Alternate Timelines with Ian Vogel

Why Everything (Even the Nasty Stuff) Happens For a Reason

• Ian Vogel • Episode 12

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This might be the most uncomfortable video I’ve ever made — but it’s also one of the most important.

I’m sharing a deeply personal perspective that challenges common narratives about suffering, identity, and spiritual growth. 

I know that not everyone will agree. 

And that’s okay, this isn’t about convincing anyone. 

It’s about starting an open and honest conversation around how we perceive challenge, pain, and meaning.

If you're on a journey of spiritual awakening or seeking a new lens through which to view the world, I invite you to sit with this message, reflect on your own experiences, and share your thoughts in the comments.

#consciousness #spiritualawakening #innergrowth #growthmindset #podcast

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Hey, I’m Ian Vogel—host of Alternate Timelines. My journey started on a small farm in the midwest, where I always felt a little out of place. After years of skepticism and even a stint as an atheist, a near-death experience changed my perspective on everything. Since then, I’ve explored plant medicine, past life memories, and the mysteries of consciousness. Now, I’m sharing those experiences to help others navigate their own awakening. Through real stories, deep conversations, and wild explorations of the unknown, we’re building a community where it’s okay to question reality. You’re not alone in the unknown. 👽✨

If you're here, I'm going to assume that you saw the thumbnail and read the title of this video. So before warned today, I'm gonna talk about some things and share a perspective that I know a lot of people simply won't agree with. My intention for making this video is not to agitate, it's to share my point of view and open up a conversation and have a dialogue around some subjects and topics that are very touchy for a lot of people. Honestly, I've been thinking about making this video for weeks, but I've been hesitant to do so because I know it's going to ruffle some feathers and a lot of people just won't resonate and connect with what I'm about to say. And that is completely fine. I'm not here to preach. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. Everybody's had different life experiences, everybody's got a different point of view, and I fully and completely respect everyone's model of reality and viewpoint of the world. the most recent video that I put out got way more views than I was expecting and had by far the most amount of comments that I've ever had on any piece of content that I've ever put out. Now. I was pleasantly surprised and really encouraged by the fact that even though a lot of people did not agree with my point of view, we were able to maintain an open dialogue and be respectful without name calling or judgment. My hope is that we're able to ride that wave and continue to have an open, respectful dialogue even in disagreement, because I am certain there are gonna be people who disagree with my views on many things. And that's okay. One belief is not better than another. One belief is not necessarily more evolved or more advanced than another. What I'm about to share with you about my core belief and outlook on the world is not something that I've always believed and I've changed over time and my beliefs have adapted to new circumstances and new experiences. And who's to say that my belief won't change in the future? I simply don't know. And I'm open to changing my belief and shifting that in light of new evidence and new life experiences that I may have. Alright, disclaimers out of the way. Let's get into it. I have a deeply held core belief that everything happens for a reason, Now that saying everything happens for a reason, it's not just a platitude or a cliche, it's a shorthand version of saying something much deeper and much more profound. When I say that, I believe everything happens for a reason. What I'm really saying is that I believe that there is a divine loving intelligence that's responsible for everything in existence. That includes every being, every experience, past, present, future. Absolutely everything is encompassed in that. And for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to call that God. I believe that that divine intelligence that I'm calling God is responsible for everything, and that there is a loving, benevolent intention behind every action and every motion of reality. Another way to put that is God is everything. God is love, and everything is love. And when I say everything, I mean everything. I believe that there is nothing separate from the loving God Divine source. Now, I know a lot of people aren't going to necessarily agree with that. Feel free to leave a comment below. I'd love to hear other people's perspectives on this. Now, if I'm being totally truthful, I myself am challenged by this belief at times. But the reason that I hold onto this belief, and the reason that I find this point of view to be true is because it aligns with my lived experience. There's not a single experience that I've had in my entire life that I can't go back and look at and analyze and find something positive in. I've learned from every single experience in my life, even the most challenging ones, and especially the challenging ones. Because I believe that every experience I've ever had was initiated by a divine and loving God. What many people would call trauma, abuse or suffering, I label as challenges. Trauma, abuse, and suffering all typically have some sort of harm associated with them, but I don't see those sorts of events as harmful. I see them as opportunities for growth and challenges that a loving God has put in my life to help me grow and be the best version of myself. Now, when I say that, the first thing that comes up for most people who don't share my point of view is that I'm using a spiritual narrative or flowery language to spiritually bypass a very real situation. And I can totally see why people might think that if you're looking at it from a surface level perspective. But if we dig deeper into this, assigning a new meaning to an experience is not the same as negating, bypassing, or trying to pretend it