Facing The Afterlife Question

What if admitting “I don’t know” about the afterlife could make you more alive today? We dive into the stories humans tell about death—why they comfort us, how they guide behavior, and where they can quietly limit our courage. With warmth and honesty, I explore the tug-of-war between the need for certainty and the deeper call to live, love, and serve without cosmic guarantees.

We start with the big questions: do we believe in heaven because it’s true or because our brains fear annihilation? I share current stats on U.S. and global belief, then unpack terror management theory to show how minds chase symbolic immortality—children, legacies, doctrines—when mortality shows up. We examine the desire for justice beyond the grave, the ache to see loved ones again, and how cultural upbringing can harden into a script we stop questioning. Along the way, I talk candidly about my own path: raised Catholic, still drawn to community and song, but choosing humility over certainty about miracles and metaphysics.

From Christianity and Islam’s heaven and hell to Buddhism and Hinduism’s reincarnation to modern ideas of energy returning to the universe, we map the range of afterlife models and what they reveal about human needs. I share why I ground my spirituality in love experienced here—soul-level connection, service, tenderness—rather than promises of reward later. The point isn’t to strip meaning; it’s to deepen it. If death might be an end, every moment becomes more urgent, every breath more sacred, every act of kindness more real.

You’ll leave with practical questions to test your beliefs, a gentler relationship with uncertainty, and a renewed focus on what you can choose now: presence, honesty, and love. If this conversation sparks something—hope, discomfort, curiosity—lean in. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves big questions, and leave a review with one belief you’re rethinking today.

Transcript

Opening, Disclaimers, Set Up

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Hey y'all, welcome back. It's good to have you here this morning. Um just a solo episode today, but I am gonna launch an episode with Jillian Torecki. Um I think the the day after this one, honestly, so stay tuned for that one. I I think recorded with Jill in in October. Um excuse me, I'm drinking some tea here. Uh so I know you'll you have all been looking forward to having to hearing her on the show again. And as always, I'm grateful for her time um since she is incredibly busy these days. Um but uh yeah, that's gonna come out soon. If I take pauses here, it's because I'm sipping some some hot tea. So I promise the the podcast didn't end. It's just me and drinking some some chamomile tea. I'm recording this the night before this launches. So uh today I wanna I'm gonna talk about a couple things, but I want to sort of throw a um a disclaimer out there. Um if you're religious in any way, if you believe if you're spiritual, if you believe in heaven or hell or an afterlife in any way, um, this episode might challenge some of those perspectives. And I really hope you listen to the whole thing and you hold some space and really think and feel deeply about the topics I'm discussing. Um, I don't think there's really a right or wrong per se, but I think many of us end up believing things based on our childhood, based on something profound that happened in adulthood, uh, uh based on a response to trauma or perhaps some sort of um, some sort of situation that may happen that we feel like we find solace in the belief of afterlife, the belief that we'll see loved ones again, the belief that someone is above us, somewhere watching over us. And um my relationship with spirituality and how I engage with those thoughts and feelings comes from a really different place these days. Um I consider myself spiritual, and I'll get into that. Um, but I've also, as of recent, just been wrestling with um just some of the sort of pillars of Christianity and a lot of modern religion, as many of you have known. If I if you listen to the show, I've interviewed a handful of people from atheist, agnostic to devout, um, religious folk. And I think there are reasons for everything we believe. And until we investigate those reasons to the best of our abilities fully, until we question our beliefs, I don't know if they're ever truly serving us in the way they could be. And um, I want to put this disclaimer out because you know, you might be triggered by some of the things I say, and it's out of a place of love and respect and reverence. Um, but also I think it's important to warn people because hey, if you're not in the space to have your faith questioned, then I understand, you know, you don't have to listen to this whole podcast. Um, and that goes for people that are atheists and people that are devout, like religious practitioners, uh, for some sort of modernized religion. Uh so yeah, I just wanted to start with that because I think it's important to excuse me. I just ate, so I have that, you know, itch in the back of my throat. Um, I think it's important for us to preface these things with people before we engage in discussion, because you might not want to listen to this um on your drive to work or in the morning. You might want to save it for afternoon or night, or you might want to listen to right now. Um excuse me. It's entirely up to you, but I at least want to start with that so you um know what we're getting into today. So I wrote down a bunch of talking points because I wanted to be