GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

229. What's On Your Mind- From Doubt to Oneness: Roxana’s Spiritual Journey

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon

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In this heartfelt episode of What's On Your Mind, Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon explore a deeply personal spiritual journey shared through three emails from a listener named Roxana. 

Spanning over a year and a half, Roxana’s correspondence reveals an inspiring evolution from doubt and disconnection to curiosity, courage, and a desire for oneness with the Divine.

Through Roxana’s words, listeners will resonate with the emotional honesty of someone searching for truth in the wake of personal suffering, disillusionment with religion, and the isolating static of anxiety. Her initial doubts and questions, sparked by pain, secular influences, and spiritual exhaustion, give way to hopeful inquiry, theological exploration, and a longing to reconnect with God.

Jerry and Scott reflect on Roxana’s unfolding story with compassion and philosophical insight, discussing themes like panentheism, the nature of divine communication, the role of suffering in spiritual growth, and the difference between religious doctrine and lived spiritual experience. They unpack how spiritual progress often begins not in certainty, but in openness- the kind that Roxana beautifully models through her vulnerability and persistence.

This episode offers encouragement to those feeling spiritually adrift, reminding us that we may already be home, we just need to remember. 

Whether you’re religious, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), or spiritually curious, Roxana’s journey invites us all to look inward and listen deeply.

🌟 Have your own story to share? Email us at questions@godanautobiography.com.

Explore the book that sparked it all: God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Get your copy on Amazon.

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Scott Langdon 00:17: This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, a dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions and God had a lot to tell him. Episode 229.

Scott Langdon 01:09 Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon and this week on the program, it's time for our What’s On Your Mind series. In this episode, Jerry and I dig into three different emails from the same author, Roxana.

Scott Langdon 01:24: Roxana wrote in on three different occasions over a year and a half period responding to different excerpts from Jerry's book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher.

Scott Langdon 01:34: Her story and her journey are fascinating and inspiring, and we're thrilled to share it with you, in hopes that your spirits will be blessed by hearing it. If you'd like to share your story of God, please drop us an email at questions@godanautobiography.com. We'd love to hear from you. Join Jerry and me next week for What’s On Our Mind. I hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome back everybody to another edition of What’s On Your Mind. I'm Scott Langdon and I'm here with Jerry Martin. As usual, we're here with three emails from the same emailer Roxana who wrote in to us and Jerry, I found these to be so interesting on their own, but putting them together it's a correspondence over several months here in time, and putting them together there's a real journey that Roxana goes on here.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 02:32: Yeah, I thought that was very interesting that she is so generous and kind of her to share this with us, because since she checks in periodically, you might say, and how the book that she's reading along, its excerpts were being posted at that point, and we get to follow that journey and what's going through her mind and heart as she reaches different stages of that journey. And so you know, it's a very illuminating ride to take with Roxana.

Scott Langdon 03:07: It is illuminating. I really felt like I identified with her in so many ways as I was reading through these and I thought what a good thing to share and let's take an episode to really share all three of them and talk about them. And, by the way, all of these correspondents that we talk about and, Jerry, you know you typically will read your responses that you had given at the time and all of these can be found on the website at godanautobiography.com, if you want to check them out, all of these correspondences that we read. So they're always public, they're always out there from the get-go.

Scott Langdon 03:41: And I say that because, number one, if you'd like to go visit the website godanautobiography.com and check things out for yourself, we'd love to have you over there and take a look. And also, they are written in and we share them because, as we've talked about many times, your stories really are meaningful, your encounters with God, and you often say, Jerry, write it down. Write them down because they can go into that mental place that it's the attic, and we can lose them, these experiences. So write them down and when folks take the time to do that, and push, send and send them out to the world, to us, it’s such a blessing to have them shared in this way, and so we really thank you for that. So if you'd like to share your story of God or an experience, drop us an email at questions@godanautobiography.com. We'd love to hear from you. And, Jerry, I'd love to get into Roxana right now. What do you think?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 04:41: Yeah, let's do that.

