The Struggle to Find God | Ep. 44
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?
[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek.
[00:00:43] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with another episode of order within.
[00:00:53] Today is going to be covering a very.
[00:00:58] I think near and dear topic for me. It's something that I've struggled a lot with throughout my life. I think a lot of people struggle with. God and our relationship with God and finding God and what it all means. Today's episode, episode number 44 is about the struggle to find God. I'm going to share my personal story and struggles.
[00:01:21] In my relationship with God, I'm going to break down some historical perspectives and thinkers. On the struggle to find God. Or then going to look at the influence of religion on our perception of God, which I did an episode before. Where I deep dived in a bit more on God versus religions. We'll talk a little bit about that as well.
[00:01:43] We're looking at. Uh, the next piece is going to be the power of personal experience. And then we're going to conclude. The episode. So, this is something that I've thought about. I've had this episode. On my podcast list for a long time. Now, just have been thinking a lot about how I'm going to handle the episode, how I want to share.
[00:02:02] This. Journey, this the story, the struggle. That I've felt. And many others have felt. I have a lot of friends. Who are maybe more Gnostic than anything, but. They've struggled with their relationship with God. And I think it's something that many of us feel, and I want to help unpack that and navigate that landscape because it is challenging and it's, it can be scary and there's a lot of things.
[00:02:29] That can complicate the matter. And especially when you layer in religion and how we were raised and the beliefs that we were raised with, there's so much nuance to this. There isn't a blank statement to this, but I think it's just a general struggle that many of us feel. And our relationship to our creator, particularly in the times that we live.
[00:02:49] With the. The lack of a spiritual relationship. In our society anymore, we've gone very. Very against the grain. We've removed, gone from a lot of our society. We've become a very secular society. And people take a lot of pride in that. They see it as a means to see the world objectively and be honest and truthful. And I respect, I can respect that.
[00:03:14] Point of view and understand where they're coming from, but there's also. Some mix-ups in there there's misunderstanding. So I hope to unpack a lot of that. Create some clarity. And help you on your journey to finding God if you choose to do so first and foremost,
[00:03:33] Struggling with God has been something I've felt all of my life. I've always felt a spiritual. Connection vibe throughout life. My connection to nature, my connection to animals, my love of humans. I just always had this innate sense of.
[00:03:51] Justice, if you will. I don't know, like a connection to things. It's hard to explain in a way, because it's just, it has been innate in me. I remember it when I was a child. And I remember playing with animals in the. And the neighborhood and. Realizing the power that I had to potentially harm them.
[00:04:09] And exploring that not hurting animals, but recognizing that wow. Like I actually do have the power to harm other living beings and that we have power to do things. And. Impact the world that we're around. And the world that we experience. And I realize. That, because of that. I had power, but I just didn't really know what it meant. And it was always lingering in me too.
[00:04:34] There was a lot of this that. Was always around, but I just couldn't understand what it was. And as I got older and I started to understand context of religion and. What we were told about. The story of how we came to be from a Western Christian perspective. And. And then just, it never. Felt right to me, going to church, never felt right to me. I went to church a lot. I went to a lot of different churches. I went to churches with friends. I went to church.
[00:05:03] When I was a kid, I went to church as a teenager. I went to churches and adult. And I've just never felt a connection there. Oh it, and I'm not, again, this is not. This is my experience. Everyone's experience is unique to themselves. And I'm not saying that I'm not even against church. I think church can be a phenomenal community.
[00:05:21] Building tool. It's a great way for us to worship together and share insights and believes and support one another. So there's a lot of value in communities and churches. But it also confuses a lot of people in it. That's what it did with me. It confused me a lot. I remember in particular, I stayed with when I was in elementary school, I stay with a friend.
[00:05:40] And elementary school. I didn't realize how religious they were until I stayed with them. And they were very strict. Kind of Bible beaters, if you will. And it was just a lot of fear. A lot of fear that was passed out. And that was something that always did not feel right to me is that all this fear did not make sense to correlate with God.
