Episode 18: Embracing Diversity in Beliefs: Navigating the Intersection of Religion and Spirituality

Welcome to the Aphantasia Experiments podcast. In this episode, titled "Embracing Diversity in Beliefs: Navigating the Intersection of Religion and Spirituality," join our host as they navigate the complex landscape of belief systems and dive into their own personal journey. From questioning religious beliefs to exploring different spiritual practices, our host seeks to understand the significance of these aspects in their own life and in the world at large.

In this thought-provoking episode, our host reflects on their childhood experiences and the disconnect they felt within their family. As they open up about their spiritual side to their husband and begin to embark on a new path, they contemplate the influence of celestial events like Mercury retrograde and strange happenings that often occur during this cosmic phenomenon.

Our host delves into their own upbringing in a household where religion played a nominal role, but a fascinating encounter with the Holy Rosary sparks their curiosity about the hypnotic trance and tapping into a higher source. They ponder the existence of a cosmic energy, viewing it as a plasma source akin to the Big Bang Theory, and strive to find their place within the metaphysical "video game" of life.

Throughout the episode, our host reflects on the importance of respecting and recognizing all belief systems, sharing personal stories of encounters with concepts such as prophecies and religious figures, like Mother Mary appearing in various forms. They question why dreams and prophecies are often dismissed in society while acknowledging that spirituality, whether true or not, can still have a positive impact on the lives of others.

With kindness, understanding, and love as their guiding principles, our host strives to be authentic in their communication and seeks to understand why diversity in religious beliefs and viewpoints should be embraced and respected rather than judged. Exploring the connection between near-death experiences and religious epiphanies, they reflect on the interconnectedness of all beings and the potential guidance from the universe to have faith in something beyond ourselves.

Join us in this enlightening episode of Psychic School as we embark on a journey of self-discovery, explore the intersection of religion and spirituality, and delve into the depths of the human soul. Tune in to unlock the secrets of the universe and expand your understanding of the metaphysical realm.

Transcript:
Speaker A [00:00:01]: Hello and welcome to another episode of Aphantasia Experiments as well as the Psychic School podcast. I am so excited to have you here. I not I'm not sure if I'm going to talk too much about Aphantasia today, but I have this feeling that I'm supposed to just keep podcasting on both platforms because they reach different people and honestly, you never know what you're supposed to hear. And I found so many messages through random podcasts. So like maybe I'm just supposed to put this out there and just keep doing it. So I'm going to do that today I wanted to talk about and by the way, I'm walking my dog in the rain currently. This is like it's so funny. I feel so compelled to podcast that I'm finding these ridiculous ways like driving in my car and walking my dog. Speaker A [00:01:00]: So if you're thinking about, hey, I have something to say and I don't know when to say it, go for a walk, record a voice memo, maybe it'll become a podcast, who knows? I mentioned that because I was watching. So last night I was up at 02:00 in the morning and I know from going on TikTok this morning that Mercury is in retrograde, I think starting today. And so shit's going crazy, but in a more positive way than ones in the past. I've had a lot of crazy stuff happen to me during Mercury retrograde, like changing jobs, death of loved ones, I don't know, it's just always kind of a weird time and I never really got too much into astrology and then that stuff happened and there's definitely more to the sky than we know. I'll just leave it there and I will talk about that more one another podcast episode because I'm not in it enough to speak on it yet. But today I want to talk a bit about religion and spirituality and the difference and the similarities and I guess the importance in recognizing both of them and respecting all belief systems. So a little backstory on me. I grew up in a house that was not I think we were baptized Protestant, so we were baptized, but we never went to church. Speaker A [00:02:39]: Anytime I went to church, I felt pretty uncomfortable besides the chairs. I just like not knowing what to do. I'd always try to do the hand stuff with my chest and I never knew what I was doing. And I always just felt literally until recently, my husband said, why do you even try? Why it's not your religion. Like you don't have to nobody's watching you. He's watching. But I don't know, I've always felt just out of place, I guess, in church. But I always respected it. Speaker A [00:03:17]: But my sister is very anti religion. She's an atheism and more like on the sciency side of things. Like she loves Star Trek and Sci-Fi and that kind of thing. But religion no bueno. And she gets like angry about it and she'll say things that are kind of offensive in front of people that are religion, like, religion religious. She's on her own journey, and that's wonderful. Sorry. My God, this is, like the most ridiculous podcast, okay? Because I got to try to put my phone in my pocket. Speaker A [00:04:05]: There's an airplane above me. It's raining outside. I am in a big field just describing