Exploring Spirituality and Religion: A Personal Journey

Peter: 00:00:00

Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only.

In this episode, Ryan digs deeper into the basis and background of his spiritual grounding. Peter responds from his Buddhist perspective and presents the catalyst for his seeking. Now join Ryan and Peter for the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.

Let's try to be specific. So there's some podcaster keeps on saying specificity. Oh, it's John Hodren. Specificity is the soul of narrative.

Anyway, so you referenced denominations without naming them.

Ryan: 00:00:47

Sure.

Peter: 00:00:47

So I want to know. Okay.

Ryan: 00:00:49

Well, I mean, I have. So I went to a Catholic high school, so I had some interaction with Catholicism that way.

I was baptized into congregational Protestant when I was, I don't know, four or five.

We were a very outdoorsy family, and pretty much every weekend we were biking or hiking or skiing or doing something, and my dad would frequently make comments when we're like, on the top of a mountain or something, just being like, this is our church kind of thing. And from my dad, who was never outwardly religious to my. To my recollection, it was interesting to hear him speak in that kind of language.

So that's my early years. And then I didn't have any real exposure other than those, you know, weddings, funeral kind of thing.

Maybe going with a cousin or something until high school, which was Catholic high school. They did do some other. It wasn't.

It was a school that also, you know, we had a world religion class and we had a death and dying semester and things like that. So they. It wasn't like only that, but we also had liturgies occasionally, I think once a month they had liturgies and holidays, too.

So I got some exposure into some of the tradition and practice of a service I found interesting, but not spiritually moving. And then I was the spiritual, but not religious, but not really even spiritual, which would be like the nuns.

Like I was say, agnostic, essentially, is the best way to describe it. I wouldn't want to say I don't believe in God, because that wouldn't necessarily be true, because I don't know.

And I have that perspective enough to say I don't know. And some people will take a hard stance on that and be like, if I don't see it, then it doesn't exist.

Peter: 00:02:38

So there's a comment that a lot of people claim to be atheists, but it's actually quite hard to be an atheist. And atheism takes a big commitment and. And actually a lot of faith because you have to be willing to say categorically there is no God.

I know there is no God. So just a point of semantics that as you say, there are probably fewer atheists than people think there are.

Ryan: 00:03:06

It was funny because Neil Degrasse Tyson was doing something. I don't remember it specifically and I wish I did. I need to find it so I can reference it better.

But the summary of what he was describing was there's a lot of evidence out there that things aren't a mistake. But then was not and has not been willing to make that leap to. Well, that's. That's intention or.

Peter: 00:03:29

Right. Design.

Ryan: 00:03:31

Intelligent design. And that, you know, that's essentially God.

Peter: 00:03:34

Yeah.

Ryan: 00:03:35

Which I thought was interesting because that to me really highlighted how it's become sort of its own institutional thinking where, yeah, there's intentional design and everything, but it's not God. Which comes down to just semantics in its own right as far as what language we're using to describe it.

Peter: 00:03:53

Right.

And I think the insistence that it's not God is backlash against organized religion saying what God is and the pictures that culture paints about what God is. So the other thing that you mentioned was non canon writings. You've mentioned this several times and again without saying what it was.

So I'm really curious.

Ryan: 00:04:19

I read Book of Enoch. What else have I read? I read the Gospel of Thomas, which I found interesting. And I had talked to you previously about conversations with God.

The book.

Peter: 00:04:32

Yes.

Ryan: 00:04:33

It was the first time that the purpose of life and all these things was explained in a manner that actually rationally made sense. Like totally made sense. And in it had some elements of like all these different thoughts.

It didn't exclude really any of them, but it was presented in a holistic fashion, which is where my perspective that I think we've all gotten the same message at one point and has just diverged over time to now being institution. And those institutions are at odds. Right, right.

Peter: 00:05:09

So. So after Book of Enoch, what was the other one that you mentioned?

Ryan: 00:05:13

Conversations with God?

Peter: 00:05:15

No, between the two.

Ryan: 00:05:17

Gospel of Thomas, Thomas.

Peter: 00:05:20

Now are those. So what are the Book of Enoch and Thomas?

Ryan: 00:05:26

Enoch was.

I can't remember the history behind Enoch, if that was an original writing or if it's just kind of an offshoot of some of the history that was like some of the early Old Testament kind of stuff.

Peter: 00:05:42

But it's basically a scriptural. It's a scriptural writing. It's a tradition, traditional scriptural writing.

