Returning Home to Love: A Conversation with Felicia Murrell

Author and spiritual director Felicia Murrell joins Dr. Habīb for a luminous conversation about awakening to Divine Love, releasing inherited images of an angry God, and rediscovering the boundless compassion at the heart of all being. Together, they explore the practice of stillness, the wisdom of the body, and the invitation to return home—to Love itself. Drawing from Felicia’s book AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World, this episode invites you to soften into receptivity, listen to your soul’s remembering, and live from the truth of your sacred goodness. 

Transcript

Beyond Names: Spirituality for Anyone and Everyone

YouTube Channel: Beyond Names with Dr. Habib Boerger

YouTube handle: @BeyondNamesPodcast

Episode: 17

Host: Dr. Habib Boerger

Conversation Partner: Felicia Murrell

Title: Returning Home to Love: A Conversation with Felicia Murrell

Description: Author and spiritual director Felicia Murrell joins Dr. Habīb for a luminous conversation about awakening to Divine Love, releasing inherited images of an angry God, and rediscovering the boundless compassion at the heart of all being. Together, they explore the practice of stillness, the wisdom of the body, and the invitation to return home—to Love itself. Drawing from Felicia’s book AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World, this episode invites you to soften into receptivity, listen to your soul’s remembering, and live from the truth of your sacred goodness.

Transcript:

Dr. Habīb Boerger: This is a space for spiritual seekers and soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition and those who aren’t sure what they believe.
 Whether you call the Divine God, Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Brahman, Great Spirit, Higher Power — or you’re still searching for language that fits — you are welcome here.
 Together, we’ll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our True Selves, to our Source, to the light each of us carry within.
 I’m so glad you’re here.

Let's begin with introduction of our conversation partner for this episode – Felicia Murrell [like pearl].

Felicia is an author, and spiritual director. In fact, Felicia and I are in training together to become Compassion-Based Spiritual Direction Supervisors. Felicia is the author of Truth Encounters. Her most recent book, AND: The Restorative Power of Love In An Either/Or World, was named Englewood Book Review Most Anticipated Books. 

To learn more about Felicia and her work, please visit website, which is www.feliciamurrell.com. 

Felicia, thank you for being here. Welcome!

It's a pleasure to have this time to get to chat with you.

Felicia Murrell: Thank you for having me. It is a real delight to be with you today.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, would you please tell us a bit about your spiritual story as a way of introducing yourself?

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, I can do that. Um, I think it feels almost like a circle. I tell people that, um, I'm a product of the South. And my story begins in the rural south in the 70s. In those days, churches… And in our town, I should say, churches didn't have a preacher every Sunday. Um, and so on the first and third Sunday, I attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, AME, with my father's family, and… On the second and fourth Sunday, I attended United Church of Christ with my mother's side of the family.

So, um, and then around age 12, my mother had what we would call a born-again religious experience, and…left denominational churches and started attending, um, Word of Faith, Charismatic, Pentecostal-type churches.

So, I say that because my beginnings are somewhat of a religious mutt, um…

I've had experiences in a lot of different denominations, but the full circle part of that in the story is that I find myself now very much still with Christianity as my mother tongue, although I consider myself more at home and into spiritual practices and interfaith, um, communities of belonging.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm. Beautiful. I can certainly relate to the spiritual diversity. I don't want to use the word spiritual mutt, because…I think it's okay for you to say, but I'm not sure I can say that. I appreciate that as someone who has....

I was just thinking about this this morning, that, what a unique background of coming from… having a Muslim first name and a Jewish last name, and my birth name day was Todd, like that just captures, to me, small Texas town conservative Christian family that is descended from the son of a German-Jewish man and his mistress, who eventually converted to Islam after studying Sufism, after Islamic mysticism for years, so I can definitely relate to that diversity.

Felicia Murrell: I appreciate the fluidity of hybrid, you know, that hybrid kind of spirituality, so… you get to learn a lot and see where there are parallels and the different, religious traditions and the different wisdom traditions, so…

Someone once said they were all fingers pointing to the moon, right?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And landing….

I love that. Could you say that one more time?

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, someone once said that, um, they were all fingers pointing to the moon.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes, yeah, yeah, that's… that's one of the things that I love in my study of mysticism, is how. The outer differences fall away. And there's this element of… inner differences as being the same, as being one. And, I have to say that that idea is something that I've carried and has been a pivotal part of my own spiritual journey.

