Releasing Shame in Spirituality

In this episode of Spiritual Unraveling, hosts Ashley and Nate explore the complexities of spiritual practices, the importance of presence, and the journey of transformation. They discuss the challenges of feeling disconnected from source, the role of shame in spirituality, and the necessity of embracing feelings without judgment. The conversation emphasizes the significance of trusting the process of transformation, recognizing the body as a vital technology, and focusing on what is working in our lives amidst change.

Transcript

Nate (00:02.337)
Welcome everyone to Spiritual Unraveling with Ashley and Nate. It's been a little bit since we've done a podcast. Ashley, how are you doing?

Ashley Henderson (00:13.601)
doing pretty good. It's been, yeah, what a complicated last sort of six months and I really feel like the we're still in it but things are moving, shifting, I feel some energy moving so I'm feeling okay today. How about you?

Nate (00:35.957)
I'm doing good. We just wrapped up a cross-country move and we're living with family and we're trying to find our new rhythm. So I am in the midst of a lot of change and I'm doing okay with that, but it's also a lot.

Nate (01:06.381)
Well, and I guess I'll lead right in with what we were talking about. One of the things that has been up for me while I'm doing all of this change is...

Nate (01:22.263)
having this thought that I need to be kind of diligent or the good spiritual student in order to access my connection with source. So an example would be if I don't meditate one day or I don't ground or

I go see friends or family and I have a couple of beers or drink and feel a little bit like I get my sleep cycle off and I overindulge and I feel basically I feel like guilt or shame that then I somehow have a waiting period, a time before like where I need to redeem myself or something before I can come back into connection. And I was.

I'm aware of this, you know, and I was thinking about it this morning and just thinking about what crap that is and how much of kind of a hijack that is of the egoic mind of 3D thinking of this kind of idea that I'm somehow ever not connected to source, which that is not true. can't, if you're living and you're embodied, you are a soul. You are always connected to source.

And just that it creates a lot of feeling of, yeah, guess shame and guilt, but it doesn't really, it doesn't give you a place to really honor those feelings either because they feel like feelings that are coming up that you wanna just either work through or jettison or whatever so that you can like get back.

to being the good spiritual person. So this is probably coming about because I've done so much change over the last month and I've really disrupted all of my systems, right? I had like my spiritual routine and systems, meditation, grounding, walks in nature, and all of that is completely thrown out the window. And so I guess the kind of broader theme is like, how do I reconcile this

Nate (03:43.647)
belief system that has shown itself to be underneath. It's been kind of operating, I think, beneath the surface for a while, this kind of like, you need to be the good spiritual student. So, I don't know, what do you think about that?

Ashley Henderson (03:59.243)
think it's probably a really typical...

common place that people, like a transition almost, I think that people make. you know, it makes sense that we would take our shame-based conditioning, which we all have, it was probably the original separation from ourselves and from source happened through shame, and put it into spirituality. You know, so we're just...

It's just showing us our conditioned mind, how we're... And then there's this real opportunity to unhook from that, or however you want to say that, and then reconnect to all those practices without shame being a part of it. And so how would you... And then it's just the joy of nature, meditation, or grounding.

is just a, you know, like an experience that your soul wants to have. It's excited to do it, you know, it's just this like really amazing opportunity to feel connected and, but right, you're never not, you're never not connected and you can do it in any given moment. You can have that remembering.

And I was saying earlier that for me, what's showing up right now, it's kind of like layers, it seems like, right? Like we're just like deepening as you keep journeying through and feeling called to this path, there's a deepening and it feels like a layer that I'm hitting is just this.

Ashley Henderson (05:57.661)
unconditional love that's sort of always available no matter what. And that's an awesome layer to get to because there's no conditions around worthiness or spirituality or any of it. It's like, I'm loved no matter what I'm doing, no matter what I'm feeling, no matter what I'm...

thinking and there's something like that just kind of showing up. It's not something that I'm necessarily cultivating although I like it so I'm going with it. But it's something that's just showing up. It feels very real to me. Like oh we are all loves. We are all loved no matter what. And it's just like something to plug into. So I don't know.

Nate (06:52.607)
Yeah.

