Grief 2 Growth

When Religion Becomes Trauma: Dr. Moe's Journey to Healing w/ Dr. Maurice Turmel | EP 444

• Brian D. Smith • Episode 444

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What if the pain you carry from religion isn’t a personal flaw—but the result of deep emotional and spiritual conditioning?

In this powerful episode of Grief 2 Growth, host Brian D. Smith welcomes Dr. Maurice “Dr. Moe” Turmel, a seasoned spiritual psychologist, trauma survivor, and author of Breaking the Spell of Religion. Together, they explore the profound and often hidden impact of religious trauma—and how to heal from it without losing your faith or spiritual foundation.

Dr. Moe shares his journey growing up in a rigid Catholic environment, his years of emotional repression, and the inner awakening that led him to rediscover joy, self-trust, and a deeper, more personal spirituality. This conversation is not just informative—it’s a lifeline for anyone navigating the pain of deconstruction, spiritual abuse, or faith-based guilt.

🧠 What You’ll Learn

  • How childhood religious indoctrination can create emotional trauma
  • Why some religious teachings undermine self-worth and silence inner wisdom
  • The difference between organized religion and authentic spirituality
  • How inner child work, music, and self-reflection become tools for transformation
  • What it means to be “divine, not defective”—and why that matters

🔗 Connect With Dr. Moe

Visit the Grief 2 Growth store for FREE items as well as other tools to help you along your journey:

  • Guided Meditations
  • My book GEMS of Healing (signed copy)
  • My Oracle deck to help you connect with your loved ones
  • Mini-courses
  • Mini-guides

Check it out at https://grief2growth.com/store

I'm excited to announce a new resource I'm very proud of. This guide outlines the four daily practices I discovered on my grief journey. These techniques have helped dozens of my clients. Get it free today.

GEMS- 4 Steps To Go From Grief To Joy

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Speaker 1:

Close your eyes and imagine what if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted and, having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree? Now open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth, and I am your host, brian Smith. Hey there, I'm Brian. Host Brian Smith.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is a powerful one, and it's one that's deeply personal for me. I'm honored to welcome Dr Maurice Turmel, affectionately known as Dr Mo. Dr Mo is a seasoned spiritual psychologist, an acclaimed author and a performing songwriter whose path through trauma, healing and spiritual awakening offers a light to those navigating their own dark nights of the soul. With a PhD in counseling psychology and over 25 years in clinical practice, dr Mo has spent his life helping people heal emotionally and spiritually. But his expertise isn't just academic it's actually lived. He grew up with emotional trauma, religious repression and deep self-doubt. Yet he broke free from the chains of early conditioning and emerged with a life-affirming truth. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.

Speaker 1:

In today's conversation we're going to explore how religion for some, can become a form of institutionalized trauma and how to begin untangling that conditioning. We're going to talk about what makes religious trauma unique and how to heal from it. We'll talk about the moment that Dr Mo broke the spell and reclaimed his inner authority. We'll talk about how to shift from guilt and fear into love and empowerment and even after decades of emotional repression, and how music and creativity became a spiritual lifeline in Dr Mo's personal journey. We'll talk about his latest books, including Breaking the Spell of Religion and Healing the Trauma and when Angels Call, coping with Grief and Loss, and how his work can guide others on their own healing and awakening paths. So if you've ever struggled with breaking free from harmful beliefs or if you're seeking a way forward after spiritual or emotional trauma, this episode is for you. And remember, after the episode, the conversation doesn't end here. Join me at grief to growthcom slash community to carry on the conversation there and, with that, like to welcome Dr Mo to grief to growth.

Speaker 2:

Hi, Brian, and hi to all your listeners and yeah, yeah great, it's great to be here.

Speaker 1:

It's great to have you here. We were starting to talk a little bit before we got started. We do have this thing in common. Anybody that's listened to me for any amount of time knows my background and I share a little bit of what I went through. But I want to talk about what you went through in terms of your religious upbringing or whatever it was that started you on this journey.

Speaker 2:

Well, I was born into a typical Catholic family and, in my case, being up here in Canada, it just so happens that I also have a French-Canadian background. But it's Catholicism, no matter what language we speak, has its application and its general formats. And, as you and I were sharing earlier, before you started this session, all those typical practices that you got in childhood I got as well, you know, in terms of the conditioning towards your particular religion. Mine was obviously conditioning towards the Catholic view of life and my education was also overseen by nuns, who were not only instructors, you know, in the typical ABCs and mathematics of life, but you got your catechism and your rote learnings.

Speaker 2:

You know that you had to practice on a regular basis and in Catholicism, basically, you're defined as a sinner and shame and guilt are pretty powerful tools that are used on you to condition you towards their definitions, the church's definitions of who and what you're supposed to be. And it becomes not that you know it when you're a child, because you'll recall in your own childhood you don't have references to guide you along and say, hey, this isn't right or things may not feel right, but if your parents were indoctrinated into this system, if your parents were indoctrinated into this system and they're your reference point at home, then there's no one to throw a kink or a monkey wrench into things here and say hey, no, no, this doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2:

So what has to happen and I'm going to guess it happened for you because it happened for me there's an awakening at some point in your life and your younger adult life. But the first thing that happens is when you start self-reflecting. Then you start asking those questions like why doesn't this feel right? Or you know what's wrong with this, or how come there's so many contradictions in this so-called, this religion that I'm supposed to be part of? And why is it that I have to be perfect? And how the heck am I supposed to be perfect?

