Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, I'm Josh Galt, host of the new Bad at My Religion podcast. Now, at first glance, you might be thinking bad at my religion sounds a little judgmental, Josh, but it's not. I mean, it is, but it comes from a place of love.
[00:00:16] And before I get into publishing my conversations with fascinating guests, I wanted to take some time to explain my heart and where my head is at with this and why I decided to put some time and energy into it.
[00:00:37] Religion is not a real politically correct topic, especially certain religions. I imagine there's certain religions that if I even mention, I'm liable to get censored. There's others that if I talk about them in a positive light, there may be attempts to label me as some type of person on the fringe. And there's others that absolutely, if I criticize at all, it's not acceptable. You have to accept and be cool with absolutely everything in certain religions. So rather than being based in spirituality, morality, love, it's become a political tool to divide us.
[00:01:23] And I would suggest that it's not that it's become that. I would suggest that's what religion has been since the very inception. And I'm not so much of a historian. This is not going to be a podcast about the history of religions. It's about today. And my premise is people struggle to live with integrity, which means people struggle to live in accordance to what they say that they believe. That is integrity. It's kind of the opposite of hypocrisy. Nobody likes hypocrisy. And yet we have been very conditioned to believe that anyone who is strict in how they live, in terms of ethics, morality, religious beliefs, is some sort of a fundamentalist, which has a negative connotation of being an extremist. Of course, no one wants to be an extremist. Just like until their last couple of years, no one wanted to be labeled a conspiracy theorist. That's becoming a little more in vogue since all of the conspiracy theories of the last 20 years have sort of played out, and people are realizing, oh, there's a lot of truth in this ideas. But I digress. This is not about conspiracy theories. This is not an attack on any religious belief system. This is a heartfelt interest to find synchronicities sitting outside. There's bugs here. To find those natural overlaps between different religious beliefs so that we can, as individuals and as the collective society of planet Earth, understand how much power that we do have as normal people who don't run the show and how much better the world can be if we choose to live with love and in accordance with our values. So that's really the goal where this all came from.
[00:03:30] This is very recently. Well, I'll give a little bit of background on my story, but first, to set the stage of what really set me off and push me over the edge to decide, you know what, I'm going to do this and I'm going to talk to people about this theme. And I want to dig deeper because I see it as something that is maybe not even consciously understood as a problem by most people. So I've been living in Mexico, and in Mexico, it's a very Catholic country by profession. People. People say that they are Catholic.
[00:04:08] The majority of people do. I don't know about majority anymore. A large percentage of the population does go to Mass. They do. I would say a majority of people probably have a crucifix in their home, a painting of Mother Mary, that type of thing. So the symbolism of Catholicism, the rituals of Catholicism are very prevalent in Mexican society. How much people actually go to Mass and pray and whatnot is likely a lesser percentage. But it's a. It's a big part of the country. Right.
[00:04:46] And so people baptize their children.
[00:04:50] Then because their children were baptized, usually around 6, 7, 8 years old, they do their confirmation, which is like them, when you're baptized as a baby, obviously you don't have any conscious awareness of what you're doing. Your parents are baptizing you in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit into the Catholic Church. But then when you're old enough to make that decision for yourself, then they have what's called confirmation. So the kids choose to do that. And there's some, I think, some reading that they have to do, and some they need to have a profession of faith, etc. Then there's first Communion and there's probably some other things, but these are the ones that I'm aware of and I've been involved with.
[00:05:29] And so this year I got married. My wife is very Catholic. I am not just I'll get to my faith framework, my spirituality, but we've agreed to disagree and respect each other on our beliefs. But she is very Catholic. And so we have already been padrinos for a handful of people. And I've started to notice a pattern, but it didn't push me over the edge until it was someone I didn't know. We had to go to a baptism of a baby, which is cool. You go to the Mass and the baby's all dressed up beautifully. And the priest prays for them and blesses them with holy water. And everyone is there, the family and the grandparents. And it's a cool ceremony, right? Regardless of your religious beliefs, it's a pure, beautiful, loving religious ritual. But after the mass, then you have to go to the party.
[00:06:26] And before I get into this, I'm the kind of person that likes to be productive. I love to have fun also. And when I can combine productivity and fun, whether it's a business, creative project or something that I'm working on that I'm passionate about, I can be productive and also have fun at the same time. Or I can just be having fun living my best life with people that I love.
[00:06:50] And I do that all the way. What I really dislike is sitting around doing nothing, being unproductive in every way, and just surface level everything. Conversations and like, small talk that doesn't mean anything with people who are going to forget me and then I'm going to forget when we walk out the door, etc. Just it's a waste of time for me to go and be entertained and eat, drink and be merry. That. That whole idea, unless it's something meaningful or with people that I truly care about or with people that I'm building relationship with, which there has to be some sort of conversation, shared experience, something meaningful in order to accomplish that.