[00:06:03] 'cause for me, it always felt, I felt an overwhelming sense of love, even though I couldn't understand what it was or explain what it was or anything like that. But the fear. I could just never resonate with. And because of that.
[00:06:18] I struggled with how much fear seem to be all around. It was everywhere. Like relative to God. And it was all fear-mongering the so much. And I grew up in West Virginia. And the eighties and nineties. So it was still. A little bit of a different time, but there was a lot of fear-mongering around that. And so that created a sense of fear for me.
[00:06:41] Early on. In my relationship to God. And I think a lot of us go about that's how we get started on the path is this fear-mongering path is we're afraid initially of, oh, we're going to be damned. Eternally, if we make mistakes or if we sin or all this stories that we were told is inherently that we are broken.
[00:07:01] And that. If we don't. Make changes. If we don't accept. Christ as our savior, then. We will go to hell. It's a pretty raw story. It's a pretty cruel story. To be honest. And so that fear drives many of us. It's because fear can be an effective way to control people. And in my mind, Fear has controlled many people throughout religion.
[00:07:28] And now it's tied together with God. And a big part of that fear though, is once you get outside of the religion piece, Is that. There is a fear of, uh, of a source of power. That's aware that's intelligent. And has so much more power than we do the thought of that of actually having a conscious creator in our universe.
[00:07:54] Organizing. And building and creating. Now we have free will. So nothing's guaranteed. That's the beauty of life. That's the upside we have to choose. We have the freedom to choose. That's. The distinction here is that we have the ability to choose our creator. Desires us to choose. That's what we have been given our ability to say yes or no to that path.
[00:08:18] We can deny it. If we wish we can deny our heritage, we can deny the connection in the universe. We can deny all of these things. That's our choice. That's how much we were loved. We have the freedom to choose. But that fear can grip us. And we can turn away from it. And we can stay away from it from that, because of that fear, because first and foremost, it is pretty terrifying thinking about the fact that there may be consequences and everything that we may do in our lives may be recorded.
[00:08:50] Or recognized in a universal sense. That's a very scary place. I think a lot of people struggle with that. I know I did personally. Was the fear of the judgment, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of failing. All this fear. That was hammered in and. Connected to God. Incorrectly.
[00:09:13] Because as I've gotten older and I've built and developed a personal relationship with our creator, I've come to realize that this whole fear thing is humans. Humans are the fear mongers. And fear is a good thing. It's a great indicator. It's a signal to us that something may be off in our environment. It teaches us, it leads us.
[00:09:31] But it's not something that we should be living by all the time. It's a useful signal. But that's really it. It's a response. We can leverage it. It's there for a purpose, but it's not meant to be our main mode of operating. It's not our true north. Our true north is love and creation, compassion, truth. Those are our true Nords.
[00:09:51] As humans. So when we go against those things, it can be a struggle. And that's what I felt for many years. I was afraid of this concept of God, of something being out there that.
[00:10:03] Was controlling me. Or trying to control my life. And that was another thing is that if I surrendered my life to God, that I was somehow now a puppet and I did. I didn't want to. Surrender my freedom.
[00:10:19] I wanted to be free. I wanted to live my life. As I saw fit, I wanted to be and live as I desired. And so I was all, I had all these conflicts. I had all these desires and had all these internal conflicts because I wanted freedom. I want to do experience life deeply. I wanted so badly to go out into the world and have everything that I could.
[00:10:38] All the experiences that earth had to offer. So I was conflicted a lot. I was always young too, and I felt guilty for having desires. I felt guilty for being sexual for being physical. For wanting to do things for wanting things for having needs.
[00:10:53] But we can internalize this stuff. And this is what happens if we don't root it out is we internalize this and we believe that's the case. And we go on operating like that becomes our operating system. It becomes a fear-based operating system. And so many of us live in that space. And our brain is a supercomputer. It's a living machine that has been created for us to use so that we can create, learn and grow.