somewhat structured in the conversation I have around why humans believe in an afterlife or heaven? And I want to open it up with sort of this question that I want to pose myself and all of you out there. Why do humans across cultures invent stories about what happens after death? So think about that. Is belief in heaven a truth about reality or a psychological response to the terror and anxiety of death? So, as far as we know, based on our current understanding of life on this planet, humans seem to be the only species that knows it will die eventually, meaning we have a conscious um presence and it and a conscious understanding that we will die, each one of us. So the question is, what stories do we invent to make that um knowledge, meaning the knowledge of death of our mortality bearable? And why? So I want to go over some statistics first. And I used AI to kind of parcel through some polls on the internet to just give us some like general statistics to base like what we're gonna talk about today on. So this these stats particularly are based on the United States, but they can probably be applied more generally to Western culture. Um but again, if you want to look up more stats around belief in um or in other cultures, I encourage you to do so. Like continue to learn, continue to question. So belief in the US, about 67 to 71% of Americans say they believe in heaven. Roughly 70% of Americans believe in some form of life after death. Around 26% of Americans say they do not believe in heaven or hell at all. 74% believe in God. That's an interesting, I'm I expect that number to be a little bit lower, actually. So that's kind of surprising, um, according to Gallup polling. Belief in heaven is interestingly uh much more common than belief in hell. So about 71% believe in heaven versus only about 60% believe in hell. Um, that suggests that people tend to prefer hopeful versions of the afterlife. And it sort of speaks to a larger idea that we are looking for hope. We're looking for um like positivity within death, right? So global beliefs, around 54 to 56% of people world worldwide believe in the uh life after death or heaven. Um, but belief varies dramatically by region, much higher in religious societies, which would be obvious to us. And it's lower in Western uh European and secular countries. So the first sort of road into this conversation I want to walk into is the psychology around heaven before we get into spirituality. So one theory is sort of called the terror management theory. And this is where psychologists propose that religion reduces death anxiety. And uh some of the core principles around this are that humans create symbolic immortality. Wow, excuse me. Humans create symbolic immortality, uh, religion's legacies, children, heaven to cope with the knowledge that we will die. So there's four parts of this I want to focus on. And the first is fear of non-existence. The one thing that our brains are really good at doing is surviving. And they're not always optimized to thrive, but they're optimized to comfort us, particularly in times of discomfort. And if we think about like discomfort, it usually comes from pain. And again, like as my friend Mike and I, Dr. Meaney, discussed a couple episodes ago, you can have physical pain, you can have emotional pain, you can have sort of an intellectual pain too. Um, so there's different types of pain. But ultimately, pain is is subset to fear. They can exist in the same time, but they don't always have to. Uh, like for instance, if you're in physical pain, you might not be scared of the pain because it's your reality, but you might be scared if it gets worse, right? And so you might look for ways to prevent it from getting worse or to build a story in your mind so that it doesn't get worse. That way you can kind of separate from the pain, right? And our brains do a pretty good job at this, at comforting us, particularly when we're faced with death. Um, when we lose someone we love, whether it be a parent or a child, especially when it's um perhaps sooner than we would like. Right. And I think it's tricky because I think there's some good that comes from that ultimately. But I think a lot of that construct comes around this deep rooted fear to not address our own mortality. And so within that fear, we allow ourselves to make something up. And we allow ourselves to make something up so we can feel comforted. We can feel a little bit more safe in the unknown. Now, over the years, I've I've struggled with this because as many of you know, I was raised Catholic in a very traditional uh Chicano Catholic family. But I've I've always questioned these things. Um, there were some there are some incredible teachings in the Bible that I was a fan of growing up, and there was a lot of oppression and repression, especially if taken literally. And I always had a problem with the idea of like certain people go to heaven, certain people go to hell, but yet God is supposedly based on the Christian text, um, all-forgiving, all-loving. And so even that duality in of itself never really made sense to me. There seemed to be a lot of I don't know, conjectures that were made by my fellow humans that were matter of fact. And now at my age, having explored and really given, I'd say, a lot of religions a fair shot, I've sort of come into my own spirituality. And that is, I don't need religion to be a moral, ethical human being. I don't need religion to want to do good in the world. I don't need religion to want to be a better man, be a better person. Um, and some