what I see because I have to pick up my dog shit right now. That is why I'm stopping. And I can't talk about anything else while I'm focused on something else. You're going to have to deal with this shit, okay? And in case anyone signs an airplane, there it is. Coming through. The airplane is up there. Speaker A [00:04:43]: Okay, so back to my family. I grew up kind of like a black sheep in my family, and not in a negative way. My family was very kind to me. I mean, for the most part, like, all brothers and sisters fight and whatnot. But our household was fairly peaceful and not traumatic in any sense that I can remember. And yeah, everything was fine in my house other than I just felt out of place. I always felt just a little out of place. And it was mostly, I think, because my brother and sister were so bonded together, and I felt just a disconnect. Speaker A [00:05:23]: And I know more about that now as an adult. But as a kid, it was very lonely. And so I sought relationships in other places. So I had really good friendships growing up, but I also felt connected to the other side. I never saw dead people. Wasn't like that, but I had this sense, and I questioned things at a really young age. And sorry, I'm losing my train of thought because my dog's pulling me to the silver maple rock, in case you're like, hey, I asked for a maple or or the color silver as my sign. Well, there it is. Speaker A [00:06:05]: My dog just took me to it. So my sister and brother were very connected, and I felt kind of, like, out on the outside. And I think that's just, like, how my story was supposed to go. So I'm okay with that. But I remember as a kid. So here's an example, okay? It's, like, really raining now, and I'm in the forest, so I'm going to just stay in the forest. So you're going to hear probably little droplets because I'm being protected by the trees because I don't want to go out of the forest and get all wet. So gosh. Speaker A [00:06:42]: I hope it doesn't thunder. And if it does, you will get my last podcast recording if I get stuck under a tree. Oh, I shouldn't say those things. Okay. Um, and now she's pulling me in another direction. So not earliest, but one of my earliest memories, like, spiritually that I remember. And it all came back because my daughter went fishing this weekend and lost a fish and she had a funeral for a fish. She played with the fish for a while. Speaker A [00:07:22]: After a while, I'm like, dude, you got to stop paying with this dead fish. It's kind of getting creeper at this point. But she just loved it. She thought it was like I don't know, but it was kind of getting creepy. She's five. So I was like, you need to respect the fish and let its body go. His soul is gone already. And so she decided she wanted to have, like, a celebration for this fish. Speaker A [00:07:46]: So we did a whole funeral for the fish. And I know in her head she's questioning things right now. She's questioning, where did that fish's soul go? And that's what happened to me very young. Started questioning things. And I had this, like, whoa. Oh, my God. There's this giant snake dead. Oh, you know what it is? Oh, my gosh. Speaker A [00:08:17]: It's a snake skin that's been, like, removed. Well, that's wild. Okay. Sorry. This podcast is going to be so ridiculous. Oh, my God. I was like, it's a good idea to go for a walk and do a podcast. Sure. Speaker A [00:08:34]: So your sign this week is Snake Boom. You got, um and if you don't know about signs, go read Signs by Laura Lynn Jackson. It's such a good book. I've read it so many times, and I feel like it just is such an uplifting book. And again, it's like stories. I think I mentioned this before. Maybe I'll get into it, but stories are just like a way we learn, like, religion. Okay. Speaker A [00:09:07]: So as a kid going back, I remember my Internet block going back, we had pets growing up. We never had a dog. I always wanted a dog. Never had a dog. We had goldfish, we had hamsters, we had birds. I think only one bird, Lucky, and we had a rabbit, Thunder. And I remember each time the animals would die because they don't have a long shelf life, I would question things, and I would think about where they went and whatever. And I remember I think it was when my bird died. Speaker A [00:09:43]: I don't remember the animal that much, but I do remember the feeling. And listening to my brother and sister downstairs. No, was it was Thunder the rabbit. I do remember listening to my brother and sister downstairs listening to Dave Clark Five sat all over or glad all over or something. They were dancing around. I could hear them stomping, clapping. I was like, hurt that they didn't think about thunder and weren't feeling that loss the way I was and wondering and questioning things the same way I was. They were just, like, over it and whatever. Speaker A [00:10:25]: And I think that maybe because I questioning so many things when I was little, I don't know, it's made me really able to connect. Or maybe I've always been connected. I don't know how to explain it, but watching my daughter have this experience with this fish and the things she said to me in private about death and stuff, I don't know. It made me remember a lot of things from my childhood and my feelings surrounding a lot of things and how I felt disconnected from my other family members in the way I felt. And honestly, this feeling of being disconnected from myself and from my family, like, being able to not speak authentically who I am in front of my family, especially my sister, I can't be my authentic self with her, so I can't speak my truth at all. It's made it really difficult to speak my truth with