When I was, in a point in -- you know, we all have different moments in our lives of spiritual awakening, and for me. So, I guess some of us are more easily awoke. And some of us have to be hit pretty hard. So for me, after the death of all of the immediate members of my family, what the Divine placed in front of me was Sufism. And what opened the door for me was hearing this Sufi sheikh say, if a person who is Christian or Jewish or Muslim knows their religion well, they know that there's only one religion, and that's the religion of love, peace, and mercy. So this teaching that there's only one religion, and that is the religion of love and peace and mercy and justice and freedom for all, without separation, that really hit my heart in a way that just landed more fully than what I experienced previously. 

And so, when I looked at the description of your book, AND: The Restorative Power of Love, and I'm just going to read this. So, AND: The Restorative Power of Love In An Either/Or World is an invitation to move beyond binaries, beyond hierarchy and comparison to embrace the concept of “AND,” with an inclusion and generativity that allow for more than one perspective and/or way of being.

This book is for those who want to think more deeply, those who are asking questions of how, what, and perhaps even why, and those who want to engage in deep listening and empathy.

And so, when I read that, it actually evoked that sort of… what I call pivotal awakening moment for me, how many, 20-plus years ago when I first had that moment that, for me opened the door to an experience of unitive love.

Felicia Murrell: I love that so much. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, with that in mind… I can't wait to hear about your book. So, what would you like to share?

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, I have some passages marked, and I just want to say, in talking about spiritual awakening, too, as you shared that, and it'll lead me into a passage in the book.

And I think for me, you know, I remember a time of just going to church, doing the whole thing, and feeling like there's got to be more, there's got to be more. And I was going to church, but I…I was still frustrated, I was still angry, I was still… all the things. I didn't feel…like, I was, um… 

There's a scripture in the Christian tradition that says you will know them by their love.

And I didn't feel like I was exhibiting that love, but I didn't know how to get there.

And so one of the awakenings that happened to me, and I will read that as a portion of that piece, um, page, um…189.

And it says…

If what we believe to be true about God frames every part of our existence, whose inherited ideas have shaped the foundation of our God concept? What preconceived notions or habits of thought might we be projecting onto God? Are those preconceptions our own? How did we arrive at those conclusions? If what we believe about God frames our lived experience and how we relate to and interact with the world around us, how are we discovering or rediscovering divine love for ourselves? How might divine love be inviting us to reorient our mind to the Holy Three's goodness and kind intentions toward us?

For the greater part of my life, I lived with a superficial, shallow God Who was angry, distant, and always waited until late in the midnight hour to turn things around. Or didn't. Using bad events to teach me a lesson. I remade God into an undependable, unfeeling, callous, Zeus-like, image. More devil than deity. Just white and big instead of red with a tail and pitchfork.

Vision clouded, disappointments kept me from knowing divine love, and seeing love as love truly is. One day, I met a couple who described God as a Father who loves me, a mother who comforts and welcomes me, and prepares a seed for me at her beautiful table. They described a God who was running toward me and not from me. A God who wasn't withholding good from me because I forgot to pay my tithes. A God who included and affirmed all, Whose banner over all is love.

The core of my being leaped, inviting me to challenge all that I once believed to be true about God. Could I have imagined an illusion -- an image of God that wasn't exactly there? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Had I conjured a false, graven image of God?

Indeed, I have. But thankfully, I'm seeing a bit clearer now.

That was my spiritual awakening that led me into what Father Thomas Keating calls, um…receptivity over effort, especially in prayer.

And it led me to just…learning to be with the divine, and to receive…the love of the divine into every part of me, and to let that transform me.

And then to live from inside out, to live that love, and to be…that love in the world.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I want to write down everything you say, but I'm probably not going to… probably not going to capture everything.

I just want to sort of reflect the beauty of what you're saying, and just how deeply it resonates with me.

And when you're…. I've been working on a manuscript that is all but finished that is so resonant with what you're sharing from your own book.