people feel like they do, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But where I think we run into problems is where our fear begins to dictate our reality in the way that we believe in something without fully questioning why we believe in it. So another part of I think why the heaven thing comes up for us is that we have a desire for justice after death. Um we have a desire for balance. And often in real life, we don't get that balance. Innocent people lose their lives lives every day, um, often to circumstances that uh us as fellow humans could have prevented on some level. And so we say, you know, we the heaven thing comes in and fits a little perfectly, and in my opinion, too perfectly in the scenario where we'll just make something up because we feel guilty or we feel bad, or we feel like there has to be fairness at some point in life, even if it's not in the current life. The other point is a desire to see loved ones again. Now, this is huge, right? This is, I think, why a lot of adults that question sometimes still lean towards believing in an afterlife. Um, because we have lost people we love. If you've ever lost someone you love, um, even if it's someone that left by their own decision, or perhaps even a relationship that ended and the person is still like actually physically alive, but you you experience that loss. Sometimes our our fear of never seeing a person again and never being able to hold a person or never being able to feel their energy or hear their voice or feel their touch is so strong that we will say, Hey, yeah, heaven exists. I know I will I'll see my mom again, I know I'll see my dad again, I'll know, I'll see my my child again or your friend or whoever you lost. And I think why it's it's hard for me to allow myself to fully believe in that is because I don't know. And I know many of us feel like we do, and it's this certainty, but it's that sort of certainty that makes me question our integrity, and I say this as softly as possible, but our own ignorance. Like, I love Harry Potter, for instance. Um, love those books. I've always read them since I was a kid. I was like that kid that my mom, my mom would take me to like the Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstore, and I would be standing out there at like 11:30 waiting for the book to drop at midnight, and I would go home and I would read it in a couple days. And the the crazy thing about those books is I was always the same physical age as the characters, the main characters were in the book. And so I had this like emotional attachment to like their story. But not once in my life have I ever gotten on a broomstick and jumped off a bridge thinking I could fly. It doesn't mean that the stories aren't valuable. It doesn't mean that the lessons, many of the lessons within it aren't incredibly powerful for us. Um, but I also don't go grab a stick and wave it around and think I'm going to um be able to expell the armus somebody. And I say this because like this is obviously me being humorous and joking around, and I'm not poking fun at religion, I promise. We have to be able to laugh about sort of some of the things we believe in because when you think about it, it's quite interesting and there's some humor in there, right? I think mostly we feel so inclined to believe in these things because they're like these ancient religious texts, but when in actuality, like our belief structures have gone in cycles. I mean, we started as sort of worshiping many different gods, and a lot of indigenous cultures worship um sort of deities that represent the earth, like Mother Earth, Father Sky, and the Navajo religion or Navajo spiritual practice. And these things are kind of woven into pretty much every modern religion. Um and I think they're there really to comfort us, you know, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to seek comfort or being comfortable. But I think that it becomes dangerous when we stop to question why and stop to acknowledge that we are still evolving. We are always going to be evolving as long as we exist. And that isn't just like physically with like physiological adaptations, that is also relationally, spiritually, emotionally. You know, our relationships, uh particularly in Western culture, have evolved a lot, even since the particularly since the inception of social media. But also with dating apps and with what we ask of our partners, what we ask of ourselves, our emotional intelligence and depth that has evolved a lot and it will continue to do so. How we define love, how we define marriage, how we look at partnership versus marriage. Uh when we look at the structure of those things, why they exist, when we look at loneliness, when we look at death, all these things, right? It plays a role. And so the desire to see a loved one again after death is a huge reason why people choose to believe uh in afterlife. And I want to provide as we get down this conversation, maybe some alternative perspectives to that, that you can still feel okay with loss and you can grieve, but if it doesn't feel um fully aligned with you to believe in life after death, I think that's okay. I think you'd still be safe in that. I think you can still feel okay. And you don't have to believe in that. Um, the other part is cultural cultural reinforcement. And as you guys know, if you're listening to this show, 99% of the things that we do until we become more aware is really based on childhood, and that um also extends to our belief system, you know, particularly like we have similar beliefs