Speaker 2:

You know, if I make the slightest mistake, then I failed, you know, and on and on it goes, and the latter that they present to you is well, then you can seek redemption, and that means praying and that means lighting candles and that means putting money into the kitty. Don't worry, we'll get you to heaven. We got the keys, but you have to be perfect and it goes, and that's my overview of my own upbringing. What happened for me? It was I was married very young the first time and within five years it wasn't working, and my wife and I at the time we had two children, two daughters, which are beautiful young women today and we both loved them, and her and I are not friends, but we're okay with each other because life was so different.

Speaker 2:

But, for me. It sent me reeling and it sent me into an environment where I met a medical doctor who was into psychology and he introduced me to books and materials on psychology, and that opened the door for me to start questioning things, and and and that's when I like to use that term self-reflection, when we start to look at ourselves and we get and then those early stages, we get help. You know, we get to bounce ideas and thoughts and concerns and questions off of other people, people who are there in front of us with levels of skill and education that you know, we respect and we can admire, and they start saying things to us that make sense. And here's another thing that clicks in is when something makes sense, it feels right. And when things start to feel right, it's like our heart starts to vibrate and say, ooh, I got to understand more of this, I've got to find more of this.

Speaker 2:

And so we keep seeking and we talk to these people who are giving us information, and they're not trying to program us, they're just saying, well, you know, look at this, read this book, look at that, and if you have questions, come back and talk to me, and all of a sudden we have permission to examine things that were drilled into us and you know, we can use more severe terms like brainwashing or, at the very least, indoctrination and we can start to question those things and we can start to develop this new inner map that says it's a good thing to start listening to our own heart. Our heart is telling us things, our feelings are telling us things. Even though the church told us or told me anyway, and maybe you had this experience too you can't trust your feelings because everything you need to know is in a book and read this here and boom, boom, boom, right. So one of the earliest and worst things done to us as children is we're taught not to trust ourselves and not to trust our own feelings.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, there's a verse, I think it's in Jeremiah, that says the heart is wicked above all things, or something like that. And they tell you whatever you do, don't listen to your heart.

Speaker 2:

There you go, and here's one that I like to throw back at them. Brian Jesus said the kingdom is within. All right and for me as a psychologist and before I became a psychologist, that resonated for me and that is one of the things, the key things, that allowed me to start to trust my own feelings.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

For me that was the most important relic that I could take from that. And you know, let go of all the other stuff that came from the appliers of the religion, which are not spokespersons, you know, unless they have video of Jesus of Nazareth saying certain things to us, or a video of Him walking on water, then you know you might have made it up or you're certainly exaggerating, and I don't know if you have this in your Pentecostal system, but apparently with Catholicism you show up in the crib, in the needle-nail ward, and you got original sin. You know. Yeah, there's your start in life.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about that experience of being a child and going through this. You know, as you said, the original sin thing and you know, I remember being like a five-year-old kid, maybe eight, maybe I was a little older than five and they're like well, you're born in sin because Adam sinned. You sinned, therefore you sinned, and therefore God he loves you but he can't stand you. And you know, as you said earlier, when your parents take you to this place, where the nuns, or in my case, the Sunday school teachers, are telling you this, as a child, you have no defense and even though it doesn't feel right, you're like well, it must be true.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're told it's true and, as you said, it's underlined by your own parents' faith and their indoctrination. And if somebody said that word to you when you're eight years old, you're not going to know what that means. This is your reality, this is how my family functions and my family goes to this church and this is the kind of instruction they got and now I'm getting, and you don't have the wherewithal yet and the self-reflective ability yet, because that only comes later in life, as you mature. You don't have those tools, so you go along, but at some level even you might not have words for it something doesn't feel right, something just doesn't feel right, and it's later on that you know, when you're capable of reflecting and you're getting guidance for that through a book or through someone you value about grief to growth For me.

Speaker 2:

That was when the fire of personal growth lit up like an explosion, because all of a sudden, so, from book to book and from specialist to specialist, as I went through things, it's just like this big path opened up in front of me and I followed it. And there were some wrong turns, there were some bad forks in the road, but most of the path led to something valuable which led to something else valuable, which led to something else, and it just grew and it grew and it grew. And somewhere along the early stages of that path I said I want to be a psychologist. I didn't look it up in a book, I didn't look like a holistic policeman, this person, this person, lawyer, I didn't look it up, it just came from my heart, it came from inside. This is what I want to do, this makes sense to me and that was a very big turning point for me yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking that it was for you yeah, so in your experience, um, when you were a child and you're, as you're, going through this, when did you realize there was something wrong, that it just didn't feel right to you?

Speaker 2:

probably Probably early on, and not in the sense that I actually thought about it, but my father was prone to violence and I was the eldest and I got the worst of that. And so how can a religious-oriented person go off the rails like he did a few times with myself and my sisters and the only remedy was that, you know. So I would talk to a teacher about it or I would talk to my mother about it. My mother knew there was something going on there and at that age I had no information or wherewithal to understand that. He grew up in a violent home that was also surrounded with religion.