Nate (06:56.68)
Yeah. Well, earlier in that when you started that part of the conversation, the thing that jumped out to me was

Ashley Henderson (06:56.907)
Thank

Nate (07:06.718)
The idea of...

spiritual practices or spiritual tools, they can really cut both ways in a lot of ways, for me at least, where it can feed into the good spiritual student narrative that I had running, Where if I'm not doing the things on the regular, then I'm somehow...

not gonna be as connected or not worthy or not the good student, right? And then what you were talking about was this other feeling that you can reach or get to where those things organically rise up as things you just genuinely want to do because they make you feel good and you really enjoy them. And it's like that tension there is kind of where I'm at. And I think

To be completely honest, some of it might be just my obstinate nature to where I get my feathers a little ruffled around the idea that it's as difficult as we, like that there's any kind of difficulty really involved in connecting with source, in feeling divine love, in being a creator. It's like all human made.

And I just want, there's a part of me that recognizes that that's true. And then there's also the egoic 3D mind that's like, well, it's not that easy. You gotta sit in meditation for X amount of time. You gotta, you know, ground. You have to do all of the things that make you a good spiritual person. And that little, that tension is definitely up for me right now. And I guess,

Nate (09:08.583)
Yeah, I really want to embody or move into the place where every moment is like a holy communion, where there is just this, I guess it is presence. It's just you're always connected to it. And then each, you know, I don't go outside to ground with this kind of big thing. I just go outside and I immediately ground. And I don't.

sit in meditation because I should or I want to feel connected to source. I just close my eyes and take some deep breaths and then just feel into the moment. Right? I mean, we were, it's funny because we were also talking about this before the podcast when you were noticing this thing happening with you and your dog and how your dog was showing you just how unbelievably present animals can be. And I think that's

That's where I want to be. I want to be moving to that and have it just sometimes feels like tools get clunky, right? And they create another layers of separation or obstruction between, you know, the present moment or divinity, all of that. All of that is the stuff swimming around in my head right now. I don't know.

Ashley Henderson (10:30.473)
Yeah, right. I'm glad you brought up obstruction because that's what I was thinking. there's a way that, you know, those obstructions are illusions because it's not real. There's no real obstruction to your beingness. You are being all the time. There's no real obstruction to presence. But that we

have this thing called consciousness and we get to put our attention somewhere. At any given moment, we get to bring our attention to something. And if we're in the mind doing a shame loop, we're in the mind doing a shame loop. It doesn't mean that presence isn't happening, beingness isn't happening, your soul disappeared, whatever. But you're not having the conscious experience of that.

And there's something where when you get off the train, I don't know if I'm making this up, but if you get off the train of, which I think actually this train that I'm about to describe is actually a really important part of it. You know, the train of seeking, spiritual connection, the train of developing conscious awareness, the train of realizing that you have consciousness and that you have a choice about where you put your consciousness.

You know all of the train of realization the train of seeking but when you get off the train and you start to just realize my gosh none of that this whole thing was happening and is happening all the time and I get to experience I get to have this experience of Life there's no good or bad. It's actually just about consciousness. It's just about conscious awareness

And if I have a couple beers and I'm not conscious, or if I'm worrying about money and I'm not necessarily present, you know, and I'm in that worry, presence is still happening. Your soul is still accumulating experience. Nothing bad is happening. But you are not having maybe like the present moment experience you could be having.

Ashley Henderson (12:55.105)
It's like a choice at that point. You could even choose. I'm to go offline for a little bit. And it's your choice. it's, you didn't get a D. You're not getting a demerit for that. There's no, there's no, there's no judge. There's no, there's nothing about that. It's like, you know, I've had, I think this is really, really up for me right now because I've had two people close to me pass on in the past.

Nate (13:01.659)
Yeah.

Nate (13:10.886)
Thank

Ashley Henderson (13:23.649)
several months and I'm, you know, that always brings you closer to life, living, right? Deaf brings us closer to, how, you know, how much time do I have left? How do I want to spend my time? And there's this gift of presence, you know, that actually feels really, really good. It feels better than a couple beers. It feels better than a Netflix binge. You know, it actually,

And there's so much there, we're just scratching the surface, you know, of what's possible even for our like human experience. So I think that's what waking up is, you know, you're waking up to this reality that's always been here. I know, that was a bit of a rant. I don't know what you think about that.