probably to people in our family, or maybe we are repulsed by certain beliefs because of that exact thing. So it can be the opposite too. But it's important to be aware of that. It's important to be aware of why you believe what you believe, you know. What kind of school did you go to? What kind of conversations did you have? You know, what did your parents value, right? And it's interesting. So the other part of this is justice and moral balance. So another psychological driver around the belief in afterlife is people want the universe to be fair. And the idea of heaven provides rewards for good people, which has always been an interesting construct to me. Um, punishment for bad people. And I'm using these terms generally because I think this is like how a lot of religious texts break it down. Uh, cosmic justice when life feels unjust. Um heaven sort of fixes that imbalance psychologically that we have. And again, it sort of is a medication for our fear in the unknown. But what if we thought of it this way? What if we can acknowledge our fear and understand that the fear of death is there? To I would hope encourage you to live. I would hope it would encourage you to take risks, to take chances, and also to put people first, not just yourself. I think when I come across somebody that's like very spiritual and also very self-aware, um they're able to be very bluntly honest about their belief structure, what it does for them, and maybe uh some parts where they're like they don't know for sure, and that's okay. From my perspective, like I don't believe in afterlife, not in like a total sense, like I know for sure. I just there's no evidence to prove that it is. And I know people are gonna say, Oh, you're looking for logical science and something that's beyond that. And I hear you, I get it. It's totally beyond our ability to study with like the rubric of science as we know it. It's not beyond our ability to think and feel um, because as this thing of energy, right? You'll say, I'll call it spirit. Um, I think it's easy to see like what happens to a soul when it dies. Well, it goes up, you know, goes up into space. And what if it's the opposite? What if it goes down? You know, we always think of like below us as being the construct of hell, fire, like burning, torment. And we just made that up. People just made that up, you know, and then we start to believe it. And I want to say that it's okay if you question these premises, you can still like believe in a certain religion. Um, I don't think any spiritual teacher that is actually reasonable and um not speaking out of bias would ever tell someone that they shouldn't be questioning their own beliefs. You should, absolutely, because anything that's real and true will only be strengthened after you question it in-depthly again and again and not broken. If it's not, if it's not meant for you, then you might break it, you might shatter your reality. And that's not a bad thing either. That's certainly what has happened to me again and again within my life. Um I think another part of this is like how we speak to our children about the afterlife too. You know, if you're raised in a certain religion, it's almost like we it's almost like the Santa Claus theory, we'll, but except it continues past a certain age, right? We all seem to be fine with like understanding that Santa Claus after a certain age, it's okay. When a kid turns a certain age, they'll figure it out, right? That you know, mom or dad or whoever is putting presents under the tree, and it's not from this person sort of fitting themselves in a chimney. Coming down with rangers on the roof. But there's a certain magic of that that we all can recognize when we were younger, when we believed in that. Like there's this magical thing, right? And that's the beauty of like storytelling and the beauty of like imagination in all of us, and particularly when we're kids. But I, you know, I would hope you don't lose that as an adult. Like I'm such an imaginative, imaginative person. I remember like, you know, I grew up as an only child, you know, to a single parent. And I remember I would just go in the backyard and like I would create these like different worlds in my head where there was different characters and I was playing different roles for each character. And I and like there was always like an um antagonist or like a a bad, a bad, bad guy, right? Just you learn it from the superhero films, and I would like sort of entertain myself for literal hours, like, you know, and sometimes I would continue the story the next day and the next day, and it would be this huge thing. And that was always something I did as a kid, and it was beautiful, you know. Um, and I and I don't think I've ever lost that. Like I love that part of myself. But I also know there's like make-believe in reality, right? And I think it's really important we, you know, tell the difference between the two because you know, I remember my Tata telling me a lot when I was a kid, you know, it's like, Miho, one day I won't be here, and you know, I'll be up in, you know, heaven or the sky wherever I he never said heaven, but he said, you know, the sky looking down upon you. And that's like those are such beautiful sentiments to share with people you love. And, you know, I know religious people will say, like, once I say what I'm gonna say, they'll be like, oh, you just have to pray, or you know, you're just not open to feeling or being receiving it. And I don't think that's the case. Um, but I'll tell you what, I do not believe that