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The Hero's Journey Series Episode Two: Answering Your Calling
Hello magnificent community, and welcome to my podcast Working for Spirit podcast. You can find all the episodes at workingforspiritpodcast.com. I want to let you know that last episode I started a new theory, the Hero's Journey and so today we have Episode Two in the Hero's journey. I'm so excited to have you here with me.
I want to talk to you today about answering your calling. I have always been a healer. I know that now. I sense the calling inside of me throughout different stages in my life as I was growing up and what I would gravitate toward or what would light me up and what would move me but I didn't always understand what I was seeing.
Then even once I started opening up to see the possibility, I didn't know what to do with it. Spirit will guide me, Spirit will call the spirit and will put things in front of you. But what you have to understand is you have free will. Spirit can not impede on your free will.
So a lot of times I see people getting stuck, what is my purpose if I just knew my purpose? Here is the thing, your purpose is inside of you, your purpose is if you could find a way to live in joy, and truth and full self expression, and that could take many different ways of being, doing, having throughout your life. You're not given to go down or stand in this place and do this thing and wear this and be this.
Sometimes wouldn't it be easier, a lot more of a job description, but it's not a job description. It's going to be a whole lot more about maybe you are making it right now. I know that's a hard one as helpers and healers. We are wired and designed to see and feel and hear everybody else and respond to their needs with the gifts that are inside of us. Yet this Hero's journey is about stepping out into that unknown with everything you have inside of you not knowing yet what you're going to do with it.
You start getting the nudging and some of you will step on the road before you have a lot of information. Others want more of a map that is just going to show the next step, the next step, the next step. It is like if you decided in your car to travel from the West Coast, to the east coast. You know where you want to go and you can focus on how you want to feel where you want to go. I want to be in the Big Apple, New York City. I'm watching a Broadway show. I am eating in the restaurants, shopping and you're feeling it and you know where you're going and a lot happens. There are a lot of ways to do it.
You could choose to jump on a plane as we write them. You can get in your car and you can go and along the way things are gonna happen. You could take detours, side trips, stop and see other attractions. Visit people you know, meet new people. This is all of you, this is your journey. You're not going to get it wrong when you start experiencing things in your life that you don't like, that you don't love, that is when you want to change them.
So I began expressing this in my life with the people around me and the people I came in contact with. I did notice this calling and then I did get busy with life. I get busy working in relationships and I get busy letting my mind spin me around and spin me around. Y'all know how that goes. People that didn't ask for your help don't want to be saved and rescue them. That's what I was doing at first, chasing people down in my workplace, in my neighborhood and in my family, not focusing on my own issues and trying to save and rescue other people asking for help, because it is inside of us.
But I was deep into living from my way instead of my extraordinary at the time so I didn't know any better. I found myself by the age of 20 in an opposite marriage, where I struggled with codependency as the partner of an addict. We rode that cycle hard. Then at 25 I woke up and I looked at my life and I asked what is this? Who created this? Why is this happening? It was like waking up from a bad dream to find out you are living a nightmare.
My relationships with my parents and my siblings were strange. I hated my job. Common denominator here is me. Then the universe stepped in with a perfectly orchestrated Spiritual awakening. I found out my best friend was dying and I went to visit him. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I felt like it was beating with the beat of my heart, it was calling to me.
Now I have visited him many times but there was something in the air. I was trying to pay attention. I kept brushing it off but I kept hearing, “come here, move here”. My mind of course was ticking up. “You're married. You have a job. You have a two year old. You have a life. What was your parents saying? You can't move here”.
Lunch on Sunday and I heard myself asking my friend. What would you think about me? Moving here? My logical mind is ticking off, husband at home, baby, job. We can't afford it. But this nudging turns to an urging. in the spiritual awakening now that I can look back and if I'm really honest with myself and it already be gone, but I didn't know enough yet. So I wasn't clear on it.
When I got back home I felt like I was walking in a fall. Everything appeared to be the same, but nothing was the same and never would be again. Things came to a head with my situation at home that I could no longer ignore. Then I had a blow up at work with my boss's broken action that I knew I no turning back. I had a knowing that I had just set something in motion and now it would be revealed to me which was I would rather go controlling it.
