Finding Your Truth: Religion vs Spirituality

What does it mean to be spiritual but not religious? Drawing from personal experience healing from religious trauma, this raw exploration delves into the profound differences between organized religion and authentic spirituality.

Growing up in an intensely religious household—complete with 5 AM devotionals, multiple weekly church services, and constant fear of eternal damnation—created deep wounds that took years of therapy to heal. That journey from fearful religious conditioning to authentic spiritual freedom forms the foundation of this heartfelt conversation about finding your true spiritual identity.

Shamanism offers a different approach to spirituality—not as another religion demanding adherence, but as practices supporting personal truth and healing. The key distinction lies in autonomy: religion often positions external authorities as arbiters of truth, while genuine spirituality emerges from personal introspection and self-discovery. While most religions contain beautiful core teachings about love and connection, problems arise when these teachings become twisted to instill fear, control, or manipulation.

True spirituality begins with the profound question: "Who am I?" This goes beyond external identifiers like family connections, career achievements, or relationship status. It requires facing yourself in the mirror and understanding your authentic nature independent of childhood conditioning or societal expectations. If you believe you have a soul—that you're more than just your physical body—you're already a spiritual person. The journey involves rediscovering who you truly are without using religion as your sole identity.

Whether you're questioning your religious upbringing, healing from religious trauma, or simply curious about different spiritual perspectives, this episode offers a compassionate framework for finding your authentic spiritual path. Can you answer who you are beyond what you've been told to believe? Your spiritual journey begins with that question.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Religion & Spirituality
• 3:38 Growing Up in a Religious Home
• 7:14 Defining Personal Spirituality
• 12:01 Religion vs. Spirituality Explained
• 17:36 Energy Work & Daily Spiritual Practice
• 21:43 Finding Your Soul's Purpose

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the Joyful Shaman. I am Naomi, your host with the most, and I am glad to be back here with you for another episode, and so this week I really want to talk about religion and spirituality, and this has been on my heart. I made a video a couple weeks ago on my Instagram in regards to my perspectives and my interpretation of what spirituality is, how I perceive religion, especially since I work a lot with people in my local community that are healing from religious trauma, and how much therapy I have had because of my own religious trauma. So I feel that, given the circumstances in the US right now regards to religion and separation of church and state or what it should be, let's dive into this. So, from a shamanic perspective, I am not a religious person. I don't view shamanism as a religion, although some people may equate it to be, but shamanism to me is just a blanket word for the practices of spiritual rituals, so to speak, that support the belief systems that are intrinsic to that person. That support the belief systems that are intrinsic to that person and that could be for anything, and it really is. The shaman is a leader, a teacher, a guide, could be a preacher, could be a counselor, could be a doctor. It's just an authority in that people trust in that individual to be able to assist them in healing a part of themselves and activating their own healing within, ideally. So I want to say, like, shamanism is not my religion. I don't believe I have any type of religion, but that's just my perspective. That's just my perspective. So I really wanted to talk about this topic because I live in a very ultra conservative community. It might be changing, you know, in the last couple of years, but I do want to preface that if you're listening to this and you are religious, I love you. Want to preface that. If you're listening to this and you are religious, I love you. But these are my thoughts and feelings and they come from my personal experiences. So, where I live, I would consider, if you know, red and blue are the political colors. It's very red and there are probably close to 200 churches for a community of about 140,000 people. So you know there's a little bit of something for everybody that wants to be part of those communities.

Speaker 1: 2:55

For me, I grew up if you've listened to my other podcast episodes in a very, very religious home. I grew up in the Assemblies of God church and then proceeded to go to a more non-denominational church, but still evangelical church. My parents both grew up Catholic my dad being Catholic from Mexico, so that's really part of the culture and then my mother growing up Catholic. I will say that both of them converted and I feel that their fervency and their own belief systems was really not a choice for my sister and I growing up and for myself, it felt very forced and it was. You know we went to Christian private school from kindergarten until 10th grade, over two states when we moved from Louisiana to Florida, and you know everything was about church going to church on Wednesdays, going to Bible study, going to Sunday school, go on both services on Sunday in the morning and at night. You know not really having access to as much as my father could control. You know being part of the outside world, as he would call it. You know we would wake up at 5 am to do morning devotionals. You know when we're trying to stay awake right before school and it was very regimented. You know my grandmother, she converted as well and you know it was one of these things where I believe that the culture of my grandmother and my grandfather, you know, with Catholicism just kind of transferred over into their version of Christianity.

