to discern well without, you know, sometimes guys are nervous about going to a vocation director in a diocese or necessarily they don't even know what to do to visit, you know, a monastery like the one we were just talking to in our previous interview. With Abbot Phillip from Clear Creek, they just don't know what to do. So if you have an interest in the priesthood, go out to myhighcalling.com, mymyhighcalling.com. Or if you know a young man and they have a vocation or you think they might have a vocation, just give them the website and say, hey, check out myhighcalling.com. And you can find all kinds of resources for an inspiration regarding the idea of what it means to become a priest or you're calling as a priest or how to discern. And we support, you know, faithful dioceses and religious orders, but we're kind of independent in a way and so that it helps, we work alongside them. But sometimes folks feel, guys feel more comfortable checking in with an organization that isn't, is sort of a one step removed before they jump into kind of a deeper conversation with directly with someone. So check out the myhighcalling website and you will be blessed. And for those of you who are interested in helping vocations, you can do the same by sending guys to that website. So let's jump back into the show. You ready? On your mark, it said, yo, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking today. We're doing a Q&A show today. We haven't done one in a while on just questions we've received in general ways from folks who would go to our events or whatever on the interior life. And the next question, which you kind of didn't, you didn't even, I have the question list. I am the master of the questions you didn't even know. You were the keeper of the keys. I can't even see it. The next question is very much in keeping with kind of where you ended in the last question about being stuck spiritually. And the question is, what is the best way to deal with negative emotions instead of burying them? And how can one be assured that they have truly surrendered them to the Lord within their heart? So what's the best way to deal with them instead of burying them? And then how can you be sure that you're fully healed? Interesting. So I was having a conversation with one of my directees and this pervading emotion kept coming up and I recognized it as hopelessness, desolation type despair. And I think the thing that we have to do is when we continually are living in this kind of revolving door of this particular emotion, because it's persistent, it keeps coming, you know, is to ask the question, was there ever a time when you felt deep despair or hopeless as a child? And it's an interesting question because I can guarantee you that every time I've asked it, a memory, a person kind of stops, they're a little taken back and they take a moment and they get a little introspective and they go, this memory just popped up and we go and we talk about it. And then what I do is I invite them to ask the Lord to come into that memory to go to it, not to dwell in the sorrow, not to dwell in the pain, not to dwell there, but rather to go there in their heart and their mind and then ask the Lord to meet them there. And it's remarkable the healing that he brings. It is remarkable. Every single person experiences it differently, tears flow. You can feel a release and it sets them free. It's a beautiful way. It's really where we can encounter the Lord to receive some serious healing. Of course, we need to use discernment of spirits. The enemy can not read our thoughts, but he can put those thoughts in our head. I've been struggling with desolation for the last 24 hours. And I can tell you that I'm constantly going back to, where's this coming from? I think I'm just tired. I just came back from speaking at a conference in California and I am physically exhausted. I haven't slept very well. I haven't eaten very well and I've been traveling and of course we've got all the time zones differences. So I had to look at that. Is it my emotions? Is it my physical, my physiological needs that are causing this thing? Is this a habit for me or is this a one-off situation? So I think it's looking at where we are in our state of life, where we are spiritually. Is there anything hidden that we need to deal with? Or if it's really, really persistent over a long course of time that we've been struggling with something? My guess is it's an invitation to healing. And with a good spiritual director or somebody that's attentive to the interior life that can help you kind of see what's going on, is you can do a little bit of self-examination and go, why am I always kind of half mad? Or why do I have this lingering sense of sadness and despair or whatever this is and find out where it started? Or why am I easily irritable or why am I easily triggered? I mean there's a lot, any sort of negative emotion. There are two books that come to mind that I think are great resources for folks to dig into these. One is My Own, which is spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, which really helps you to learn what it means to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, which is a scripture passage, of course, in the New Testament, St. Paul wrote that, taking every thought, the idea of taking every thought captive. Spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, you can find that at spiritualdirection.com in the shop area. The other one is Be Healed by Dr. Bob Schutz. And do you want to tell folks a little bit about him? Yeah, Dr. Bob Schutz runs the JP2 Healing Center. They do beautiful work. They have conferences like Healing the Whole Person and Deeper Dives just for women or for everybody at once. And they have retreats for seminarians to get healing, priests to get healing. It's just really extraordinary. But he really couples the spiritual life with the psychological. He's a psychiatrist and an extraordinarily beautiful holy guy. And really he and his organization are doing beautiful work. So it's a good thing to