I had this knowing that I just set something in motion and now it would be revealed to me of which way I would go rather than controlling it. There's so much in my mind. I'm getting tongue tied. So I wanted to stop and grab that again because now at all for now because I've lived it and I'm way down the road. There was the sense that all this was happening as part of some divinely orchestrated plan. What happened next changed the trajectory of my entire life. I did go to San Antonio where my friends lived. I found a place to live. I took my two-year old son. I said that I intended to just stay a while and have some time with my dear friend to spend some time, to help him navigate his new piece of his journey. Thus unexpected and what turned out to be pretty tragic. But I never went home. San Antonio became my home and it welcomed and help me my first spiritual awakening. I was helping my friend live while dying with AIDS. I was very involved in the aid community and especially alternative healing and hospice. AIDS was a crisis when my friend's partner died. Then my friend found out we didn't even know what it was. But it was starting to be the voice around the world. Prior to this, I have not worked as a healer in any capacity. I realized that the volunteer work I was doing was so much more rewarding than the paid work that I was doing.
I followed the breadcrumbs and started showing up all the way to graduate school to study to be a therapist, the work I was doing, helping that I had been led to that Spirit orchestrated, opened up this world and it's opened up something inside of me. Now at any point my mind could have won. I could have never moved to San Antonio and changed my life in this way dramatically. I would have had other opportunities where things could have looked really different but the urge got strong, and things came to a head that I couldn't answer my calling.
I was given precious time with my best friend and he was attending this healing circle based on Louise Hay’s work that she was developing, especially around the AIDS crisis. I started attending with him and became involved in it. Later in San Antonio, I met my husband who I've now been married to for 31 years. He and I had two daughters. I moved back into living as a wife, mother of three, a student and then an employee, and life got busy.
I got carried along by the win, and I would grab pieces of my Spiritual journey where I could. As a therapist. I ended up working in a psychiatric hospital, which set two things in motion. One, I got very sick because I'm an empath and I didn't know how to control my energy or my fear. I had an undiagnosed illness for seven years that escalated once I began working in that hospital. I ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery and an eight day stay that I remember very little about.
I also at that time was called into seminary working in that hospital. I can see that there's always a spiritual element. Even if people say they don't believe in God, in whatever way they understand it. There's a spiritual growth and development and a spiritual element in all of it. Then I would see the hospital chaplain and I was talking to them, and understand the piece that they were bringing to the equation and I thought under my license about the spiritual things.
I was aware there were energetic things going on that I can talk about now. I didn't know what they were. I was starting to have experiences in that hospital where I was working where I would know what wasn't being said during intake, or I would anticipate things before they happened. I would feel things, for instance, I was known that they would say whenever we got a volatile or violent patient for me to go stand near them because they calm down. So I was just being aware of all these things to kind of open it up and then have to give you the opportunity to respond. I want to go there. I wanted one more. I introduce all of that because you have to understand it. Not just here's what it is. Here's what's going on and here's what you're going to change.
So then one of the things from this interaction with the hospital chaplain was I was called into seminary, and I found a seminary I resonated with and I began cross country journey. This cross country journey was me living in Colorado and attending Seminary in New York City. Those two years were amazing. I came home to myself and I found myself. I studied and trained as a hospital chaplain. I did that work until we made a big move that shook everything up again.
It was time to get about my work in the world. I wasn't doing it yet. But each of these steps were leading. I had to grow into it. I had to open to it. I had to say yes because Spirit cannot impede on your free will. I had to recognize the breadcrumbs, step in and say yes, and let it unfold. We made a big move that left me feeling as if I was completely untethered. The move was rough on all of us and things did not go as planned, which started me telling all of these stories about how bad the move was, and how everything was going wrong and how we had made the wrong decision. So guess what, whatever you say is, is.
The universe had to keep delivering the story. I spawned in that story. I spawned in being depressed and upset and outraged. All of it is herds of losing secrets and the teachings of Abraham. They showed up right on time. By then I had been sitting on my couch for about half a year. Something spoke to me, it was remembering rather than learning something new. I recognize truth with a capital T. It was like I was remembering things I already knew. They were settling me. They were developing me. I would look at my life and I decided to turn it into an experiment for the law of attraction.