Nate (14:10.628)
No, that's good. That's good. think part of what also happens when we go into our little...

we kind of move into phases or moments of disconnection, which is okay, like you said, I think it's probably, it's good for us to have moments of kind of just like unplugging, whatever that is, right? It's the judgment about that that comes up afterwards that I think is problematic. And I think for those, for anyone who has that level of awareness where we're kind of thinking on that, like I do this thing and then.

and then thinking about how you feel about it afterwards. Like for me, what I think comes up is I start to see belief structures that have informed me. Even if they're not ones that I necessarily like or agree with anymore, they still kind of live in me. And so, part of that is like,

you know, even the language I was using when I was describing being the good spiritual person. I mean, what I really wanted to say was being the good spiritual little boy or girl, right? And that informs or shows that level of socialization and conditioning that we have, that is, it's just, it's there to kind of be slowly pulled apart and acknowledge that like that stuff lives inside of us. And I think to the point of

presence and of grounding and having some of these moments in these practices, what they do is they can kind of cut right through that and you can move back into the whole self, the integrated self, and you see those things, they feel much more trivial and they don't feel like weights. But somehow in those moments of kind of disconnection and then reconnection, I think

Nate (16:13.953)
it's easier to be re-triggered by those judgments, those things that feel like old conditioning patterns. And I think we've talked about this before, probably the easiest way through all of that is to just actually feel all those feelings, right? So what comes up is I feel the feelings of shame or guilt or whatever, or even sadness that I have those feelings. And that...

is the moment where you're either invited to be in the feelings or you're invited to pick up the phone. And, you know, for me, it's not really anything, quote, bad. It's like pick up the phone and watch another spiritual video. But it's like, but that's not being with my feelings. That's trying to soothe soothe the feelings as opposed to just letting them kind of sit there.

Ashley Henderson (17:00.179)
Yeah.

and

Ashley Henderson (17:09.387)
Yeah, yeah, I love everything you just said. think the, you know, meditation can be this funny thing because I think two things can happen. on one side, people can sit and sort of power through a meditation, not really knowing what it's for, you know, and really not understanding how.

how it would affect the rest of your life. Some people kind of get a hit of calm and stillness and that actually is, it's really nice and can help develop a pause when you're having a reaction or something like that. I think people often find meditation is useful in this way, but I think you and I really see the value of practicing

presence, you know, when you practice presence and meditation, there's not usually a whole lot going on, you know, because you're sitting still, there's no stimulation outside, but you start to, you slowly start to get, my gosh, there's so much going on and I don't need to change or fix it. It just needs my presence. And as you practice and practice and practice, just staying present, then when these old patterns come up,

Now, instead of it just being your default mode, instead just operating from the default mode of judgment, shame, blame, whatever it is, you're like, whoa, I just went from feeling pretty calm to all of a sudden now I'm in a shame spiral. What's going on? And you just bring presence to it. And what I think is coming online for me is that complete absence of judgment.

I'm just dipping my toes in the waters of like actually judgment doesn't even exist on a really experiential level. And it's, it's really healing. Those are some healing waters to explore because once we, because presence is one thing. Consciousness is one thing. Having that 50 % of the healing. And then what we can bring in is,

Ashley Henderson (19:36.669)
love, really compassion, and neutrality, non-judge, non a non-judgmental stance, just embrace embracing whatever showing up in any in any given moment with excitement or awe or acceptance or whatever, whatever is available, you know, in the moment.

That's really, it's really life changing, really life changing, really deeply healing to just develop this of presence and then bring that to absolutely every single moment without judgment. I feel like that's it. That's the path, you know?

Nate (20:19.491)
Yeah, well, and the beautiful part about that is that when you do that for, it can happen for outside yourself, for others, or it can happen inside yourself, but the one always leads to the other, which is the beautiful thing. So if you move into a place of presence and neutrality or losing judgment for the self, then you notice you just are so much more gracious with

everything happening outside of you. And then I also think sometimes you can just have tons of neutrality and presence and compassion for what's happening outside of you. And then it can kind of wash over you and it happens for yourself as well. And that's that beautiful thing about neutrality and non-judgment, which is.

