Episode 22
Gut Instinct, My Spiritual Journey Part 2
the fully nourished podcast | Episode 22Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Youtube
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on Google Podcasts
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So this episode is a continuation of the conversation that I started in the last episode. It's part two, talking about my spiritual journey and trusting our gut instincts throughout it, and my experience growing up in a very rigid and dogmatic Christian space, and being able to expand beyond that and completely shift everything, every single cell, in a different direction. And so we left off with me. I was a rope with one more string attached, and that string finally snapped. And in a fit of just feminine rage, I just said, no more. Enough is enough. I don't know what this means. I don't know, but I cannot do it anymore. Physically, mentally, spiritually. This is just something I cannot stand. It was almost a primal response of like, I need to get out of here, I can't do this anymore. And so many of you said, you know, what are some resources that helped you?
I'm going to be really honest, the first couple of years I didn't want to do anything. I had gotten to such a point where I just couldn't stand it. And I look back now and understand that this was wisdom. I understand that this was divine wisdom, that God knew that I needed space. I knew my body knew I needed space. I needed to let all of the pieces fall where they may, because I had a whole lifetime of belief systems and brainwashing and patterns. And do this. Don't do this, do this. Hypocrisy. Conflicting information, hurt, just culminating and ruminating throughout my body. I had to just process. And I look back now and say, Thank God I didn't just dive right in and try to just, like, fix it and figure it out. I think that is part of the trauma response is when you are a part of the church, you're really told to always be checking in with where you're spiritually at. If you don't know where you're spiritually at, like, you better be afraid. You're backsliding. You know, you're turning into the prodigal son. You're going to need to return. And so I know the first instinct is, I got to fix this. I got to figure this out. What do I believe now? There needs to be something to fill the space, but you have to create the space so it can be filled with truth.
You have all these things, and now you need to wrestle with them and really start to think about them every single thing. Now you have to start practicing awareness. You have to start trusting yourself again. You need to actually learn how to live your life in a spirit led way, which we'll talk about what that really means. And when you have been manipulated to question your own body, your intuition, your own thoughts, your own experiences, your own feelings, how are you ever going to be able to do that?
Practicing Surrender
So in my opinion, I think the first step is just to allow space to practice surrender, to practice trust, to let the pieces fall where they may and just lay back in your life raft, so to speak, and just float along a little bit and let God just carry you. If there's something that you need to be studying or you need to figure out, do you trust him enough to bring it in front of you? You're so weary, why do you think he's going to make you, like, seek it out? And if not, you're going to be punished. And so for me, a part of this expansion was just me, like really sitting and wrestling with everything that came to my mind every time I felt triggered or every time something came up where I was like, no, that's this is the way it is, I had to second guess and question and say, okay, is that actually the way it is, or do I just believe that? And it can be a really grueling process because what you're doing is you're really wrestling with everything. That's really what it feels like. It feels like spiritual wrestling where what you know to be true and I mean Truth with a capital T. In the scriptures, God says, I am truth. And I think that's hard for our human brains to wrap around. Like, how can something be a being but also be truth? And remember, God is not a being. He's not a human. He is really beyond what we can even really comprehend. He just is.
Discovering Truth
And so truth is not of God. Truth is God. And so when you find truth, it feels like finding God. It is a spiritual experience. It is goosebumps. It is a deep resonating within your bones. You know it, you recognize it. It is it is something that you always will connect to because you know, when you step into the presence of the one true God, it's like a gong that vibrates you to your very soul. And you just know deep within yourself and your gut it to be true. And when you have been brainwashed or really, that's the best way to put it.
The first thing we have to relearn is how to see that feeling. And when you're constantly being told, “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” You at first, at least for me, I felt really guilty and shamed, even for trusting my own body and trusting myself. It felt like, oh no, am I following the Holy Spirit? Or is it like sin, like am I sinning? And it just took time for me to get out of that mindset. It took time for me to wade through all of the junk and the rubble and be like, okay, this is trash. Oh, this stays. Oh, this means something totally different. And it was a really long time for me. The most healing thing was just being able to explore the things that I couldn't explore before. I was able to just enjoy things really for the first time without overanalyzing why I'm enjoying it, to just experience life without it being just this heavy, heavy burden and constant just hypervigilance. And I'm not saying that that's going to work for everyone. I know some people just dive, right into therapy, but I just didn't really know what I needed. And I don't think I really understood how hurt I was at the time.
