Where Do I Fit In? Overcoming A Spiritual Crisis

In this captivating episode of The Higher Paradigm, we delve into how to deepen your relationship with God and live a more spiritual life without adhering strictly to religion. Inspired by a morning prayer, the host discusses navigating faith outside traditional belief systems and shares personal experiences of spiritual crisis, guidance from Mary Magdalene, and the role of the divine feminine. The episode highlights the differences between religion and spirituality, how to practice spirituality in daily life, and the importance of personal healing. Join us as we explore how to cultivate a spiritual practice that resonates with your soul, even in a modern world. This episode is perfect for anyone on a healing, spiritual, or faith journey seeking authenticity and connection with the divine.

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00:00 Introduction and Purpose

02:05 Personal Spiritual Journey

05:09 Exploring Priestesshood and Feminine Spirituality

11:05 Challenges and Conflicts in Spiritual Beliefs

14:44 Defining Spirituality vs. Religion

20:33 Daily Spiritual Practices

25:47 Healing and Divine Guidance

Much Love and Many Blessings to you.

Transcript

0:01

In today's episode of The Higher Paradigm, I'm gonna go a little bit deeper into the topic of how we can grow in relationship with God, live a more spiritual life and faith without religion and the reason. I'm going deeper into this topic is because sitting in prayer this morning at my altar, it became very clear that something that I'm being guided to talk more about is the how. How do we implement this? What do we do? And I understand that very well. I wanna share also my internal battle with where do I fit in because I don't fit into any particular belief system and I wanna share what that looks like for me. But before we get into it, I want to welcome you to the higher paradigm. If you're new here, and if you haven't already, I invite you to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Or to follow the podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify, share this content with anyone who believe would resonate with it. My mission is to grow in like-minded community and encourage these deep, meaningful, conversations that invite us to get curious within ourselves. And. To rise up into our own authenticity and to break free from societal conditioning. If you are an outlier, a rebel, a black sheep, you are in the exact right place. If you are on a healing journey, a spiritual journey, a faith journey, I welcome you. Now, let's get started. So I wanna first share how I can relate to feeling kind of conflicted or confused or unsure of the how, like how do we deepen in relationship with God if we're not religious or we're questioning, certain aspects of. Religion and the construct of it, or the belief systems that are put in place within a specific religion. I found myself almost in, I wanna call spiritual crisis four years into my, um, healing and spiritual awakening journey, because I felt so sure that it was so much more than what I learned raised in a Catholic household going to church, I was so sure that that wasn't for me. And then. I started embarking on this journey and deepening into my own relationship with spirit and the spiritual realm and the metaphysical and all these things. And at some point I started to feel inside of me like God was really working to come through and show me. The way, um, in a deeper way, I felt Like honestly, I was divinely guided the entire time and I really felt that, um, from the time that I, in 2019, quit my 10 year nursing career to jumpstart this journey of sobriety and healing and working through. My trauma and you know, finding safety within myself and rediscovering my purpose, and also feeling connected spiritually with a higher power and the divine realms, but also doing a lot of work of discernment and learning how to hone my own unique spiritual gifts and connecting and, and doing healing work with my ancestors. And there was a lot going on. And I definitely knew that there was a bigger purpose for all of it and that. Oh, it, it brings me to tears. Even still, when I have those moments of, oh my gosh, i've been divinely guided all this time, or I've been di divinely guided to exactly where I am right now. Those moments are just so deeply emotional and sacred, I'm so utterly grateful for the guidance, but at some point on my path. Beyond honing my own unique gifts and the discernment and the ancestral work and the healing of my inner child and trauma healing and all those things, I started to align myself with women who refer to themselves as priestesses, and it felt very resonant. It feels very resonant for me to be on this journey of sisterhood and a priestess, in my understanding of it, is a woman who is embodying the sacred and holy and and divine feminine, who aligns themselves with the path of love and is on a mission to bring more of the feminine embodiment into our reality. But if we go on social media and we find priestesses there who are obviously influencing or there to influence us in deepening and connecting in with our own. Sister wounding or mother wounding or, you know, going into that work, but also coming, coming together in sisterhood, recognizing how we can have this sacred relationship with the divine feminine through, you know, a lot of these priestesses. Uh, worship goddesses and deities. And while that did not feel in alignment for me to worship a goddess or a deity, because I at the time started to build a relationship with Mary Magdalene, and it wasn't that I worshiped