It's also lack of resistance, right? So it's like, and this is a big thing that's up, and it's up for me, and I think it's up for a lot of people. There is so much happening right now that is in our space that we can very easily move into judgment about. And I get it, but also it's just not all that helpful.

And I know that that's hard and weird to say. like, we've got war, we've got riots, we've got natural disasters. And this is another thing that's been funny that I've been having conversations with my family about, which is saying to people in the midst of commenting, they're commenting on all of these things that happen. And I just have to gently remind them, your thinking doesn't affect any of that.

You have no, you're not, you having bad thoughts about that or just whatever, it only affects you. know, having judgment, having lots of self-righteous indignation, all of these big, big feelings. It's not affecting change, it's affecting you, which is affecting the world because now you put yourself into a spot where you're not feeling very good. But it's just this kind of.

Nate (22:44.575)
fascinating thing as opposed to just all of this stuff is happening and moving to a place of that. You could just literally say that. Wow, all of this stuff is happening. It doesn't need to be a judgment there. There's like a there's a and that's about the presence, right? The observer and yeah, go ahead.

Ashley Henderson (22:54.389)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (23:01.589)
Totally.

Well, you know, I actually was thinking, I think that transformation often happens this way for me where I have to play something out all the way. And maybe what's happening on a large scale is that people are playing fear out to its nth degree, helplessness, lack of control, judgment, anger, rage, whatever it is. we're in an

It's like relentless, what's coming at us. And so maybe there's just this massive opportunity for transformation and some people may just double down. have no idea, you know what will happen. But I know for me, sometimes I just have to play patterns out until I cannot do it anymore. It's so miserable. It's so like untenable. I just can't experience it anymore. And then I'm like,

Huh, that was a pattern. And you see the other, maybe possibility or option for how to hold things. So I don't know if maybe that's what's happening right now on this much larger scale, but yeah.

Nate (24:23.338)
I think it is, yeah. That definitely resonates and I see it in the people around me too where it's this real call to almost to go further down, to really go into those places. I don't know, I know that fear is up right now because it's very much being triggered in a lot of

but I also think that the way that our culture handles fear is very strange. kind of, we move into this shock and fear mode and then it's cut or right next to spend time doing this or consume something to numb that feeling. And so it's like, you get kind of shocked and frightened by it.

So you get the kind of the first feeling of fear, but you don't sit with fear. You're not, no one is really is having anybody do that or to just let it play out like, okay, well, what would it be like if this got really bad? It's okay, know, feel to let those feelings move through. And I think one of the things that is now becoming a theme that we're talking about is this kind of, is acceptance and,

letting things flow and be even if they're uncomfortable or even if we deem them as wrong or whatever but that's like, if it's there, it's there, you know? If it's up for us, it's up for us. it's, you know?

Ashley Henderson (26:05.301)
Yeah.

I think we're also talking about trust. I think we're also talking about trust because it takes a lot of trust to allow and accept, you know, or feel or go to these unfelt places. They're not really unfelt places, but they're trapped inside of us in a very protective shell. And so we're opening these, you know, opening up doors to places that are scary or, you know, but that is...

Nate (26:10.57)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (26:37.665)
That is the only way, I think, into transformation or whatever you want for yourself. You want a sense of freedom, you want a sense of peace.

Ashley Henderson (26:51.765)
joy, I don't know what people want these days, those are up for me, that we've got to open up and air out some of these locked rooms inside of our psyches and all of these spiritual tools. You can do that in therapy, you can do it in all sorts of ways, but now we have all these tools that are accessible to us, they're free.

They're like, it's just all the technology you need to heal and really become awake, become an awakened being, to be enlightened, whatever, to have peace, to have freedom. All the technology is inside of you and that's what we're starting to really unlock. It's like, oh, whoa, this is all inside of me. just takes practice. It takes consciousness. It takes courage. It takes a little humility, you know?