Speaker 1: 4:47

I will say that the church provided a really cool community for me, especially since, when we lived in Louisiana, the church that we went to was also the school that we went to, feeling a familiarity of growing up with kids that I knew and you know, being friends with them and learning, and it really opened up my eyes to better understand the messages you know from the Bible. But I didn't really care that I was forced to do it instead of being given a choice or being taught to not interpret the Bible so literally and to be given an opportunity to explain things and to ask questions without being told that everything was a sin. And so I grew up fearful, extremely afraid in my life and afraid of constantly dying and then burning in hell if I didn't ask God to forgive me or if I didn't pray to God before I go to sleep or if I wasn't in this constant state of prayer in my day-to-day life. And it created a big identity crisis within me and you can hear this in my other podcasts in my twenties, and I had a mental breakdown because of that. And so I was told when I was 18, that you know.

Speaker 1: 6:13

If I didn't want to go to church, if I didn't want to do any of that, I didn't have to once I became a legal adult, and so I was literally counting down the days where I wasn't being forced to go to church. I wasn't being forced to sing in the church, I wasn't being forced to be part of the youth group or be part of the performance group or whatever it was. At that time I wanted out, mainly because I just wanted to be free to think for myself, to figure out who I was and to make sense of what my own internal belief systems were. It really wasn't until, I want to say, in my early thirties because I'm nearing 40 now that I really started to ask myself the questions of what are my beliefs, what is spirituality to me versus religion, what do I believe, how do I want to live my life and what are the support systems that I have in place to help me. And that's where I started to formulate my own perspective and understanding for myself of what my own spirituality was and how it differentiates than religion.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Now I will say religion is created by man. All religions come from perspectives of individuals and their interpretations, and I don't believe that religion is inherently horrible, unless that religion is to cause harm to other people, then no, I do believe that at the core of most religious indoctrinations or religious texts or practices that there is a basis of love and of understanding and of really personal development and connection. The issue is when religion gets twisted by people for the use of fear, control, manipulation, abuse and harm in the name of religion, and so that's where I draw the line of no, that's not for me. I love world religions. I actually studied world religions a lot in college. I find a lot of comfort in the practices and beliefs of Buddhism. I find a lot of comfort in other belief systems as well, and I love the history of religions. I love the practices of certain religions and what they mean on a deeper level. That supports my spirituality. I don't label myself as Christian, I don't label myself as Buddhist. I don't label myself as anything except for I am Naomi.

Speaker 1: 8:58

I know who I am, and for me to discover what your spirituality is starts with discovering who you are as a person. Who are you, you know? Who are you outside of your family, who are you outside of your job, who are you outside of your personal relationships? Who are you outside of the society that tries to tell you how to be? At the end of the day, imagine yourself looking at your face in the mirror and you say who am I? Could you answer that question? And if you say I don't know, well, that's the path of self-discovery and that leads to your own spirituality.

Speaker 1: 9:42

And spirituality for me, in the most simplistic way, is my personal, innate belief system in the relationship of who I am to my mind, to my body, to my spirit. That is my personal truth. That is who I am, what I stand for, my morals, my values and my beliefs that I have created, regardless of my childhood conditioning, regardless of my experiences, regardless of what society tells me or anything else. That is an external circumstance. I have come to these conclusions based on my own personal development, my own reflection, and I stand in that truth, and then I find supportive practices to help me live by that truth. Now, that, to me, is spirituality, and everybody's spirituality is different, and I believe that people have souls, but other people may not believe in souls. I believe that there is a higher power that I call creator, and sometimes I do use the word God, but I don't necessarily mean it in the Judeo-Christian belief system of God as a deity or a being. It's more of an energy, it's more of a consciousness. It's a living breathing center or source that we all come from. There has to be a master design to everything that we know that is in our current 3D world and beyond. So that's my personal belief, but that's part of my spirituality, but it's not my identity.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Who I am is a person of love. I am a person of kindness, of compassion. I am a person of strong boundaries. I am a person that will fight for others that are being oppressed and that are being persecuted. I am a person that will defend myself and defend my family and defend my community. I am a person that, for me, self-care is doing the hard shadow work, is doing the inner work. I'm a person that will express their emotions. I'm a person that's not responsible for other people's reactions and responses to my personal truth. And I'm a person that will continuously check themselves to ensure that I am living in my most authentic and genuine self. And my self will change as I age, as I go through more things. As I do greater self reflection. As I mature, more. My spirituality may change, but at the core, today, at almost 38 years old, this is who I am. This is my spirituality. Now I have chosen shamanism as my foremost spiritual practice to help support my personal spirituality.

