Episode 2: What If God Isn’t Who You Think? | Healing Worthiness After Religion

 Do you ever feel like you're not enough for God? 

In this deeply honest episode, Tamara Ridge explores how our upbringing, relationships, and religious past can distort our ability to feel truly connected with the Divine. Through personal stories and spiritual reflection, Tamara unpacks the lie of spiritual unworthiness — and invites you into a new way of seeing yourself. 

Whether you’re deconstructing religion, healing from spiritual trauma, or simply asking “Is this all there is?” — this episode will help you reconnect with your own sacred value. 

🔍 Topics include:
 – Spiritual deconstruction
 – Healing religious trauma
 – Worthiness and divine connection
 – Intimacy with God without dogma
 – How to stop projecting old wounds onto Spirit 

🌿 Take the free Sacred Intimacy Snapshot quiz:
 👉 https://innerlightcompanion.com/sacred-intimacy-snapshot
 

🕊 This isn't therapy. It's a meeting of souls.
 🎧 Subscribe for weekly episodes. 

🌿 The Inner Light Companion is hosted by Tamara Ridge, LMFT — guiding spiritually curious souls into deeper connection, intuitive healing, and divine remembrance.

💌 Connect with me:
Website & Guest Submissions: www.innerlightcompanion.com
Spiritual Counseling: www.guidinglightspiritualcounseling.com
Instagram: @innerlightcompanion

🎧 Subscribe for weekly stories, tools & reflections to help you reconnect with your inner light.

However you show up on this path, your story is sacred.
Let’s walk it together. 💫