Ryan: 00:05:47

That's not, that's not canonized. Right. And then Gospel of Thomas was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in the 40s.

Peter: 00:05:57

Okay.

Ryan: 00:05:58

It's 114, essentially sayings purportedly by Jesus, written by Thomas the twin who was the doubting.

Peter: 00:06:07

Okay.

Ryan: 00:06:09

And they're the way that the sayings are written present Jesus in a little bit different light, really more of a human light. And some of the sayings have ties and lineage to some of the four gospels that are canonized. And, you know, a lot of what's said is.

Is said in parable and story, which I think is really that trying to use analogy to help people understand.

And they were written in a context of people whose culture was vastly different than what we have today, which also makes it difficult for people to interpret what these kinds of things meant. The meaning of them back then is not necessarily how we understand it today. And also, I laugh about translations. And you hear loss in translation.

My kids watch a show called Twisted Translation. Have you ever heard of this? Okay, so it's this woman. She's hilarious. Very talented, too, musically. Basically, her show is.

They take songs and things and they run it through Google.

Peter: 00:07:12

I have seen this over and over,.

Ryan: 00:07:13

And then it comes back and it makes no sense. And to me, like, I can envision some of that impact over time on these stories.

Peter: 00:07:22

So. So then the third one, Conversation with God, is basically modern mystic writing. I mean, it's an individual who's writing,.

Ryan: 00:07:31

An individual who had very limited religious exposure and experience. I mean, he was Christian by family, but not, you know, he. He was very. And he was in a difficult position.

This was written in the 90s, and basically the. The book reports that he pretty much had. He was about to lose his job. He was struggling financially.

His marriage, I think, was falling apart again or something. He had been married a couple of times, and he's just really in a bad, hard place. And he sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and was just like.

Like writing to God, but it was more like venting. And in that exercise, found God was air quotes. You know, God was responding to him, intuiting whatever it is. The.

The answers were coming upon his heart so that he. And at the end of all of it was that this was going to be a book and be not for everybody.

That some people will find this and find value and learning and meaning in it, and other people will call it blasphemy and just trash it and call it the work of the devil, and other people not even hear it.

Peter: 00:08:42

Right.

Ryan: 00:08:42

You know, and so, yeah, that's. That's yes, it ended up being three books. The first one was the one I found the most interesting I've listened to.

I listened to it on audiobook, but I've listened to it a number of times and I've come back to it a number of times. But a lot of what is said in there aligns contextually with what you're saying and what Buddhism kind of is.

And, and what I've kind of come to understand again, also talking about like the near death experience, people reporting when I read or listen to that book. And then it's also reinforced in this other thoughts. And then it's reinforced by people purporting to have experienced this.

And then I can start to see it in these other areas, like in the Christian writings and stuff where I'm like, oh, well now this all makes so much more sense.

And then finally, within my own experience, I can say with confidence for myself that I believe I have a strong understanding of what all this is and why. And it's not because of following an institution of belief.

Peter: 00:09:51

Right?

Ryan: 00:09:52

It's in trying to really seek being the seeker. And in that it said, for all those who earnestly seek, the answers will be given to you.

Essentially, I think that intent is an important piece to the journey. And it's the people that I envision we would be connecting with are these people who are open to, open to other ideas only.

So as for growth and learning, not that you have to change what you're doing, but you need to be open to questioning it. And if you're not, if your belief system and your practices are meaningful to you and bring joy to you, you're already there, right?

If they aren't, which I think a lot of times people find more confusion, then maybe being open to some of these other thoughts will help you to find more understanding.

Peter: 00:10:44

You keep on saying things that are, that are like triggering, really triggering other thoughts in me. Oh, so I wanted to follow up on, you know, the failure of the church. You know, as you said, Jesus failed, although it's not his fault.

And so one of the things that I've often thought, and I'm not sure if you can check me on this, is that my understanding from the New Testament is that Jesus supposedly gave my namesake power and said, you're the rock upon which I build my church.

And anything you say is as if I said it, because my understanding is that that's where so much of the constraining like negative Christianity comes from, is from that lineage of Christ saying of things that Christ did not say, but things that his followers said after he said, well, whatever you say goes just as if I said it. And so to me that was like the death stamp. And I kind of question. I mean it's very, very suspicious, right? It's like, did he even say that?

Yeah, sure he did. I mean, let's get these scriptures written. You know.

Now I'm not good on, on biblical scholarship, but you know, how many years after his death were scriptures actually composed?