other people. So my husband or I've literally done a loop in this circle in this forest like three times. Like, my husband, I've just recently opened up more to him about my spiritual side. Speaker A [00:11:45]: He knows I have books stacked everywhere about near death experiences and signs and ghosts and telepathic communication and energetic healing and all this stuff. I'm always reading about stuff, but I don't really talk about it because I think it's something he's not interested in. He's a football guy. We're so different, but we come together so nicely. But I just recently started. Honestly, it felt like I was pushed to do this. It doesn't feel like I had a choice, but I think that this is just so obviously the direction my life is headed in the spiritual side of things, that I had to share it with my significant other. Like, I can't keep it in anymore. Speaker A [00:12:32]: And it felt like I was pushed spirituality, like, really pushed hard to do, to talk more openly, freely with my husband. And it's been well received, really well received. He doesn't always have the reaction that I want. Like, OOH. Tell me more. That's exciting. La la la. He's not my girlfriend, but he listens and he doesn't mock me or judge me. Speaker A [00:12:57]: He just listens and doesn't always agree what I have to say. But that's not what life is about. I just want to share the things I'm excited about. Or if I have some dream about a dead person or a dream that I think someone's going to die, I need to share. Please let me share it with my husband who's sitting right next to me. So that's really been great for me, but it's taken a lot of work. Like, I'm in therapy, and I think I mentioned it in a previous episode that I feel like talking for me to my friends, like we do voice notes to each other, has literally changed my life. It's made me be able to process the things that are swirling in my mind. Speaker A [00:13:44]: Being able to speak it out loud helps my thoughts become more concrete, and it makes me know which thoughts are the true thoughts and which thoughts are just meant to float away. I hope that makes sense, but it does completely to me. So I've been working on talking more authentically and stuff. And I literally feel like I've been pushed to start this podcast. Like, I had two separate dreams about them, the importance of them, and where the direction it's going to go and how it's going to get there and all these things. And I feel so last night I was up in the middle of the night and I was watching I don't know what's going on, but I was like, Mercury retrograde shit. I was watching Tyler Henry and he was speaking. I watched an episode of Tyler Henry on Larry King Live. Speaker A [00:14:48]: And man, Larry King Live is kind of a larry King is kind of a dingus to me. And I don't like judging other people. But you know, when someone asks you a question, but then while you're answering, they ask you another question, you can just know that they're not actually listening to your well thought out response. They're just, like, attacking you to prove you wrong. Everyone knows a person like this. I know several. And I've been spiritually attacked like this so many times. Like, ask me a question, I'll tell me my answer. Speaker A [00:15:20]: But you're not really listening. You're just thinking of your defense. You're not absorbing. You're just ready to attack. And then on the other side of it is I'm listening to your side and not thinking of an attack. So when you wait for my attack response, I don't have it because I am processing and absorbing what you've know. Anyways, larry King was kind of a dingus with Tyler Henry. But in this interview this is such a tangent in this interview, rosie really wants to go this way, but it's like, pouring. Speaker A [00:15:59]: In this interview, Tyler Henry was talking about, like someone asked on Twitter or whatever if he ever gets tired of doing it or if it's draining or whatever. And he said that he loves it because he's, like serving his community and serving people with love and whatever. But also, when he doesn't do a reading for a while, stop rain, please, just for a bit. Go to Cuba. We're going to go back in the forest. Still too rainy, but it'll stop. Watch. So in this interview, he's saying that he loves what he does, but he also feels like if he doesn't do a reading for a while, it builds up. Speaker A [00:16:59]: I think he used the term feels like it stacks up. And that's how I feel now about podcasting. I have so many things are coming in literally daily, like life lessons, important things that I feel like I need to talk about. And even when I'm talking, I get so many new things that come in that are like, don't forget to say this. Don't forget to say this. It's wild. It feels like this stacking thing. And it feels very positive. Speaker A [00:17:27]: Like such a good feeling getting it out and releasing it and the feedback I'm getting, it feels really good but it's just funny. Like, I watched that and I was like, I get it. That whole interview. You should watch it, by the way. Larry King live. Tyler henry just YouTube it. It's not very long and it'll be like larry King is like all the scientists who mock spirituality and Tyler Henry is the one who's level headed and just trying to explain how he interprets things currently because he knows that he doesn't know everything. I think it's important that we admit that we don't know everything. Speaker A [00:18:09]: It's impossible to how can you look into the sky and think that you know everything? It's impossible. You can have belief systems and like, an understanding, but the whole purpose of life is to learn and grow