her, it was that she became a mentor and someone I felt was a role model and is a role model for me circling back a little bit, there's this worshiping of goddesses and deities and there's this. Hyper fixation on sexuality and embodying your sexuality and talking about self pleasure and talking about sacred sex. And I mean to me, why do we need to exploit our bodies?'cause we see a lot of this on social too. We're healing our. Relationship with our bodies, our sexuality, but yet we're exploiting it on social media. And to me that never felt quite right to be posting a reel of the camera on this woman's booty as she's moving stagnant, quote unquote moving stagnant energy. And she's. Influencing through teaching, how we can move stagnant energy while gyrating and bouncing and, twerking. Our booties. Why do we need to see up close? Just almost bare ass of a woman who is embodying the sacred feminine, showcasing this. I just couldn't, something never felt quite right. Or, lots of pictures and reels of things that to me never felt like it was at all a reflection of the sacred or divine feminine. It felt like a aspect of healing our sexuality. But then doing the complete opposite that showcases that there's still healing needed to be done. I hope that that makes sense. But yeah, it just reeks of I need to be seen and I need to be like, you need to see me as someone who is, who has healed my feminine sexual wounding and. Yeah. When we showcase, and I've done this too on my journey of healing and speaking my truth, and finally expressing truth that I never shared before because I buried things to protect my family and all this stuff. And there were times where I shared things very explicit, very detailed that probably didn't need to be shared, but I recognize now that that was part of my healing journey. But looking back there was still so much healing that needed to be done, and that was part of the process. I could not. Proclaim that this was a healed version of me exposing these truths. You know? So to me, when I look at women who, or hear or read, um, posts from women who are sharing that, you know, these aspects of sexuality and they're referring back to. Players like Mary Magdalene or Mother Mary, and they're referencing the sacred sexuality. I, it, it's not, it never has and still does not. And I, I know I'll, I'll have a whole episode talking about this, but it does not. It does not seem right. It does not feel in alignment. And even conversations that I've had personally with Mary Magdalene, this is not how she wants to be referenced or she doesn't want, and she doesn't wanna be worshiped the only worship we should be giving is to God, is what I know to be true. So. Knowing all of this and feeling all of this in my heart and feeling like something just feels a little bit sinister or demonic, and at the same time, I kind of felt like where do I fit in because I didn't believe in and desire to follow any religion. I knew that there were aspects of that that did not feel true and in alignment and authentic to. What my soul knew to be true and what I was being shown and how I was being guided. Yet at the same time, there was this whole new world that I was exploring and aspects of that world did not feel in alignment with my soul and how my soul had been guided. So, you know, I was listening at the same time to Christian women speaking on their own podcast and quote unquote new age spiritual people that converted to Christianity and listening to these women speak, it really threw me for a loop and I thought, oh my gosh, is everything I'm doing wrong And what if I am wrong about? Everything. And what if the only way is Christianity, and in those moments I had to really check in and align with my heart and soul, which meant I have to stop consuming. I have to stop consuming social media, stop listening to other people's stories, other people's truths. And come back to my altar, come back to my sacred space and meditate, connect in with spirit, with God, with Mary Magdalene, the one who had been, guiding me and supporting me and sharing ancient wisdom with me. So. It was a challenging time and I felt what if I'm doing this all wrong? And then I had to remember my truth does not exist on a social media platform. And it does not exist in the belief systems of the people around me who might be following a certain system of beliefs. It resides within me, so again. As I shared in the last episode about all of this, it is truly so important to disconnect from everybody else and their beliefs, what they're telling you or showing you to do because if it doesn't feel authentic and exactly right for you. Then there's something there. And it's important to trust that guidance and listen to your body when it's contracting or, clenching or just feeling like a pit. A rock is in your stomach and it's a sign. There's something more to explore here for you. So I want to share in this episode the how, because I feel like when we only know spirituality as religion, it does create this sense of difficulty in how to establish your own unique. And genuine relationship with God. And I wanna first just say that there is a difference between religion and spirituality. And you can be religious without being spiritual. You can be religious and be spiritual, but you can be spiritual without being religious. Religion is a structure, is a system of beliefs, these are the systems that you abide by. When it comes to religion, it is what it is, and that is what you believe. That is what you follow. So if things don't feel right for you religiously, you know, there are certain aspects of the scripture. Or whatever literature