Ryan: 00:12:08

The four gospels. Those people didn't ever know Jesus and I think it was like 70 years after his death. Yeah, yeah, I know. I think it's.

John is written significantly different than the other three. They have something about the Q source.

I don't know much about this, but from what I understand is basically that there's a, a central source where three of the four Gospels appear to have come from like that they got their information from a central place because they're written very similar. And then there's John that is like kind of really different in its, in its way of being written.

So yeah, so I've gone back and forth historically over, you know, does interpreting biblical writing literally versus, you know, interpreting it to some degree. And at one point I was fairly fervent that if you don't take it wholesale, then it pretty much invalidates the whole thing. But I've moved on that.

And then it brings in the complication of the, the history behind the book itself. Jesus never set out to start a church that was his disciples that, that did that.

And I agree, I think in the post gospel books in the Bible, in my opinion, I see where a lot of the things get led astray and you get into the letters and stuff in the churches and it become, it's already an institution now. You know, it's been 100 years and it's already having those, you know, the rules and all this. And it's at odds with mainstream Judaism.

And so, yeah, I mean, I guess when I say Jesus failed, that's where it ends up being, is that he never fully enlightened his students.

He was never able to get them to a place where they really understood the purpose of this and what he was trying to teach and whether they were the ones that perpetuated some of this. And over time it does. But a key piece and I think some of this is coming around at least in more Protestant denominations.

And actually it was said something similar at church for me this week, which was refreshing was the divinity of ourselves. And I think that that's where I Start to get really. Well, at least one point where I get iffy with Christianity and its.

And its doctrine is that Christ is God and his only Son and he came here to save us and all this stuff. And I think what the purpose of Jesus was and what he understood was that we all are divine, we're all part of God.

And I'm going to demonstrate to you how that is not so that. Not to show you how great I am, but to show you how great you can be.

And I think actually in the conversations with God, there was a comment that was, if you can't do this yourself, at least be able to. To do it through your belief in me. Because a part of the effect you have in this realm is through your belief. What.

What you believe becomes made manifest kind of thing.

So if you can't believe in yourself, in your own divinity, if you can do it in this other person as a proxy, then you can have effect in this world by that proxy.

Peter: 00:15:29

That, to me, sounds. That resonates with my current practices, where these Buddhist deities are not supposed to be external entities, where you get intervention.

You know, that you entreat external entities, and these external entities have agency and then they do things for you. It's more of a mental mechanism. I just read this term last night, and I can't remember what it is, but it's basically, I think, tutelary deity.

Basically, the purpose of the deity is you follow the practice and you envision this deity and it helps you become more like that. And that's the purpose. It's not that this deity does a thing for you externally, which sounds like the kind of thing that you're talking about.

So going back to. To the big question, big questions, plural, you know, one of the ones that you said was, why are we here? What's the purpose?

So just to give, you know, my big question that really started me actively seeking and reevaluating is, why am I suffering? Because, you know, I've referenced, you know, the failed promise a few times, and as a teenager, that's where I was. I was unhappy.

And even though, I mean, I wasn't chronically unhappy, because this is a time when I was active in the church group, you know, and so I was very happy. Like, I had a lot of nice activity and friendship and fellowship and all kinds of stuff, but I was still essentially unhappy.

And so that's what's been driving me. And what started the seeking was, okay, here I am, I'm in this church. I'm supposed to be in a church. This is supposed to be good.

This is supposed to be a way to be happy, is to have a faith and practice. And what I thought at the time was, oh, well, if you pray to me and you believe in me, then you'll be happy. And I think that is.

I think that is a promise made by the church, in a way, maybe some.

Ryan: 00:17:43

I don't think it's explicit as far that you will be happy. Right, right.

Peter: 00:17:51

It's more about eternal life than being. Not about being happy, exactly, but still there is. If you ask me for things, there's. There's a promise of Jesus, you know,.

Ryan: 00:18:02

Anything you ask in my name shall be given. Right. Right. Before you even ask, it will be given to you.

Peter: 00:18:08

Right. And. And so, you know, who. Who wouldn't ask to be happy, like, to stop. Stop the suffering. And so, you know, that was my big.

And continues to be my big question. Although now I feel like it's not so much asking the question, it's just doing the exercise and doing the work.

Ryan: 00:18:29

Because you have the answer.

Peter: 00:18:30

Because I think I have the answer. Like, I have faith now that I have the answer, but it is article of faith. Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast.

Join us next time as we continue the discussion. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content.