Scott Langdon 04:52: All right. Well, here is her first correspondence, her first email into us. Roxana says this:

A Letter from Roxana: I just happened across you on Facebook and I feel I was meant to, because I'm suffering emotionally and physically and didn't know where to turn. I had lost my faith with a terrible incident and also with higher education. I knew many scientists ended up believing later in their life, but it didn't work for me. I became turned away from hardcore Bible thumpers and a lot of the hypocrisy that came with some of them, especially when it came to the poor. I did not hear God. But sometimes, if I am open, get the thought but rarely form questions. I wish I could. I'm going to try and listen better. Anxiety is throwing me around a bit. I could not get chapters five or six, or maybe it was six or seven, but I found I could continue with the following chapters, which I'm very grateful for. Thank you. So far, so good. I am hesitantly hopeful.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 05:50: Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice? This is the beginning of a journey and she is hesitantly hopeful; hoping there's something here for her. And as I respond at the time, when she first wrote in: You are not alone, Roxana. Crises of the spirit happen to everyone. She talks about losing her faith right at the beginning. Crises like that happen to everyone, believers and doubters alike.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 06:26: It is difficult, even in non-crisis times, and she has some crises here that she's referred to, emotionally and physically. But even in non-crisis times it's difficult to get in touch with God, and anxiety, which she also mentions, creates static that even the best receivers have trouble penetrating. But you may have a better connection than you realize. This is important. She may be doing a lot better. She feels she's floundering around a bit, but I suspect she rather has a good connection and in any case, divine messages arrive, I told her, in surprising packages. It might just be an inner feeling, or a pang of conscience, or a vision of beauty, or something someone says to you that really hits home, or a task that has been put in your path, or even thoughts that seem like your own. Just let yourself be led as best you can, without distraction, resistance or prejudgment, and you will find yourself in sync with God.

Scott Langdon 07:35: Yeah, looking at this, I really identified with her feelings, the way she describes her feelings here about, well, a couple of things she talks about in her experience that she'd lost her faith with a terrible incident which she never really goes into, what that is and none of our business, it is what it is. And higher education. So, in other words, when she got in more to science she felt like that answered some questions that I guess her religious experience hadn't answered before, and but now she's dealing with this anxiety and she's dealing with this when she's open, gets these sort of thoughts or feelings, and so that's, there's something to be explored there, and I find that really interesting. With her sort of scientific mind I would imagine she's somebody who wants to explore, a scientific mind typically wants to explore and get into these things, and so when she's feeling these feelings, she wants to explore those feelings.

Scott Langdon 08:39: And I kind of labeled this just off the cuff because I related to it so well- the agitation phase. It's sort of like when God is kind of stirring things around and gives you, in a sense, or you become aware of or however you want to talk about it, but suddenly there's this sort of feeling that you need to engage with something that you don't understand. Things are happening and it's not like I want to get to the bottom of an explanation of it. Maybe it starts there, but it's sort of there's a mystery and I want to explore that more, and I really liked the idea that she was open and willing to examine those feelings.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 09:24: Yeah, exactly, see, and you know it's often we lament the fact that life has suffering. Of course it's a rough, tough world that we're thrown into, you might say, and she obviously has had some suffering. And also, you go to higher education and the environment is so thoroughly secular- sciences, they feel, they tend to have the predisposition to think of any kind of religiosity or spirituality as simply what people thought before they had science. Science eclipses all of that, but it actually does not answer those questions, the existential questions of life. And what is the life's meaning? They don't address that question. Or what is your meaning? You know, what are you… how are you supposed to cope with your situation?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 10:17: But I was going to comment, Scott, that often it's in this, the bad moments that we start thinking about what is the meaning of things and start getting more spiritual, sensitive. I don't know quite why that is. Maybe because it strips away the more conventional layer. You know, when you're feeling fine and you show up at work or whatever and go home and hi family, let's go on a picnic Saturday or let's take a trip to the beach or something, okay, there's, you know… what's to think about? You might say your life is just rolling on. But when you have these setbacks, you're kind of thrown back and maybe even you might say your sensitivities are more alert, because you're going through stuff and you're taking it in, and one of the things you're taking in is the great questions of life, the existential questions.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 11:16: What can this mean? Does it mean anything but also a kind of more sensitive opening to let the divine in and become aware of it. As she says right at the beginning, and she puts scare quotes around what happened, I just happened to come across you. Okay, she already, from the first sentence here, knows that, huh, there might be more to this and that's that sensitivity becoming open, alert, aware and ready to learn more. And that's all over her wonderful email, that she's now in a quest, you might say.