[00:11:16] But our brain. Uses mental operating systems and those operating systems are our beliefs. They are often subconscious, obviously. And they operate. And in order for us to change our lives, we have to rewire our brains. We have to re program our operating system, and that comes through beliefs and understanding all these things and unpacking this stuff. That's why this is so important.
[00:11:40] But there's a lot of deep seated, guilt and fear. That I had early on in my life and my relationship with God. And then the conflicting nature of religion and humanity. Just the very nature of the mini laws and things that were pre. Announced in religion. Our very anti-human. Just the language around marriages and some of the things around gay people in general, there's a lot of darkness in the Bible. There's also a lot of truth. There's a lot of wisdom in there and that's, again, this isn't.
[00:12:12] I'm against the all or nothing mentality. Finding the middle path is what it's about. Take what worked for you and leave the rest. But there's a ton of conflicting information. About. Life and being human in these religious texts, it can really warp people's minds and put us against ourselves, our human nature, because we are first spiritual beings having a.
[00:12:35] Physical experience. It's not the other way around. But we've gotten things so warped. Everything's turned upside down. And that fear drives that so much of that fear drives that. But this conflict that many of us feel. Is based on these outdated ideas of God these incorrect ideas. They're not.
[00:12:57] Correct. That's just, and this has happened. This has changed for me over my experiences as I've reflected on my beliefs. My past beliefs, the things that I once. Understood about God and the things that I believed about God were incorrect. And I had to go about reworking this stuff because my experience was showing differently and I was learning things differently.
[00:13:21] I was. As I was in my twenties and thirties, I began. Experimenting with psychedelics. I've done. Iowasca a few times. I've had some mushroom trips done intentionally. In retreats with the intention of healing and using them as medicine. And it opened my eyes to things I've used cannabis as a meditation tool and I've done deep meditations. I, I.
[00:13:47] Read through and leveraged Osho. The Indian philosopher who came to America and had this whole crazy story around him in the, in an Oregon, I believe it was. That's, that's neither here nor there. I know people have their qualms with him or not. It's nobody's perfect. It doesn't mean they can't have good ideas and helpful.
[00:14:07] Ideas that we can leverage. And he was one of those guys.
[00:14:10] And he had a book called the book of secrets, which is. Like 112. Meditation techniques. And I was trying a bunch of those different techniques and using those techniques, I had some pretty breakthrough, spiritual experiences. I felt I experienced myself. I experienced other beings. I experienced the intelligence of the universe.
[00:14:31] Leveraging meditation. Psychedelics. And intention. And over time, I began to realize dude, we've been lied to a lot. Like most of us have learned. We've been lied to a lot, to keep us small, to keep us controlled, to keep us down. And this really all changed. When I read the book, you're Rancho that you ranch a book it's over 2000 pages.
[00:14:53] If you haven't read it, I encourage you to check it out and do some research on it. It's available digitally online. You can find it anywhere. It's a nonprofit. It has a mysterious beginnings as well. Coming about back in the early 19 hundreds. But the concepts in that book. Change my experience with God, because it made me realize that I'd been experiencing God my whole life. I just didn't understand it because the context wasn't there. And so you Rancho helps paint a picture of an organized.
[00:15:18] Scientifically driven spiritual world. That we're a part of all these structures, all these layers, all these dimensions to reality. All this intention, all this intelligence. But one of the things that stood out above. All was the concept of the thought adjuster, the divine thought adjuster, which is effectively a spark of God, a spark of creation that is placed in all of us. That is the spark of life that we carry within us. That is literally the voice of creation within us. All.
[00:15:50] The small, still whisper within is there for all of us to engage with, to lean, into, to learn from and to allow it, to guide our life. And that's what I started to realize. I didn't know what that's, what that was. I'd been experiencing that small, still voice my whole life. It's always been there.
[00:16:07] And it's got me through some dark times. Some challenging times, but that small, still voice. Gave me the love the guidance just enough in those dark times to carry you through just enough light to carry through, it would just whisper. You can do this. You've got this. There's more in this world. I promise you.