Speaker 2:

So, like we've already seen, you have no access points for alternative ideas. You have no access points for alternative ideas not until later in life when you're more on your own and you can do the kind of self-explorations that you've obviously done, to be interested in what you do and to develop it into a podcast so that you provide a venue for people to come and talk about stuff and come and share their pain and their difficulties. You know there's a long trail that led to where Brian sits today.

Speaker 2:

There's a long trail to where I sit today. And then you and I are meeting at this point and we're talking about hey, my trail was very much like yours, except, you know, I'm French-Canadian and da-da-da-da-da-da, but my religion did the same kinds of things to me as yours did to you.

Speaker 1:

It's the same thing. And you know, for me I thought when I was younger, like what's wrong with me? You know why is this working for other people but it's not working for me? I just I couldn't accept the fact that. You know again, I was born a sinner. God only loved me because he killed Jesus for me. So I'm like I love Jesus but I don't want anything to do with this guy. But for some people it doesn't seem to bother them.

Speaker 2:

Have you figured out why some people can go along with this for so long and it just seems to be okay? In most religions the systems are closed, so you can't go banging at the doors or opening cracks. There's a certain amount of comfort and predictability in being told what to do and being told that this is how life is now thinking and feeling. Persons at some point in their life are going to start questioning things. That's what's happened to you, that's what's happened to me. But there are people who come into your religion and come into the one I was born into as adults, and what they're there for and yeah, it's puzzling right. Yeah, but you know what they're there for, brian is the comfort of a place. It's. It's because religion is now like a super parent. They'll tell you what to do. They'll tell you what to think. They'll scold you when you make mistakes. They'll reward you in some fashion when you do something that they say you need to do. It's got a predictability to it. It's got a familiarity to it. It's a closed system. Every cult is and most religions are cults, even though the big ones that you and I know and grew up in. Typically, when they talk about cults, they talk about the Moonies and these people at airports who are dancing and collecting money for whatever. The fact is that most religions, these restrictive religions, they're cults, but that's comfortable for some people and they'll stay there.

Speaker 2:

You have to actively and maybe not consciously, but actively submerge your own feelings. Something rises up and says, hey, this doesn't feel right. Oh, but the teacher said this, or the Sunday school teacher said that, or mom said this, or dad said that, and then it goes back down. So we're already repressing stuff in those early days, brian, and we're doing it not consciously. We're doing it because we need to survive in this environment that we're in, and so this is how it works here. So at those stages of our life we comply. Later on, when we are able to question and look at things from a different perspective, that changes, and then we get condemned for daring to challenge that right.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, we get condemned.

Speaker 2:

You know, in my former church there's excommunication. There may be something similar in what you grew up in, but what keeps people there to answer that question is there's a certain comfort to it, predictability to it, and they don't want to have to think or feel beyond what they're familiar with. So they comply.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know you refer to religion as institutionalized pathology and we've also thrown around the c word here, the the cult word word. Yeah, and I remember when I was coming out and I found this guy named martin zender who was a christian and he wrote a book how to quit church without quitting god and I just and I was like you were saying so, I was just grabbing everything I find at the time and I remember there's a chapter and he listed 20 traits of a cult and then he compared this to the traits of the church and it was like it's a cult. It was pretty clear. So when you refer to religion as institutionalized pathology, what do you mean when you use that term?

Speaker 2:

Well, pathology, Brian, is anything that harms you.

Speaker 2:

So back in the 80s, and there's a very brave woman on television named Oprah Winfrey and she brought on experts in all kinds of areas and she was instrumental in opening the doors to people understanding the dynamics of dysfunctional families, starting with understanding the dynamics of a family where one or more of the parents, but usually one, was a raging alcoholic, an alcoholic, so dysfunctional family, a whole group of people on understanding these dysfunctional family dynamics. Well, when that door opened and Oprah had these guests on her show, there were great books to read and I read most of them, most from the guests that she presented, and it was amazing.

Speaker 1:

most from the guests that you presented and it was amazing.

Speaker 2:

Well, in the last 10, 15 years, as I was pulling my book together, I realized the synchronicity between understanding dysfunctional family dynamics and dysfunctional religions and same levels of pathology. Conditioning right, it's this way, this way, this way. That's the way it is. And, as you said, don't trust your feelings, don't trust your heart, Only trust what we say. It's written in scripture, it's etched in stone, so this is what you can believe and it's that they deliver that strict edict to you. This is how the world works.

Speaker 2:

Then you read this book how to Quit Religion, but Not God.

Speaker 2:

That's beautiful, because you don't give up spirituality to walk away from religion.

Speaker 2:

As a matter of fact, your spirituality takes a much deeper turn now, because now the message now is I have to trust myself, I have to trust my deepest self, I have to trust it's not just have to, it's okay to trust my own feelings. And as we go through these layers, brian, the layers of indoctrination, and we take one away and then another one and another one, we get closer and closer and deeper and deeper into our own heart, deeper and deeper into our own heart, and our feelings start to reveal this beautiful, majestic, amazing world. And I don't know if this happens for you, but when I walk in nature now I talk to the trees, I just say good morning, you know, and I touch them because I can feel the vibrations coming from them and they're just waving in the wind, you know they're beautiful. Or flowers and the bugs and the butterflies and the bees you know floating about, and the best place to go is a playground and watch little kids yelling and screaming and having a ball.