and not know everything, but experience life and live and learn through it. Big tangent to say I wasn't raised in a religion household and I've struggled being authentic because of my mostly. And I think that my sister challenges me for a reason. I think that she's there there's a purpose behind it. So I'm not mad about it. She's there to challenge me for a reason because I'm going to be challenged by lots of people in the future. And it starts with someone you're comfortable with, I think so. Speaker A [00:19:04]: I grew up not religion, religious, but knowing there was something more. Like just every time I thought about death, I would think about things just ending and and the soul being gone. Not even like I didn't know what a soul was at the time, right? I would think about where would you go? And I would think about us just like, going to blackness. And I just knew that not to be true. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed absurd to me that flowers grow every year. They die and they grow and grass and trees and the roots and the trees and everything just seems so like, I don't know, magical and works together. And then there's these people that just live and die and then that's it. There's no regrowth, there's nothing. Speaker A [00:19:59]: It's just gone. Kaput doesn't make sense to me, and it never has. And I just feel like when I was a kid, like my brother and sister, I don't know if they questioned those things in the same way that I did, or maybe they questioning them and their result was like that that's all that they could grasp is that nothingness is what we are. I don't know. So there's two different sides of it, right? But my sister was she gets really offended when people talk about religion or whatever. And I think that her knowing that I'm more spiritual and now that I'm speaking more openly about myself, about who I truly am, it's almost like she's sad for me, angry and upset for me that I've been tricked or whatever. And it's not even about that. I think that even if I am tricked and none of this is true. Speaker A [00:21:04]: My whole life principle is built on kindness to other people and trying to understand people and loving people regardless of their flaws. That is like, the main thing, like living and learning through life and being kind to others. And if spirituality is wrong about that, well, heck, I made someone smile in my life and isn't that worth it, even now that I'm just ducked? So I don't think that in any way this is serving in a negative way. There's that so religion. I think this is my like, this is my sorry, I'm trying to adjust my mic because I'm worried that it wasn't recording. That would suck if it's all gobbledygook. Religion, to me, is like these life lessons and life principles that we're supposed to learn through our lifetime, but they're told as stories because we learn through listening to stories. Some people wow, I just picked up my phone. Speaker A [00:22:25]: I'm at 22 minutes, 22 seconds. Sorry. You know when you just don't look at something for a while and you pick it up and it's a number, your number is two, two, two. There it is for you. Religions tell a story, like the Bible, for an example. It's telling these stories and it's supposed to teach us lessons, but no religion is the right religion. But if you've ever really looked at religions and I don't go deep into all the different religions because I think, just like a game of telephone, the stories change over time. And I don't know, you don't always get the same principles and lessons you're supposed to after it's been changed. Speaker A [00:23:18]: And whatnot my belief is that we're all a one consciousness. So there's different people, different types of people in this world, there's different religions to help them learn these lessons because people need storytelling to learn. And if we just lived aimlessly without any religion or purpose, we might not see and learn as much as we do with these guiding principles. So I don't think religion is a bad thing. I think it's meant for good. It's to serve a purpose and to help us learn and grow. And I don't know if any of it's true, but I don't say it's not. It could be true. Speaker A [00:24:07]: I think about, like, Joseph again, I don't know much about religion, but Joseph would see these things in his dreams and he would have these prophecies. Why do we disregard that as not like a sign of people in our day to day life might experience? That the only dreams I've had that are prophecies, am I Joseph? Why do we ignore that? Why do we people who are religious think psychics are crazy or like, evil or whatever when there's signs of it in the Bible? But I don't get that. And I think that when you use religion to judge other people for their behavior, not being to your standard or your religious whatever, I think that's where religious went wrong. Religion has gone wrong. So for me, I'm not religious. I have had experiences where Mother Mary has come up for me, like in various weird ways, and I don't really know what that's about. And I've listened to the Holy Rosary because of that experience. Mother Mary came up in so many different ways in like a week span. Speaker A [00:25:34]: But I started listening to the Holy Rosary and that was one of the things that made me realize that repetition helps with hypnotic trance and accessing source. And it doesn't really matter what you say, you can say anything. But the Holy Rosary did it for me a few times. So for me, people ask, oh, are you religious? Do you believe in God? Well, I believe in something, and I think it's more of like a source, like an energy source, like a source of plasma, something