And one of the things that I start the manuscript with is a quote from -- Gosh, I'm not going to remember the name of the book now, I think it's from… How God Changes Your Brain by Andrew Newberg and Mark [Robert] Waldman, and… I don't… anyway, the idea is that these neuroscientists, who are not of themselves religious people or inherently spiritual, they say that at the onset, but they've done all this research, and they found how much spirituality and spiritual practices has a positive effect on the brain.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And positive effect on mental health and physical health. And one of the things that they noted was that in the States, we Americans tend to think of God as that white guy in the sky who's angry, who's judgmental, who is distant. Whereas if you look globally, and you… and you look at religion and spirituality as a whole, the greater [more widely held] perception of God is of a unitive God.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: As God as loving. As God that is both...

Felicia Murrell: That's right.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Imminent and the transcendent. As a God that's both available for intimacy.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And in the utmost politeness, waiting with you. Nearer to you than your own jugular vein, but waiting so politely for you and your own receptivity.

So, when you talked about that Thomas Keating quote, I thought, oh, of course this resonates....

When I teach spiritual formation classes, I very often say that the… the path of spiritual development or personal transformation, personal growth.

Felicia Murrell: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...is remembering, reading,

Felicia Murrell: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...reflecting, receiving, returning.

Remembering the truth of who we are. Remembering the truth of the divine. Reading the signs of the divine in the world. Reflecting, we need time in contemplation. Receiving the light, there's so much… so much of our spiritual walking and our personal growth has to do with the degree of our receptivity to receive divine love and light. And through all of that, returning. Returning to our true selves and returning to the divine again and again and again until we are truly home.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So I feel so, so resonant with that. 

Felicia Murrell: I say the same.

Dr. Habīb Boerger:  I will say…

I'm sorry?

Felicia Murrell: No, I was just going to add that I… I say the same when I… when people ask me about spirituality and…what it means to me, I say, spirituality is an invitation into a way of love that is so wholly relational and free, um, is coming home to the truth of your being that if we get quiet enough and still enough, we can listen to our souls remembering. And then once we've glimpsed our sacred core, and we understand the truth of our own goodness, we can live from that interior freedom.

Um, and so it's… I'm filling the resonance.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Preach.

Felicia Murrell: I'm feeling the resonance in that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Can you say it again?

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, yeah. That spirituality is an invitation into a way of love that is so wholly relational and free it’s coming home to the truth of your being, and it's getting quiet and still enough to listen to your souls remembering, right?

And then once we've glimpsed our sacred core, and we understand the truth of our goodness that we can live from that interior freedom. 

That's spirituality. It's just coming home to ourselves, and our soul remembering that…

Putting it, all the pieces back together again. And that… and then living from the truth of that interior freedom, which, there's no way that we live from that truth without reconnecting to the divine, reconnecting to one another, right? Like, what comes out of that is a sense of our interconnectedness across sciences, across spirituality, across… you know, it just… all of a sudden, you realize that you are not a silo, you are part of a web.

Um, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: There's so many things that I could pick up on… pick up on that. One of the things that I want to emphasize is you're talking about that interior movement, that interior awakening, or that interior awareness of, or remembering of the soul, I believe you said.

Yeah. And so, I just have to point out that that's really not easy for some folks. I mean, we live in a world that is all about distraction and is all about grabbing your energy, grabbing your attention, which is about keeping you up and out.

And not encouraging that inner movement and that cultivation of the inner life.

And so it becomes incumbent upon us, if we do want to return to our true selves, and we do want to be in touch with who we are in our essence, that we do engage in stillness.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that at some point, um, we have to engage in some silence, solitude, and stillness, or a stillness, whatever that looks like.

I think, though, what happens is a lot of people have an image when we say engage in solitude or engage in stillness that that means, oh, go get the mat and sit down for 20 minutes, or sit down for an hour a day, or, you know, um…go do yoga. And it could be those things. Um, for me, actually, it is some of those things, but also, I think, what I tell people is --Find the place of wonder.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm…

Felicia Murrell: Where is it that your walls come all the way down, right? I mean, if you think about it, think about when you see a sunset, or you see a gorgeous tree, or a flower, or you engage a baby, or maybe you love music and you're lost, in…a jazz set, or a classical music. But all of a sudden, everything inside of your head quiets. Right? Like, all the noise goes away, and you are just…so alive and present in that moment.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Felicia Murrell: And when the walls come down, that's the place of receptivity. 