Speaker 2:

They're unhindered, right, they're unhindered, and they're just expressing that beautiful inner nature. Sure, they make mistakes, but mistakes can be corrected. When you define someone as defective, how does a child correct that hammer that knocks them down and keeps them trapped in that unhealthy, traumatizing situation? And that's it's my point of view with religion is they have committed crimes against humanity in terms of hammering away at our hearts, our feeling nature, which needs guidance, of course, needs nurturing, of course, and behavior needs guidance, of course. Correcting behavior and teaching kids that they can trust their feelings is far different than defining everything as negative and broken and defining the person as defective.

Speaker 2:

That's a crime against humanity.

Speaker 1:

I agree and you know the thing is, as I mentioned to you earlier, my grandfather was the pastor of my church and my parents, and you know and I know these people all had good intentions and I don't hold anything against them in terms of that. But looking at it now and looking at what people are teaching to children in the name of religion, it's child abuse. And when you were speaking about your father being a violent man and someone might say, well, how could someone who follows God be a violent man? Look at the guy they told us about. I mean, this is a guy who would literally torment you forever just for being the way that you were born. So why wouldn't you be a violent person?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, good point, good point. That's a you know. You know who George Carlin is.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

George Carlin. All right, he was raised Catholic. He goes through that long list of things that you've already cited. You know, just one after the other, all the definitions of how you're defective, and then the punchline is but God loves you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

How can that be One of the things that we need to understand in personal growth and you must be getting it now if you're trusting your heart. We have to love ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So the first step I call this my three-step system Self-reflection opens the door. It leads to self-acceptance. All right, now I'm okay, and now you're in that mode of well, I want to learn more and absorb more and try more. And self-acceptance leads to self-love touching your heart. Look, buddy, we gotta love ourselves, otherwise we can't. And you used these terms earlier, these questions why am I here? Who am I and why am I here? You use those, I use those very same phrases who am I and why am I here? Well, your heart will tell you why you're here. Home is where the heart is and that's where I live Inside my sorrows. I have learned to forgive. I have learned to love again. I am happy. No more chagrin. That's one of my song lyrics.

Speaker 1:

I love that yeah.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, it's just beautiful. The heart is the biggest and most important part of us, and even a guy named Albert Einstein you might be familiar with that name said love is the most powerful force in the universe. Well, when we feel it, we can feel how powerful that is, and sometimes it really shakes us as we dig down deeper and uncover, remove the rubble and the shambles of what we were indoctrinated with. We get into those deeper layers of feeling and love, not just for ourselves, because narcissists don't love themselves. Narcissists are people hiding behind a whole plethora of defense mechanisms. They are, but self-love excludes no one. In the healthiest sense it excludes no one. Why it's okay.

Speaker 2:

I want my children to love themselves. I'm going to model that for them. We're going to correct behavior, but behavior is not a definition of who they are. It's an act that needs. We want them to trust their hearts because the natural goodness is there and they're like. You see kids playing with pets and with bugs and whatever you know. They're adorable in the way they care and the way they emote and show their feelings. It's beautiful. If that's our natural inclination, don't we want to favor that? Don't we want to allow that to grow and let them become whoever they are, whatever they're meant to be, including loving and accepting themselves along the way, because they're only going to have more success in terms of what they're going to bring to life, in terms of their gifts, in terms of their uniqueness, in terms of answering their question of who am I and why am I here. You can trust your heart my son, my daughter and your heart will tell you who you are and why you're here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's your guidance.

Speaker 1:

So for you you mentioned meeting someone who was a psychologist and you mentioned your marriage when you were young. Was there something in particular that said where you just said, okay, I can't do this anymore. Was there like a breaking point for you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there was the first book that I got introduced to and you may or may not be familiar with it because this goes back to the early 70s, but it was called I'm Okay, You're Okay. It's that simple, and the author's name is Richard Harris, and he explained that I'm okay, you're okay simply means I'm a good person, you're a good person, you respect me, I respect you, I respect myself. And then he used the other combinations of it, and we can call them dysfunctional combinations of it. I'm okay, you're not okay. In other words, I'm a self-centered narcissist who thinks I'm better than everybody and you're a loser. And we know and we hear people, including people in politics, who use those phrases they're losers, they're losers, da-da-da-da-da. So I'm not okay, you're not okay. Well, that means we're all screwed up, that means we're all losers right.

Speaker 2:

And yeah and I'm not okay, you're okay means I'm a loser and you're okay and kind of that kind of defines the way we come out of our religion. If our teachers and our nuns and these people who are indoctrinating us, if they're okay, then why do I feel bad about this? So that was a door opener, but so was. I can't think of his name. Anyway, he was probably a minister of some sorts, but his book was called the Power of Positive Thinking.

Speaker 1:

Oh, Norman Vincent Peale.

Speaker 2:

Norman Vincent Peale. I'm pushing 80 now, so my memory isn't as—recalling stuff like that, but what a powerhouse message that delivered the power of positive thinking. But you can't think positively if you're being programmed to think of yourself as a sinner and to think of yourself as defective in the eyes of this institution that your parents belong to and you belong to, that your parents belong to and you belong to. So between that, those were the early stirrings that led to, and there was mountains of books that came out in the 70s and some very famous psychologists coming out of the US, and in my profession one of the top ones was Carl Rogers, and Carl Rogers is what, in my profession, we call the father of client-centered therapy. He developed an approach to basically listening to people. Listening to people, which is the same thing you do for someone who's in pain, but it's the same thing you do for someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. Listening to them and creating an environment where they can talk about what they're feeling. People who are grieving, they're hurting. They need to talk about that, to express those feelings.