that is like, providing us, like maybe the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang was this source plugging in his video game. And we're in this video game, but there's a bazillion different video games that we don't know about because we're in this video game and we can't access other video games because they're in a case. And this is just like a metaphor, obviously, but when I was at the cottage, my daughter moved to this rock and there was a bunch of bugs underneath it. There was like a bunch of little ants that were, like, carrying these little it looked like larvae almost. Speaker A [00:26:57]: I don't know, maybe they were eggs. I don't know what it was like. Little rice pellets, I don't know. But I was like, oh, let's leave the ants be. Let's put the rock back. They were doing they had a mission and so we put it back. But in my head I was thinking, oh, man, they're living a whole life under that rock. They're living a whole experience underground. Speaker A [00:27:18]: They have no idea about Egypt. They're living in their own world and they have no idea the concept of something more out there. And I think that that goes with Earth. We feel like we're I mean, we know that the universe is massive, but we don't understand how much we don't know because it's know. Imagine explaining to an ant. Oh, man, I feel like Tyler Henry's talked about this on the Larry King thing. Watch it. I feel like this is coming through because of what I watched last night. Speaker A [00:28:00]: But it was just you know when you watch something and you're like, that's exactly what I feel like. That's what it was. Now I'm walking on the street again. It's still raining. I hope you don't sure you heard it more in the forest, actually. So I would love to hear what you think about spirituality versus religion. Oh, the other thing I wanted to say was that so I've studied a lot of near death experiences. I love learning about near death experiences. Speaker A [00:28:32]: I feel like it's such confirmation that there's more to the consciousness that we know. So in a lot of near death experiences, people have religious epiphanies, they have their life review, they meet God or whatever and God will be if they're like atheism, for example. But they grew up with a friend who was Catholic, so they know a lot about Catholicism. They might see God or versus or whatever, but it's like their mind's way or their consciousness's way of processing it's. Like you see what you have learned most about and if you're an atheist and you you don't have anything like I think that's the universe's way of kind of like when you get out of it, you need to like have faith in something. And I don't think it's about God. I don't know. I think that we're all just kind of one. Speaker A [00:29:55]: And the religions, there's different religions for different people for a reason, because we are all put on this Earth even though we're all one. We are all different characters with different minds and different abilities and we're supposed to not be all the same. And that's what makes the world interesting and that's what makes us be able to learn and grow right. If you had the same personality as your partner or your boss or your sister or your mother and all you did was talk about the same interests all the time and did the same thing all the time and were never challenged or exposed to different things, how are you learning and growing in life? So I think that we are faced with these different religions and different viewpoints for a reason and it shouldn't be about proving people wrong. Feel like there's a lot of right in a lot of the things. But the main thing is not judging other people. For me based on I think it's really important that if we're religious or if you have a certain viewpoint, let's take a step back and don't judge someone else for having a different viewpoint. As you literally I randomly opened up a page to my book by Brian Weiss the other day, and it was talking about empathy and how you gain empathy in life from experiencing loss and hardship and whatever. Speaker A [00:31:47]: You learn empathy through experience. And I think as a kid I learned empathy quickly because of all these deep thoughts I had about these creatures that died. And I don't know, I just always felt I always felt like I could feel other people's feelings. I remember a story about this kid on my street who lost half a toe from a license cutting his foot and I couldn't see that visual, but I felt it. I don't think I could see it. And this is one of the things that I'm like, maybe this is what caused my aphantasia because I could see it, I don't know. But I remember I can't get rid of it. There's no ability to turn this off, the feeling of just ickiness. Speaker A [00:32:43]: I honestly don't know where I was going with that. And my walk is, like, over now because I am sopping wet. I walked way longer than I should have because I wanted to get all that out. But if you have any, like if you want to talk more about this, I'm a pretty open book. I know I don't know everything I am learning, and literally every day, I grow and change and expand. I'm not saying that I know everything. I just think that we are all way more connected than we could ever possibly imagine. No. Speaker A [00:33:15]: And I'm just loving learning more about all this stuff. I just love it so much. So if you're interested in this stuff too, feel free to reach out to me. I think the best email address to use I get two, but is Rofocreative@gmail.com. That's ROFO creative@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you, and I hope you continue to listen. Have a great day. Bye.