a specific religion follows. From my understanding, it's just because you don't like it doesn't mean you, it's, you shouldn't follow it type of thing. But it's not about liking, it's about tuning into your soul and feeling that that ping of intuition saying. This doesn't feel right for me. There's a difference between not liking something and it not feeling true to you. And if it doesn't feel true to you and, and yet a specific religion is saying, just because you don't feel it's true, doesn't mean it's not. I mean, it's up to you to decide are you going to. Believe that, or are you gonna believe what you're feeling? Spirituality can exist within religion because it is your own unique journey. It is personal, it is introspective. It allows you to go inward and connect with God or your spiritual beliefs in a way that is embodying or bringing it into your daily life. Because you can meet a religious person and they do live. Their life, in accordance with their belief systems. They have ritual, they have practice. They pray every night they walk and their faith guides them. But you also meet religious people who save all of their faith for one day a week. When they go to church, they repent their sins from the week. So they might even live their lives. Like, it's okay if I sin all week because on Sunday I can repent. And there's not really a spiritual, life that they live per se. You can be spiritual without religion because. You can learn from different spiritual teachers. You can learn from different religious, literature and things within that literature, like the Bible or the Torah or the Koran, whatever it is that a specific religion would follow, I personally, am starting to branch out and learn. Buddhism and I am going into even more ancient literature before the Bible was created, and you can again, take what resonates and leave behind the rest. Ultimately, a lot of these books or all of these books, most of these books, I guess because I, I suppose there are religions that I'm not aware of out there that do not. It doesn't all come back to love, but the ultimate truth is love in all of them, regardless of what, how you refer to God, what name you give God. And regardless of specific belief systems or rules that each religion abides by, the ultimate truth is love. So it's really interesting to, to dive into different spiritual literature or religious literature, because I, I find that. Some of the stories within the Bible really resonate with my soul, but also I have received information from God about. Alternative truths to what is being shared in the Bible. And it's interesting because God guided me to the Old Testament, literally an invitation to the Old Testament specifically, which was a Bible study book showed up on my back deck, just sitting in a snowbank. Where it came from. I have no freaking idea. It was definitely divinely guided and I felt as though God is guiding me to read the Old Testament, not for the purpose of becoming a Christian, but to. Deepen in my relationship with God be the direct, open channel for God's wisdom and love and truth, and whatever messages are meant for me specifically to learn for myself, but to share also like I am right now. Anyway. So that's the difference from my understanding and my perspective between spirituality and religion. So with that said, spirituality is a practice. It is an integration of bringing faith, holiness, sacredness. Gratitude, love healing into your own daily life. And so it's a practice of going inward. It's a practice of being an open channel, an open vessel to connect with the divine. On your own. And it is a practice of living it day after day after day, which is what I wanna share because this can look a variety of ways. How do we practice? How, how, how, how, and yes, of course there is ritual. And there is practice. It can be meditation, it can be journaling, it can be going out into nature, as I shared in the last episode. Using your five senses, connecting with the earth and the trees and the wind and the sun, and just. Having this spiritual relationship with your surroundings and noticing and feeling the holiness living within all of it. Breathing in that breeze and feeling the Holy Spirit moving through you because it exists among nature. Meditation, breath work, implementing some specific practice that feels true and good for you. And for me, I do have a sacred space. It has an altar and I have specific objects upon the altar that means something for me, and they usually align with what it is that I am. Learning and who's mentoring me, or who I believe is guiding me and supporting me on my spiritual journey and whatever else feels sacred and holy for me. Of course, that's candles, crystals, incense, and other objects that seemed to have been dropped in, just dropped into my life randomly, like coins and, and origami cranes that showed up outta nowhere, and they have no explanation. Things like that I will put on my altar because those feel like they were given to me through divine guidance. And,, divine intervention. And so your own altar can consist of whatever feels true and activates divine love, peaceful energy within you. Meditation is not easy for everybody, as I mentioned, breath work and doing the somatic, dropping in and connecting in and using your five senses. Moving your body and being in tune with your body is a positive contribution to your ritual and connecting in spiritually, connecting in with God means recognizing that there is. Holiness being held within a space and an energy that is evoked and an energy that is ever present, God gives us spiritual supports the universe supports us