Speaker 2:

There's lots of tools that you can use, whether it's about grieving the loss of a loved one or grieving your own childhood and that poor little kid that you were, who was lost in that morass of all those do's and don'ts that were driving him crazy at that time. Well, now he, she, needs you, the adult, you, to look back down, look back on them. Not down on them, but look back on them and say, hey, I know what you've been through, I mean, you know what you lived it. But I, the adult me, know what you, the child, me, have been through and we're listening, I'm listening, tell me what you're feeling and if you need to cry, let's cry. If you need to scream because you're angry, scream. You know, get the feelings out, you know, and that's the safest thing to do with a safe person or a safe environment.

Speaker 2:

Or you can use tools like journaling, talking to a friend, joining a group. There's grief groups for all kinds of things. There's personal growth groups. Well, you're talking about grief and growth. They go together. Grieving a lost childhood is not much different than grieving the loss of a loved one.

Speaker 1:

I want to emphasize what you just said there, because when I was going through you know my deconstruction phase and everything I remember I was in my mid-30s and I was like I was on antidepressants. I was having panic attacks all the time and I was like I was on antidepressants, I was having panic attacks all the time and I was like, okay, there's something, I've got to figure out what this is. And I had enough intuition, I guess, to say I'm going to go to a counselor, but it has to be a Christian counselor. So I went to a Christian counselor and she helped me to understand that I had to grieve for that child and I thought it was nonsense at the time. I'm like, what are you talking about inner child? And I got what I needed. And she's like, well, did you get what you needed? I'm like, yeah, I was fed, I was clothed, I was taken to Sunday school.

Speaker 1:

But I realized that was something really important for me to figure out because I was traumatized. And again, I'm not blaming my. I realized that was something really important for me to figure out because I was traumatized. And again, I'm not blaming my parents or even my Sunday school teachers. They were doing the best they could, but for me. I just felt like, why is God so angry at me? You know what did I do? And I felt like I would never be good enough, and that lasted until I was in my mid-30s.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a big load to carry. And you see how what you just described is how all that conditioning worked. I mean, you were still in your mind, fighting with yourself, because the definitions you've been given was, you know, suggested that God's angry at you for something. So well, what have I done wrong? And I don't know if you have the same terminology as we had with original sin, but if you're born defective, then what possible chance do you have to have a decent, fulfilling life or to make a positive contribution to mankind, because you're already broken. How did you get broken? Well, you can't figure that out, because you never were broken. You were just conditioned to believe by the same system that indoctrinated your parents, by the same system that indoctrinated your parents, by the same system that indoctrinated your parents' parents and all the way back, by the same systems that basically are in the service of keeping those institutions afloat and keeping them prominent on the landscape where they have major influence in our lives.

Speaker 2:

You know how many directives come from the Vatican, and now that you've got an American Pope from Chicago who is sitting in that chair, now you know all of these things, but the foundation upon which those things are built, the renunciations, the references to scripture and this and that Show me the videos, show me the origins, show me when Christ said this or when God said you know you're defective and I am pissed off with you. No, no, no, no. Here's the punchline, and you know this already, but if not, you'll get it. We are God. That is what we're getting in touch with. That is our original spirituality. We are spiritual, and so that book you read how to break free of religion but still be friends with God. It's a beautiful thing. There's someone who opened the door for you.

Speaker 2:

You read that. That opened the door for you and for me. Same thing happened, but just a different array of books. But back in my mind see a lot of people who break free of religion and there's books like this, and there's one by his name is Dr Darryl Ray and it's called the God Virus. He's an atheist, so you have atheists or agnostics. There's something lost there. Then all we are is this human form inside this body with a very strict due date, like a fiery date, right.

Speaker 2:

That's got to come up and then we're gone. I didn't have evidence at the time, but I always thought there's got to be more to this than just me being in this body. And if that's the case, why am I going through these particular life lessons? Why are these particular challenges coming? Well, at this point and you may agree with me you and I have walked the path to this point where we learned with others, because they're doing or they're coming, they're coming up against the same things you came up with years ago, when, when, when, things broke open for you the same thing with me yeah people need our experience and and, and we're benefiting from people ahead of us who offered us their experience.

Speaker 2:

Right, you see the pattern there, right? And so we could be upset about why we were born into these circumstances, or we can turn it into life lessons and gifts to ourselves, ultimately, but gifts to the generations coming up behind us. And the beautiful part about regaining spirituality and and I like being.

Speaker 2:

I like being identified as a spiritual psychologist, because most people in my profession don't no I like doing that because it's part of the, it's part of the access of of our deepest inner self, it's part of of, it's part of connecting with our heart.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I want to get back to that because I really appreciate you using that term. But I also want to emphasize a point you just made. You know, religions can do such a disservice in so many ways, but one of the ways they do a disservice is they can kill our spirituality, and that they can, you know, again tell us we're less than nothing. Or like my friend I remember he was part of we were part of a church called the Vineyard, which is a huge you know movement and stuff, and he was all into it, he was a missionary, et cetera, but then when it started to fall apart from him, he went to the other extreme and became the atheistic materialist and completely lost his spirituality because he said, if, if, this is what god is, this doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's uh, 180 degrees from the original problem is still a problem exactly. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and for some people that's a hard conception to buy. So what this person is actually exhibiting by throwing the baby out with the bathwater is that there's this big pool of rage inside of him or her, and that's their answer.

