Tracing Inspiration

After the Cave: Life Beyond Achievement

Anisa Ali is a longtime friend whom I recently reconnected with through my new role in state government. We discovered that we now work in similar fields, and by what felt like divine timing, our paths crossed again as she began exploring the Enneagram. After seeing a post I shared about my wife Chelsea’s… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wakingupforwork.substack.com [https://wakingupforwork.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#5: Moving to the Center with Sarina Partridge: What Song Circles Can Teach us about Leadership, Community, and Following the Call

Singer/songwriter/educator Sarina Partridge joins me in a conversation about the tedious path of following a calling. Sarina went from wacky math teacher in Minnesota, to a world-traveling song leader who uses harmony circles as a way to build community as well as to resist conditioned impulses to "disappear the self." She encountered setbacks so great that she even thought the dream of singing had passed, but everything changed when a neighbor asked Sarina to use her gifts for leading songs during the dreary early days of the pandemic. Learn more about Sarina here [https://sarinapartridge.com/]. 4:00 Mature adults can have artistic hobbies? 7:00 Singing in service of community building 9:00 Attachment to career identity rather than one's calling 15:00 Disappearing the self 20:00 When the question becomes the calling 33:00 Near-death experience clarifying the passion 37:00 The white martyr archetype 39:00 The unknown and challenging might just be your purpose 41:00 The lift-off point for Sarina's calling 45:00 Hymnaculate Contraception 48:00 I both matter more and less than I thought 51:00 The power of encouragement Note: The recorded singing and conversation at the beginning and end of the episode came from Sarina's annual Solstice Song Circle. You can learn more about her events and find ways to join up at her website: ⁠https://sarinapartridge.com/⁠ [https://sarinapartridge.com/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wakingupforwork.substack.com [https://wakingupforwork.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

A Slumber Party Under the Honeysuckles with Luna GebbenGreen

Cozy up with tea (or —if you’re more like me— queue this one up for your next car ride or long run) because this giggly, joyful, deep conversation with Presbyterian pastor Luna Gebbengreen covers so many universally applicable themes, namely: learning to trust, love, and stick with ourselves, even when it would be easier to self-abandon. This isn’t one I can chop into sound bytes or give you a timepoint chronology—it’s everywhere and all of it across all time and it warrants the prolonged wander. Today’s musical special feature is by Lynn O’Brien [https://lynnobrien.love/] and the song is called “With Her Voice.” Her music is available everywhere. This song came from her album Light Everywhere [https://lynnobrienmusic.bandcamp.com/album/light-everywhere], available on Bandcamp: Because Tracing Inspiration is meant to inspire you to follow what you love and go do what feels uniquely special to your spirit, I also want to make sure you have resources beyond this show to help if you’re feeling too stuck to get started. The best person I know of to help is my wife, who I’ll gladly share for this purpose! Chelsea Witbrook [https://chelseawitbrook.com/] is a certified Somatic Enneagram facilitator and best-selling author of “Blessing My Demons.” [https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-My-Demons-Transform-Critic-ebook/dp/B0CJZMDWF3] As a Somatic Enneagram guide and Spiritual Director, she combines social justice awareness with compassionate guidance. Chelsea specializes in helping people who feel stuck by teaching them to establish Grounded Presence, connect with their Inner Observer, and respond to their body’s wisdom. Through her coaching, clients discover inner resources and learn to embrace all parts of themselves with radical compassion, finally releasing patterns that once held them captive: www.chelseawitbrook.com [http://www.chelseawitbrook.com] Now. Go do what you love doing because the world needs you to do that exact thing! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wakingupforwork.substack.com [https://wakingupforwork.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Heir to the Work: Milton Stewart on Liberation and Transformation

"Everything you want and desire— like really, really want— it's inside. It's not on the outside." -Milton C. Stewart But where are the keys that unlock the passage to the inside? And how do we access the freedom needed to pull the inside out into the world? Milton C. Stewart, MBA, is a coach who uses the Enneagram to help people see their patterns, motivations, and fears. Finding internal freedom through self-awareness so that liberated system change can unfold in the world is what Milton is all about. He works with individual clients, small groups, and leaders to help them become free internally so that liberation can flow outward from each of us into the world. I've experienced this directly: Milton was one of my first formal teachers of the Enneagram, but over the last few years our teacher-student relationship has been evolving into friendship. It was a gift to sit across the screen-- student to teacher, friend to friend-- and learn more about his backstory, and to hear how liberation as a core driver connects directly to his essential qualities. Tracing Inspiration isn't an Enneagram podcast, but the Enneagram has been a lens that's helped me see myself more clearly, or as Milton puts it, "has brought me back a lot of times back home to who I truly am at the deep parts of me, my essence. And to me, that is the most important part of life." We get into how inner work and understanding our emotional patterns offers a self-liberating freedom to fall deeper in love with ourselves and flow forward into our callings, contributing to the legacy that preceded us, that we were born into this lifetime to continue on behalf of the collective, not just for our own egoic desires. The course of the show follows this arc: --> The Enneagram as a Way Home --> Liberation as Purpose --> Al-Warith, "The Inheritor" --> Soul Lineage --> Egyptian Rebirth Join Milton and me in person for a retreat in May through the B.I.G. Water Retreat: https://bigenneagramretreat.com/ [https://bigenneagramretreat.com/] Work with Milton https://kaizencareers.com/ [https://kaizencareers.com/] Follow Milton on Substack: https://substack.com/@miltoncstewart [https://substack.com/@miltoncstewart] Get great tunes by Ian Crawford who designed and recorded the music for this show: https://iancrawford.bandcamp.com/ [https://iancrawford.bandcamp.com/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wakingupforwork.substack.com [https://wakingupforwork.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Resting in Love is Contagious: Really Good News with Phil Gebbengreen

What does it mean to actually allow love — not just believe in it, but allow myself to receive it? In this conversation, I sit down with Phil Gebbengreen, pastor at Edgcumbe Presbyterian Church in St. Paul and staff with the Enneagram Prison Project, to talk about worthiness, judgment, the prison of our own making, and how resting in love is actually quite contagious. Find more at Waking Up for Work on Substack — no subscription needed, and if you do subscribe, it's all free. I post minimally and try to respect your inbox. Timestamps are not exact, but these'll get ya in the realm of: 08:00 Trusting me — a taboo act 12:00 What if God actually likes you? 16:00 Prison and the pew 24:00 The hardest thing to celebrate: yourself 29:00 Being and doing aren't in a duel 34:00 The tree of judgment 42:00 Strength without vulnerability is just scary 56:00 Timshel: thou mayest 1:10:00 What Lent is actually about 1:13:00 Coming out as a person of love 1:18:00 The angry man question 1:22:00 A less frightening reality Check out church: https://epchurch.org/ [https://epchurch.org/] Get unstuck: https://chelseawitbrook.com/ [https://chelseawitbrook.com/] Get great tunes: https://iancrawford.bandcamp.com/ [https://iancrawford.bandcamp.com/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wakingupforwork.substack.com [https://wakingupforwork.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]