I have a friend, for him, he runs several miles a day, but then every Friday he takes a 15-mile run.

And that's his place of stillness. He's not on his phone, he's not…

All the walls just come down, and the world is silent. And in that silent is him and the Divine. That's the place where he communes with love.

And, you know, sometimes I can get up and I'm going, going, going, and I'll lay down in bed and realize, like, oh…let me just take a moment right here to drop down into the deepest part of myself, take a breath, envision, you know, divine love loving me, and just be in that… in that place in my mind. I call it my secret place where I'm just receiving love into me. And so, yes, it can be long periods and consistent periods, but it can also be, can I pause and take three really deep breaths with all of me open to receive love in this moment.

Can I begin my day turning my attention toward love?

Um, you know, I begin my day just in my mind, like -- All that is eternal within me greets the wonder of this day. Love flow to me. Love flow through me. 

And so I'm setting my intention to live and move and have my being in love.

So, I think, yes, we want to get still enough to hear the song of our heart, to remember what it is that love sings over us.

And also, in working with the world, what's some baby steps that you can move into practices of stillness and silence and solitude? They count as well.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Of course, yes. 

Felicia Murrell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And you're right, sometimes it is just a moment. It's a ...it's a pause for a deep breath.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And setting the intention to drop in. 

I will say, sort of circling back to the idea of misconceptions about God that came up in the passage that you read, that in my own experience -- when I first embarked on spirituality, or my spiritual journey consciously, I had so much baggage from my experience of church as a child. And I really couldn't separate my trauma in the church experience, from my trauma in my family, you know, that was very much intertwined, because we were in church 5 days a week, you know, and my father was very active in the church, and my mother worked in the church, at the church, and… and so I was unable to separate any of that, and so when I first consciously said, okay, I'm going to start exploring spirituality, if you just even said the word God to me, I was like -- aagghh.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so I had to develop the capacity. And it's… I bring that up because I… I just think that that's a common experience, whether it's the synagogue, the mosque, or the church, or the temple or, or, or, or and, and, and. There's a lot of folks that have to move through misconceptions around the divine. And it was so… it, for me, when I encountered Sufism, which is Islamic mysticism for any of the listeners who haven't caught that at this point, that… the conception of God was so different. 

And I don't… and you may know this, so please forgive me if I'm saying things that you already are very well aware of, but the Quran begins with the words, In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And those words are repeated in every chapter, save one. That's the beginning of every chapter.

And then there are verses that… say the word Rahman, which is the word for mercy, and… is associated with mercy and compassion and love -- that this is an equivalent word, the equivalent name, divine name as the divine name God in Arabic being a Allah, in Aramaic, Elaha or Alaha.... I bring Aramaic up because of Jesus speaking Aramaic -- most religious scholars agree to this.

So, it's saying this is an equivalent name. So… the unifying name of God. An equivalent name to the unifying name of God is… the most merciful, the most compassionate.

And the roots to that word, and this is true in other, of, I would say, sacred languages, the roots are the same for the word Lord, and the word for merciful, they share roots for the word for womb.

So, the Islamic concept of God, is a God that is so loving that all of creation is an expression of love in that all of creation is connected as in an electric circuitry of love, metaphorically speaking, but also, on some level...

Felicia Murrell: Energetically speaking, cosmologically speaking, yes, yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: realistically speaking. 

Felicia Murrell: Yes, yes.

I'm with you, yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that everything… even those things that we don't understand, are encompassed by this womb-like, mothering, inherently… inherently built into the system, Love.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And one of the practices that I had to do that I did when I was working on this, on my own misconception… childhood misconceptions about God, was I recited that phrase. Of course, as a Sufi, I recited it in Arabic, so I was reciting Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.

But I just recited that phrase over and over, visualizing light from the heavens coming down and washing.

And… And I… and it changed my heart.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It changed my relationship, my perception of the divine, my relationships with the divine. I experienced… it truly felt like being washed.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah. Absolutely.

Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...as if the angels were present with me. And washing away those childhood misconceptions.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so now, there's a part of me that even just saying the words, Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate, it touches a place...

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...where I remember that experience of feeling so washed, and feeling so loved in a gentle, soft, merciful way.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And if we… if we all collectively knew our religions well, we would know that love.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah. Yeah, and not the fear that someone else handed us inside of our religions.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And we would…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. Which is, you know, one of the things that I've realized was that I had been conditioned to see the divine a certain way.