Speaker 2:

To just throw the whole thing away. Throw it all away, and I path that these experiences recommend is regaining trust in our own heart, and our own heart will lead us to what we need and the spiritual dimensions which are there all around us. I have no problem with that. I don't need to see them to know they're there, because funny things show up in your life when you least expect them, but they're exactly what you need at that moment. How did this happen? How did zinder's book show up when you needed it? You know the kinds of things that showed up for me, the things that we needed when we needed them, and you know.

Speaker 2:

So where is that direction coming from? Well, it isn't going to be till a long time later that you're ready to accept your spiritual nature in your heart, that you realize there's been something kind of guiding you along and just giving you a little nudge. Just hey, look at this buddy, what do you think of this? Try this on, try this on. And that's the beauty of the spiritual connection and the understanding that we're part of something way bigger.

Speaker 2:

And this body is a vehicle for this life experience on this planet at this time and for what we're here to learn and for what we're here to give, for what we're here to return to pass on to others. And I think, and I know in my heart, that there's an awakening going on, and people like you and I and many others and people that we look to for guidance and instruction are part of it. And the awakening is that we're good, beautiful people on the inside, that we have beautiful, brave hearts, that we care, that love is the most powerful force in the universe and we want to spread that around like wildfire because it's the best medicine for healing just about anything yeah, right, yeah, yeah, it's why, as you were saying that, because, um, we can get very almost evangelical, you know, um, which is to spread the good news.

Speaker 1:

There's nothing wrong with that word, right, we? And? And I I'm like I, ironically, I, because I used to be um, I was a Christian apologist. I would go back in the day AOL, I'd go in the chat rooms with the atheists and Jewish people and I'd try to convert people, and I had websites to convert people to Christianity. So I was doing all that stuff and I don't do that at this point in my life, but I do want to offer people what was offered to me. I found a site called Tentmakers back in the day when the internet was just coming up, and I found these people that gave me permission to think differently, because when you're in that, as you called it, it's a closed loop. You can't think outside that box and they indoctrinate. They will tell you don't listen to your heart, don't listen when anybody tells you anything. They're going to tell you these things and they're going to sound really good, but you can't listen to them.

Speaker 2:

And those things keep playing back in our heads. Yeah, there's the resonating factor of these that are our earliest conditioning that plays out, so it's a growth process. Conditioning that plays out, so it's a growth process. You know, once that door, once we put that door open and we apply those tools that are now readily available the first one being self-reflection, self-reflection it just didn't happen. A book opened your mind, opened your heart, an encounter with a person or a TV program, something started to make sense to you and you dug deeper.

Speaker 2:

Now I like to use the analogy of peeling away layers, because none of this gets done in one fell swoop. It doesn't happen that way and it's not desirable for things to happen that way. I know there's people, maybe still in the Christian traditions, that say they have a rebirth experience. I'm not sure what that is, and it's not something I aspire to or I think I need in my own life. If what I'm going through is a rebirth experience, well, the rebirth is simply that you know I'm trusting the original self that I was born into before all the garbage got tossed on top of it.

Speaker 2:

I'm trusting that part of me and my own inner goodness, and that's an important thing to recognize in ourselves. Because that's when black becomes white Things just flip right around. You were defined and held that definition of yourself as defective for so long. But that thing had to flip. And when it did and now you're coming from the position of I'm a good person, who's learning, who's got stuff to share, who's growing, and I've got lots more to learn, and as long as I'm here, I want to keep learning. Therefore, that's what I do I grow. Well, growing is a process. It's never a fait accompli. It's a process and we keep growing.

Speaker 2:

I like to quote George Burns. Once in a while George Burns, a great comic he said I ain't done till I'm done, and he was in his 90s and he was still working and he was still expressing who he was and he had a great sense of humor and genuine heart and kindness, and he just showed that all the time and right till the last minute. And that's what I want for me. That's what I want for me and that's what I want for me.

Speaker 2:

That's what I want for me and that's what I want for my kids and my grandkids. I've got several of those now. That's what I want for them to learn to trust themselves and to follow the inner directives, which is where we need to be, to recognize that we're divine to begin with, as opposed to defective, as we were schooled to believe. We are divine, but we're all divine, so I'm not better than you and you're not better than me. We have all these capacities and when we see it in other people, it's it makes us smile. You know we have conversations with people that you can see they're happy with themselves. You can see their genuine kindness. You know just their way of being in the world. You feel good when you're with them yeah feel good, right why?

Speaker 1:

do I trust them because it feels good and I trust what I feel you know it's funny, you, you mentioned something about rebirth and I've been thinking about that recently because I still think a lot, I read, still think about the Bible a lot and I there's a lot. I think there's a lot of good stuff in the Bible, I think there's a lot of good stuff in religion and Jesus talks about being born again and I'm like, okay, what does that mean? And when I I know you're in the music there's a song by a group. The group is called Enigma and the song is called Return to Innocence.