um, you know, people I love are floating around somewhere looking after me. What I do believe is that the memories, the love they gave me in reality, what I actually experience at any age is still with me and it's always with me. And there are parts of them inside of me at all times. And I read this beautiful quote a couple a couple weeks ago on social media. It was like, we are just made up of tiny bits of everyone we've loved and their love. And that is absolutely true. I don't think there's a person that can even argue that, right? Um, and we are also made up of tiny bits of the fear in the people we've loved until we can rectify it and process it in our own fear too. And we pass these things on, we like transpose them onto each other like bits of musical notation, you know? And sometimes we're unaware of when that's happening. So phrases like, you know, oh, my grandfather's looking down on me, or I know I'll see him again, like particularly why parents say this is it gives comfort to grieving children, right? It avoids existential discussions that we might not have the answer to. And it maintains a cultural tradition because we feel like we must pass these beliefs and structures on if we are to be sort of welcomed in to these gates, or um, maybe it's for fear of feeling guilty if we don't, right? And adults are often very uncomfortable saying the truth is that we don't know what happens after death. So they replace uncertainty with storytelling. And I think this is directly perpendicular to grieving. I think to truly grieve something, you have to be fully honest about its absence. And that doesn't mean you can't put energy out into the universe, into the world, can't pray about it. You can certainly do those things, absolutely. Um, but I would caution you against replacing uncertainty with a narrative. Sometimes the best we got is I don't know. And I think it's very spiritually and emotionally mature to be able to say that. I think as adults, particularly when we talk about the word wisdom, and when we see watch spiritual leaders or pastors or practitioners or whoever talk about these things, the ones that speak with it with a certain matter of fact always sort of raised my spidey sense a little bit. Because we really don't know. We don't. You can have the strongest feeling, intuition in the world, and that might honestly be coming from a place of deep fear of the unknown, of deep grief because you lost someone you love, and the chance or perspective that you might never see them again. Which leads me to this third point that, like, as humans, we really hate uncertainty. I mean, I know I do. Like, it's being uncertain is very tough to come to terms with, even when you're putting energy into making things certain, right? Even when you're trying to um live your life in a way that produces a certain outcome or set of outcomes, right? So a powerful psychological concept is the brain prefers a wrong answer over no answer. It wants like a definition, it wants something to be definitive. So we've evolved to create patterns. We fill gaps in knowledge with storytelling, with the metaphysical, with the myth. And we construct construct meaning out of these stories, and they're passed down over time. So heaven may be yet another example of meaning making under uncertainty. All right, so now let's get into some of the different afterlife ideas. Heaven is not universal across religions, and it certainly isn't universal across people who consider themselves spiritual. So Christianity and Islam in general believe in heaven and hell. Hinduism, Buddhism believe in reincarnation, ancient Greeks had the underworld. Um, some modern views are energy returning to the universe, right? It's never created nor destroyed, so it just returns. An interesting stat around this, though, is even among Americans who reject heaven and hell, many still believe in some form of spiritual continuation like consciousness or energy persisting. This suggests humans are deeply uncomfortable with complete annihilation. And I share that discomfort, honestly. I think in my own spiritual beliefs. Um since this is something that feels tangible to me, like the energy that makes us, I think is just goes back into the world, wherever it is, whether it's in a mushroom, the grass, the sky, what have you. I don't believe my consciousness stays with it, but I believe just that feeling, the feelings that I had, they're just out in the universe. They're in particulate matter, right? And we can say, well, the spirit sort of separates from that, but then we, but we don't know where it goes. We don't know what happens. It could just end. It really could just end. And that's okay too. It doesn't make life any less meaningful, it doesn't make the love you have right now any less valuable. In fact, I would argue that it makes it more valuable because you're not behaving with the idea or the construct that you're gonna get a reward after or you're gonna see your past loved ones after. But you have total respect for each breath you're taking. And you have total respect for the difference you can make, differences you can make in the lives of others. Um, particularly when you withhold love, when you shut down because you're scared. Those are the times when I think death and this sort of like blind storytelling that we use to pacify our immortal our mortality and our fear comes into play because look, you can you don't need to be living for the gift uh that you're going to get. Live right now with the gifts you have. There are people that love