It takes a willingness, a desire to, you know, kind of take on some hard, hard things, but it's never as hard as you think it is, honestly. I mean, this, I've had a lot of big, big, big cliffs I've jumped off of in the last year, really big ones. And there's a lot of fear.

that comes up in anticipation that could easily stop me. I could come up with a million reasons why I do not need to jump off that cliff. But I've been at this long enough with myself and with other people to know I am jumping off the cliff. It's never as bad. It's the anticipation that's really hard, you know, because our old little selves are saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's the danger zone. That's where we don't want to go. It's too unsafe. And but we're not.

little ones. We're, we're wise and we've been around the block and we have strength and a lot of capacity that we don't know we have. And that was a lot. Yeah.

Nate (28:59.057)
Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (29:02.4)
Yeah.

Nate (29:03.517)
No, it's true. Everything you said resonates and I totally agree. This is how the thinking of the thing can prevent you from just doing the thing or experiencing the thing. And the thinking is almost always flawed because it's usually based on old scripts or old beliefs. And if we're trying to get to a new place with the old thinking,

The old thinking is always gonna be like, let's pump the brakes a little here. I don't know about this cliff you wanna jump off, this metaphorical cliff that's gonna lead you to more freedom and happiness. I don't know. This doesn't look good, right? That's the kind of old thinking's way of dealing with it. And yeah, it's trust and it's surrender to the process. And I do think that there's another piece in this too that I think is coming up for...

It's definitely coming up for me and it might be coming up for other people too, which is...

the call or the invitation or even the fear that some of this metaphysical spiritual stuff, like will the parachute open? Right? I think you were talking about the cliff and the thinking can make you scared, but even just this kind of, for me, this more, this bigger existential...

fear of like, will this all work? But you actually can't know until you do or until you live. And that's like this weird tension that always exists with transformation and with surrender and trust is that you gotta put your foot on the path. You gotta just start going down that way. You have to explore it to figure out, is there,

Ashley Henderson (30:47.754)
Yeah.

Nate (31:05.603)
is something going to catch me? Or is the bottom going to drop out? And it is, unfortunately, if you believe like Ashley and I, and you believe in kind of eternalness and the expansive unfolding of the universe, there is no bottom. So there's not going to be a bottom to fall out.

Ashley Henderson (31:08.928)
Right.

Nate (31:29.881)
And I think maybe sometimes being faced with that reality also might be a little bit of the terror that keeps us small.

Ashley Henderson (31:38.431)
Yeah, you know, I this thought that...

Sometimes this is where I actually think concepts are helpful. Sometimes concepts are the block itself. We're so caught up in the concepts that we won't, you know, that's kind of where spiritual bypassing can come in. We've got the concepts in the mind, but the body isn't really involved. And the emotions aren't really involved and the cliff jumping isn't happening.

Nate (31:52.284)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (32:12.361)
But sometimes concepts can be really helpful to get us ready for cliff jumping or to help us move through. so I think that's sometimes where I know for me it can be helpful. Once my mind has agreed to it, then I'm much more ready to do it. So that's where a lot of the things that we're talking about or when we're going...

and doing our spiritual deep dives. It's partly because the concepts can be helpful for readying for that kind of moving into more presence, but it's not, the concepts aren't enough on their own. I think that's what they're good for is just like pointing, this is where you're going. And it's okay to go there. Cause all these other people have already said they've done it and it worked out or something like that.

Or it just feels true. You kind of get your mind into a concept that really syncs up with the gut, really syncs up with the heart. And you're like, ooh, that's true. Uh-oh. I may have to do that now, because all that just kind of synced up with each other.

Nate (33:12.241)
Right.