I became an avid student and the teachings and teachers appeared before me. I gifted myself to a ticket to Louise Hay’s I Can Do It conference and traveled by myself to Tampa, Florida. I remember I knew Louise Hay was because I had been introduced to her all those years ago. Breadcrumbs, Opening, planting the seeds. I saw all those people who were big names to me Wayne Dyer, Sylvia Browne, Sonia Choquette, Dr. Brian Weiss, Carolyn Myss, Esther and Jerry Hicks. I saw in them what was in me. I saw how many of them had come from the traditional healing world and the traditional science world and has become the spiritual teachers and spiritual leader.
They were speaking on stage, they had books and classes and programs and products. I experienced it knowing that I was meant to do this and be this and have this yet I had no idea how my mind wanted to get involved. But I was learning through the law of attraction to leave the how’s to the universe. That one has served me well more than anything else. I was learning how to see the opportunity and to trust that where there is a desire, a way has already been made.
I was learning how to follow the breadcrumbs. These are the things you have to learn and you have to know. Six months later, that big awakening where I followed, I said yes. I took myself to that event. I saw what Spirit and wanted to show me. I got in the presence, I got in the energy. Six months later, I had agreed with Spirit to open the Hope House, not even knowing what I would do once I created. I joined through an invitation from someone I had met, a group study program of the Artists Way, if you are familiar with the artist's way. We had this exercise created something on an index card to bring it into reality. I still have the index card when I have created Hope House and within a few months. It was real. There I was writing this, going What is this? What is this? Inside of me?
This was a long journey from victim to powerful creator. We all work on this continuum. We walk on this continuum and anytime we are moving toward victim or towards creating. I once lived most of the time on the victim side of the scale. I was programmed and conditioned that way.
Then I learned to take 100% responsibility for my life. It was brought with so much power, real true power, not the false power I had cultivated as a defense mechanism. I really want you to get that. I came to the place where I spent more and more of my time and then most of my time on the Creator side of the continuum. This brings us to the expensive hobby, conversation which brings us to the profitable, sustainable business. I love that support and sustain the life I want to live which brings me to you and your Hero’s journey. Hope house called for and gathered an incredible community of people. Inside of that little blue house I became the healer I am, I became a teacher, I became the leader. Hope house brought me many guests. Among them the realization that I needed to feel and integrate spirituality, business and money. I saw it would not be an easy path to choose.
I knew I would get a lot of pushback and I did. By then, I was living more and more on my purpose and doing what my soul desired and required. It was heaven on Earth. You have a choice point in every moment and every choice is toward or away from what you want. A choice point exists at this moment. Will you or won't you? When I learned to see the opportunities that were showing up in answer to what I was asking for, I said yes and stepped in. I busted limiting beliefs. I faced my fears and watched them fall away. I transformed on every level physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This journey was in 2007 to 2009.
I walked you through it because this was the way it unfolds. If you would have told me back then what I have created today and what I'm doing today, what I'm talking and writing about today when I'm living without a belief you sit down to take it in. Then I would stumble over myself and my mind would have wanted to go out there and figure out how to do it. And that would have not served you. I'm here now with three books. I'm working on my fourth and fifth books.
I got this podcast, my newest book, soulteachbook.com, a 365 day book for you to live these principles for a solid year. My working for Spirit podcast. Now I come so far down the road. Every time I made a choice, and I took an action, Spirit rushed in to meet me, never impeding on my free will and this is what I've created. I'm going to throw together my own hero's journey as bringing all of this to you and taking you back to the pivotal moment because I want you to realize, now I have a big business and a big life that I love and I’m living my purpose every day.
I am integrating and talking about spirituality, business and money, which is part of my purpose which I couldn't have ever understood with my mind. Because I was not good at business or money. But I learned a lot because of Hope House, it became an expensive hobby that I had to come through and get to the other side. I am now into 15 years, I have not had a job since 2006. I have programs I've worked with clients. I speak, I travel all over the world. I write. I teach. I live in this life I love and I want to help you get there to have that as well. Stay with me in this series. Stay with me in your theory, the hero's journey.
Stay with me on this journey. If you are saying yes now, if you are ready, we will get on with being about our business. We will start talking about spirituality, business and money all in the same breath and we will watch what happens. I'm so glad you're here on this journey with me. Stay with me. Tune in for these episodes. I will be back with more soon. Meanwhile, make sure we're connected on facebook.com/michellebbarr. My DMs are open for you. You can go on my website. You can connect with me there and I'll answer questions. Thank you so much for being here for another episode of Working for Spirit podcast. Have a great day, a great week and create a great life.