[00:16:26] I have things for you in this world, do not be discouraged by your circumstances. All these loving messages now. It was silent over. It was very still. Because the critic, which all of us have. It was loud, angry. Hateful. It took me a long time to unpack those things. But experiencing that and understanding God from a different perspective, realizing that God is not what we've come to know in religion.
[00:16:55] God is not some old man with a beard in the clouds. We still have so little knowledge about existence and consciousness and our physical or reality. We know even less about the cosmic universe. So there's so much to this. And so for me, early on, I was afraid, afraid to surrender afraid that I was surrendering my sovereignty afraid to let go.
[00:17:21] Afraid that meant that I had to give up my life, that I was going to become a puppet. A tool for God, whatever that meant to beat, to use me in a way that he saw fit. But what I didn't realize was that. The very life that I dreamed about my highest life that I dreamed about was actually the God the life that God was wanting for me as well.
[00:17:40] That to me is what destiny is. Destiny is our highest possible life that we can live on earth. But we choose destiny. We have to make it work. We have to align our lives with destiny. So destiny exists. It's our job to align with it. For me, that's what I felt that for the first time in my life.
[00:17:58] I realized for the first time in my life that all these desires. All those things that were burning deep in my heart and my spirit, or actually God calling me forward. It was the world. That had tricked me into believing that these things were not truthful, that they were not good, that they were not loving.
[00:18:15] And that has happened to so many of us, the world has tricked us into believing. That God has something different that God is something outside of ourselves. That it's something you find in a book in a church you don't. God is within all of us. And that is the massive shift. That has happened for me. And that's what started to change. But for years I struggled with fear and guilt.
[00:18:40] I didn't want to surrender my life because I thought I was giving up everything that I love. But what I come to realize is that everything that I truly loved. It was what God was calling me to do. The life that I envisioned was aligned with God and the mission that he had for me, I wasn't surrendering anything. In fact, that was gaining myself, gaining more of what I have getting more of already. What I am.
[00:19:00] Uh, gaining more of this vision, more of my power.
[00:19:04] So since adjusting my perspectives, the power has came to me and grown. And I have more freedom now than I've ever felt in my entire life. And I feel more authentic and true to who I am than I've ever felt in my entire life. And that's because my perspective has changed on God and my relationship to God has changed. And now I realize that power, that spark.
[00:19:25] That. Thought adjuster. Is the key to all this, to key, to transform these fears, these guilt, all this confusion and to power and to creation. That's a long-winded story there for me. But I've had a ton of struggles with God and I've. In and out flexing in and out of this, I've been afraid of it for a very long time. And so many of you may not know me, but I wear a cross.
[00:19:48] Around my chest. Every day. I never take it off. I've always felt a connection to Christ Christ, the human Christ, the. To my mind was a greatest human to ever walk this earth. He represents what's possible for us.
[00:20:01] So that's why I wear it. Not because I'm necessarily even a Christian, but because I believe in him and even more so now you rancher. There's connection to that. And this deep root, deep seated love that I feel for creation and for life and for my fellow brothers and sisters of humanity. Once you see all that you realize that we're just one giant family.
[00:20:21] But there's a lot of power in this y'all and I can tell you, I promise you if you're feeling that fear, if you're feeling some of these similar things. I lean into them. Just let them lead you your. Your power comes in is amplified. When we lean into our creator, we find freedom in that there's so much glory and power that comes with it.
[00:20:41] There is freedom that comes with it. What becomes what you want to become becomes more possible. That's what's beautiful about it.
[00:20:50] All right. So let's talk about some. Prominent thinkers throughout history have also struggle with this concept. There's four thinkers. I'm going to highlight today.
[00:21:01] Frederick Nicha, CERN, Soren, Kircher guard. Albert Caymus and Virginia Wolf. So we're going to go through each of those or talk a little bit about their perspectives. And then we're going to keep cruising through the show here. We're getting some influences on religion as well. Niches concept of God is dead, was not a direct declaration of atheism, but rather a critique of the way religion had been used as a tool of cruise control and oppression. And that's what I was talking about earlier. This is not new, right? A lot of us have felt this. Some very deep, powerful thinkers have felt this way too. Nisha was one of those. He saw the problem, not with God, but.