[00:07:34] I'm just not a fan of wasting time. And so with that said, after this baptism, we have to go to a party and I don't know anybody there. I'm. I'm very open and friendly and I talk to people and whatever. But after a couple hours, it just really hit me hard that all the adults are having really shallow conversations getting drunk. The kids are doing a pinata. They're stuffing their faces with processed sugar.
[00:08:05] And the DJ is playing, you know, Bad Bunny and Whis and the Yandell and I mean, I like reggaeton in the club, but it just hit me like, what are we doing?
[00:08:16] Not one person has mentioned that we are here because the parents who are putting on this part just dedicated their child, their child's eternal life to God. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They just baptized their child. They made preparation for their child to have their soul continue in paradise one day.
[00:08:43] And yet all we are doing here is meaningless.
[00:08:48] Getting drunk. The kids are getting sugar highs and we're listening to absolutely the trashiest music that we could be listening to.
[00:08:59] Again, I'm not judging that music. I like it if I'm in the club or if I'm, you know, at a party or something. But this was not that.
[00:09:06] And it just hit me really hard because I'm like, I am wasting my entire day to celebrate a child's baptism into the holy faith. And I have to do it with people getting drunk, kids getting high on sugar, listening to Bad Bunny. Something's wrong with this picture.
[00:09:25] And so I decided from this moment on, if I am ever asked to be a padrino again, and even if I'm not, if I'm at one of these parties, and especially if it's an older kid, I'm not going to confront parents. But if I'm a padrino for a kid, I'm going to ask them before we start partying, why are we here? What did you do today? What does it mean to you? So you did communion or you did your confirmation? What does that mean?
[00:09:54] What is it all about?
[00:09:56] What do you understand about it? How can we help you to know more?
[00:10:02] What can you teach us?
[00:10:04] And I've had a couple opportunities now since that, because it just.
[00:10:09] My poor wife, it lit me up. Like I was like when we left, I'm just like, I am never doing this again. This is so wrong. Like, it doesn't make any freaking sense. It's a waste of my time. I would not have a problem with it if we were there and everyone's having a big conversation about what does it mean to dedicate your child to God? Okay, let's have an in depth conversation. Like, that would be fascinating, right? And you got like 50 people there. We can eat, we can eat, drink, that's fine. But like, let's pass the mic around. Let's have a conversation about what baptism means.
[00:10:45] So I've had a chance now for a couple occasions to do this, and it's been less uncomfortable than I thought it was going to be for everyone.
[00:10:57] Because, you know, I'm doing it in love. I'm not being mean about it, but what I realized is the kids are all about it. They're like, oh, wow, this is new. I've never seen this. So we're going to talk about what I just did. And they are interested because they had to make the choice to do confirmation or to do communion. Right? Obviously, a baby is not consciously aware of getting baptized, but the kids are. And so they can discuss what they learned, why they made the decision decision, what it means to them, etc.
[00:11:29] What I have found, though, is that the adults are the uncomfortable ones. The adults who are in the religion because they were born into the Religion. They grew up in the religion, and they consider themselves Catholic, but they don't really do the thing. A lot of times, that's who gets uncomfortable with this conversation, and they're like, all right, let's. Let's party. Come on, let's have some fun. Like, this is existential to your eternal existence, right?
[00:12:02] I mean, supposedly according to your own belief system. I'm not even Catholic, and I'm pushing to do this. Like, I want to understand and I want the kids to understand.
[00:12:12] And I've had these experiences before. This isn't the first time that I've been around kids who had really religious families or whatever. And I push them to question, why are you doing this? Don't ever do something religious unless you know what you're doing. Don't do anything at all unless you know what you're doing. But especially as pertains to your spirituality, your eternal salvation, your existence as a spiritual being, having a human experience here in this material world.
[00:12:43] Why are you doing it if you have no clue what it means because your parents told you to question a little bit more than that. So all that to say, I just decided, you know what?
[00:12:57] I think I have a mission because I am so passionate about this, and I really think I am positioned because of my life experience in a way that I can bring light to this conversation and do it in a way that is intelligent. Do it in a way that comes from a place of love for my fellow humans, but also a place of being real.
[00:13:26] We're not good at our faith. We're not good at our moral frameworks. Everybody rationalizes. Sometimes even vegans.
[00:13:37] Like, maybe. Maybe Jehovah's Witnesses don't. Maybe the Amish don't. But they do. But they do. I'll get to that. So I won't get to it because I'll forget. So let's just cover it right now. So during the election, the Amish went and voted, right? Good for them. You know, they'd had some issues with the government overreaching. That's redundant government overreach. They had. I think they had ransacked a raw milk farm or something in. So the Amish were a little bit fired up, so they went to vote. Now, Amish are not supposed to use any modern technology. They're not supposed to drive motor vehicles. And I saw an interview where Elon Musk was talking about, well, they. They can't drive, but we arranged bands for them because as long as they're not driving, they're able to ride in the van. And I was like, man, even the Amish rationalize their moral frame framework because, come on, really, you're not supposed to use modern technology, you're not supposed to use motor vehicles, but now you're going to rationally say, well, as long as we're not driving, because you don't want to spend three days to go get to the place in your horse and buggy and vote because it takes you 45 minutes in a van. I mean, I get that.
