Reverend Joan M. Kistler

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. We’ve been talking about how to tune out the loud, demanding voice of the ego and tune into the still, small voice of Essence. We learned a couple practices to help us with this: mindfulness and meditation. We ended our last broadcast suggesting that the ego not only uses thoughts to distract us from the present moment where Essence dwells but also often also adds a splash of emotion. This makes its thoughts “sticky” and therefore more difficult to ignore. So emotional awareness is another practice we can use to release those “sticky” feelings. Many people have an unhealthy relationship with their emotions: We either hate them or love them. When we hate them, we resist them too much, and they can’t be resolved. So, if we’re angry ab

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. We’ve been talking about the difference between listening to Essence and listening to the ego, and most of us would probably prefer to tune into the still, small, gentle voice of Essence than to the incessant, loud, demanding voice of the ego. We learned that practicing mindfulness is one way that we can learn to tune out the ego and tune into Essence. Another way is by practicing meditation. What is meditation? Mindfulness is actually a form of meditation. I consider mindfulness a more informal mode of meditation. We practice mindfulness in our daily lives when we pause to be aware of the present moment and the bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions that we are experiencing within it. The practice of meditation is more delib

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. We’ve been discussing the difference between the ego and Essence, particularly how the ego is threatened by the present moment and therefore uses all kinds of tactics to drive us away from it – like judgment, negative emotions, and time pressures. Essence, however, longs to experience the present moment fully – just as it is – through our human consciousness. Essence rewards us with feelings of love, peace, and joy when we tune into it. Most of us would much rather tune into the love, peace, and joy of Essence than the judgment, negativity, and stress of the ego. We suggested that one of the ways to tune out the ego and tune into Essence is the practice of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Most of us are largely unaware of our t

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. We’ve been talking about how the ego uses a variety of methods to pull us away from the present moment – including judgment, anger, fear, and guilt. At the end of our last broadcast, we suggested that the ego also uses time. How does the ego use time? Actually, the ego creates the illusion of time.   It accomplishes this by reviewing the past and imagining the future. But both past and future do not exist in reality. The only time we ever really have is now. To a certain extent, there’s a functional use for time in our human experience. Clocks are useful to coordinate our activities with others. Thinking about the past is useful for learning and thinking about the future is useful for planning to a certain extent.

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. Last week, we talked about how the ego uses painful emotions, like anger and fear, to pull us away from the present moment. But then we suggested that anger and fear are not the only weapons in its arsenal. Another weapon is guilt. How does the ego use guilt? The ego is like an angry, scared child who doesn’t understand the way life is. So, it’s constantly stomping its feet and demanding things because it’s scared that it’s not going to get what it needs and wants. Life always provides us with what we need, but not always what we want. That’s the way life is. The ego generates fear because of its lack of trust in life to provide what it needs, and it produces anger because it refuses to accept that life doesn’t always provide

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times.  Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler. Last week, we talked about how the ego uses one of its favorite tactics, judgement, to pull us away from the present moment. At the end of the broadcast, I mentioned that the ego also uses painful emotions, especially anger and fear. How does the ego use anger and fear? The egoic mind developed out of the primitive reptilian brain. This part of the brain contains the emotional center of the brain, which is responsible for our fight-or-flight response. When a threat is perceived, a signal is sent from one part of the brain to another part, which dumps adrenaline into the bloodstream, causing us to feel unpleasant “anger” or “fear” sensations, such as increased heartbeat and breathing, and tense muscles. The problem is th