Transcript

0:00

So I've been thinking about spirituality and spiritual intimacy for quite a long time, my whole life really. And as I look back at it, I'm seeing some patterns. And today I just wanted to chit chat with you about that and see if you see the same kind of patterns that I see. I think it starts with we all have the tendency to un-thro-promorifies God or spirit or deity, whatever it is, however you think about the divine, we have a tendency to make it human in maybe a way that doesn't make sense. And I'll talk more about that in a second. The easiest way that I can apply that concept is to think about how we anthropomorphize animals, right? So I've had a bearded dragon. I've had cats. I currently have three dogs. And truthfully, I am a person who haven't had any children. And so I have consistently treated my dogs like babies. And what does that mean? It means that I have some very poorly behaved dogs. They're not trained well, because kids and dogs are different. So when you, for example, for me, when I allow my dogs to sleep with me on the bed, when I allow them to sit with me on the couch, then they think we're equals. And when it's really important, say for example, we're out on a walk and I'm leash training my dogs so that they can go on walks with me on leash, but also off leash to run and get exercise because they're really high energy dogs, right? I have a a sprutal and a burn a doodle and they both need to run. However, if they think we're equals, then they think that their decision ability when I call them to come to me is just as good as mine. And they don't always have to listen. So the effects of my dogs believing that we're equals because I've treated them like kids, I've been saying, "Come on, children," instead of calling them by name and using an authoritative voice, I instead use a very sing-songy sweet baby voice. It doesn't work. They're currently, one of them is right there, sleeping behind me. Why? Because I've been boss mom in training now instead of treating them like babies. And the other one is, oh, you can only see her backside, right? Right there. So they're both being very good girls, but they're doing that because today I've stopped letting them sit on the couch with me. I've stopped letting them be on my bed. I've stopped letting them have anxiety about deciding what it is that they need to do. Now, how does this relate to our relationship with God? When we start interacting like I was projecting onto my dogs, that I could give them love and attention and sweetness and everything would be wonderful. Truth is they've been very poorly behaved until now because I was giving them love first and not discipline first. Dogs need to understand the hierarchy of the pack and you as the dog owner needs to be the top dog. And so I'm working on the top dogness, although I prefer to be sweet and treat my dogs like babies. That has to come after the discipline. How is, like you're listening to a spirituality podcast and I'm talking about dog training. How do they apply? How does it fit together? Here's how it fits together for me. When I put my perception on my dogs that they are something besides animals, who generations ago were wild animals, they run me instead of the other way around. And I tend to be a little anxious naturally. And so because of that anxiety, my dogs are also anxious. So they are barking at strangers, reactive to any little noise. Although right now you're not seeing that. Why? Because I've been responding to them with calm alpha energy. I've been speaking dogs speak to them. If we only have one frame of reference, so my dogs have one frame of reference, they probably have mirror neurons just like we humans have mirror neurons because they pick up our energy and they respond in kind in a similar energy. So what are mirror neurons? Nerding out with intellectual ideas. But that's who I am. That's why I've always been. That's why I've been able to succeed as a therapist for 30 years. That's why I think I was able to pull myself out of the dark hole that happened when I left the faith and religion of my childhood and started thinking about new frameworks and how can I possibly live in a spiritual way without living in organized religion? And how can I teach people how to tap into their spirituality without relying on someone between them and whatever their concept of God is? So as I've thought about this and I thought about moving back into my history and looking at where I've come from, we only ever know what we're exposed to. So my dogs only ever knew to behave with anxiety and unruly behavior because they were the top of the pack instead of me being the top of the pack. And if you grew up in a family where, for example, your needs weren't met or the concepts that you learned of God was an angry, jealous, like Old Testament God. I really love the Baba Ghatgita because it talks about the spiritual battle and it uses that metaphor to help us understand that the spiritual fight is really a fight within ourselves. And it's very different from some people, and I even found that in current spiritual, religious, sort of Christianity circles, there's still a lot of talk about right and wrong and good and bad and being able to be good enough for God. If we were never good enough for our parents in one way or another, or never as good as the friend that our parents compared us to, then we're never going to be good enough for God because the only frame of reference we have is not being good enough. And if we're not good enough, then we're also going to assume that the deity or spirit or God or the universe, whatever you call it, is also going to see us as lacking. And then we see ourselves as lacking unless we have a spiritual experience that shows us our value in the eyes of the universe that allows us to see ourselves differently. But these mirror neurons that we have, they teach us to react the way other people around us react to us, to the world, to religion, to spirituality. So if the only frame of reference we ever had growing up was one that was steeped in fear and not enoughness and always striving to be worthy, then it's not likely that we will ever get to the place in our own spiritual development where we see ourselves as worthy. And I'm telling you, the only way to do good work, the only way to do work that you've feel worthy and powerful and able to put something into the world that is truly meaningful is if you see yourself as the vessel, if you see yourself as the agent of whatever that work is in a truly worthwhile, ordained, called position. There's no space in the world of the universe or the world of sacredness for belittling ourselves. And in my own work as a therapist, the 30 years that I've done that work, I've always had trouble believing any dialogue about having worth that is less than optimum. We talk to ourselves in a way that talks us down. That's not coming from ourselves. That can't be coming from inside. It's coming from somewhere else. And if you really believe in a universe that works well, that all things work out good for people who trust, then there's no way that you can be essentially as bad as you see yourself if you're not seeing yourself as holy, worthy, and capable, and able to receive a calling from the universe for your work in the world. So I'm getting a little pre-sheet now, but what I'm suggesting is that