[00:14:54] I get the desire to have life be softer, easier, more relaxed and efficient.
[00:15:02] But we're not here for vacation.
[00:15:05] And so if God is the center of your universe and you have a moral framework that says, thou shalt not use modern technology, well, gosh darn it, don't use modern technology. Don't rationalize that.
[00:15:20] So I think I'm so passionate about this because of how I grew up.
[00:15:26] I'll tell you a little about my background and why this is something that I am so passionate about, but also why I believe I am positioned very well to have this conversation and to bring insight and to talk to people from all over the world from all different faiths.
[00:15:49] I grew up as the child of missionaries, Christian missionaries, very fundamentalist, Pentecostal, Evangelical Christian missionaries. So I was born in the us Grew up first, most of the first decade of my life in Canada, British Columbia. My parents had a school and mission station for the Native Americans there. Native American Indians up in Canada. And so that was my upbringing. One room schoolhouse with kids of all ages from kindergarten to high school. And then from there spent time in Western Africa, Eastern Europe and orphanages and with gypsies, spent time in Asia, Nepal, all that. Before I graduated high school.
[00:16:39] We went back to the US for my. My formidable years because my dad was very much an athlete and he wanted my brother and I to play American sports and to grow up in that. And I'm glad that I did because I got to grow up at the peak of the American empire in the 1990s as an athlete. And so, you know, watching the dream team in 1992 with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, all those guys just destroying the world. And that I think lit a fire under the rest of the world to compete. And now you look like the last few NBA MVPs have been foreign players, which is incredible.
[00:17:17] The world has changed in 30 years, 32 years as it does.
[00:17:23] But that was how I grew up. And so when we went back to the US it was still a very, very fundamentalist upbringing. I was homeschooled for A couple years during some of those travels when we were going to Africa and stuff.
[00:17:38] But then I went to private school in high school, and I went to university, public university.
[00:17:44] And then since then, pretty much my whole adult life, I've been an expat working remotely since before that was really a thing. And I have had the incredible opportunity to travel the world and be part of many different cults. So I saw a lot of that with my parents.
[00:18:06] I saw showdowns between my mom and dad. You know, my dad was preaching, my mom's playing the piano. They're doing this, you know, Christian worship stuff, and there's a witch doctor that comes and starts having a, you know, ceremony against them and like this back and forth. Like, I saw miracles happen.
[00:18:24] And when you see these things, when you see faith of different faiths all around the world, as a kid from, you know, some of the most frontier places in Ghana, West Africa and in Nepal, in Romania and Hungary, and In the early 90s, it was in a very, very interesting perspective that it gave me on life.
[00:18:53] Then as an adult, got to travel the world as a extreme athlete, running rivers all over the planet. And I've been in more than 70 countries now.
[00:19:05] Something that gives me a very broad perspective on humanity in general.
[00:19:11] But Also during my 20s and 30s, I dated lot of different people from all over the world.
[00:19:19] And so I got to see on the inside how Muslim families are, how Buddhist families are, how Catholic families, Christian families, agnostic families, Hindu families. I get to see a lot of these things up close and personal without a lot of bio bias. So I grew up in all of that. I was even part of starting a church, and I was a worship leader for a couple years when I was in university.
[00:19:51] And then partially because of that, that was sort of the peak for me where I was like, I started to become uncomfortable really, really truly questioning. And I had always questioned and my dad did not approach of questioning, especially questions that didn't have real good, logical answers, like how can a good God create evil?
[00:20:17] And you know, the story of Job.
[00:20:21] But my mom let me question, and she was honest.
[00:20:25] She was, I think, secure enough in her faith that if she didn't know the answer, she would say that she didn't know that. She would pray about it. And she would tell me, like, you should pray about it. You should ask God what the answer is to that question. Because I don't. I don't know. You're right that that is a puzzling sort of riddle. And it seems like a contradiction, but I believe that God is sovereign and the Bible is, you know, the inspired word of God. And so I don't think it's contradiction that was her take, but she would let me question at least others, including many pastors that I butted heads with did not appreciate questioning. And so after college, after being part of a church plan, et cetera, I went totally the other way.
[00:21:11] I discovered Ayn Rand.
[00:21:13] And that was just.
[00:21:15] It was like a drink of fresh water to someone that's just dying in a dry desert.
[00:21:23] Logic and reason and the ability to have morality without needing it to be dictated to you by a deity, that you have to take on faith. But understanding that morality can be framed through that which supports life, that which promotes life, it's very simple, actually.