away. Okay. Choosing a different perspective or mental framework to look at our experiences or different situations in our life is not the same thing as bypassing. Reframing our perspective on our own lived experiences such that we can give them new meaning is something that we all do. We've all been through breakups. When you're in it, yeah, it's painful. It could feel terrible. You might even label it as being traumatic. And once you get through that experience, it is super common for people to be able to look at a past experience or a past relationship that at the time was really challenging and say, you know what? I learned so much from that. Maybe I learned about manipulation, or I learned about this, or I learned about that and I needed that experience to help teach me what I le needed to learn, to be able to find the perfect partner. And now I am in a happy, loving relationship with somebody that I truly connect with and fit with on a deep level because I had that experience to show me what I didn't want or that gave me a lesson that I needed to learn to be able to achieve what I have right now. The experience is what it is. It happened. It's not going to change. And when we're in it, sure, we're gonna have a certain point of view. But later on, once we've learned the lessons, that allows us to assign a new meaning to that same exact experience. For me, when I look back at everything that's happened in my life, even the most painful and challenging experiences, I realized that I learned something from all of those experiences. And therefore there is a positive takeaway and each of those experience had a net positive benefit on my life. I got through the experience, I learned something, and I'm able to grow and become a better version of myself as a result of the lessons that I learned from that challenging situation. The lens through which I choose to look at the world now, that assumes there is positive intent behind every action and every experience that I have allows me to do that reframing ahead of time. I don't need to necessarily learn the lesson to believe that there is gonna be a positive outcome, and I'm going to be able to grow and become a better version of myself as a result of the experience. The reframing happens immediately, rather than waiting for the future lesson to be learned'cause I know it's gonna be there. And that's not always easy, a little over a week ago I went on a hike and went off trail. As I sit here right now recording this video, I've got a poison ivy rash on the inside of my leg, on my shoulder, on my chest, on my hand. And if you've never had poison ivy, it's itchy and it burns all at the same time. It doesn't make any sense and it's quite miserable. It's affecting my sleep, my ability to concentrate on my work. Really, it is affecting all areas of my life And, while I'm not consciously aware of what the lesson is right now, I trust and I believe that this is happening for a reason. Maybe it's teaching me patience. Maybe it's teaching me to pay attention uh, maybe it's teaching me to stay on the trail. I don't really know, and I trust that at some point in the future, I will know and understand what the lesson is. That may be tomorrow, that may be next week, that may be in three years. If I get Poison Vy again and have to revisit this experience, I simply don't know and I'm okay with that'cause I trust it's all for a divine purpose and it's all for my greatest good. When I chose to believe that everything happens for a reason and everything that entails, it caused some internal conflict. I had to let go of some other beliefs. If everything comes from a loving creator and is love at its core, then what does that say about the things we label as evil or bad? From my perspective, evil and love are not two separate things. They both exist on the same spectrum. An act that we might label as evil is simply an act where love is not expressed. The individual that acted in that evil way, still has love at their core. They're just not expressing it. Darkness does not exist independently of light. What we call darkness is when there's very little light being expressed in the same way evil does not exist independently of love. What we call evil is when very little love is being expressed. You can take that or you can leave it, but that's how I perceive reality. I believe that there is a loving source behind everything. Letting go of the good and evil paradigm has a lot of ramifications, particularly when we look at experiences that are often labeled as trauma, abuse or suffering. From my point of view, when an experienced is labeled with the words trauma, abuse, or suffering, it's an indication that the person who is using those labels is not perceiving a challenge and opportunity for growth in a positive light. They're perceiving the situation incorrectly. From my point of view, when somebody's going through a particularly challenging situation. It doesn't mean that I don't show empathy, and it doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge the fact that they're in a challenging situation. I'm not bypassing or negating it. I'm just choosing to look at it through the frame of. There is something beneficial that this person's gonna learn When this is all over, because I choose not to perceive challenging interpersonal conflicts through the lens of abuser and victim. It means I don't see victims and I really don't believe in privilege. I fully understand that in this day and age, there are a lot of conversations happening around privilege, but the way I see it, thinking of somebody as privileged and somebody else as being at a disadvantage is simply misperceiving the grander situation, Because I believe that there is a positive intent behind everything that happens in life. The way I see it is that the people who are labeled as privileged and the people who are labeled as disadvantaged are just going through different life circumstances so they can learn different lessons. One isn't better than the other, and one didn't necessarily cause the other. Humans are incredibly dynamic and multifaceted beings. When we choose to label someone based on one very narrow and focused aspect of their life, like their socioeconomic status, for example, or their race, what we're doing is we're negating