And so, um, I remember decades ago now, but being on a walk and having the sense of spirit inviting me to give back to God everything that I had believed to be true about God.

And that the Divine would sift it.

And give back to me what was truth, big T Truth..

And I said yes to that.

Just like the… that couple teaching me about…Um, you know, God as a loving father, God as a loving mother, that was a gateway, a portal, an entry into knowing the divine in a way that I had not experienced growing up. And it was the beginning. And then when I got this invitation some more years later, to essentially hand…you know, the divine, everything I had ever believed to be true. Essentially, what the Divine was saying was, Let me cleanse all of those thoughts that you have, all of those ways that you've been conditioned.

Your eye is muddy, if you will.

And you're seeing through criticism, you're seeing through judgment, you're seeing through…harsh, um, harsh language. You're seeing through fear. And all of that muddies how you think about God, how you think about yourself, how you think about the world.

And in the Christian scriptures, there's a verse in the Gospels that says, when the eye is clear, the whole body is full of light. And so that invitation to allow the divine to shift how I was seeing things, what I believed. When I said yes to that, you know, I thought it was a one-time thing.

But it turned into this expansive way of being, um, and from that, I…I learned that love is the ultimate message of the universe.

Love is the wholeness of everything.

It's the solid foundation within and beneath us.

It's… love is boundless and unrestrained.

It's the sustaining and creative energy of the cosmos.

And love heals. And if we learn to live and move and have our being in love, then we join in and are infused with that same healing wholeness that essentially created the world.

And love is free, and it's unafraid, and…it really is the ground of all being.

And if we are to…tap into that goodness, that all-encompassing care and merciful compassion that sustains and upholds all things...we learn to live from the energies of that, from the sustaining force of that.

And we learn to participate in our world, not from reaction, not from fear, but from response. And so I'm always listening, like, it doesn't matter what you call yourself, or how you identify, or what label, are your words soaked in love?

Is it coming from the sound of love? Can I hear the resonance and the heartbeat of love in that?

When I read Sufi passages, it's all there. I just… I mean, I feel such a deep resonance, right? And… and so…I'm… I'm listening, like, I think often in, um…Hebrew scriptures, there's a story of one of the prophets going out, and he's supposed to be looking for God, and there's, like, an earthquake, and there's this loud noise, and there's all these things.

And it says in one translation that he heard God in the sound of sheer silence.

What is that invitation? If we quiet ourselves down enough. If we steal all the things someone else told us enough. And pause. The silence will speak to us.

And up from that comes the energy of love, because it is the song that holds…all things together, all things together. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Beautiful. Yeah. And thank you for, sharing this description of love as boundless.

Because that…

Felicia Murrell: That womb, and it made me think about, like, I mean, love is the womb that we all were birthed from, right? We come from that. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah. So you've already, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you've given us little tidbits of… of, um…tips, like – pause, breathe, stillness, go inside, allow that, allow yourself to feel love in order to be filled up by the energy of love, and to… and to live… to embody that love.

So, do you have any… any prac… any more prac… any more practical suggestions...

Felicia Murrell: I love that!

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...for… for those of us who sometimes are challenged in, uh, and what was that you said? You will know them by their love. Some of us who are not… always, um, evidencing that you’ll know us by our love.

Felicia Murrell: I get the how question a lot. People are like, oh, that sounds so great up there, Felicia, but how? How do you live that? What do you do? What are your practices?

Um, and I… you know, I think…For me, one of my… one of my main practices, I… I do meditation. Um, I also do yoga. I really believe in returning to the body.

Um, and so I think, particularly in Christianity, which is, you know, my tradition, we have been cut off from our body. We were told that all flesh is bad, and um, you know, the heart is a heart of stone, and blah blah blah, and so we disconnect from our body.

And we hand out power and our agency outside of ourselves. And so, in that, the body holds every memory that we've ever had.

And we, with ourselves, will be the longest relationship that we will ever have.

Um, and…So I think one of the invitations of love is to return home to yourself, to return home to the wisdom of your body. So there is a spiritual practice called bio-spiritual focusing, which is to invite you to, essentially, through consent, listen to the deeper parts of the wisdom of your own self, um, to be present to what needs to be tended, nurtured, or cared for.