[00:21:44] And so through that, I ended up going almost all the way to the extreme.
[00:21:50] Ayn Rand.
[00:21:52] While her objectivist philosophy is not necessarily based on atheism as much as it's just based on reason, she was an atheist. And I never was comfortable with that because I think atheism takes as much faith as mysticism, to use her word for religions.
[00:22:14] I think it takes a lot of faith to believe that from nothing came something so incredible as this world that we live in, and potentially the universe, although we may not fully understand it, the multiverse, whatever.
[00:22:30] So I never got to that point. I was more of an agnostic theist, which someone explained to me at one point, because I was having trouble sort of defining what my belief system was. And essentially I was at the place of, I hope that there's a God. I hope that there is a benevolent creator, a deity.
[00:22:50] I hope that they are good, I hope that they are loving.
[00:22:53] I want to believe that, but I don't see it in relation to humanity on Earth today.
[00:23:00] And that was sort of where I was at from there.
[00:23:05] And over the next couple of decades, traveling the world and dating people of all faiths and being really immersed in those worlds and reading a lot. I've always been a voracious reader since I was a very, very little kid. That was one thing that my parents let us do. We weren't allowed to listen to music that had a beat or electric guitars. They were very, very strict on rock music. It's of the devil, but, you know, so we didn't also watch tv, we didn't watch movies. I didn't really have any pop culture growing up, but we were allowed to read, and we had a huge library. My parents had a massive library in their house.
[00:23:45] So I read absolutely everything from old encyclopedias To National Geographics. We were allowed to read Sports Illustrated because we were. When we were older, because we were, you know, athletes, many different books. I read novels, I read science books, I read interesting philosophy books, all kinds of stuff from the time that I was really, really young.
[00:24:07] And I still. I'm a voracious reader still today. So over my whole life I have been seeking knowledge and understanding and I read things that I completely disagree with. I don't want to live in an echo chamber. So I've read Karl Marx.
[00:24:26] I read things that are at odds with each other, sometimes at the same time.
[00:24:32] So I'll be reading two or three books simultaneously, not the exact same moment. But I'm going to fly to Asia, for example. I've got 30 hours on planes. I'm going to do some reading. So I'll download three or four books that I want to read, and some of them will be completely opposite spectrum on certain ideas to get different perspectives, to understand what those people think and believe, and then compare that to my experiences and everything else, you know, the sum culmination of my learning over the course of my life.
[00:25:07] And it raises many more questions. Obviously, the more you learn, the more that you realize you still have to learn and the more that it's fun to do that.
[00:25:18] And so that's led me to this place now in terms of faith. Well, there's one more thing. So over the last decade, I have started to experiment more with plant medicine. So from my time with Ayn Rand and going really far down the objectivist sort of road, I started to come back being, I guess it was being in Buddhist society more than. More than my time in the Muslim society.
[00:25:51] Living in Muslim countries, I didn't really resonate with that personally, but living in Buddhist countries, I definitely resonated with that philosophical viewpoint.
[00:26:06] But I thought it was kind of that they had turned it into a religion when to my understanding of Buddhism, it was never supposed to be anything more than a personal philosophical framework for how to see the world, how to interact with all living things, and your own personal individual quest for becoming more enlightened as a being.
[00:26:31] And now it's a religion with gatekeepers.
[00:26:37] But I did resonate more with that.
[00:26:41] But over the past decade, I've spent. I've been based part of the year in Southeast Asia, part of the year traveling back to Latin America and so sort of being in Buddhist culture and then going to cultures where plant medicine is much more prevalent and common and accepted.
[00:27:01] That has really taken me to a completely different level in Terms of who I am as a person, my own spirituality, my own framework, my own self confidence, my own view of the world, of materialism, of capitalism, of politics, of every ism.
[00:27:21] And so my framework has become much more.
[00:27:26] At this point, I believe that there is a sovereign creator of some sort.
[00:27:32] I think the idea of divine consciousness, of this omnipresent divinity that pervades everything, not just every living thing, but the atoms of absolutely everything, including more dense objects, etc. I think that has some merit. I like the idea of this deity God consciousness continually evolving itself.
[00:28:04] I was having a conversation with somebody recently about.
[00:28:08] I just think it's kind of silly to assume that God is timeless and all powerful, a creator, and yet after, you know, God created the heavens and the earth, God just stopped creating.
[00:28:25] So it connects with like the idea of Christianity and what you teach kids of, like when you die, you go sit on a cloud and play a harp for all of eternity, right?
[00:28:37] And there's a similar sort of idea, whether you're looking at Buddhism or more New age sort of philosophies, spiritualism, like once you open your third eye and then eventually become enlightened, like you're just this floating mist of colors through the multiverse and it's like, whoa. But that doesn't sound any more fun than sitting on a cloud playing a harp for all of eternity.