Nate (33:36.452)
Yeah, I like that idea and that feels very true to me that the concept is kind of the pre-paving, paving or the soothing for the mind. Like, hey, get ready. We're gonna have to make an adjustment here. Here's some things for you to chew on mind, because you like to chew on things and they make you feel safe. And then the other thing that you talked about there, which I think is very important we haven't brought in.

a huge amount in this conversation is the body, and the truth in the body. And it feels like there has just been so much mentalism dominating everything for so long. And I think a lot of people are also accessing these deeper truths and maybe, you know, not bypassing, but just figuring out that if I go through my body, I can get there a lot easier.

and move into integration a lot more smoother because the body holds most of this information and is this feedback system that is not as complicated as the mind. Like the mind is self-complicated because that's how it's rationalizing its existence all the time. It's always like, no, no, no, you need me. Look how complicated this is. Meanwhile, when you sit in the body and kind of really move into the body and into presence, it's like this either is in alignment or it's not.

That's not really complicated.

Ashley Henderson (35:05.087)
Right? Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah, the body is where it's at. The body is where it's at. And we're, you know, we're getting that, you know, I think we're getting it. I think it's happening. And I think because people are connecting to their bodies in all the different ways that are up right now, you know, like yoga and breath work and somatic experiencing and psychedelics and

Nate (35:17.103)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (35:35.211)
There's all sorts of ways that we're like getting into our bodies in new bringing our consciousness into our bodies. And I heard a podcast recently of this young and analyst talking about the body as technology. And I just love the word technology because I think it reorients our connection to the massive intelligence of the body and being able to approach the body as.

a technology that's gonna support our whole beingness, like, you know, and that you really wouldn't want to go offline with the body. Like, you really wanna stay connected and online. And I thought that was really cool, because we're in a time of technology. Like, I mean, it's just wild to me what technology is.

becoming in our lives. And so to see the body as technology is, I think, really cool. I think it's really opening things up for people.

Nate (36:45.924)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the connections, neuronal connections in your brain and like the gut microbiome, they're as expansive as the known universe that we have, right? So it really is what is outside is inside and what is inside is outside. And that's all just contained within us. It's massive.

Yeah, I think...

Nate (37:16.952)
moving into a place of the body and out of the mind might be one of the simpler invitations out there right now. I think sometimes we are in a place even as spiritual people, I mean hear sometimes spiritual people in the past, I've heard them talk about the body in this disconnected way or whatever and it's like

You hear people talk about their meat suits and they want to just meditate and move off an astral projection. I'm like, man, this is a package deal. And the body is ready to come online. And I think the idea of thinking about it, as you said, like technology in the face of evolving computer and artificial intelligence technology, it's like, yes, let's...

treasure and honor and listen to this technology source that resides within us. And maybe if we can all do that as we're engaging in this external technology, if we always keep our internal technology at the forefront and involved in all of our decisions, then we're probably gonna have a synergistic relationship with this external technology and it won't get out of whack. It's when we...

we give it up to something else or we don't listen and I think the body hasn't been listened to in such a long time.

Ashley Henderson (38:52.619)
Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a really good point. I also wanted to mention that Sarah Landon podcast where she says, you know, we've been so conditioned to focus on what's not working in the body instead of thinking about all the things that are working in the body and just switching that mentality of being so grateful for, just aware of.

Nate (39:02.521)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (39:21.703)
everything that's working all the time, the absolute miracle of the body functioning, you know, so that you can have this conscious existence in an embodied form, you know, rather than, my, I have chronic Achilles tendonitis, so I could just focus all my attention on the pain in my Achilles, right? Or I could focus on all the things that are really working, because there's so much that's working.

Nate (39:40.514)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (39:50.851)
I also think that's kind of a cool refrain.

Nate (39:54.23)
Yeah, well that's like an old Abraham thing that they used to talk about. let's, as we're wrapping up, let's broaden that even further into just say, look at how much is actually working as opposed to what's not working. There are things out of balance, but so much more is actually coming back into balance and into awareness. There is just a massive shift happening right now. And I think,

A lot of what we were talking about today are just all of these repercussions of massive change. And I think on a, both on a global and a personal scale, it's all good. It's just, sometimes it's change. So it can be uncomfortable and it can be exciting. It can be all of it.

Ashley Henderson (40:37.675)
changed.

Ashley Henderson (40:44.779)
Yeah, that's a really good place to end with an invitation to look at all the things that are working. And yeah, I've been feeling that a lot lately too, Cool.

Nate (41:03.832)
It's fun.

Ashley Henderson (41:04.033)
That was fun.