Speaker 1:

And when they're playing, when they do the video for the song, they show this person they're old and they're just getting younger and younger and younger and the song's about returning to innocence. So for me, being born again, it's like we come into this world and we are innocent. We are born innocent, we are born good, and then the world says, no, you suck, you know you're broken, and then we have to fight to get back to that. So for me, that's what my rebirth is about. My rebirth is returning to that innocent child that I was before they told me I was broken.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and Brian, that's, psychologically speaking. We're talking about the same thing, Right? You know all these psychology people who talked about and brought out all the dimensions that we now understand about connecting with your inner child. That's what it's about. So you know, whatever language you're comfortable with, and it defines that experience, but recovering that beautiful, nascent, innocent child and now knowing, in a vastly different way than what you were conditioned to, that of course I was innocent. I tell people this when we're dealing with the religious subject in terms of grieving, I say go to a hospital and go to the neonatal ward and look at those babies and start, you know, point at one and say, hey, you got original sin, and point at another one and say that Can you do that?

Speaker 2:

Some people have tried it. They can't. Can't assign that negativity to that. You know this. This thing is wiggling around and it's breathing and it's it's. It just arrived. Hey, it just arrived yeah just arrived.

Speaker 1:

It hasn't had time to screw up it's interesting to talk about this because I was raised um, you talked about original sin, but catholics to me are interesting because and I was raised to believe the catholics were going to hell, by the way. So, but you know, cath Catholics have this concept. Well, you have to baptize the baby right away because they have original sin. We didn't have that In our faith. You had to be baptized as an adult. So what they did was actually made this whole thing up. It's not in the Bible at all. They called it age of accountability. So if you were good up until a certain very fuzzy age, but you had original sin, but God at least knew enough not to send babies to hell, so that was one advantage we had yes, you were, you were ahead of us, because people would say, well, you can't look at the babies of the baby to hell.

Speaker 1:

Not even God would do that.

Speaker 2:

So they're good up until they understand what they're doing the hardest thing for as we're traveling that path, and you can't introduce the idea too early on. For people who are recovering from religion and recovering themselves the idea that we're divine, that just seems blasphemous to even suggest that idea.

Speaker 1:

Yes yes.

Speaker 2:

But Jesus said it yeah. We have to get past those early definitions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And when we're at a point where we can accept that. It's not about thinking we're so superior, it's just about recognizing that we are energy and our soul is energy and our soul is the active ingredient inside our bodies. When our bodies are done, our soul goes on to do whatever and maybe come back. Two-thirds of the planet believes in reincarnation. I don't have any problem with it. Thirds of the planet believes in reincarnation. I don't have any problem with it. But also most religions, and mine included, will teach you only have one life. So well, you know, what does that do?

Speaker 2:

That gives them more control, because if you have reincarnation, well, I can come back and I'll do it better next time or next time and next time, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:

You've got to do it perfect this time, according to them, but getting to that spiritual point where you recognize that divinity and all you're doing is you're recognizing that energy that you are, that primal energy that showed up in that little baby's body when you first showed up and then you grew into this environment, the earth environment and life experiences, and now you're you're working through those issues, that that defined you early on but damaged you and hurt you, and, and now you recognize that and now you're recovering from that, but you haven't tossed away the idea of your spiritual self. Well, now you can accommodate yourself to that idea and at some point you can just simply accept it. And it's not like we glow in the dark, you know, or like we're a big exploding star. We're just divine, just a package of energy. We're just divine, a just package of energy. We're having experiences and we're driven by our hearts, which are basically home-based, for love, the fuel that fuels life and makes life beautiful and warm and cozy and fuzzy, and all those good things, and, uh, you know, we hug together as family and and uh as uh.

Speaker 2:

What? What do you have? A partner or a wife?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And and children.

Speaker 1:

I have one, one child in spirit and one child here, yeah, All right. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well then I understand that you've gone through some heavy grief, yeah, and you know as we're talking about. You know grief and we. We talk about grief as losing. You know losing people, losing children, parents, whatever. There's also the grief of losing your religion. There there is a real you. That, for me, was a scary, scary process, wow, where you feel like you're stepping off a cliff. Sometimes, right, it's like if I let go of this, will there be anything there to catch me?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that fits in with what you asked me earlier. What keeps people inside? It's that comfort and familiarity. But yeah, I mean, that's a good description like you're stepping off a cliff Because you're stepping out of that familiar definition of who and what you are and what life is and why it's safer in here and those people over there In your case, you were pointing at Catholics while we were busy pointing at you but what you and I have in common is the understanding of our spirituality, and we're exactly the same.

Speaker 1:

We are.

Speaker 2:

We are Exactly the same.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'd like to. We talked a lot about breaking free of trauma or religious trauma. Talk about your book and what people will find when they read your book. How will it help people on their journey?

Speaker 2:

The title says everything that you and I have been talking about Breaking the spell of religion. You standing on the top of your cliff and ready to go and healing the trauma. The trauma is all those negative definitions that we received, all of that conditioning, all of that indoctrination, just psychologically speaking. Defining people as broken, as negative, as a failure is.