Speaker 1: 12:50

I still definitely reflect on the stories of the Bible. I still reflect on the messages that Christ tried to share and the underlying message of it all you know, am I a person that believes that if you don't accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you're going to burn in hell? No, I don't believe that. No, I believe that there are a lot of things that have been interpreted or written that you know. The Bible's been translated probably close to 16,000 times from the original text, and it's all about the deeper interpretation. And so for me it's like how do I perceive this? How does this resonate with me? And for me, I feel that it's more of opening your mind and accepting the greater consciousness that we're all connected, that we should all be reflective of love, and that is the pure energy source of where we come from. And that's just my personal belief, and I truly feel that that's what Christ was saying in the text, if I were to interpret it today for myself.

Speaker 1: 14:00

Now, a lot of times I work with individuals that are like I'm new to the spirituality thing. You know, I'm no longer part of the church, I'm just trying to discover who I am and what my faith is, and you know what is my spirituality? And I tell people I'm like well, you have a soul. If you believe you have a soul and you're more than just your meat suit, you're more than just this 3D reality. You're already a spiritual person. It's more of rediscovering who you are, what you stand for, how you identify yourself and maybe not using religion as your soul identity.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I see a lot of people in my community and a lot of people online and in the world that do use religion, various religions, as their soul, identity and spirituality, and the issue within there it just is very restrictive. It's when it starts to become convoluted, where people don't know they may not have the skillset or they may not feel they have the permission to actually think about how does this resonate with me? How do I apply, how do I interpret it? They take it so literal that they close themselves off to the possibility of other interpretations or other meanings, and yet they follow someone, a teacher, a guide, whom they put their trust in to tell them. So that's where it, for me, gets very dangerous, because that's when what I call the herd mentality comes, where they are flocking to this quote, unquote shepherd and this shepherd may be intentionally leading people down a path of. This is literal truth. There is no other variation, and to possibly think otherwise is wrong, a sin or will lead to damnation. That, to me, is extremely harmful.

Speaker 1: 16:02

I don't believe that Christ, in the biblical sense, came here to do any of that, and you can read it. If you're going to interpret the Bible, you're going to read that Christ didn't come to condemn people. Oh, if you're going to interpret the Bible, you're going to read that Christ didn't come to condemn people. Christ was among all kinds of people and welcomed people with open arms from all different backgrounds and experiences, and so that is what I try to embody to be open to all people.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Now, if your spirituality is a fear of hate, of harm towards other people, I can't change that about you. But if your practices are, you know I come from this place of fear and I want to cause harm, and that supports that. There's a problem there and you're going to have to face the repercussions you know by the authority that will catch you. You know I hate that there might be harm that happens to other people until that person is caught. But that is the reality when you think about it. And I don't believe that people are born inherently evil. I think all of us are pure souls, believe that people are born inherently evil. I think all of us are pure souls. It's just we are conditioned from our experiences since childhood to fear, to have maybe a false understanding of what is morally okay and what is morally wrong sometimes, and that has to do with culture and that has to do with culture and that has to do with twisted religion and that has to do with trauma and grief and generational woundings that happen as well. Everybody's experience is going to be different, but if we can all be awake to go within ourselves at some point and stop and pause and say I don't have to be these things, even if these things happened in my life, I don't have to go along with that, when you come to that realization, that is the first step in awakening and saying to yourself I need to know who I am despite all of this. The rest of that journey is hard I'm not going to lie and it's lifelong, and you have to be consciously committed to doing that work every single day. So that, to me, is the difference between spirituality and religion. I have no issues with religion.