if we learn a way of looking at ourselves and then we project that onto the universe or onto spirit, that idea that I'm not good enough, that spirit or God, the universe, doesn't see me as good enough for me to do or step into the big shoes that I feel called to step into, then we're not really interacting with the universe. We're interacting with our idea of the universe and our idea of the universe prevents a real intimate sacred interaction. We're just beating ourselves up. We're trying to fight our way out of a paper bag. It's just like when I was interacting with these wild beasts as children, didn't care whether or not I understood them and interacting with them in real dog spirit, they just went wild. They went, "Oh, look, she's not the boss. We can be. Yay. We can do whatever we want and not listen to her." I become the boss. I understand dog. I start dealing with them as dogs and magic happens. They're quieter. They're happier. They're safer. They need that structure. So what if you started to question anything that makes you question how the universe sees you? What if you start to question anything that makes you shrink from light, from opportunities, from joy, from connection with other people? In therapy, one of the things that we talk about is metacommunication. So metacommunication is when we talk about the way we talk to each other. So it's looking at the patterns and thinking about when we have particular patterns of interacting and talking with each other. Those patterns over time create their own energy that really does impact the way we relate to each other. And most of the time that happens outside of our awareness. And I think the same thing happens in our relationship with God, with the universe. Now in my own journey, I came up Mormon. And in Mormonism, I learned a lot about feeling a lack of worth and a lot about having gatekeepers between me and God and the universe. I didn't leave Mormonism until I was 43 years old. And then I had this desire to find another container for my spirituality. I felt the need to reach out and find a different congregation, a different community who would honor me, who would allow me to have a relationship with God. I think essentially when I'm sitting here and thinking about and talking about this, it was really, I was looking for another container where the authority figures in that container would tell me I was good enough to be with God. The first experience was I went to a mega church and in my naivety, I listened to the band and I listened to the talk and I listened to all of the things and I thought it was great and that maybe I can belong here. Maybe these are people who I can relate to. At the end of the service, they said,"Who wants to know Jesus?" And I'd already had a relationship with God, but I was really doubting it because I'd left the church and left everything I knew. So when they asked that question, I raised my hand. And so they said, "Oh, if you raise your hand, come down to the front." And I'm like, "Okay, I'll come down to the front." So I went down to the front. And then all of us who went to the front got corralled into a little room and were paired up with a person who was supposed to be mentoring us and gave propaganda, maybe they wouldn't have called it propaganda, but I call it propaganda, that was related to their dogma of that matter. And I went, "Okay, this doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel inviting. It doesn't feel supportive." So I didn't go back. So the next thing I did is I went to Orthodox Christian Church because I'd been in Orthodox Catholicism and I loved the service. It felt spiritual. It felt elevated. And I loved that. So I went to, there was a local Orthodox temple close to me and I started going to church there. And the next thing that you're supposed to do when you're going to seriously give your life to God, which is what I wanted to do, it's what I thought I had to do to belong, was give a life confession. So I went and gave my life confession, which you talk about to a priest about anything you've ever done in your life that you need to repent for. I don't know, it was a two hour long conversation. And I talked about all the things and he gave absolution, which I don't know if a man is capable of doing that between you and God, but that's another story for another day. But in the end, I had been through, and I'm going to be honest with you, I'd been through these relationships. It took me a long time to unravel all of the learning and the patterns in myself that I had learned in a family where I didn't feel loved. So I have a total of about 30 years of abusive relationships before I was able to break those patterns completely. And the last conversation I had with the priest was talking about, after the life confession, he asked me to come back. He asked me about my marriage. I'd already separated from my husband who was very abusive in specific ways. And that priest told me that I needed to go back to my husband, which I knew with every cell in my body was not the right choice for me. It was equal to death for me. I could not go back. And he said that based on the premise of God doesn't allow fourth marriages, so you need to go back to your husband. And I said, no, there's no way I can do that. And so then he said, then you need to join the monastery. You need to become a nun. I said, I have been a therapist for 30 years. I help people heal trauma. I do really good work. If I go into the monastery, I won't be able to do that work anymore. He dismissed the idea that I gave any kind of good work and told me I needed to decide and pray about it and go into the monastery. And I walked away from his conversation and from that temple campus feelings. So awful. I thought, if there is God, God wouldn't want me to feel like this. So I walked away and I said, thank you very much. I sent him a text message that said, thank you much for the conversation. I appreciate the time that you've spent with me. And what has become clear to me from our conversation is that organized religion is not for me, which I'm sure he did whatever a priest does when he knows somebody's going to go to hell. He never responded to me. That was the time when I started thinking about how I think about God, how I think about my relationship to spirit, to the universe, to divinity, however you want to call it. And I think that just like we, when we talk about how we talk to each other, I think we need to do something that is called metacognition. We need to think about how we think about God. And don't take things for granted. I think usually the only time that we think about how we think about God is if we're planning to defend our belief system. But what if we allow ourselves to just be challenged by exploring thoughts behind why we believe what we believe? Why don't we start thinking about, does this belief serve me? Or does it make me feel more small? Does this belief make me feel more in tune, more alive, more like I was created by a universe who still sees me as part of the universe? Now, I know that deconstruction is scary, right? I left Mormonism that it was something that I adored and lived. I was a pillar in the community. And then as soon as I realized the house of cards started falling apart for me, I knew I had to leave and I tell that story in other places. But deconstruction is really