because God supports us, our wise, well, and healed ancestors support us because they are sacred and are with God. Our guardian angel and our spirit team appointed to us by God. So it is. Connecting with all of these different spiritual supports, and that is connecting with God also. Talking with God literally is. Talking out loud, like you would somebody you love and trust, you are speaking directly to God and these are great moments if you do have anger or some sort of quote unquote negative emotion. Projected towards God this is a great time to share with God why you feel that way and why you're angry and it's so incredible how speaking out loud and sharing your thoughts and your feelings that are on your heart and in your mind, and living in your body. It can create this opening and this clarity and understanding, and you can literally. Feel or hear a response. And it might not sound like words, it might be objects. It might be um, synchronicities, it might be symbols. There is no one way, but once you start to do, this sort of practice, you will know. How you receive information or messages so having a conversation in an open dialogue with God is definitely super simple. All you gotta do is. Sit down and just chitchat with God your spirit team, whoever you feel is present doing your healing work is so important to deepening in your relationship with God. This is more yes of a journey, of a practice, a commitment to yourself, but it's necessary to be an open channel, we have to be willing to go inward and connect with those parts of us that are holding onto so much pain and trauma and so much wounding and so many beliefs that are not actually your own. When we are consumed by beliefs that come from a place that are not authentic or genuine for us, that can. Block the divine love, life force energy can move more freely through us when we. Open ourselves up and, and go into those places. With that said, when we start to, welcome God into our lives and into our healing journey, God will work through us to guide our healing. And that can look like envision sacred energy moving through. But you can also envision the wise, well and healed ancestors guiding and supporting your healing and having a spiritual experience through your healing work. Feeling that sacredness of connecting with your inner child, re mothering, re-parenting, that version of you that needed something that. You did not receive, but now you can give to that part of you god is present for that. When you're having those intimate moments of healing and you're feeling all your emotions that need to be felt and your moving energy and you're. Connecting with that part of you and re remembering when things were not your fault and things happened to you and it wasn't fair and you're feeling your rage and, you're letting it move. That's sacred. That is God there with you. Just encouraging and, doing the work with you. It's so beautiful and through the healing work and knowing that God is there and allowing God's guidance through mother, father, our spirit team and our guardian and, and the wise one and healed ancestors. When we allow for that guidance, we can. Surrender and know that we are not alone Through this process. We are always being divinely guided into exactly what we're ready to see, where we need to go, and what work we need to do, and then we experience challenges. We face things that we need to face or we need to see in order to learn the lessons and in order to practice what we preach. Because through the healing journey, we will be tested and those are tests from God. Okay, you, you feel like you're ready. You feel like you've overcome this, you feel like you've healed so much. Let me put you to the test to show you how you show up differently so that you can feel and revel in those moments of gratitude for how all the work that you've done has led you to this point where you're able to truly show up in challenging moments in a new way. You're able to perceive and experience something that once triggered you, or maybe it still does, but you handle it and you operate differently through it. And you can recognize in those moments, oh my gosh, this is the divinity that lives within me being access. This is me choosing a new path that is divinely guided. When we feel and allow ourselves to be guided in those moments where we're really being challenged or triggered, and we also tune into that intuition, that wisdom that lives within us and in order to operate differently, that is God, that wisdom that lives within us. It is our. Soul. It is our higher self, which is a fractal of sacred holy God love consciousness. So doing the healing work is. So important to deepen in your faith and your relationship with the Holy Spirit, with the divine, and to be come that open channel for wisdom, for your own wisdom, for God's wisdom and love being aware and acknowledging your blessings throughout the day and moments of holiness that exists throughout the day. You know, holding your baby and or your toddler or your child or your young adults child holding them and cuddling with them, watching them fall asleep, or just being in the moment with them embracing one another. Those are moments of holiness. Those are moments to revel in our blessings. You know, being able to cook healthy, nourishing food, a moment to be grateful for, and also moments for me cooking it inspires me to connect more with my ancestors, but also, yeah, it feels very holy for me to cook, if you have a fireplace, sitting by the fire and just like, just feeling the warmth of the fire and just feeling how sacred fire is to sit by a fire and just be it. In