I do wish I would have been more aware of nervous system work, and really knowing when I was processing trauma. To me it was just such highs and lows, like I was going through such highs and lows and really wrestling with everything that I'd been taught and told. But I can see in hindsight that that's now what being transformed and renewed by the spirit really is. I now really am aware of what Jesus meant when he said, being born again. I think people are like I'm a born again Christian and they're just like, repeat these talking points and don't really think about what Jesus means here, like thinking about babies and what it means to be born. And, you know, oftentimes you'll hear like you need to you know, you start with drinking spiritual milk and then you start to eat meat. And it's just like, so dumb.
But when I think of being born again, it's like, you get to start fresh, you get to start new. In a way, you are a baby. You rely on me for everything that you need. And as you grow and as you develop and as I transform you and I renew you, and you mature more and you learn about me and you understand me, you're able to take on more and more and more and more until you're an adult or whatever you've matured. But to me, the idea of being born again is the ability to start fresh and completely rely upon God to lead you and guide you upon the spirit.
But when I was going through this, I was also going through my 20s. And so I feel like your 20s are just a time to really develop your sense of self. Anyways. You're really trying to figure out who you are and figure out your purpose. And so for so long, being told, you know, your purpose is to get married and to be a helpmeet and to submit to your husband and birth babies and die and be sentenced to a life of misery. You know, it's just after being told that that's kind of just like all you have in store for you, and not wanting that, I deeply did not really believe it. Uh, that's something that I just never could get on board with. I always felt like I am made for more and I think now I think back to now, like, can you imagine if I would have just married some guy that I just didn't like and just had this miserable relationship and just sat there in misery like I would just wither and die and I would never have been able to help hundreds of thousands of women. How devastating. How traumatic, how just absolutely heartbreaking.
Experiencing Life
And so for years, I really just kind of wrestled with things like that. And I didn't really care to really read the scripture. I'd read it enough. You know, at that point I was just like, I'm, I'm done. And some Christians that I know would define that as stepping away or backsliding. But what I did was like a spiritual walkabout. And so I just started to just enjoy my life and study the things that I was afraid to study before and look into the things and experience the things that I had not allowed myself to experience and just experienced life and experience God. Because that's what experiencing life is. I finally stopped worshiping a false idol, and I actually started to meet at the altar in the temple of the one true God.
But one thing stuck to me and it kept just rolling through my head over and over during that time. And that was just the words, you know, “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” And he has set us apart before we were even born. And that is something that I really had to wrestle with because I wanted to understand what that meant so desperately and deep down in my bones, like I felt that that was that I was sent here for a purpose. Like there is this purpose. I mean, we, you know, my higher self, the self that I am eternally right because I'm an eternal being, just as you are. I'm made in the image of God. So I am a co-creator, right? I can't create from nothing because only God can do that. He's the only thing that can speak a word and set life into motion. You know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and all of that. But what he allows us to do is co-create with him so we can take energy and change it, and we can create from what he has already created.
And that's what he delights in. He delights in that co-creative process. That's why he created us. He was already whole. He was and is and is to come, like he's always existed, which is so hard to wrap our mind around. And as a little bit of a side rant, I'm sure some people listening get annoyed when I call him a he, but I call him a he because he is a father to me. When I call God he, that means that I can be in my feminine and he can take care of me. He is providing, he is protecting. He is a father.
But in reality God is, you know, both feminine and masculine. There's both. And that's why throughout Hebrew Scripture, the Spirit is always referred to in the feminine form. It's not that God is a man or a woman, it's just that the way that the English language works is it doesn't quite translate from ancient Hebrew, like ancient Hebrew has so much more meaning to it. The numbers, the vibrations, the orders of the letters, like everything has meaning, whereas English doesn't operate that way. And so when the Bible got translated and the scriptures got translated, a lot of the magic and mysticism within it got lost. A lot of the deeper layers of meaning and the poetry and the context gets lost, and the meaning and the meaning and the meaning within the meaning and the layers. Because there's many layers, there's the literal, but then there's also the allegorical. There's the mythical, there's a lot of facets to the Scripture, but that's a long way of saying when I refer to God as a he, to me, that is delightful. It's like I get to be taken care of by a provider and a protector by a king.