And to be with it in a very compassionate way, without critique, without judgment.

But just to be with it. Not to fix it or change it, which is so much of what we are taught, is that, oh, we need to come in and rescue this, or save it, or make it better.

But just learning to listen within.

Um, which actually couples very nicely with something that we are learning in our compassion-based spiritual direction, and that's the practice of compassionate listening, or Pulse, where we're learning to Pay attention and Understand empathically. Um, to Listen to the sacred, Uh, and to Sense that and Embody it. 

So those are kind of my practices that I do, I end every day dropping down, um, into my body, and just asking myself, Is there something that I need to listen to today?

You know, what's going on? Is there a pain that I'm feeling in my body that I need to just sit and acknowledge, Um, and be with? Is there something here?

So there's a… so I share that because in learning to be with my own body, without harsh judgment or critique, in learning to listen to myself well, and tend and nurture the places that were flaring up and asking for attention, it's also helped me learn to be with others in that way.

Um, but I can't give away compassion if I don't practice compassion, right?

Um, so I think the practice of being with myself, of being able to sit in that place, you talked about visualizing light and how it felt like you were being washed.

Um, that is a big practice for me.

If you can imagine what is the safest place for you. Can you imagine you and the Divine together in that place? Can you imagine yourself being held and being cared for?

Can you allow yourself to be without wanting to run away without feeling like you're a disappointment?

What is it to sit and look at yourself in the mirror, or to sit in the quiet place with the divine, and not feel judged and not want to judge. Right? 

Um, so I think those are some practices that are entry points and points to maintain a relationship with divine love.

Hopefully that helps.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you. And to remember that as the divine love is boundless, there's always more to receive. There's… there's always more love.

Felicia Murrell: There's always more to receive. I think when we understand that love is boundless, and that it's infinite, I often think of, like, a water wheel, and the practice of kenosis, of emptying and refilling, you know, it's emptying.

But we can empty, empty, and we run out. Love never runs out, because it's boundless. It's infinite. It is the source.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

And it will always generate loving energy and care in the world, and toward us, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I love that image of the water wheel, because… in… in meeting people where they are, whether they're spiritual but not religious, or deeply devoted to a tradition, I love that image because it's… an image that crosses traditions and no traditions. So, a person who's spiritual but not religious can use the image of emptying and filling. Or emptying and awakening, or, you know, emptying and being renewed and sustained and filled. 

That image works for someone who's not religious, as well as someone who is consciously participating in growing intimate connection with the divine as they relate to the sacred and define that for themselves. So, thank you for that.

So, I appreciate so much your time. I am grateful to be sharing the journey with you. Any last-minute words of wisdom, any insights or takeaways that you want to impart?

Felicia Murrell: Hmmm. That's really good. I… I think if I had last-minute words of wisdom, I would just encourage people, again, often in sitting with people in direction, what I notice is so much of what we've done is hand power and validation outside of ourselves. It's like we're chasing the carrot on the stick.

And… and so my wisdom would be to return home… home to the deepest parts of yourself, home to Love, and to remember that our work is to love, to surrender, to trust, to be -- that ours is the work of participation.

And as we do that in the circle of life, and…um, participate with love that water wheel does just keep on turning.

So, return home. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Beautiful. And I notice that you have your book in your hand, so would you hold it up? 

Felicia Murell: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Beautiful, thank you.

Felicia Murrell: Yeah, thank you for allowing me to share a passage from AND today, and to share my thoughts on…on love and stillness, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Absolutely. Thanks again for being here. Thank you for the great conversation.

Thank you to all listeners for joining us on Beyond Names. Before we go, briefly, if you would please just take one breath to pause and reflect for a moment on anything that stays with you from this conversation.

You will know them by their love. 

Can't help but come back to that.

May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light and love in your own heart.

May you grow in compassion, in clarity, in courage. 

May you find your way again and again, back home to yourself, back home to the divine, however you name it, back home to the love and the light in your own heart and soul.

If today's conversation spoke to you, please like, share, and comment on this episode, and please follow Beyond Names.

To make an appointment with me, please visit https://www.habibboerger.com/. 

Until next time, may you be light, may you consciously participate in growing your light, and may you share your light.

Peace be with you.