that moment. Even silly things what you get to do every single day with your own free will. I get to go pick up my children from school. I get to. Brush my teeth with clean water. I get to take a warm, hot shower. I get to sleep in a comfy bed. What a blessing. I get to have a roof over my head and a warm home. What a blessing I get to live amongst this mess and that is such a blessing because look at the mess that means it's, we live in this house. Like sometimes I'm really grateful for the mess because it's a lived in house and it's a happy home and it just, yeah, sometimes other times I'm like, oh my gosh, this is driving me crazy. Just like any of us, but. Yeah, just taking moments and reveling in your daily blessings. I get to breathe a healthy full breath, with clear lungs. I get to use my legs and walk. These are all simple, simple things. It doesn't have to be something extravagant or something that, requires money or a lot of money, or is expensive. It's the simple things in your everyday life. When we really illuminate the blessings within all of it for ourselves, that is how we can grow closer with God too. And recognize that these are all blessings because this is how our life was created, co-created. We created it with God. Everything that we do, it's a co-creation, and when we allow ourselves to be guided, we can really feel and know how supported we truly are. Listening to your body, because God is working through us and there is divinity that lives within us. And when we listen to our bodies, we are accessing. More trust within ourselves to have that direct relationship with God. When we activate more trust, we can settle and know that we are always supported. I know in the last episode about this specific topic, I did talk about how. The Bible is just an ancient book but there is such a beautiful thing about ancient literature because there is God working through it. But the point that I was trying to make was that. There is an evolution that God is aware of, God is fully aware that life does not exist the same way it did 2000 years ago. Therefore, God is willing to recognize that there might be a new approach to get more people to reconnect and reunite within their relationship with God. So that's what I know to be true, and that is what God has channeled through me. Because when I was having that big spiritual crisis, so to speak, I was like, but what? And God's response was, it's not about adhering to an ancient book, necessarily to a T, it's about an evolution and how this applies to your life today and what within it is actually going to bring more people closer and in relationship with me and through the body and through. Different practices that might not have been documented within ancient literature, or maybe we're coming back to even more ancient practices. That's just what's coming through right now. But I mean, even about the priestess, stuff that I was sharing, they refer to ancient practices too, but they're only pulling out and. Regurgitating things that maybe were not in alignment with God, even in the ancient practice of it, like it, maybe it was actually something more occult or sinister, because some of the things that women on social media who embody the sacred feminine or our priestess, pull out this information in regards to how women used to live. And that can't be all, that can't be it just, if it doesn't feel right for you, trust that, trust that that voice or that feeling, that sensation in your body. That's all I gotta say about that again. So it's not to say that a lot of what comes from ancient literature is not valuable anymore, it's just that we have evolved so much and we're in a much different era, a much different time, how can we deepen in our own faith and relationship with our higher power, how can we as a society, as a people of this world, remember that there is something so much greater than the human. Division that's been created. How can we, we remember there's so much sacred, holy, and divine guidance that. Is present and how can we come back to the good and to love. So, yeah. Okay. I think that's all for this episode. I hope that that helps whoever is listening to this or watching, uh, YouTube and listening to this episode and is like. I really do wanna deepen in, in my faith and my relationship with the divine. However, I don't know how, and I don't want to necessarily just go to church or just do it the way that I, I know other people are doing it. There's gotta be some other way and. Even if you are religious, I hope that this, offers some guidance towards how you can cultivate that religious belief system into a spiritual life because it is, a beautiful thing if that's what you're feeling called and how you're feeling called to live. So I hope that this offered some clarity and some insight and some. Ways that it can be simple, but also a commitment and a journey, and being willing and open to make that commitment to yourself and your relationship with the divine, with God, and embark on the journey. And of course if anyone listening to this episode interested in, in embarking on that journey with guidance and support from a human like myself, I will leave my. Website in the show notes below, and you can check out the work that I have to offer in the one-on-one space. And meditations I have available for purchase a mini course on how to implement a daily sacred ritual for your mornings and. Yeah, I will leave it there for now and I look forward to connecting again in the next episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, follow this episode in the Higher Paradigm Podcast much love and many blessings to you.