The Good Father
So he, this king, this good, good father, he delights in us co-creating with him, expanding the universe with him. He chose to create us. We are the apple of his eye. We are the center of why the universe was created. And so I know you probably don't expect this from me anymore to do anything like you think I'm going to do, or give you the resources and just be like, do this, do this, do this. But I would say the first thing that I really started to relearn is I think how people see God as a direct reflection of parental guidance or how they are parented. Now, I have a unique honor to have an amazing father. I have a father who, of course he's human. You know, no father is perfect, but I had an incredible father that was always emotionally there for me. Always a provider, always a protector. Just a really good dad. But that's not everyone's experience. And so I think a lot of people in the church really have a skewed view of what a good, good father is doing. They think that there's this, like, guy in the sky wielding this weapon and going to just smite anyone that is not doing what he commanded. And there's almost this permeating idea that God is an abusive father.
Can you imagine if a father said to his child, “you're a worthless human being, and the only thing that makes you good is the fact that I love you.” We would be like, that guy's an abusive piece of trash. And yet this is what so many people believe God is this kind of authoritarian, demanding, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child. And God is not that at all. He's never been that. You know, even when you look at Genesis and Adam and Eve, they've done their thing, which we talked about in two episodes that are really good for you to listen to if you are kind of lost: episode two on bioenergetics and then episode five on feminine versus masculine. But I touch on Adam and Eve in there, but you see God and he already knows what Adam and Eve have done, and yet he calls to them. He gently says, Adam, Eve, where are you? You know, he seeks them out and they're hiding. He knows what they've done, but he gives them an opportunity to just come to him.
And of course, they play their little blame game. They go back and forth and then they are like, God, we're naked, you know, we're naked. And what does he do? Does he just, like, spank them? Does he punish them? Does he smite them? Does he destroy them? No. He goes and changes the entire course of the universe and kills the first animal and creates clothing for them so that they are no longer naked because they're now aware that they're naked, they've lost their innocence. And then out of such love, he kicks them out of the garden and puts angels at the gate or at the front. Because now that they have the knowledge of good and evil, they cannot eat from the tree of life. That would be a punishment, right? That would be a curse to know everything, to know, to see, to lose your innocence, and then to also have to live forever within this kind of place where you are constantly trying to take things onto your own shoulders and trying to be like God, because you can't live forever and have that loss of innocence and no longer be reliant upon God. You'll be in this constant kind of war with God. It would be such a curse.
And so a lot of people see that as a punishment that God kicked them from the garden, like that was the punishment for what they did. And it's like, no, that was just the natural consequence. And the protective father taking care. But a lot of people within the church have been raised in these kind of authoritarian households where it's like, if you don't do what I want you to do, you're going to get spanked. And can you imagine training a child to believe that if they don't do what you want them to do, or they don't do what the right thing is that they can be hit and that's okay, and that's love? And then you like kiss them afterwards and you're like, I only do this because I love you. When your child ends up in an abusive relationship where their husband doesn't like something that they do, and so they hit them, and your child thinks that that's okay, because I'm only doing this because I love you.
Remind yourself of the part you played in that, you know? It is so bizarre here. We have promises of God being gentle and non-demanding and not really wanting anything of you. He just invites you to come to him. You know, “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” This is truth. And yet why does your burden feel so heavy? Why do you feel so disconnected and so disassociated and so pulled in a million different directions? Why do you have such internal chaos? And this is what Christian women need to ask themselves.
You know, you see this talking point over and over again of I want to live like Jesus. And Jesus is my favorite and, you know, follower of Jesus and to me, it's like, have you really studied Jesus's life? Like, have you really allowed what he did penetrate you, the revolution that his whole existence was? Do you really understand that saying that at the time that Jesus was alive, saying that in the political climate that he was in, the spiritual, or I should say, religious environment that he was in, would land you a really untimely death and possibly get you made an example of? Do you really grasp that? Do you grasp what he has done? Everything about his life was symbolic, because we see the wise men, which experts and scholars believe that these wise men often referred to as wise men in the scriptures, but sometimes referred to as kings, like in the song, “We Three Kings,” but are actually more accurately described as Biblical magi most likely came from Persia because when you look at not only the Scripture, but the history of the time, ancient Persia would have been a kingdom or an empire to the east that had wise men. And when you dive into the history of ancient Persia and their religion, it will blow your mind, because contrary to the time that Jesus was born into, it was a monotheistic empire or society.