you, there are people that are trying to open up to you. There are people more people that are you haven't even met yet, that if you're open to open your heart, getting to know them, being vulnerable, they're probably going to change your life in a way that I can't even communicate to you through this microphone right now. And if you've had people like that come in your life, I know I have, you know it's real. It exists, right? Those are those are tangible experiences. Another thing I think heaven has enforced in or the construct of it in one way or the other has been moral behavior within people. Creates a it creates a group identity. I mean, as humans, we love, we love like uh to be part of groups. I mean, it's we're social creatures, so it makes sense that we find comfort in believing in something more so when other people believe in the same thing. It reduces our fear of death. We've talked about that. And it strengths, let's be honest about this, it strengthens religious institutions. I mean, religions get more followers when people experience loss, when people go through grief, when people experience addiction, right? But do but is it the religion that's helping people or merely just the community of being around people that care about them, people that they feel safe around? Maybe they've never even been in a safe community before. Maybe they've never even been safe being by themselves. So, from a historical context, historically, many civilizations have used the construct of an afterlife and the narratives around it to reinforce obedience, to reinforce moral codes, and to reinforce sacrifice. So I want to pose some more questions after this, right? So questions that I would love for you to sit with are is belief in heaven a coping mechanism or a genuine insight into reality? Does believing in heaven make life better or worse? Does it help you connect more deeply with people that are still alive? Or no? Would humanity behave differently if we believed death was the end? So maybe heaven tells us less about what happens when we die and more about what humans desperately hope is true. The real question may not be whether heaven exists, but why the human mind seems to need it. Now, I've at least in the past couple years, I've really sort of given my old faith, like even from childhood, like just not necessarily Catholicism, but Christianity in general, like a fair shake. And that includes other religions too. You know, I I enjoy going to church still, and I go as often as feels right with me. But I I enjoy going to congregations of most beliefs because I just feel like it's a gathering of people celebrating something greater themselves, which I find beautiful, particularly in today's society where self-love, personal fitness, all these things are just based on self. But I also don't go to these things in search of uh security in the unknown. I think I probably did when I was a kid because that's what I was told, right? Was right. And now it's like, look, I'm I'm not on board with the afterlife thing because I don't know. I'm not definitively like, oh, it doesn't exist, and I'm not definitely like it does exist. I don't what I do know is that when I believe it exists, it's really to comfort me in some way. Right. It's really to make me feel maybe a little less sad, maybe a little less regretful, maybe more hopeful that I'll see the people I love again, that they're in some grassy field with the sun shining on them, celebrating, looking down. But it that just doesn't feel that just doesn't feel like truth to me. When I really sit down with why I would want to believe in something like that, it's just based out of fear. And I I refuse to live in fear. Um I really believe that you should be doing as much good as you can by as many as you can for as long as you're here. And that is um irrelevant of what you're getting in return. I say that because I do think that that's where true joy is found in being of service to others. Now, that might sound very religious to you, it might sound very Christian, it might sound, and there's some wonderful teachings in all the religious texts. I don't think it is religious, though. Um, you could say it's spiritual, sure. I think it's human. I think the majority of humans, we do really want to do good and do right by ourselves and by others. But many of us are the biggest thing in our way is ourselves. The biggest thing in your way is your mind, your attachment to a false sense of security rather than a unquestionable, unquestionably sobering dose of reality. It's a tough thing to talk about because I really do understand why many of you out there believe in those constructs. But I also really encourage you to question your beliefs. Not just in that, but everything. I mean, how you believe relationships are formed, how you believe you show up in a relationship, how you believe you listen, how you believe you process, right? Um, maybe some things you're telling yourself to shut down connection with someone that's really just trying to connect with you. You know, and for a bit there, I was like really toying with the Jesus idea again, too, because one is a historical teacher, I really appreciate a lot of the things that people say that Jesus taught, right? Um I find it curious that he didn't write very much himself, which has always been interesting to me, other people writing about, so it's like a secondhand interpretation, which is always tough. You know what I mean? Like if you think about it, if someone were to write a book about my thoughts and feelings