301. Special Episode: Finding God Beyond Religion- Spiritual Discernment in Everyday Life

A piece of music, a friendship, a moment in nature, a struggle with suffering, a quiet stretch of contemplation, or a remark made almost in passing can become a point of contact with something larger than ourselves.

In this special episode, Jerry L. Martin considers theology as an inquiry into divine or ultimate reality. Particles are ultimate in physics. Leibniz had his monads. Jerry is interested in the kind of ultimate reality that has, or ought to have, a gravitational pull on our lives.

Religious traditions offer rich glimpses of that reality, alongside philosophy, literature, depth psychology, art, music, love, friendship, suffering, and the demands that arise unexpectedly in the course of a life. A calling may be one of those moments. So may a clue, a nudge, or something said by a friend at exactly the right time.

Spiritual discernment means learning to notice those glimmers and take them seriously without losing the ability to question them. Jerry considers projection, fantasy, groupthink, and the assumptions we bring to our own experience, while also asking what can be missed when doubt becomes the starting point for everything.

His “epistemics of trust” offers another possibility: an open mind, an open heart, and a willingness to let experience teach us. No one can take in everything. The task is more personal than that: to recognize the breadcrumbs along your own path and follow them as faithfully as you can.

Jerry L. Martin is the founder of Theology Without Walls, a cooperative, constructive, trans-religious theological project devoted to understanding ultimate reality as fully as possible. Its premise is that revelation, enlightenment, and insight into the divine are not confined to a single tradition, so theology should be willing to learn from the insights found across religious traditions.

Get the books:

Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

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https://substack.com/@ultimatequestions

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Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

The Life Wisdom Project – Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.

From God to Jerry to You – Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.

Two Philosophers Wrestle With God – A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.

Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue – Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.

What’s Your Spiritual Story – Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.

What’s On Our Mind – Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.

What’s On Your Mind – Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

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SPEAKER_01 0:16

This

Introduction to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast

SPEAKER_01 0:17

is God and Autobiography, the podcast, a dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book, God and 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 301. Welcome to God and Autobiography

Introduction to Special Episode: Finding God Beyond Religion

SPEAKER_01 1:12

the Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon, your host. What if finding God isn't about finding the right religion, but learning how to pay attention? In this episode, Jerry Martin explores theology with what he calls a radically personal approach. Glimpses of the divine can come through religious traditions, but also through art, music, nature, and experiences of friendship, suffering, contemplation. Maybe even something another person says at just the right moment. The challenge is learning to notice these experiences and discern what may be real from what may simply be our own projection. When it comes to our relationship to God and how we talk about God, a new type of theology is emerging. A theology without walls. Here's Jerry to explain. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Theology, Ultimate Reality, and What Grounds Our Lives

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Always start with the uh the etymological meaning. Theology is the logos of theos, the articulate understanding of what we can know or apprehend of the divine or ultimate reality. And I always pause here because there are different kinds of ultimates. The boson particle is a kind of ultimate in physics, and various philosophers, uh, Leibniz, monads are ultimate and so forth, but that's not what we're quite interested in. We're interested in, so I always think it's important to define what ultimate reality, what divine reality are we looking for, or are we trying to explicate? And I explain it this way: the relevant reality is that which has or ought to have gravitational pull on our lives, that which should ground us and toward which we should orient our lives. The purpose of theology is not merely to develop a theory of reality, but a living attunement with it, a life in concert with the divine or ultimate. The subject matter of theology is the divine reality, not the religions, not certainly one's own religion. Otherwise, as Robert Neville has noted, theology reduces to sociological claims. This is what my group believes.

Where We Encounter Glimpses of the Divine

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Like any truth-seeking project, theology must take in all available data. The world's religions are, among other things, rich sources of what I call aperçues, glimpses of the ultimate world, which manifest itself in revelation, enlightenment, epiphanies and insights. Valid Aperceues can be found not only in the religious traditions, but in philosophy, literature, depth psychology, social relations, nature, art, music, love and friendship, suffering and struggles with evil, the quiet moments of contemplation, even of despair.

Spiritual Discernment: Recognizing Genuine Spiritual Insight

SPEAKER_00 4:47

The epistemological challenge is spiritual discernment. The first task is to pay attention, to notice and to recognize the glimmers and tremors of the divine. These may come in extraordinary moments of divine presence, or in more subtle signals in the surface of consciousness, or in the depths of our bodies. The glimmers may come in religious ceremonies, or as a friend reported, when he's on his dirt bike. We live our lives through our bodies, minds, hearts, and situations. We are our instruments of spiritual discernment. For this task, we need a clarified soul, not burdened by distortions and distractions. Divine messages, hints, clues, nudges can arrive in many forms, including tasks put in our paths or what may seem like casual remarks from friends, neighbors, or even enemies. Noticing these moments requires spiritual sensitivity and an open soul. The second task is to distinguish genuine aperçues from fantasies, groupthink, ego, projection, and so on, that a particular apercie or insight that lies outside one's own current theological or other commitments is not an adequate reason to discount it as evidence.

Calling, Vocation, and the Epistemics of Trust

SPEAKER_00 6:36

One important aperçue, or kind of aperçue, is receiving a calling. The disclosure of one's true vocation, or swadharma, or a summons of love, or of commitment, or even just a momentary demand to rise to a particular challenge. The discernment of appers and living in truth in tune with the ultimate requires that we genuinely seek truth. Once we do our best to achieve an open mind and an open heart, we do better to trust Appers Huse and let them show what they have to teach than to doubt and thereby foreclose further insights. This is why I sometimes speak of an epistemics of trust. Unlike the epistemological tradition that starts with doubt, epistemics reflects on how knowing actually works. We always start with trusting our experience, our memory, our reasoning, and then we correct those in light of other experience, memory and reasoning. As we articulate the theological implications of aperçues, we take in, consistency and comprehensiveness are desirable, but not necessary.

Theology Without Walls, Paradox, and Your Own Path

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Paradoxes and loose ends may allow for a wider range of aperçues and a richer harvest of truth. When we do not know how to reconcile apparently contradictory insights, it may be best just to live in dialectical tension. That unresolved tension may reveal truths of its own. Nobody can take in everything. That is not what we're called to do. In my own radically personal version of theology without walls, the challenge is to find your own best access to the divine or ultimate, and to probe those truths vouchsafed for you, and to follow those paths marked out for you as best you can discern them. In the radically personal approach, our theological formulations will not be seen as the one and only truth, but rather as an aspect or dimension of a complex ultimate reality. One's own task is to follow with faithful attention the breadcrumbs that mark one's own path. And, as the Bhagavad Gita recommends, live not the spectacular life assigned to another, but the humble, even errant life that is one's own. That is where you will find the divine.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

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 and Autobiography is Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with episode one 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 and Autobiography is told to a Philosopher, available now at Amazon.com and always at God and Autobiography.com.

Outro: Stay Connected

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions at God and Autobiography dot 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.