Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

This grounding practice is brought to you by Kevin Adler of Miracle Messages. You can check out our full interview at that separate episode wherever you tune into This Is How We Care.

Taking the next couple of moments now to transition into a space of receptivity. Perhaps you'll want to find a place in your environment where you can get more comfortable, remove any distractions, and of course, give yourself any time you need, you can pause this right now, to do so.

With that, I will pass it over to Kevin to share this practice.

Kevin (Miracle Messages): This is a [00:01:00] zany one for all the listeners out there. I'm going to share a little bit about a practice that I did. I don't think I'm equipped or trained to lead in this practice, but I'm going to walk through it and share why it was significant to me and invite you as the listener to maybe engage in it if you find it resonant.

 The practice is called Hitbodedut.

And it's this practice of basically speaking aloud to God, often in nature and seeing what comes up. So it's an unfiltered stream of consciousness where you're really inviting, not only God to be in conversation with you, if you can be so bold, or the universe or mother nature or whatever your belief systems.

But I think you're also inviting within yourself to almost listen to things [00:02:00] that maybe you don't often say. 

And I know when I had my experience of introduction to Hitbodedut I was in the Ramona Crater in the Negev desert in Israel, and we were guided to do this practice, basically to just do it for 10 minutes.

And the part of the point of Hitbodedut is to do it in an uninterrupted way. So whatever you're saying, keep saying it. And you may say, I have no idea what to say. I don't know what to share. 

But when I did it, I was shocked, overwhelmed and heart wrenched by what came out of my mouth. A high level, I was shocked at how hard I was on myself.

And it took me about eight minutes of the ten minutes to release all this pent up self loathing, this anxieties, these stressors, and the last two minutes of the exercise, fell silent. 

What happened [00:03:00] is I looked up and I saw the moon, and I started weeping.

Because when I was a kid, really young, my first words after 'mom' and 'dad' were 'moon'. I used to look up at the sky and go, "moon, moon, moon," and I had this realization that, here I was with all this education, all this training, all this professional accomplishments, all these people that I've built relationships with and yet as a 30 something year old, I had somehow forgotten some purity of wonder, curiosity, openness to love that I just instinctively knew as a young one or two year old.

 I have continued that practice in various forms to this day. 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): And I think if as the listener without any preconception that you're going to [00:04:00] have the same experience as me or say the same things. I would just invite anyone who feels compelled to take ten minutes, pause this conversation. Or maybe afterwards, go outside, go into an area that feels calming to you and open your mouth and hear what comes out and have that conversation with God that maybe you've been invited into for a while that just has been simmering under the surface and can see how it maybe affects how you see yourself in the world.

So that would be my invitation. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. Please head over to our conversation with Kevin at Miracle Messages, to hear more about how his organization is helping to tackle the Relational Poverty aspect of Homelessness in the United States.

We hope to see you there.