Most empires at the time were polytheistic, meaning that they worshiped many different gods and goddesses. You see this again and again, right? With ancient Greece and ancient Rome. And you see this with even ancient Egypt, where God is often saying over and over in the Old Testament, you shall worship no other God beside me. You shall worship no other God beside me. This is why he's saying that over and over. Because gods and goddesses were integrated into the culture. It was completely normal. And this is why you see him send the plagues to Egypt. Each plague had a specific meaning. He was dominating over what the people thought was all powerful. These kind of gods and goddesses. You know, when he sent the frogs, they had the frog goddess. And what he was doing was he was liberating the people by showing them that I am God. These are not God. You don't have to worship them. You don't have to be under this, these rules and these regulations to exist and be in the presence of God. I am here and I am the one true God. He was revealing himself to the people, liberating them.
Digging into Zoroastrianism
But although you see this kind of trend of worshiping many gods and goddesses, and it's integrated into people's culture and their society and their psyche, they don't even know anything different. You see, ancient Persia practiced what's considered one of the oldest religions in the world, or one of the oldest organized religions in the world, which is called Zoroastrianism. And the Magi were priests, or kind of the highest of the religious order, the religious leaders of Zoroastrianism. And when you dive in to this religion, which is why I think it's so dang important to dig and dig and dig and challenge and challenge and challenge and keep asking those right questions and be hungry to understand who God is, who God really is. Because when I looked into Zoroastrianism, it blew my ever loving mind. This religion was thought to have maybe started around 1500 BC. So 1500 years before Christ was born, ancient Persia had previously been a polytheistic society, but this guy, Zorastor. Zoroastrianism. Get the correlation?
This Zoroaster, we'll just call him Zoro, he receives a vision. You know, he's a part of this polytheistic culture. Everyone's worshipping gods and goddesses, doesn't think anything about it. And he's born to nobles within the Persian Empire. So his parents are part of nobility. And they actually believe that his father could have been a part of the priestly class or the priests of the time in this polytheistic culture. So pastor's kid. Right? And because in that society, the sons usually followed in the footsteps of the father, he started studying at a very, very, very young age. And so similar to what's going on in the rest of the world at the time. It's requires animal sacrifices, ritual sacrifice, just like many of the other societies of the time. And he's absolutely disgusted by this. And so supposedly this guy grows up, he's an adult, and he all of a sudden receives what he says, a life changing vision or the good news. And he says an image of a celestial being which referred to himself as Vohu Manah, which meant good purpose in their language, and this being (sound familiar?) says that he is sent by Ahura Mazda, which means Lord of wisdom and creator and sustainer of all things. Sound familiar?
And the message was that the priests of this society, so his father and him included in this, have gravely mistaken and misunderstood the divine truth, and are worshipping false gods. And there is only one true God, which is Ahura Mazda, Lord of wisdom, creator and sustainer of all things, and that this god does not require blood sacrifice and only ethical behavior, and that he has been chosen to preach this revelation to this whole empire. And at that point, you know, he is now told to go out and to begin his mission of preaching this new good news. And what happens, our homeboy Zoro, he goes out and he's like all enthusiastic, like, thank God we don't have to kill animals anymore. Thank God, it was not sitting right with me anyways.
He is not met with the enthusiasm. He thought he was rejected by the priests. He his life was threatened. He had to run from his home. But no matter what happened to him, Zoro, he seemed pretty convinced and he would not stop preaching this like new good news, this truth that he had been revealed. And he said that he remained constantly within prayer to receive guidance by Ahura Mazda in how to move forward in his mission. But over time, even though he didn't really put anything in writing at the time, eventually certain things were written down and passed down, but he spent his whole life proving – he had the background, the theological education in their theology – and he spent his whole life showing the validity of what this vision that he would not sway from.
