[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to another solo episode of the Mark Rose podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today I want to dive into a subject that feels like a bit of a leap for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by that is, if you've been following my journey for a while, then you know that I essentially have had sort of what would be seen as maybe a repairing relationship with the word God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I grew up Catholic and, you know, maybe you grew up Christian, maybe you grew up in some form of religious sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when the interesting thing about religion is that we are born into our religion, we're not really given a choice about what our faith or spiritual practices are going to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even if our family are atheists that shows up in [SPEAKER_00]: and sort of what relationship we have with the idea of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because religion was really weaponized when I was younger, I went to a Catholic school and things like intimacy, sex, arousal, those things were associated with going hell, the devil's shame.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I always found this to be an interesting thing to balance as a human because, of course, naturally you're going to have the experience of a rousal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, first time, well, this is back in the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: This would be dating me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the first time you look at a serious catalog and you check out the boroughs section, you're like, whoa, that was like our pornography back then in a national geographic with a, you know, sort of a tribal [SPEAKER_00]: picture of a tribal group and getting to see boobs as if they just didn't even matter.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was, I remember just being like, whoa.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, of course, naturally because you're human, you're going to experience arousal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if your religion teaches you that arousal is bad, that it's the devil, that it's evil, that you're going to go to hell.

[SPEAKER_00]: then you either have to disassociate from a rousal in order to hold the belief or question the belief and hold on to a rousal.

[SPEAKER_00]: But nonetheless, what it does is create a fracture in the relationship that we have with desire.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then as we get older in order to be in the company of a rousal, we often have to be drunk or do something to anesthetize the shame and fear that's present.

[SPEAKER_00]: in the presence with someone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what an intimate, beautiful act it can be if we're taught reverence about it, if we're not taught shame about it, but actually like beauty, depth, connection, care, presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, so much of our early sexual experiences are actually we're not even able to be present for because we're able to be in our bodies because of the things we've been taught about desire.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I say all that in [SPEAKER_00]: you know, just recognition that my journey back towards the idea of a word like God has been a long one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a beautiful one, you know, I think the first time I really thought about something beyond myself was going through my engagement ending in my late twenties and then reading the bookman search for meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in that book, Victor Franco, it's one of the best books I've ever read, but it was the first time I really thought about having a purpose on this planet, having something that was beyond me greater than me other than to become a breadwinner and to make enough money to buy a house and cars and provide for my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: the sort of standard narrative that at least maybe were more taught in Canada, the US, and I'm sure parts of Europe.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, probably everywhere, some rendition of that story.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's when you wake up in that story and realize that parts of it you desire, but other parts you don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I really rejected religion because I didn't know how to relate to religion from a place of, it expanding me and that community because you see this so often in religious [SPEAKER_00]: circles that they're not actually a place of unconditional love.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're very conditional.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you break the rules, you are exiled from the religion.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you're told you go to hell.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's not, you know, when we go through life changes and divorces and infidelities or whatever it is that we're navigating.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we should be held by our community in those transitions.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I wrote a article years ago that was called, maybe instead of shaming the divorce, we should learn from them because it was really this idea that whether you choose it or not, if you go through a divorce, [SPEAKER_00]: You are rebelling against, again, I want to be honorable of your experience, because you might not be by choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: But either way, you have to, again, learn how to reconcile that yourself worth does not live in your relationships status, that those two things aren't even correlated, but in world that teaches you that your value [SPEAKER_00]: is represented in someone else seeing value in you and choosing a relationship with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then if you lose that relationship, your value perceptually goes out the window.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now look, if I'm a God, and I'm deciding, okay, or as Carol Emace would say, if I'm your angel, [SPEAKER_00]: And I see your worth lives and your relationships to help us all remove your relationships.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can really experience that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I always say that we lose things where we place our values so we can realize our value doesn't live there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so just compassionately holding that if you've lost something and you feel incomplete without it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel devastated without it, I want to hold the both end that it is yes, devastating.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the grief and death that you're experiencing isn't just of the loss of the relationship or the job or whatever it might be.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually in placing your value in that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that it made you complete.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've spoken before about how we [SPEAKER_00]: fall in love with the method.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we date someone and then we feel love and so it's through dating people that we experience love or we do meditation and that's how we experience God or prayer or whatever you want to call it or we do psilocybin or some sort of psychedelic and that's how we experience God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But these are just the tools that wake up within us, what already exists.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you realize that if that already exists within you and if someone else can activate it in you, it's in you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so can we just stop making someone else the intermediary between us and [SPEAKER_00]: What is expansive?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Alan Watts said that the greatest trick the church ever pulled was to be a broker between you and God.

[SPEAKER_00]: What a brilliant idea, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We approve of your behaviors or not, and that gives you access to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we decide instead of no, that's not how it works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in the coming back home to this experience of [SPEAKER_00]: What is greater than myself in reading that book, man search for meaning, I remember him saying that man can get through any what with a why.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he has his beautiful line to live is to suffer, but to survive is to find meaning in your suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I heard those lines, I remember thinking in my own suffering, that there was a deeper meaning within it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I never related to suffering from that place.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what a beautiful thing to have the opportunity to re-contextualize what it meant to be in suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it offers an extension to the suffering that we experience when we love people when we lose them, that the pain you experience in the loss of a relationship is [SPEAKER_00]: directly correlated to the amount of love that you have been capable of holding.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the natural response then is not to open our hearts as much in the future, but that's actually a disservice to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what a broken heart is.