from my perspective, and then everyone started to take that as like, oh, this is what he felt. I don't, that's really, I don't know. That seems really tough. I don't think anyone would do it justice unless I wrote it. And vice versa, if I wrote something about someone else, even that I was really close to or loved, or someone I was with for 50 years, it's it's different coming from them. I think it'd be a little different. And like the Jesus thing, it just, you know, one thing that I'm I'm pretty comfortable with saying now is that I do not believe in Christ. Um, I don't believe that a woman was sort of had like impregnated by immaculate conception, and this one person is the chosen one of our planet and the universe, and um and he was a man and was born from a father in a God form. And yeah, I just that just sounds very fucking out there to me, guys. Um, and again, I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, read the Bible many times, and I mean from front cover to back. And I just feel like that is, I don't know, there's just a lot of entitlement within that belief structure. And again, I'm using these words, I'm not trying to throw shame or shade on your beliefs. I I do respect them 100%. I'm just talking about my own personal beliefs, and hopefully that might allow you to think more about yours too. Yeah, that like the historical teachings of Jesus, there's a lot that I can get on board with. Um, but the metaphysical son of God thing, it's not not for me. Um and that's okay. Like I feel I feel better that I'm able that I was able to explore it, give it a second and third chance, and really, really delve into it and read and ask questions and have deep discussions. And it's just not for me. Um and what's equally not for me is atheism, not just shrugging my shoulders and saying, well, nothing. Like, you know, I I do have a deep spiritual um reverence for love. And my spirituality is is pretty much fully, well, not pretty much it is, it's fully based in love, in the feeling that I have legitimately felt with so many people, and particularly with only a few people, on a soul-opening, soul mirroring level. And for those folks out there that that are those people, if you're listening to this, thank you. Like that is where I find God. It's within love of love of people. Um, when and also when people love me in that same way. And for me, that's enough. It's enough, it's okay for me to admit I don't know these other things, but I do know love. And I know pain, and I know suffering, and I know fear. And my spirituality is steeped in the tangible experience of love. And I think that's the gift of life is no matter how short, how brief we're here, you have an infinite capacity to love people, and you can continue to love people even those you disagree with, even those who don't look like you, even those who don't believe in the same things you believe in. But I think the only way to fully get to as deep of a love as possible is if we question ourselves. Question our patterns. And I mean all of them. From how you're feeling when you go to bed to when you wake up to how you show up for yourself, how you show up for others. Two relationships, connections with people you let continue that are hurting you, that aren't helping, that aren't helping them. To relationships and connections with other people that you may have not let grow because you're scared. Maybe this person fully sees you. Maybe they actually fully love you. Maybe how we love isn't enough for them. Maybe how they love isn't right for us. There's all these things that come up for me when I'm speaking about that. So that's pretty much what I had for you today. And hopefully you rewind this thing, right? Listen to these questions. And I think what is way more beneficial to you than just this 40, these 40 minutes we've been talking, or 30 minutes, whatnot, is you writing these questions down and thinking about them today. Like write them down, scribble them, put on a post-it note in your car and think about, think about them. And if you get scared and you think that something's gonna judge you because you're questioning its existence or its reality, don't be. Nothing that is all loving, that truly cares for you, if it is real, is gonna judge you for questioning. Questioning should always be welcomed, particularly when it's based out of love and not fear. I'm not, I didn't question things because I was scared. I questioned things because I was searching for meaning and purpose and love. And I was, I wanted to reassure myself that I can live a good life and help other people and be a good pure person and strive to be a better man every day. And I don't have to adhere to dogma. I don't have to adhere to religiosity, and I don't have to find comfort in just making things up. I hope wherever you are out there that you feel loved. And if you don't right now, trust me, I get it. But I want to encourage you to go find people that will love you, that will fully see you. Because no matter what your belief structure is, faith wise, afterlife wise, that is what truly matters right now. Go find more people to love, go be kind. Go be gracious. Go be grateful. Don't be scared.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

And the dog would be survived with the bad call.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it's not where you're going to find your sense of completion. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart. And all that will be left of you is what was in your heart, in your heart, in your heart.