[00:21:39] Religion and the desire to control and oppress humans. Need to believe that the concept of God had lost its relevance in modern times, the times that he was living in, and that individuals should look within themselves for guidance and inspiration. And I couldn't agree more. Because that's where we truly find God. That's where we cultivate a relationship with God.
[00:22:00] And we. Use that relationship. We find that relationship. We establish that relationship. Do we come our whole selves?
[00:22:08] To become all that we are.
[00:22:11] All right. So next Kirk regard.
[00:22:14] I believe that the search for meaning and purpose in life required a leap of faith. He argued that the reason and logic. He argued that reason and logic would only take us so far and that we must have faith in something greater than ourselves in order to find true meaning and fulfillment. And again,
[00:22:31] Another strong point there. Uh, logic. And reason are crucial to live balanced lives. We have to manage our emotions. We have to be objective about the world that we're looking at, but we also have to have hope faith look beyond just what we see. And that's something that sometimes we miss. With a pure scientific approach.
[00:22:52] Is that we don't always see what's right in front of us. And if we only choose to see what's right in front of us, then we're going to. Remove a whole part of life that's unseen and that's that leap of faith that's often required and that leap of faith can take us deeper into meaning and fulfillment when we recognize.
[00:23:13] That there is much more to life. Than the light that we live in the world that we live in.
[00:23:18] Now Albert Caymus explore the concept of the absurd.
[00:23:25] Which he described as the conflict between our desire for meaning and purpose in life and the real realization that there is no inherent purpose or meaning in the universe came as believed that we must embrace the absurd and create our own meaning in life. So Caymus, his struggle is like, it's an absurd concept. Like the concept of God, isn't one of those of absurdity. And some of these ideas are absurdity, like thinking about the universe in a huge context, like some of these ideas are absurd.
[00:23:56] Reincarnation, multiple planets, multiple dimensions. Layers to heaven. There's a lot of absurdity to that. And so that's what he's highlighting is that we have to lean into the absurd to find purpose and meaning in our life. In a way that makes sense to us. We have to make our own meaning in our world.
[00:24:15] And that's really key for me. That's why the beliefs that I have give value to my life and what I do, but for each of us, it may be different. So we have to find those things that are unique to us that resonate with us, and we have to explore them and create the meaning. That resonates for us. Maybe that's, Buddha's amazing yet. Zen philosophy, maybe it's all of those things. I resonate with a lot of the major religions of the world. There's components of wisdom in all of them.
[00:24:41] Alright, last Virginia Woolf's writings. We're on faith and spirituality and we're deeply personal and introspective. She struggled with the traditional idea of a Christian God, but also expressed a deep reverence for nature and the interconnectedness of all things. That's one of the things that I liked about her perspective is that she saw God and creation and nature and the interconnectedness of things, how interdependent we are.
[00:25:08] And the wisdom that operates in that. So again, we can find the beauty and the meaning all around us. Well, we have to lean into what works and you can find God in science. You can find God in nature. You can find God in art, you can find garde and music. You can find God in relationships, you can find God and sex.
[00:25:28] We can find God all around us. That's the point. It's not just in this book, this very rigid way of seeing God there are an infinite number of ways that we can connect and find our relationship with our creator.
[00:25:44] All right. So now we're going to move into the influence of religion on our perception of God. And so I've talked about this before, so I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on it here, but I do think it's important to talk a little bit more about.
[00:25:56] Religion has absolutely influenced our perception of God. Because it's played a major role in shaping our understanding of what God is and how he, or she may work our relationship to God. Many religious traditions offer a specific set of beliefs, practices, and rituals that are intended to connect individuals with higher power. However, these traditions can also limit our understanding of God and restrict our ability to connect with the divine in a personal and meaningful way.
[00:26:26] And that's happened to a lot of us. A lot of us struggle with that.