[SPEAKER_00]: A broken heart is not one that feels deeply.

[SPEAKER_00]: A broken heart is one that no longer says yes to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so instead of seeing your pain, [SPEAKER_00]: no matter what the loss is, as some sort of evidence of a brokenness and whatever capacity that might mean for you is seeing it as evidence of your capacity to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And really, if we're talking in the context of relationship, you want to be able to build the skills to protect your heart as you open it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was really thinking more about this relationship to the idea of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was talking to a friend recently, and he has this really beautiful story about his wife and how he felt when he first met her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was saying, well, you know, that feeling that you had when you met your wife, that knowing, that elation, that familiarity, that should be the barometer to which you choose everything in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he was saying, wow, you know, I don't really see, and we were having a beautiful discussion about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he was saying, like, I don't really see why God would be in the business of my work.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is someone who is raised quite religious, and then still has a relationship with religion, but just not in a more formal sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And isn't that so true for so many of us?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I found so much more comfort in the word universe or spirit that [SPEAKER_00]: became something that was sort of like me putting my toes back into this experience of oneness, this experience of something greater than me, this, you know, how do you explain the miraculous things that happened in our world?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I share that quote a lot from Ram dos that miracles are just a way of reminding us that we don't know how it works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think as we experience things like miracles or we play with ideas like if I change my beliefs, if I want to manifest something in my life, how do I do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: How do I trust that if I say no to something that is almost it, what is it will align?

[SPEAKER_00]: And isn't that the very same act of faith that we would talk about from even a more religious sense?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so in speaking to him, he said, well, why would God have any concern about where I direct my business?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, God is either everywhere or nowhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you either believe that God or the universe, whatever your word is.

[SPEAKER_00]: exists or doesn't, but you can't have pockets of his existence.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because like if you believe that the experience of God or unity or oneness or love exists in one space but not another, then what does that justify for you and your behaviors but also the standards to which you hold yourself to?

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you lower your standard in one area of your life, you must must, lower your standard in every area of your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a cost to this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you either believe in divinity or you don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: You either believe in miracles or you don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you think about it, faith is really that extension that gets you from the place you don't know to the place you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just wrote this recently on a note on Substack that there's a really delicate moment of transformation where we can't quite make sense of ourselves and the world yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the stage in which form is taking place.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has not yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we operate from the mind, it can cause us to be afraid of not being able to label, touch, or tangibly hold what we're hoping to create.

[SPEAKER_00]: The mind at a fear will make us go back to what we know.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why faith [SPEAKER_00]: and not necessarily in a religious sense is so important.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the bridge between two-nones.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the energy that fortifies the transition.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the missing ingredient that is required to complete what is taking form.

[SPEAKER_00]: Without faith, you'll never arrive where your heart has called you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here that again, without faith, you will never arrive where your heart has called you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So trust, keep going, relax the mind, stay the course.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm saying in there is that [SPEAKER_00]: the bridge between what you know and what you don't know requires the blind faith and courage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know recently I heard that faith is just insecurity and I've really resonated with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: This idea that this blind courage that you need to you left you left the relationship you left the job you started to post things you started to write from your heart you started to say yes to your purpose meaning or even maybe you're just started to say yes to the idea of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the moment you go to step towards it and you do, there's always this deep act after the leap where we decide that we want to get back in the plane after we skydive, after we decide that we want to go back up the bungee cord.

[SPEAKER_00]: We decide that we want to bungee cord and we want to go back to what we know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you look back at your life, [SPEAKER_00]: You'll likely see that you did have done that most of your life that you've been about to say this thing, about to set the boundary, about to stand for yourself, about to about to about to about to, and all that has been missing is this belief in something which is ultimately yourself too, because you're really saying I believe in the guidance that is within my heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you see you either believe in it or you don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is either everywhere or nowhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Divinity either exists or it doesn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Miracles either happen or they don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that you should blindly throw your life away in every direction and not be smart or strategic, but what I am saying is that you've likely spent a lot of your life right on that edge, leaping and going back and leaping and going back and not letting yourself fully go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that act of trust is the same act of trust that so many of us have experienced injury with spiritually that has become the blockage for us to really step into divine path, divine purpose, divine love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever that might mean for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am not one who says I know the exact prescription or the exact way but I do know that what seems to be continuously true even though I resisted and I learn it and I resisted and I learn it is is truly that there seems to be this part where we want to leap [SPEAKER_00]: but we want to know there's a net and so we don't want to leap till we know there's a net but the universe god doesn't provide the net till you leap because the leap is the act of trust and now I see that there's actually a deeper part here which is we see the net but we don't trust the net to hold us when we land, fall, crash, whatever [SPEAKER_00]: and so we try to recoil what we say.

[SPEAKER_00]: We go back on the commitments.

[SPEAKER_00]: We lower the standard, whatever it may be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I hope that this speaks to where you are in your life, because as I speak it to you, I speak it to myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I say with authentic request, I don't know if those are the right words, but if this really resonated with you, please share it on social media tag me and share it with people you think it might really help who are in [SPEAKER_00]: one of those transitions or questioning taking a leap from a relationship a job whatever it is standing for themselves maybe it's standing for yourself that you share this and get it into other people's ears and also they hit that subscribe button that helps support the show and make sure that you don't miss any future episodes so with all that said remember God is either everywhere or nowhere you decide