Speaker 1: 18:37

I have many clients that are very religious that come to me for energy work as well. Why? Because they can see that energy is our life force, is the emotional and mental body. We create energy. If you're listening to me, you create energy. Your heart is alive, your brain is functioning, your body is functioning. You're creating energy. You have mitochondria in your cells that utilize energy for your body to function. Your emotions create energy. You can sense when there's danger. You can sense when something is good. You can you know whenever you're feeling things based on the physical reactions that emotions are having in your body. That creates a sense of energy. It sends signals to the brain to react in certain ways, and so energy work is really just working on recalibrating these signals and the responses in the body and regulating the nervous system from a scientific standpoint.

Speaker 1: 19:38

You know, shamanism is just the practice that I choose, which is a variety of different cultures that I've been exposed to and continue to be exposed to, of different practices of mindfulness to balance the mind, to go within, to be safe, to access the heart space, to ask ourselves who am I, what is home to me, what do I stand on, what is my truth and how do I live that and how do I support myself in my day-to-day walk with that? That's spirituality. So when I say you know, and people ask me, oh, are you Christian, are you religious? And I say no, I don't label myself as such, I'm just a spiritual person. That's because I believe that for myself. I try to live my life every single day in conscious awareness of my own personal truth, with every situation and with every single person that I meet and interact with, even when I'm not working. Who am I on a day-to-day basis? What's my inner dialogue like? What am I saying to myself? What am I saying to other people? What are my thoughts that become actions? Saying Is it an alignment with my own truth? That, to me, is spirituality as well.

Speaker 1: 21:03

So I just wanted to share that so that if you find this and you're trying to understand, especially if you're here in the US, you know what is happening. Or if you're trying to understand, especially if you're here in the US, you know what is happening. Or if you're experiencing disagreements and discord among people that are religious and maybe you are not and it's becoming an issue for you, maybe use this podcast and maybe use just my perspective and my story as a way to relate and I hope that you can relate to some aspects of it so that you can better navigate that world for yourself. If you're like, how can I express myself to my loved one or to my friend who's questioning who is asking? Because questions are good. Questions hopefully open up the table for healthy dialogue and discussion. But yeah, this came across my Instagram in a message today and it's just been coming up a lot in my awareness of spirituality and religion and hurting one another in the sake of religion or in the sake of your personal belief system and understanding that religion is there to support you. At the end of the day, you're the one that has to face yourself. Face yourself, not what you believe, not the church, not the minister, not the deacons. It's you.

Speaker 1: 22:48

So, if you're standing the quote-unquote judgment, how did you live your life? How did you choose to live your life? How did you choose to live your life? How did you choose to love one another? How did you choose to show kindness and compassion. That's all of our purposes and service and our mission here. That, I believe, is part of the human existence. How we serve and love and show kindness and compassion is unique to all of us. But if we're serving from a place of fear, that can become hate, that can become darkness, that that becomes evil. What are we doing then? Religion then no longer serves us. It becomes a weapon, a weapon for hate, and that's not what it's about. It's never been about that. We've just kind of lost our way in the melee of the world and the atrocities of the world and are trying to find some external validations instead of going internally within ourselves and facing our own shadows and our own darkness, and that's the honest truth, in my opinion. So just a perspective for you all that I just wanted to share. But if you find this, know that you are a beautiful person, you're a beautiful soul. There is a plan and purpose here for you, and maybe this episode will inspire you to ask those deeper questions. If you're questioning, ask yourself who you are.

Speaker 1: 24:27

I do a beautiful meditation based on Toltec beliefs and practices, called the Artist, the masterpiece of your life. Imagine yourself standing in front of a canvas an empty canvas, and you have every single paint color and brush available to you on a table and you're being asked to paint a masterpiece of how you view your life. Yet the masterpiece can change and you can always add in or delete or completely start over. It's ever evolving. Can you pick up the brush and dip it into the first color and just paint, just from the heart? What would your masterpiece look like? Do you know who you are? Do you know why you're here? Do you know what your purpose is and how you're going to fulfill it? Ask yourself those four questions, and that's your spirituality. You are a beautiful soul. Thank you so much for listening and share this podcast with someone if it really resonates with you, until we meet again. Be well, friend sat nam, and I'll see you soon.