[00:26:31] A lot of us have a hard time. Connecting to God in a personal and meaningful way, because of all the things that we've been told about religion. And what we forget is that humans created religion. Humans. Humans organized religion. God, let us loose. So like we blame a lot of times God gets all the rap for all the bad things that are happening award or like, how can you, if God existed, how could so much terrible things happen?
[00:27:00] On planet earth. Or eternal beings. And we have, we live. Many lives. That doesn't mean we don't care for our planet. Doesn't mean we don't recognize where we are. But. How else can we learn if we're not able to make mistakes, just like a child. We can't protect them from everything. Sometimes the best thing we have to do is let them make the mistakes so that they can learn. Sometimes they have to touch the hot stove really quick to learn. Okay. I'm not touching that anymore because we've told them a hundred times not to touch it and it will hurt.
[00:27:29] And then they still don't listen and then they touch it once and then it's done. We're very much like that we go and we experience life. We have to experience life for ourselves. And religion can restrict our understanding and our relationship to God based on these strict beliefs, instructors, and practices. And it also leads us to believe that you can achieve things through doing these routine mundane.
[00:27:51] Mindless acts and that's something else that's that needs to go away because we don't find God by being mindless and unconscious, we find God by being mindful and conscious intentional, that's the key piece.
[00:28:05] So some contradictions. That have arisen in religion. Not that you all probably need to know this, but some religious traditions promote intolerance and discrimination against individuals who do not adhere to their beliefs. While others have been impacted in acts of violence and oppression throughout history.
[00:28:25] In addition, religious teachings can sometimes be contradictory or difficult to reconcile with scientific or empirical evidence leading to confusion and skepticism among believers and non-believers alike. I was sharing this earlier. It's very similar. But there's a lot of conflicting information. There's a lot of brutality still in religions, right? A lot of old ways of living. If we're so fixated on the text and we're not looking at life and what we're doing and living and not considering that, oh, maybe this could be manipulated. We can get ourselves into some rigid. Mental structures and models.
[00:29:00] The last piece, because this is what I was meaning here is that organized religion is not all bad. Organized. Religion can be a very valuable tool. For connecting with God. It's important though, that individuals learn to explore their own beliefs and develop their own personal relationship with the divine.
[00:29:19] This may involve questioning traditional beliefs and practices or seeking out alternative spiritual traditions or practices that resonate with one own experience and worldview. So explore, be open, try new things. If you are. Traditional. Faith oriented person. I would ask you to explore. Face that you don't know anything about face that you don't study, that you don't obscure.
[00:29:45] That you don't subscribe to. Because this allows us to build our own relationship to connection and also carry an open mind about our fellow humans. Religion. Is. The way that we try to understand our relationship with God and the different religions are a variety. Are the variety. And means the frameworks that we use to go about doing that.
[00:30:08] Some may resume. Others may not. We just have to find what works for each of us. So it's all about individual exploration. In discernment. Learning discernment is crucial in our world. Developing discernment. Is key. And we do that by digging in learning. And trying things. And exploring new information and perspectives.
[00:30:31] All right gang. I got. This last bit here, the power of personal experience, and I'm going to conclude the episode.
[00:30:38] So it's important as I was just concluding there at the end of that section and rolling into this final section here the it's important to understand personal experience and intuition and finding a connection with God. While religious traditions can provide a valuable framework for exploring spirituality and connecting with the divine personal experience. And intuition can also play a crucial role in the process.
[00:31:02] By reflecting on our own experiences and developing our intuitive capacities. We can cultivate a deeper, more personal understanding of God and our place in the universe. And that's the goal. And we can do that by meditating. We can journal. We can pray. We can use psychedelics. We can go to church. We can have, we can do coaching sessions. We can explore with other people. There are lots of ways that we can find and cultivate.
[00:31:27] Our own personal pathway with God. Our intuition, our internal. System our intuition is our internal director. That's a great way to lead us. Through our journey. My, my path has been very non-traditional to back to God. And I think many people's path back to our creator is going to be very nontraditional moving forward, because we're breaking away from these traditional formats.