Scott Langdon 12:10: I want to talk a little bit more about Roxana's openness, because this next email that she sends to us is really sort of the next sort of steps, in a way, that she takes stepping into this openness. And before we do, though, I wanted to talk about what she is responding to. Back in the, and correct me if I'm wrong before, the book was actually published, you were putting some excerpts on the website, and these are the comments and the responses. Some of these emails that we read from time to time are responses to the chapters that you had put out, so not in a serial kind of way like weekly to weekly or whatever, but maybe you did. This was before I came around, so maybe you could talk a little bit about what she's responding to, because she's responding to a thing you wrote or posted: I Am More Than A Person.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 13:03: Now she's gotten to the chapter. It was chapter by chapter. I don't remember the frequency, whether it was weekly or whatever, but it was, yeah, one chapter at a time, and so she's reading them. Evidently it came to her attention and she's reading them and then pondering each one. You know which is a good way to read it actually- not read through.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin  13:25: If you read the book, and probably true of the podcast as well, just listen to 44 as a schmear, listen to one and then mull it over, take it in, see how it relates to your life and thought. But she's now come to the part where God tells me: I'm a person. I'm a person, but I'm also much more than a person. And that's the section she's commenting on here. And for someone who's gone through discomfort with the God concept, which many people have for obvious reasons, seems anthropomorphic and so forth, and then they may have encountered versions of it, she mentions Bible thumping and so forth in the earlier email. You can come across versions of it that just seem wrong, ludicrous, even wicked, perverse. Anyway, I think here, God adds, you don't need to stop there, you can think more about what it would mean for God to be a person. Maybe there's a deeper meaning than you've encountered before in your life. but also, God is much more than a person. 

Scott Langdon: So she's responding to that and this is her second email. It comes just a few months later and she responds in this way. 

A Letter from Roxana: This is more understanding and believable to me even though it is hard to grasp. But that does not bother me. I think a lot of what “is” will and cannot be known by us as “persons’, humans, beyond our comprehension and that is very comforting and understandable to me. It makes much more sense to me than religion and doctrine. I need to re read this a few times, at different times. Your experience is very helpful, comfortable to me, more so as this goes on. I do not read this every day, just as it feels”right”. Keep posting, It helps me, is hopeful for me. I have questions though. I also need to look up the theological view “panentheism”. I have no formal education in theology at all.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 15:44: Yeah, very serious person here, and we're all serious in our best moments. You know when we think about our lives and what the big story is. But anyway, my response at the time to Roxana was: You're reading these posts in the best possible way, just taking in what speaks to you, being enlightened by what you understand and not disturbed, perhaps even comforted, as she in fact says, by what is less clear. I very much appreciate your kindness, Roxana, in taking the time to share your reactions with me. It means a lot to me that the posts are meaningful to you. So I just thought this was a very interesting development that she is reading with this kind of care, sensitivity, not demanding answers but allowing, you might say, the mystery to unfold and taking some comfort in the idea. Well, the mystery is kind of deep. You know deeper than you could just look up in some creedal statement. But there are deeper mysteries here.

Scott Langdon 17:07: Yeah, I liked that in this second one it shows there are sort of two aspects to it that popped out for me. Let me just say the first is, you know, initially she expressed a willingness to be open. And in this email the second one she says I'm reading more, I'm looking for things. This word panentheism I don't have any training at all but I want to and I'm going to look that up.

Scott Langdon 17:36: And she has an openness and she's following this sort of nudge toward an understanding of God. And yet it's not just I'm open and it'll just sort of come to me and then I'll just… God is asking her to engage, to do something, to read, to get educated. I mean, there seems to be two aspects that are happening here: this willingness to be open and then a willingness to move forward with where that calling is leading me to. And I felt very strongly that she's on that kind of path.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 18:19: Yeah, I'm struck. You know there's something fundamental here. You know I'm a philosopher and so I think well, what is the nature of thought, you might say, of cognitive processes, of insight? What's the root to insight? She's got two big elements and this, in very rough speaking you might say, are the two biggies. There's feeling. You have to pay attention to your feelings. Your feelings are registering something about reality. They can just be distractions, so feelings themselves have to be processed and made more mature as you go along, because they can just be static anxiety, fearfulness. You're too agitated to even focus on anything. You don't even know what you feel. But feelings are also picking up stuff and so if you can relax these anxieties and just say well, what are my feelings telling me? And there's a lot of psychological studies showing, if you, advice to women, if you feel you don't want to get on the elevator with this guy who just got on, wait, because you're picking up something, there's something there. I don't say what you're picking up, but you've got to trust those feelings and there's a lot of life where you have to trust the feelings.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 19:40: However, feelings are just component number one, or step one, or part one. The other is thinking, learning, thinking, dialogue, often with other people, where you trade thoughts. This is how it seems to me and why I'm thinking this way. Is that how you think, or do you think a different way? Oh, that's interesting. Hmm, I'll try that out, see if that works.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 20:04: And here it doesn't have to be formal education. But here she's wondering the word panentheism had come up and that's roughly the view that God isn't in the world, the world is in God, the world is comprehended by God and yet it's not that God is elsewhere. The world is comprehended in God and that more or less fits what we're told early on in God: An Autobiography. I guess that's why the term came up and the kind of thing related to that. She says I have no formal education in theology. Well, poo, you don't need that necessarily. It can be very interesting. There are a lot of interesting theologians. But I was struck by her saying that what she's reading in God: An Autobiography, or this particular chapter, makes much more sense to me, she says, than religion and doctrine.