Speaker 2:

Well, you took all the antidepressants and all the medication to try and undo that and to a point that'll give you an artificial lift. But redefining yourself or rediscovering who and what you are is much better medicine than your antidepressants. And connecting with your heart and now trusting yourself and now being able to send love to that little Brian who grew up in that hellhole he needs you and he's going to be more playful. The more attention you pay to him, the more playful he's going to be, because he's just going to be that kid in the playground dancing around, looking at bugs and looking at birds and you know, talking to the grass or talking to the rabbits or the birds or the trees or whatever, and just enjoying life. You get to recover. That that's a rebirth experience. That's a beautiful thing to pass on. So for me it ties into. I come at it from the psychological point of view, but it's no different than your point of view. We're talking the same language. But the trauma is very, very harmful and trauma means that there's going to be pain and sorrow and there's going to be some crying and there's going to be some anger. There is going to be some anger of how we were mistreated, how we were defined in those negative ways. So one of the tools I always recommend to people is journaling. Write it down, write it down, get it out.

Speaker 2:

I've been journaling for 30-plus years. I write things down, write it down, get it out. I've been journaling for 30 plus years. I write things down Every few months. I shred the last few months stuff because I don't need to look at it again. It's just a place where I can talk to myself about my feelings and sometimes I can have a conversation with little Maurice, the little child in me. So I'll put in the margin me adult, me say how are you doing today, little Maurice? And then I'll put little M and I let that voice speak to me.

Speaker 2:

I just write it down and she tells me what's your feeling. And it's a conversation, it's a part of you from the past speaking to the adult. You now, and you speaking to them and you're making room for them to express themselves. Because in those early days, brian, survival meant numbing out, because things didn't make sense and we were being crushed with all these negative definitions of ourselves. The only thing we could do was numb out. God consciously do that. It's just a natural protective mechanism, natural protective mechanism. That's why, with psychology, we can dismantle, we can identify and then dismantle all those defense mechanisms projection, anger, and I had anxiety attacks too before I started getting the medical and psychological help. And that's our bodies rebelling against these definitions of ourselves. And anxiety attacks are basically little wars in our own body with different parts of ourselves, and they're a clear sign that something doesn't make sense and isn't working. So, as we unpack that you don't have anxiety attacks now, do you?

Speaker 1:

No, I don't no.

Speaker 2:

No, you don't, neither do I. Those things got taken care of because we had different parts of ourselves, so different dimensions of our own energy, or colliding with ourselves, and anyway, that's the simplest picture as I can give. But at this stage and everything you've come through and you've climbed quite a mountain or dove off quite a cliff. So have I, and we have the perspective of all of that behind us and the realization that the growth path that we're still on is still there in front of us. And we're not done yet. We're learning every day. I talk to you, you talk to me. We learn from each other. I get confirmation of, or I get to recognize. I'm looking at a mirror. I see a guy named Brian, but he's lived very similar things to me. Back when you were a Pentecostal and I was a Catholic, you and I would have never talked to each other Because, for different reasons, you were going to hell and so was I.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

But now we're on the same page. That's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I want to thank you so much for the work that you're doing, the work you've done for putting your books out in the world, for calling yourself a spiritual psychologist. I think that's beautiful, because a lot of times people in that profession run away from spirituality and you can't treat somebody without understanding that they're spiritual beings in the first place. I don't understand how we can get away from that, so I want to thank you for doing that. Let people know, dr Mo, where they can reach you, where they can find out more about you.

Speaker 2:

Well they can reach you. Go to Amazon and you'll find my books there. So, breaking the Spell of Religion and Healing the Trauma, and when Angels Call, coping with Grief and Loss. So I like angels, and in the descriptions of each item there's references to my music site, which is at Bandcamp, and I have songs that are spiritual in nature in terms of affirming the very things that you and I are talking about, and I like that song that you referenced. Was it Enigma?

Speaker 1:

Enigma Return to Innocence. Enigma Return to Innocence, yeah yeah, return to Innocence.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to check that out, so or otherwise. You just Google my name. Oh, I'm on Facebook. Oh, here I'm on Facebook. Yeah, under the title of Dr Moe's. If you Google my name at Facebook, I've got three sites Spiritual Connection, motormel just Motormel, my personal site, and what is that? One called Dr Mo's Cosmic Perspective. Okay, dr Mo's Cosmic Perspective, that's a big word. But, I like the word cosmic and my YouTube site is the Spiritual Psychologist.

Speaker 1:

Alright, cool, very good, so great to meet you. We'll have to do this again. There's some more things that we could talk about. I'd love to talk about spirituality in music. I used to be a big CCM fan Christian contemporary music, which I can't listen to anymore, so I'm always looking for good spiritual music. So we'll have to talk again.

Speaker 2:

Brian, if you want to write this down, oh no, it's on my signature, on my emails. There's a link there That'll take you to the music site. All right, awesome. So go and sample what's there. It's free streaming at the site. If you choose to download stuff, then you pay, but while you're there you can look at anything, and most of the songs, the lyrics, are there, and I like the idea of coming back and meeting with you again. Last week I had a meeting with a person that we did a podcast last summer and it was like a whole new view of where he was at and where I'm at and what we had to share, and I was worried that we'd just be repeating ourselves, but we weren't. He changed and I changed, and a few months down the road, six months down the road, whenever you and I, we're going to have more to talk about and more to share, and that's good for me and if it's good for you, then it's win-win for both of us.

Speaker 1:

Sounds great. Well, enjoy the rest of your afternoon. I'll talk to you later.

Speaker 2:

All right, thanks for this, so you.

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