[00:31:54] And breaking a lot of this. Uh, mental rigidy. That's existed on planet earth for a long time. So using and leaning into our intuition to allow it to lead us.
[00:32:06] Can be very helpful.
[00:32:08] On this journey because each of us it'll be different. It may be yoga. It may be meditation. It may be psychedelics. It could be church. It could be prayer. It's going to be different for each of us. We all have to go on our own little journey. The best thing about this though, is you just plant seeds.
[00:32:24] And let's see if things grow and people, because sometimes they can grow and it's incredible what can happen?
[00:32:32] So there's, there are many examples of individuals who have found their own unique path to spiritual connection. Often outside of an organized religious tradition. These may include, as I was mentioning there, like nature based spirituality is awesome. Walking in nature. Meditation prayer. You can explore the altered states of consciousness. As I was mentioning around psychedelics.
[00:32:54] By listening to and honoring our own experiences. We can find a path to spiritual connection that resonates with our own unique needs. And values. And I've talked about, Christ's a lot on here. I've talked about uranium. But Buddha Krishna Gandhi Lao-Tzu there are a lot of people that have influenced my thinking in my journey and there's wisdom in all this. And so leaning into them, learning from them too. That's.
[00:33:20] My, when I was deep in my darkness, I wanted to learn from people that seem to have overcome any of these things. So I look to spiritual leaders. I look to. Authors and speakers and all these people throughout history thinkers to learn from them and see what their perspective was on these types of things. And it's helped hugely, and it can help you as well. Find what resonates with you.
[00:33:41] This is the, an aspect of the Rancho book that I wanted to share based around. Our connection to God. And so the Rancho book is a spiritual text that offers a unique perspective on the nature of God and the universe. It emphasizes the importance of individual experience and intuition and finding a personal connection with the divine.
[00:34:00] And offers a framework of exploring spiritual concepts outside of a traditional religious sense. And it's. It's very outside the box, but there's, it's also so organized and so thought provoking. It's such an incredible book. And this is what I was talking about earlier. One of the key aspects of the range of book is an emphasis on the indwelling of the thought adjuster.
[00:34:24] Uh, divine present presence within each individual that can guide us on our spiritual journey by cultivating an awareness of this inner per presence. We can tap into a deep source of wisdom and guidance that can help us navigate the challenges of life. And connect with our creator.
[00:34:39] That's the power that we hold within us. That's that spark of life. That each of us carry and I encourage you to listen and lean into that small, still voice.
[00:34:49] And then the last spiritual teacher here that I wanted to talk about.
[00:34:54] Is Jesus. He's considered by many to be spiritual teacher and guide the king of all Kings and his teaching offers insights into the nature of God and our own spiritual path. Jesus emphasized the importance of love, compassion, and service to others, as a means of connecting with God and finding meaning and purpose in life.
[00:35:13] He also stressed the importance of personal experience and individual intellect intuition. And finding a personal connection with the divine. Uh, by listening to the still small voice within and following our own inner guidance, we can tap into a deep source of wisdom. They can help us navigate those challenges again.
[00:35:32] Christ taught these things. He also rejected the notion of an angry and vengeful God. He always emphasized the loving nature of our creator. He did not. Vibe. With the fire and brimstone. That existed at the time he rejected that notion his father, his heavenly father was one of love. Of compassion of care.
[00:35:56] And wisdom and it's our own ignorance and our own misunderstanding of creation. And God that's warped our world and our perception, not the other way around. Humans. We have, we have to learn. That's not about blaming, right? It's about taking responsibility. That means though, we have a huge upside. We have all this opportunity to learn and grow now what an incredible time to live, what an incredible time to live.
[00:36:24] All right gang. So to sum up here.