everything else. We're not taking a look at the bigger, more holistic picture of that person. By putting a label on something, we're giving it a special designation. We're saying this is different from that. It's an inherently divisive thing to do. Love can be defined in many different ways. And personally, one of my favorite definitions for love is anything that unites. And from my point of view, using labels like oppressed, abused, or traumatized is an inherently non loving act. By choosing to label someone as privileged or an abuser, by default, there has to be someone who's repressed and abused. I personally don't see things through that dynamic, and I'm really not comfortable labeling someone as repressed. From my point of view, that's an inherently disempowering position that I'm choosing to impose on somebody with that label. And I am simply not about that, I'm choosing not to participate in that limited, and in my opinion, disempowering viewpoint of the world. And the truth about the victim abuser dynamic is that there's not just two positions. There's a third position, the rescuer, this is called the Dharma Triangle. The person in position one projects their own shame and inner stuff onto position two, and thus becomes the abuser. The person in position two gets to point and blame position one for their disempowerment and position three, the rescuer. Well, you can't be a rescuer if there's no one to rescue. The rescuer needs an abused victim to save. After interacting with a lot of people and having many conversations, I've received a fair bit of feedback and pushback in regards to the point of view and beliefs that I've shared in this video, I encourage feedback. I want to have conversations where we can openly discuss our ideas in different viewpoints. And from my point of view, a lot of the feedback that I've gotten around this appears to me to be virtue signaling. I believe that most people believe what they're saying and that they're motivated by positive intent. But from my point of view, maintaining the victim abuser dynamic does not help anyone. And again, my perception of the victim abuser dynamic is that it's a misperception of the reality of what's happening. I acknowledge that people go through some very challenging experiences in their lives, experiences that could be labeled as traumatic, and those people may seem to be traumatized their entire life and never get to the point where they're able to find the silver lining or to recognize that there was a lesson in that experience. I totally get that, and it doesn't mean that those people aren't capable of finding the silver lining. If you've done any plant medicine work or inner healing, you're probably aware that integration is a very important part of the healing process. Many people, including myself, believe that integration is the most important part of the healing process. Integration is finding the silver lining, finding the positive in a challenging situation. That's all that is. Integration requires that we look at and take an assessment of those challenging experiences. But when we're continuously labeling those experiences as traumatic, abusive, or suffering, there's a negative connotation and harm associated with those labels. Nobody wants to look at trauma or abuse. If we choose to reframe it and label those experiences, those challenging experiences as opportunities for growth, that opens things up. That gives us a new perspective from which we can address those challenging experiences. And potentially find the silver lining and learn the lesson that we're meant to learn from them. That's something that I experienced personally. When I stopped labeling things as good and bad. I didn't have this unconscious repulsion from experiences that I had once labeled as traumatic. I was able to finally look at them and do the integration work and make the changes I needed to make in my life so that I wouldn't have to re-experience those lessons again. Just because somebody doesn't learn the lesson and alchemize that pain or that trauma into a lesson doesn't mean they're not capable of it. it's certainly not easy to look at the challenging experiences in our lives, but it's required to find that nugget of wisdom and to move on. I believe that whether or not we choose to do so, that we all have the ability to look at the challenging experiences in our lives. Find that silver lining and find the lessons. I believe that if Victor Frankl can spend three years in Auschwitz, lose his parents, his brother, his pregnant wife, and come away with that experience, learning something and having a deeper meaning, being able to write a book that has changed countless lives, that we all have the capacity to go through that process and to examine the challenging experiences that we all go through. For me, choosing to believe that everything happens for a reason has been incredibly empowering. Yeah, it's still not comfortable when I go back and look at those experiences and those things that have happened in my past that were painful at the time and I know that there's something there for me to learn and that I don't have to hang onto that and that I could alchemize that pain and whatever I went through and turn it into something beneficial for myself and for the world. I fully respect and honor the fact that everyone is entitled to their own belief system and own point of view. One isn't better than the other. There's no right or wrong. From my perspective. I I think of beliefs, almost like a piece of clothing. Something that you can put on and take off whenever you want. We all have a choice, and our beliefs are always shifting and changing. We probably all believe something now that we didn't believe at other points in our life. My hope is that this video provides a different viewpoint and a different perspective for people to consider. I'm fully aware that many people are not going to agree with my point of view, and that's totally cool. Uh, please, by all means, let's engage in a conversation, a comment below. I am happy to take the discussion further or examine perspectives and points of view that maybe I haven't seen or heard before. I'm open to all of it and I look forward to the feedback and meeting people and conversing with y'all. Take care. Peace.