[00:29:04] If we are made in the image of God, if we are God, God within us, if we are God, consciousness evolving itself through our presence and work as individual beings, figuring this thing out and our purpose. And if that's the reason why we need to find our purpose, to live our purpose, because that is our help for God and for those around us, that's our responsibility, then it doesn't make sense that that will ever end.
[00:29:43] And so it seems to me that God as a creator, and any of you that are creators, yourselves or builders or idea people, you would, you will get this. Because it's like, you never run out of ideas, you never run out of creativity. You may have writer's block or you may be like, oh, I've just done 47 paintings. Like, I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the next one. But you, you never doubt that it will come. You never doubt that there will be more creating available to you, that you're going to do more, you're going to create more, build more, come up with more new ideas, innovate more. That's not something you even think about consciously, I would imagine.
[00:30:22] It's not something I ever think about until I'm like sitting here articulating this because even if my idea fails, you know, the startup fails, or I create something, I write a song and I'm like, yeah, it sucked, there'll be another one. I know that, like innately I know that because it's just, I'm, I'm a creator.
[00:30:43] And so to me it makes zero sense that God as the ultimate creator would create this incredible world, world and worlds probably, and then just stop. That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't seem probable. And so the idea that we are helping this continual eternal evolution of existence is pretty fascinating.
[00:31:13] And also in my view, both from reading and just life experience all over the world, most religions have what really boils down to similar stories in the end, similar principles, similar hero figures, similar God or gods, similar means of control through fear, guilt, shame, the lowest frequencies, right?
[00:31:45] And maybe they've been hijacked for thousands of years, or maybe that was the purpose, that maybe they were created initially as a means of control.
[00:31:55] People just fall for it because fear is easy to slip into and we want to avoid guilt and shame and grief and being despondent and hopeless.
[00:32:07] And religion gives all of those things an answer and it controls through all of those lower frequencies as well.
[00:32:15] I am much more interested in pushing back against the system.
[00:32:23] So you start to, if you're looking at the frequency scale, you start to raise that. You get to anger, then you get to acceptance and then willingness to live and to press through and to accept what this life is, that it's not a vacation, but it is work. It is purpose filled work to maximize ourselves, to be who we're supposed to be and to do what we're supposed to do. And then eventually you get to the higher frequencies. Love and joy and peace and eventually enlightenment. And I have a whole talk on that, which is a separate sort of thing. It doesn't have anything to do with religion. It's more about my background as an extreme athlete on the river and whatnot. But that is something that has given me like a really strong sense of rebellion against the fear mongering, against the centralized top down control of religion. And because I grew up in that, like I said, we were a very, very strict household.
[00:33:39] No pop culture, no tv, no movies, no secular music. Definitely. Like we couldn't even listen to Christian music. It had electric guitars or like really intense drumming.
[00:33:51] Seriously, you know what we had to wear to church was what we couldn't wear to church, stuff like that.
[00:34:02] And so I can empathize with people in different religions who are very strict. And I understand. I can comprehend that people defend that.
[00:34:16] A Muslim woman may defend wearing the hijab as a means of respecting her husband and respecting her God, various other things.
[00:34:27] That doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with them.
[00:34:30] I don't. But I can respect and understand where people are coming from with that. However, I think that if you really boil religion down and if you really start to ask people, okay, so what does. What does it mean? I understand that you're wearing this thing or you're doing this ritual, or you're having to say these prayers or whatever it is, drink this concoction for reasons that you believe have eternal consequences. But also there's a sense of fear and there's a sense of acceptance that you need here in this life as well. And I have seen this in my own life with people where they might not live their religion at all, but there's a fear to reject it. There's a fear to walk away from it. There's a fear to verbalize.
[00:35:34] I do not believe in the tenets of this religion. There's a fear of ostracism from their family, from their friends, of criticism, of being attacked, of being rejected. Right.
[00:35:51] And that's understandable, but it also makes you a hypocrite if you're doing that because you have decided privately that you don't believe in these things, and you've clearly decided that based on your actions and the way that you are living.
[00:36:10] But you're being cowardly and not willing to verbalize that, not willing to risk the response of your parents, even though you may be a grown adult, not willing to be cast out of your social circles or your society.
[00:36:35] Or maybe you fully believe it. Maybe it's not a matter of rejecting it. Maybe you fully believe it, but you live somewhere else that isn't of that religion. Right? I remember Vivek Ramaswamy when he started campaigning, however, many months ago in the US and having conservatives attacking him, you know, at Q and A sessions, because he's not a Christian. How can you understand Judeo Christian values being misconstrued in those terms? But Christian values, which America was built on, when you are a Hindu, like, you can't understand. I remember he was so gracious in his answers, and he said, yeah, I'm a Hindu, but we have similar values at our foundation.
[00:37:30] So we believe in different deities, we believe in some different theology, but at the end of the day, we can live together in harmony.