go to one of their conferences. And, you know, it's a good way to open that up a little bit. To go and take the time and be away, to retreat and do a little bit of introspection and listen to the talks and look at the visuals and sing and worship together. The Holy Spirit does a mighty thing with them. And it's a good place, I think, to kind of break things open and get things moving. So I tremendously recommend it. It's not lasting forever because you have to continue the work afterwards. So it's a good opening, but then you have to do the harder work of finding a director, finding a regular confessor, diving deep into the sacraments, learning how to pray, which they need to pick up your book into the deep to learn how to pray. Pick up spiritual direction or spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits to learn discernment of spirits to become more self aware of what the enemy is doing in you. Yeah, I think that even, you know, if you want to go even deeper on that, I have a course called discernment of spirits at the Abola Institute that I teach that six weeks. And there's a good bit of reading and diving deep on that. The other one is Father William Watson. It's got a great book. Is it, is it sacred story that I'm thinking about where he walks you through? Or is it a different one? 40 weeks. 40 weeks. That's right. 40 weeks where he basically 40 weeks is a combination of the Ignatian exercises and psychology because he's a psychiatrist and he merges it together. And it's about 15 to 30 minutes a day together. And I may have said something. Yeah, he's not a psychiatrist. Okay, okay, I'm sorry. It's not, it's not rooted in psychology. But there is, it's about 15 to 30 minutes a day of prayer. That's all it is. And it's a great work and it'll take you 40 weeks to go through it, which is why it's called that. Yeah, it's a nice deep dive. The last thing I'll say just to give people some real practical so they're not leaving with, oh, you have to go by all these books. They're sometimes just sitting down and writing out the negative emotions that you experience and renouncing them. I don't know if you mentioned that, but do you want to talk to folks about what that looks like? Sure. So say you are feeling, well, let me, let me, let me set it up this way. The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love. Okay. So when we are in deep faith, deep hope and deep love, we know we are abiding in the Lord and there's a sense of lightness and freedom and joy and peace, patience, goodness, generosity, faithfulness and self control. So we're in the fruits of the spirit and we were feeling good, right? Not giddy, but good. You know, we know we're walking with the Lord. When we experience the opposite of those virtues, we're often experiencing desolation. So the opposite of faith, hope, love is doubt, despair and narcissism. The opposite of love is not hate. It's narcissism. It's turning in on ourselves. We only care about ourselves. A lot of naval gazing or caring about our own emotions and what I need and what about me. And when we do that, we're generally not loving people around us. And so what we do is, first of all, we take all thoughts captive. We need to be aware of what's happening to us. I'm not in the fruits of the spirit. I'm not in faith and hope and love. I'm the opposite. I don't feel good. My thoughts don't feel good. I'm downtrodden. I'm not loving people around me. I'm dark is another way to describe it. So I note it. And so then I start to think about what am I feeling? Oh, I'm not, I'm not feeling faithful. You know, I'm feeling doubting or I'm doubting that God is in this situation. I'm downtrodden. I'm questioning his will for my life. I'm questioning what's happening or whatever. So then I need to renounce that doubt. And I say in the name of Jesus, which couples two things. I'm going to use the strength of my human will to exit the enemy from where he doesn't belong. He doesn't get to stay where I don't want him in my heart, my mind, in my spirit. So I'm going to use my human will coupled with the power of Jesus name to renounce the negative vice, the opposite of the virtue that's affecting me and that I'm acting in. And then I'm going to ask the Lord to bring me the virtue that's opposite. Okay. So in the name of Jesus, I renounce a spirit of doubt. And in the name of Jesus, I ask you to fill me with great faith or the faith of Mary is what I like. So whatever we do, we, we figure out where we are. We note that it's not of God. We renounce it in the name of Jesus with the strength of our human will. And then we ask and we fill, we ask the Lord to fill in his holy name, the opposite virtue. So what we need to do and what I find usually happens is people will renounce, they'll forget to fill. And so then they're in this kind of loop that they can't get out of circling the drain. Oh, I'm renouncing. I'm renouncing. Nothing's happening. Nothing's lifting. I'm not feeling any relief. Well, we need to ask for what we want. The Lord loves us, but he wants us to ask. And so we need to ask for the opposite and ask for his goodness, the fruits of the spirit to fill us and to give us life. Very good. Well, our time is up. So hopefully these few questions that we've answered have been helpful to you. If they have, please pop out spirits direction.com and donate to our work. It supports the renewal of the priesthood. The many, many hundreds of thousands of people that we serve every day through spiritualdirection.com. But pop out to spiritualdirection.com and click the donate button to help our mission. Or you can check out courses at the Avila Institute or events at spiritualdirection.com for all the events that you can be involved with. But in general, we are a formation machine, a formation machine. Anything you need on the interior life, you're going to find it here. So hopefully the show has been a blessing to you today. Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire spirit, soul and body irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.