Dr. Jerry L. Matin 21:05: And somehow some religions not all of them, but some really got in heavy duty into doctrines where you know, right at the church door you enter here you're supposed to believe one, two, three, four, five, and it's all spelled out. And the theologians have argued out how it should be spelled out and come up with a definitive formulation. And here it is one, two, three formulations. And here it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Dr. Jerry L. Matin 21:37: Well, I was struck when attending a conference organized by Calvinist Christians for the Reformed tradition in Protestant Christianity and the speaker, a young Christian theologian, was saying that Christianity, in particular in America, had gone through a period in the 20s, reacting to a kind of atheist argument against them, where they were trying to prove their doctrines and one, two, three, four, they could find the proofs and argue against Darwin or whatever they needed to argue. And this guy thought that was all a big mistake. That's not really what it's about. And he said the alternative way that I guess is catching on more is, instead of saying let me give you a bunch of arguments, say, let me tell you a story, and you know to focus on Christianity for the moment, what are the Gospels? They're the stories of Jesus, right, they're not arguments. They're not a bunch of doctrines and declarations. They’re the stories of Jesus, the stories of Buddha in the Buddhist traditions and Krishna in the Hindu tradition. An awful lot of the meaning of life is found in the stories we live and in the exemplary lives whose stories we learn from.

Scott Langdon 23:14: Roxana's third and final email that she writes to us in this exchange was done just a few months later, and she's responding to a section that you posted called A Word To The Reader. So, again, if you'd like to check out what she's responding to on these, they're all found on the website godanautobiography.com. We'd love to have you come over and take a look at it. But Roxana is responding to that and she says this:

A Letter From Roxana: Being at one with God is profound. In some ways I totally understand but wish I could hear more on this, as I REALLY want to be this way, one with his Greatness. Doing for others as a reflex I believe is one way. Would really love to hear more.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 24:05: Yeah, and of course, I respond at the time. Yes, nothing is more profound or more urgent, but how to be in sync with God is a challenge for each of us. Doing for others, which she mentions, overcoming our natural self-centeredness is surely one key. I am currently thinking of particular things God has told me that are directly relevant to living in closer attunement with the divine. I will soon start sharing them on YouTube, which will be available at this site. Of course, they're up now. Please let me know, Roxana, if you find them helpful. But I was thinking further just rereading her message, and I might mention one of the things listeners can do is go on the website and comment on Roxana. You can comment on what other people have posted, so feel free to do that, and we've sometimes discussed some of those.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 25:12: But she starts off with the phrase that I'm told in prayer is crucial. Being at one with God is profound, she says, and I was told the aim is not exactly to merge with God in the sense of losing our identity in God, because there's a multiplicity of persons for a very good reason and God relates to us in that way. However, I'm told at bottom, we are at one with God and we need to find that location, you might say, in our own lives, for ourselves. And I had the feeling that Roxana is getting there. I mean, this is really coming clear to her, I think, because now, instead of speaking with anxiety and endless nervous questions there's a whole tone to the message that is ah, I really want to be this way. She says you know doing for others and love to hear more, you know. So the tone here is not agitated, but very much. You might say much more at peace. 

Scott Langdon 26:26: Yeah, reflecting on this, I a couple of things came to my mind, but the first thing that popped in was kind of how I think I'm articulating my journey recently, and part of the way I'm doing that is almost trying to articulate this feeling of having come home, a feeling of home, and the story really does start with that eight-year-old boy singing in the church choir and really just not knowing that there was anything else but me and God. It was just such a natural, easy thing, and then this sort of seeming separation and then you know almost a realization again that, as God tells you at bottom, our soul's will is God's, we are one with God. There is no separation. In the way I articulate it and the way it's understood for me is this actor-character relationship playing a character, and that the character can't be there without me and yet I am more than the character. So that analogy has really sort of opened things, and I've also realized that it's not something that I got to, I didn't attain it. So the way she talks about it is the way I think I always talked about it too. This, I want to be this way. Like, in other words, I'm not now, but I want to be one with God. And to me the way it sort of- I got to it, if you want to talk about it in that way was not a I got enough knowledge or had enough experience where I finally got to this place where I realized I am one with God. It was more like Dorothy realizing she was home all along, kind of thing. You know, it's always been that way.