[00:37:44] Because the foundation, the tenets of our religious beliefs are similar.
[00:37:51] And I think that's a great answer. And I think that is at the heart of why I want to do this podcast, Bad at my Religion. And ask the question why?
[00:38:05] Why do I struggle to live with integrity and authentication?
[00:38:10] Because imagine for him, no one knows that he's a Hindu, right? And maybe because he's so famous, it might be a little more, more difficult. So perhaps we should use a less famous person, just a normal person who comes to the United States where they're children of immigrants, they are Hindu, they are Buddhist, whatever, and they're trying to fit in an American society.
[00:38:31] One can understand why maybe they wouldn't. Or they're Muslim.
[00:38:37] They're Muslim and they're in Kentucky, right? They're. They're gonna struggle to go pray five times a day on Friday when they're in high school.
[00:38:47] That's not gonna go over real well. And yet that's being bad at their religion because they're supposed to do that, right? I might be mistaken. My premises could be completely off, which is why I want, want to talk to people more. Because I've lived in Muslim countries, Buddhist countries, Hindu countries, I've been all over.
[00:39:10] But that doesn't mean that my understanding is complete at all. I want to learn. So there's a joke that, you know, if you want to learn something, just post the wrong information online.
[00:39:23] That's the best way to get feedback and to find out what the real reality is. So I'm going to do that. I'm not afraid to be wrong.
[00:39:30] I don't claim to know everything, but I really feel like because of my background, because of my life experience, because of my own personal journey through religious extremes and to a place where I am now of very confident spirituality, more understanding and continual seeking still of this connection between divine consciousness and our material world and our understanding and our journey through it.
[00:40:07] I really want to have this conversation and I think it's honestly one that the world needs to have. And I, I could be wrong. Maybe there's someone out there that doing this already, but I haven't seen it. I think most of the religious conversations are usually either sort of echo chambers within different religions or more of a socialist utopian perspective of let's just create a one world religion, which I also completely disagree with because that's going to turn into something very, very, very dark and dystopian that nobody wants. You just don't realize that you don't want. So when I see the Pope for example, in conjunction with the globalists and the New World Order, talking about a one world religion, buyer beware.
[00:41:00] That is a very risky proposition.
[00:41:05] But it's a fine line between that and the dangers of that control and totalitarianism on a material and spiritual level. And what I believe is vitally important today, which is that people of all faiths find overlap and find synergy and find our synchronicity as fellow humans to where we can collect, collectively evolve as a planet, as humanity.
[00:41:40] And to me, if a person is willing to have an open conversation with someone of a different faith, that is a massive first step toward peace.
[00:41:55] If a person is willing to look at their own lives, to sit in silence and say, okay, what do I say? I believe. What do I believe? What am I externally saying versus what am I externally doing? What am I doing at home versus what I am saying externally, Right? So character is, what is it? Characters revealed by what I do in secret.
[00:42:24] So if a person's willing to look at that honestly and say, wow, you know what? I am kind of a hypocrite in these four areas, I need to get better at that.
[00:42:35] That's a massive step. Because as one heals themselves and raises their own level, their own frequency, that has a ripple effect out to everyone around you, which then impacts those people as well on their journey.
[00:42:54] And so rather than having world religious leaders get together, this is where the rebel in me says, absolutely not. That is the opposite of what we want.
[00:43:07] Rather than have Muslim leaders and Christian leaders and Catholic leaders and Hindu leaders all get together and say, okay, we're going to form this one world religion of peace and love, which is going to be totalitarianism. I'm telling you, don't fall for that. Rather than that, I think we, the people of planet Earth, need to rebel.
[00:43:31] And by that I mean we need to look at what we believe and realize that there's a lot of commonality across the religious spectrum and that as people, as normal people, because I guarantee you the those top religious leaders are going to be very similar to the top politicians.
[00:43:56] And they have nothing in common with regular everyday people anywhere in the world. They live very different lives. They have a very different underground understanding of this earthly reality than we do because of the absolute privilege that they are surrounded with.
[00:44:21] And that can be a spiritual thing too. That's sort of a different topic which I think certain guests will address very strongly. There's a lot of viewpoints on that, but that's not the way to bring the world together. We as People need to do that. And so I believe having these conversations with all different religious viewpoints, theological viewpoints, philosophical viewpoints, spiritual, but not any sort of dogma viewpoints, where can we find commonality?
[00:45:05] Where can we find just our raw connection of humanity with our fellow man or woman?
[00:45:13] And how can we from the bottom up, rather than it being a top down control, like how I did that, so that way we can cut it, rather than it being top down control from religious leaders forming a new type of tyranny from the bottom up. We can raise the frequency of this planet by sharing together.
[00:45:44] Because almost every religion has some sort of foundation of love and kindness and treating other people with respect and being honest and not stealing, not killing.