[00:36:28] The struggle to find God is a timeless human endeavor. And is often complicated by the influence of organized religion on our perceptions of the divine, however, personal experience and intuition can play a powerful role in finding a personal connection with God. And there are many examples of individuals who have found their own unique path to spiritual connection. I covered some of them in line in the show, but there are so many more to write. You got to find the ones that work for you too. Maybe none of this resonates. You ought to find your own. That's okay.
[00:36:58] There are. Infinite number of paths to achieve this state, to get to where we're going. And that's within us. It's claiming what is ours? So whatever path you got to take to get there, take it. That's completely. Okay.
[00:37:13] I would also love to hear from you. Is this something that resonates with you? Have you struggled to find God? Do you still struggle with it? Is it something that you're struggling with today? I'd love to hear from you about that. Drop me on Twitter. Hit me up on LinkedIn. You can submit a form on my.
[00:37:30] Website, if you'd like, you can also hit me up on, you can comment on the order, my sub stack here on order within. So there's a lot of ways to hit me up and I would love to hear from you because I think a lot of you would recognize. That common struggle. That many of us. Here. And feel. And our relationship to God and to finding and cultivating a personal connection and relationship with God.
[00:37:54] So as some resources, y'all. A simple way. If you're curious if you're new or looking to explore this. Simply inviting God in your life. Just invite God into your life. Just request God to come into your life. That's it and see what happens if you do that, do it each day, just ask. Can you show me your presence?
[00:38:16] Can you show me your presence? God, can you show me, can you help me connect with you? Can you help me? Cultivate a relationship. Can you help me overcome my fear? Of these things just pray, just ask it really can be that simple. Explore your own fear around God journal around it.
[00:38:36] Dig into it. Were you raised in a religious background? Were you raised in a non-religious background? Where is this fear coming from? Is it socially? It's going to be all these things, but explore it, dig into it. Why do you feel the way that you do? What are you so afraid of? Explore those things.
[00:38:52] If you need some help. This is a part of my coaching program too. I've got a coaching program, a 12 week personal power program. That's also something that you can look into as well. If you want a little support along the way on your journey, there. I love coaching clients, especially around deepening that spiritual relationship. This is a part of the work, but it's not always in there, but it can be. So if you have questions on that, you can always reach out to me.
[00:39:16] Just let the love. Let that love within you lead your life. Whatever that may be, even if it's just a tiny trickle, just let that love lead. You. Let it lead you that small, still voice within. Lean into it.
[00:39:33] Introspection is key. It's how we discover the power that we hold and the expansion expansive universe that we live in. The keys to the kingdom are truly within us. Heaven is within us, the entirety of the universe. I know it's crazy, but like we have access to it. We are.
[00:39:52] Channels. So we just have to tap into the own power that we have. We have these channels within us and we just have to tap into that power. And cultivate it. It's there. We just have to take the time to explore it. And go within. To find their own path. So I encourage you to do what feels right for you to follow and listen to that small, still voice within.
[00:40:15] And cultivate your own path. Your own connection to our creator and your own way. And meaning to that. That's the power you have, make meaning for yourself. Build that relationship for yourself. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. That relationship is for you and you alone. And I promise you, it will transform your life. You can't even fathom the things.
[00:40:38] That can begin to take place. Once we surrender and we open our lives to our creator, it's the most incredible thing. And you get more of what you want. That's the crazy thing. You don't Twitter @BrandonLeeWarday end up getting rid of a lot of bad habits over time, which is a good thing. But you get more of what you truly want and less of what you don't.
[00:40:59] That's the beauty of it. It's truly an incredible experience to go through. And nurture and cultivate over time. So I encourage you to do that.
[00:41:09] All right, Joel. So that's all I've got for today's episode. Today's show. I've been meaning to do this for a long time. It feels good to do it. I hope you can relate to it. If you have any questions, just let me know. You can catch me on Twitter @BrandonLeeWard all spelled out. I'm on LinkedIn at Brandon L. Ward.
[00:41:31] My website is BrandonLeeWard.com. You can hit me up there as well as you'd like, and you can also hit up my sub stack. Order within. So with that being said, y'all appreciate your time. And until next time.
[00:41:44] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.