Scott Langdon 28:27: The illusion is that there is this separation. That's the kind of thing you know when people are talking about we just want to be in the oneness and that this isn't real. This isn't real. As a place of perspective, as you mentioned. Yes, it is absolutely great and comforting to know that, at bottom, God and I are one, that everything is in God, panentheism. So that's very comforting. But then what to do when I have to pay the bills, when I have to come up against somebody who has a different opinion and wants to push back, maybe politically or whatever, what do you do? It's not something you attain. You just sort of realize. Ah, we're all starting from the same place and our individuality is part of the point, our difference while it may not ultimately be quote-unquote real, it's real in the sense that that's the world, being in the world means we are these multiplicity, as you say.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 29:27: I think, from the point of view of God: An Autobiography, they're both equally ultimately real, not like the Eastern doctrines. I was told at one point early about this question is the world kind of unreal? Well, if it's a mirage, God says it's one you can drink water out of it. In other words, you know it has full body and I don't know myself philosophically what it would mean to say if you can drink water out of it, it's still not real. Well, it means you're honoring some other state that you regard as more important and I think that would be a kind of way to interpret that to me, odd claim. But it has a rich lineage.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 30:17: And, and I was told, praying about Neale Donald Walsh, what God wants for us, what we want God wants for us. And I thought, well, we want all kinds of crap. You know what are you talking about? And I was told the key is in what you desire and the question is which you, you might say, and what your soul desires is what God desires for you.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 30:44: And I think it was analogized in prayer to the loving parent what do you want for your kids? Well, you don't want them just to have every toy in sight that they might lust for, every candy bar, but you want what's good for them, right? And so the attitude is much like that. What they, their soul, wants what the loving parent wants, and for what the very best friend wants, is for them to be their best person and do the best thing, including, to take Roxana's examples, helping, doing for others. Well, that's a great thing, and when you do it you find out, although a candy bar or whatever is great, doing for others is also kind of great, right?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 31:33: Deep satisfactions, yeah, living our story in mutuality that way.

Scott Langdon 31:41: And there's the side of it. When we talk about reality, when we talk about being here, me as Scott, you as Jerry, part of that is internally dealing with our sort of dark side, which what this unit was about, you know, dealing with Zoroaster and God's encounter with Zoroaster and god really sort of coming to grips with this other side, which has to be there in duality. It's naturally in there and so doing things for others I have sometimes struggled with: am I doing this because it's making me feel good? Am I, you know, trying to impose what I think is right on somebody else, or am I really trying to be open to be there for whatever they might need? So there's a duality in there and a struggle inherent in the duality.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 32:32: Yeah, yeah, but you're right, Scott. That's the challenge. And when Zoroaster is describing God as sort of a divided self, a sort of mythological picture of there being two gods, and spins the story out that way and there's an evil twin, that's like God's other side, separated off, sort of like Jekyll and Hyde, and it's mainly that God isn't well integrated and that has to take place over the course of history. An awful lot of things like the problems that Roxana's talking about at the beginning, there are inflicted evils, discomforts in her life that I assume when she says physical, that's something that happened to her, but they're also the internally generated and that's part, the body's lack of full integration often.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin 33:29: But the anxiety and all of that kind of thing, our own lack of integration, that our parts are flying off in different direction. And we have one desire here, but a fear. Maybe the very thing we desire, we also fear. Human beings are very complicated and have a lot of contradictory impulses and they need to get lined up. But I think she's doing that. It's her sense of being at one with God is, as we were saying before, it's coming into focus, it's all coming in focus, so the different pieces are no longer just scattered and out there, including different pieces of ourselves, but the different pieces things in the landscape, the people, etc. In our lives, but, ah, they're coming into kind of a focus, that's, you might say, the divine focus, and you get to a point where you're listening and in tune better with the divine, conceived as God or conceived in some other way. Then you are going to have this experience of that oneness and of something more like harmony with people around you and your own situation, even if it has struggles built into it.

Scott Langdon 35:01: Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with Episode 1 of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted — God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher — available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God’s perspective — as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I’ll see you next time.