[00:45:59] Now there's certain religious texts that do advocate for those things to people outside of the religion. So I'm looking forward to talking with those leaders as well, because I have my own biases in my understanding of those texts. And so it's important that people who are outside of those religions, who have certain perspectives on those religions and believe that, well, if they were good at their religion, they would go around killing everyone like me because I'm not part of that religion.
[00:46:32] That's a valid question and concern.
[00:46:37] But even in those religions there are ideas of love and respect.
[00:46:47] And if we can find those commonalities and if people within each religious framework can say, I'm going to be the best that I can be with my faith, with my religion, with my beliefs, I'm not going to be afraid of being labeled a fundamentalist or an extremist or some weirdo that doesn't understand modern society.
[00:47:11] I'm going to live the base tenets of my religion, the foundation of my faith, which is love, joy, peace. Right? Let's just take those three, those. I think you could boil down a lot of the principles in most religions to those very, very high frequencies. And imagine if we did that.
[00:47:32] Imagine if each person just started living what they say they believe and not being a hypocrite and started living with their God as the center of their universe, not as some external thing that's sort of connected. But I'm going to be kind of embarrassed if I bring up God at this party for my baby's baptism because we're all getting sloshed and the kids are having fun with their candy and we're listening to club music.
[00:48:08] Like, really?
[00:48:10] So are you ashamed of your God because you just took your baby to mass?
[00:48:16] Why would you be ashamed?
[00:48:18] Well, you know, we gotta have fun. So your God's not fun. Your religion's not fun.
[00:48:26] Talking about the most consequential decision of our entire existence isn't fun and engaging and interesting enough to keep people's attention for a couple hours.
[00:48:40] Like, we can talk about the effing weather for.
[00:48:47] And food and meaningless things, but we, we can't talk about God, spirituality.
[00:48:55] So this is another thing. And I posted on social media the other day during the election, the two conversations, the two topics, themes that have the most impact on our lives are religion, spirituality, and politics.
[00:49:15] So religion, Religion and spirituality obviously impacts our eternal beings, our spiritual beings. It impacts the entire framework of how we perceive this existence and this journey and what comes after we die or if you don't believe that we die. If what comes after our body dies and our spirit, our soul moves on. Okay, so it's very confident, consequential.
[00:49:44] And politics touches every aspect of what it means to be human. There's nowhere on earth you can go where politics will not reach you.
[00:49:54] There's nowhere. Trust me, we've looked.
[00:49:58] You can't go anywhere outside the reach of a politician, a bureaucrat, some sort of tax law, etc.
[00:50:10] There's no jurisdiction that isn't completely controlled by politics. And yet people do not want to have conversations with those closest to them, their family and friends, about politics or religion. It's like those are the two topics that you can't talk about. Those are taboos, off limits. But those are the most consequential, the most important, the most all encompassing for our lives.
[00:50:46] Why wouldn't you talk about it?
[00:50:49] And I think part of it is because people in failing to be honest and real with themselves.
[00:50:59] Hang on, I'm gonna wait for this motorcycle.
[00:51:09] All right. Well, hopefully it's okay.
[00:51:12] People in failing to be honest and real with themselves then get emotional and defensive if they have to talk about those things with other people that are a key part of who they claim to be or who they believe themselves to be.
[00:51:32] And you can just see it. And there's. There's neurological science behind how difficult it is to change your mind. Which is why, you know, the last few years, there's so much gaslighting now about what people did or did not say during the lockdowns and the push to vaccinate the entire planet. Planet with something that is not a vaccine.
[00:51:54] The cognitive dissonance was unbelievable. But also now you don't see anybody apologizing for being wrong.
[00:52:05] It's just constant rationalization and gaslighting or just silence because it's Too painful. And this is a physiological reality of how we, we are wired as humans. It is painful. Once you have ingrained a solid belief system, it's very difficult to change that on every level. It's painful emotionally, it's painful physically, it's painful mentally, psychologically. So people don't do it. And so that's why with religion and politics, it's best avoided to not have to face those difficult changes in oneself.
[00:52:52] Because living with cognitive dissonance must be a lot easier than having to change and admit that I was wrong.
[00:53:04] Wow, that's a scary place to be, in my opinion. Not so humble opinion, but really that's not a good place to be. That's not healthy, that's not evolutionary, that is devolutionary. Like you are going backwards if you do that because then you are under the psychological control of whatever the current thing is and you are going to be deceived and led down any path that they want to take you in terms of total control of who you are as a human. And eventually they want to control your soul and get rid of it. Like these transhumanists who are running the planet right now are very open. This is not something that is a conspiracy theory. It is a fact that they are conspiring together to remove humanity.
[00:53:55] And those who continue on, they want to upload their consciousness into robots and be eternal gods here on Earth.
[00:54:03] They don't care about you.
