I am not that person anymore, I am different, that's the old me... or is it? EP 108

I'm on the second round of listening to Rob Bell's new book, Everything is Spiritual.  I literally finished it and immediately started over.   I've never done that before. In chapter 5 he talks about how we can be at odds with our past; we can be at war with our history... and how do we resolve those parts of our lives we may be trying to forget about or move on from?  What about those parts of us we don't like or are trying to change? I always wondered why it never sat right when someone refers to "the new me" or "the old me" or "I'm not that person anymore."  I get what they're saying... I have changed, I don't act like that anymore, I don't think like that anymore, I'm different than I used to be.   But isn't our past still a part of us whether we like it or not?  Doesn't our life experiences make us who we are?  Rob uses the example of seeing a picture of someone and getting a knot in our stomach or someone tells a story or mentions a place and we cringe.  Those stories and the person we were back then are still a part of us.  However, they are not a part of us in the physical sense.  For example, I am not 18 yrs old anymore, my body is different, my brain is different, I think differently. If you cut me open, you couldn't find that experience that gave me a knot in my stomach when you told that story from years ago.  So where is it? How is it still a part of me? It's in the soul!  That thing that so many people debate about... what exactly makes us human and what happens to it when we die.  He tells the story in the Bible where Moses asks God to reveal himself, show me who you are... and God says, "I AM."  "I AM" all of it.  You are all of it... your past, present, and future.  "I AM invites us to own every square inch of our story" - Rob Bell Rob also talks about how deeply personal the answers to these large questions are. Like, what is the soul? Where did the universe come from? What do you believe about God?  One's answer is usually based on a culmination of deep, personal, and intimate experiences they've had over their lifetime.  That is often why it's so damn hard to explain the answers to these BIG HARRY QUESTIONS!  What he leaves us with is this, the universe has been expanding for over 13 billion years (I know, it's hard to get your head around.  Imagine this, it would take 6-9 months to get to Mars going 20,000 miles per hour.  Our solar system travels through the universe at 550,000 miles per hour and would take about 230 million years to travel the entire Milky Way... and that's just our galaxy.  Now, multiply that by THIRTEENNNNNNNNN BILLIONNNNNNNN YEARSSSSSSSSS!  HOLYYYYYYYY SHIZZZZZZZZ THAT'S BIG!!!!  This is also why I'm super skeptical of anyone who says "they know for sure" where we come from or how it all started, lol) and it is constantly inviting us to expand with it. If you know someone you think would love at a topic like this, be sure to share the podcast with them.  Text them, screenshot it and tag them on social, or hell, pick up the phone and call them, lol!   Join our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highcostofanonymitypodcast Check out Rob Bell's talk on Youtube: 2016 Everything is Spiritual - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT09JbaEh_I Rob Bell on Instagram: @realrobbell