scary. Taking apart the life that you think you know, exploring the things that you think you know, can be terrifying. In Mormonism, I used to believe, the Mormon belief, maybe some people will say that I had a skewed view of it. I don't know. I'm not going to make claims for what Mormons say today. However, the Mormon belief is that if you study the Mormon doctrines, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Bible, the Pearl of Great Price, and the current teachings of the living prophets, then you have all of the knowledge that you need about anything in the universe. I really believed that. And as what we would call ourselves in Mormonism, a sister scriptorian who could teach gospel doctrine, I took a lot of pride that I knew anything or at my fingertips was anything I needed to know about the universe. When I left the church, I wasn't even sure that there was a God. And I certainly knew that the God that had been constructed in my head, the one that I believed in, as a good Mormon, good temple recommend carrying, tithing, paying Mormon. None of it's true. That was a terrifying fall into darkness where it's almost as basic as going to sleep in the country where you know the language, and waking up the next morning and fighting you're in a foreign land, and you don't understand anything anyone says. If you can imagine them, it's terrifying. It can feel like pulling ourselves apart if we've never thought about what we think about spirituality. And so in my podcast on Tuesday, I really did just introduce with my little script what the podcast was about. But today, let's just have a heart to heart about what it takes to have a road to deeper connection with ourselves and with other people and with the divine. I think it requires us to deconstruct. So at the time of this recording, Charlie Kirk died yesterday. And I think that one of the things that we miss in our culture that was true when I was a younger woman, it's not true now as much, is that we had some space for dialogue. We had some space for a conversation over violence. We had the ability, and that's one of the things that I think Charlie Kirk was really good at, was connecting people even where there were differences. And that's what I'm thinking we need to be doing more of, not less of. Because when we are only focused on our differences, when we're focused on the difference between ourselves and God and calling ourselves short, when we focus on the difference between ourselves and other people without having conversations about the way we think about things, that's when we run into trouble. Most of us engage in what I referred to before as projection. I projected toward my dogs, my idea of them as my kids. I can project toward God, the universe, spirit, as angry as a Mormon I learned. I had to go to a temple recommend interview once a year. I had to be really good. I had to pay all of my tithing. I couldn't think a negative thought, and God could see all of my thoughts, and God didn't approve. That's all projection. That's projection that I learned from participating in that religious structure. Not everybody learns it. But I'll tell you, the day I left a Mormon service for the last time, knowing I was never going to go back, all I saw in the faces and bodies of people around me was fear. That's fear because, in my opinion, Mormonism teaches people to project toward an angry, really stringent, rigid God. And I don't think that's who the universe, God, the divine is. But we can't know that until we know that we can connect with the divine without a middleman. And when we start to do that, I'll tell you, when I started to do spiritual counseling, I was still thinking I had to grind to be good enough. In my training, I had to sit with another person who was also learning spiritual counseling. And during one of those sessions, I explained that when I'm in meditation, I can see myself in a way that God sees me, and it's better than how I see myself. And somehow, after I meditate, I can't hold on to it. And this other person said, "Tamera, you have to meet the divine where you are." He said, "You're a nature girl. I'm always saving spiders. I love jumping spiders. I'm always saving them. I love going outside in nature with my dogs. I will send my kids. I love doing those things." And he said, "You're close to God when you're in nature. Look at how it leaves you feeling." And he was right. And right then and there, I stopped thinking I wasn't good enough. So do I meditate faithfully every day? No. Am I thinking about the universe, my relationship with Spirit? Often, I am. But sometimes, I can't take the time for meditation. Does that mean my mind isn't there? My mind is there. But without shame, without thinking I'm not good enough, without thinking I'm falling short because I didn't sit and think of nothing for 15 minutes, what if what we think about God isn't a true objective reflection of deity? And what if that thought we have actually keeps us from true intimacy with the divine? If you don't feel worthy, if you believe that the universe doesn't support you, if you believe that you have to do and be to connect, then maybe what you're thinking. I know over the years of therapy, I've seen a lot of people project things on God that prevents them from feeling held. So I just challenge you to think about that. And if you are ready, I've created something called the Sacred Intimacy Snapshot. And it's at interlightcompanion.com backslash sacred intimacy snapshot. It only takes two minutes. And it gives you an opportunity to say, where is my growth edge? Where could I heal more in my relationship to divinity? And where is my strength? And when you take that two minute quiz, you will have an opportunity to get your result instantly. Also a PDF that says, here's your strength, here's your growth edge. And these are things that you can do to make those things better. It's my goal and my mission to help each and every person who hears this podcast, not only join a community where we can feel connected to each other and in that connection, feel closer to God, however you name God, but also to help you to refine and experience your relationship with God in a uniquely personal way that fits you because you understand how to build intimacy with God, with the universe. Think about this. Here's the last thing I want you to think about before I close today. If we have been created to understand life through creativity, through communication, through social interactions, through public displays, if we're created that way, then why would the universe also be willing to be open to interactions with us in all of the ways we as human know how to be intimate? That's what the sacred intimacy assessment and the sacred intimacy snapshots are all about. So if you listened all the way to the end of this podcast, thank you for that. Share it if you would with someone who needs it, somebody who you think would have fun having a conversation with you about the ideas that I talked about today and share your experiences with me either on the podcast at interlickcompendium.com or wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. I look forward to hearing from you and I'm excited to share this journey and chit chats along the way. Have a beautiful day and don't forget to think about the way you think about your relationship to the divine. I'm Tamara Riddell.