[00:54:06] And there is likely a spiritual component that we're still investigating and maybe don't fully understand to this battle for the soul and the spirit and why it's so important to reject that type of control and deception. And so I for one believe that it's very, very important to talk about spirituality, religion, politics, personal growth, to be honest about our failures and our successes, to be, to be honest when we disagree, but to do it respectfully.
[00:54:46] Because it's not about who is right, it's about what is right. That's what I'm seeking.
[00:54:54] I'm not out to prove my point.
[00:54:58] I'm not out to debate you and, you know, see if I can beat you intellectually.
[00:55:05] I want to know the truth. I'm seeking truth. And I believe that if that is at the core of all of our conversations, that we will begin to find it and that we can begin from the bottom up to understand that these divisions are man made, they are not of God. An example I like to use, which is kind of obscure, but it's where I grew up, there's two massive sects, divisions within the Pentecostal movement of the evangelical Christian faith, one is called assembly of God and one is called Foursquare. Foursquare churches and assembly of God churches. And I only know this because my parents were part of both of them when they were doing mission work.
[00:55:57] Those two divisions exist because of a disagreement over the interpretation of a single verse about the Holy Spirit. A single verse. And there's an entire division, subdivision, sub, sub subdivision of Christianity with thousands of churches in both of those around the world. To me, that's insane. That is crazy.
[00:56:27] There's no need for it. It's completely not of God.
[00:56:31] And I would love, and I'm going to work on making this happen.
[00:56:37] I would love to have a high level assembly of God pastor and a high level foursquare pastor come on the podcast at the same time and talk about this. Not to debate. My goal is not to cause conflict. I want to help with healing. I want to bring healing in this division among people which has been caused by centralized human control and divisions created for the sole purpose of divide and conquer. I want to help bridge that divide. I want to bring people together. Because as we do, as we have billions of people from these different faiths, from Christian Catholicism, from Hinduism, from Islam, if we can bring people together and realize we have commonalities, we have similarities as humans, of course, but we have, we have synchronicities within our belief systems.
[00:57:37] You're not the enemy.
[00:57:39] It's us as people versus the overlords who are controlling everything and using this fear and shame to divide us and control us and to extract resources from us.
[00:57:53] That's the real enemy. And yes, there's a spiritual force behind that. Yes, this is a spiritual battle. It's not simply against flesh and blood.
[00:58:06] It is dealing with principalities and powers in high places. Right. What does that mean? Is it on the next plane of existence or the next br.
[00:58:16] How many levels are there to this created simulation or existence?
[00:58:23] I think you can get lost in the weeds on those discussions too.
[00:58:27] I can't promise that we won't have entire episodes that talk about those, because we will, because they're fascinating discussions and they add to the conversation.
[00:58:38] But my goal with this, my passion with this theme is to bring people together, to help there be a mutual understanding of brotherhood, of sisterhood, of Godhead as a part of who we are here on Earth as humans.
[00:59:04] And so many of these do visions are unnecessary. They're so damaging.
[00:59:10] They do so much harm to our planet and to ourselves, to our relationships. There's so Much striving for things that are not God centered, God focused. And yes, you can be an entrepreneur, a business person, an athlete, a rock star, whatever, or just a normal person.
[00:59:38] I don't believe that there are any NPCs.
[00:59:42] I believe that we all have value and purpose in our existence as a part of that God consciousness which pervades everything and everyone.
[00:59:55] That in itself would suggest that there are no NPCs. And so you have value, I have value.
[01:00:04] Everyone that is here and alive has value.
[01:00:10] Life has value. And it's important that we collectively figure out how to value life and love more together.
[01:00:25] And that each of us individually learns to value our own life, learns to respect our temple, our body, take care of it in the best way possible.
[01:00:37] That we learn to raise our vibration, our frequency, to one of love and joy and peace.
[01:00:44] No matter what your structure for your faith and your belief system is. And if we can go down that road, if we could follow that path first individually and then together, as small streams come together to form larger creeks and those join to form larger rivers and eventually the ocean, the sea.
[01:01:10] I love the quote from Cloud Atlas at the end of the movie. Sorry, this is spoiler alert. If you haven't seen it, this doesn't really spoil anything. It's just a beautiful quote. So you can still watch the movie.
[01:01:23] But one of the guys who had fought the whole movie to become a better person, become a good person, he makes the decision to leave his home. And he tells his father he's leaving.
[01:01:36] Or maybe it's his father in law.
[01:01:39] Anyway, he tells the father figure that he's leaving because he wants to make a difference.
[01:01:46] And the father figure says, what kind of difference can you make? You're just one person. You're unimportant. It's like a drop in the ocean. And the guy says, and what is the ocean but a multitude of drops?
[01:02:04] And that is what I truly believe.
[01:02:08] That each of us needs to grasp hold of and realize our power individually and even more our power collectively as humanity, as living beings connected to nature, connected to each other and connected to God.