Eventually, the story goes, he becomes imprisoned by one of the kings or the king of the time, and while he's in prison, he's able to heal the king's horse by laying his hands on him on the horse. And so the king is curious, frees him, and then takes a listen to his message. And the king became his first convert. After the king converted, the whole of Persia was soon to follow and accept this new monotheistic theology, this new view of their whole existence. And so the Magi were priests of this practice, and this religion that had already been going on for almost 1500 years before Jesus was born. And at the core of their religion, they believed in one God, very, very dedicated to the idea of the one true God, this creator and sustainer of all things. They believed that they express worship through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. It's also believed that they studied a lot of nature astrology, the stars. And we know how, although our society pretty much follows a more like ancient Greek astrology, the astrology of that region was very, very different. And there are many people who believe that the gospel is actually written in the stars, the idea of a king that's going to save the world and redeem everything.
Re-Examining the Magi
And so it's not really understood by historians how the teachings and the beliefs of this religion were passed down over the years. Eventually they had scriptures and writings, but they didn't always. But my guess is if they caught the new star in the East, they said they followed the star to Bethlehem, and then the star stopped over where Jesus was. They don't actually know if they got there, right? It's most likely that they didn't get there right when he was born, but probably within the first two years of Jesus's life. I would assume that if they noticed a new star pop up and they followed the star and they realized the star stopped, they were pretty good at studying the stars. They knew what was going on up there. That was their place of study. So we should ask ourselves, how did they know what the star meant? They said that God spoke to them.
But to me, the most important thing about the Magi or the wise men is that these were people that were committed to the worship of one God. They did not believe in false gods, and they did not believe in just anybody being God. And at the time, nobody knew Jesus was God. Jesus was like a baby being born to a chick who had sex out of marriage from the belief of the time, just a kind of “nobody.” Obviously, we know Mary was not a nobody. Nobody's a nobody. But from a perspective of the time, she was a nobody. And it's very interesting to me that these wise men knew to travel the desert bearing gifts and go through all that trouble. And then these Magi who worshiped the one true God bowed down to Jesus as their God and king. They knew this was something special. They knew this was something extraordinary. They knew that the coming of someone that's going to radically change something, change the world, change the trajectory of everything, all of energy. Is written in the stars.
You should ask yourselves how these men from Persia, who were astrologers, who followed the star, knew to come and to find Jesus. Like, have you really thought about that? Or are you just like, oh my God, Zodiac new age? Oh my god, Satan butting up against your programming there. You know, like really think through the story, think through the scripture. And this is really how I healed. I just started to explore and be exploratory and have a child-like mind and ask the right questions, not worried about the questions were going to offend God or attaching stories to them, but more just seeking, seeking like who are you? Who are you? I want to see you, I want to know you, I want to feel you. Reveal yourself to me. And so as I just look at the, you know, the true gospel story, everyone always like, tries to preach me the gospel and I'm like, can I preach you the gospel? Uh, can I do it right back? But like, even down to Jesus being born in a manger, people don't really grasp how nobody thought that Mary's pregnancy was divine, was a co-creation of divinity. They thought she just had sex before marriage, which was extremely, extremely taboo within the Jewish community.
And so here you have the political climate. A lot of people don't really understand what was going on, but you had the Roman Empire and then you had the religious empire, and there were like two kind of warring factions where you did have the Roman Empire and all the gods and goddesses and temple worship and really bloody dark, uh, kind of culture on one side. And some scholars surmise that as we shift through zodiac ages, we are now in the Age of Aquarius. But at the time they were in a completely different age. And so everything's different. When you really start to study the body, you start to understand that there's a lot of symbolism within numbers and symbolism within minerals and symbolism within the zodiac. Everything within nature kind of reflects itself. It is like all kind of interwoven and intertwined. You realize that these zodiac shifts would create like almost a completely different vibration on the earth. People would be concerned with different things, focused on different things. And so some scholars surmise that they were in the age of Taurus or something around there during that time, where it was very much more of like a bloodlust type of society, a lot of debauchery and reveling in this like debauchery.
The Emperor at the time was this really weak man, and then Pontius Pilate. He was like this social climber, this political. He just wanted power. And then on the flip side, you have the religious community, which was like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, like the religious leaders, that these are people that are like, really power hungry and trying to control people, but they're doing it in a way where they're saying, you have to do this in order to get to God. You had the priest and the temple and to come into the temple and worship at the altar, remember, you had to sacrifice. And a lot of people ask, why would God require sacrifice? And again, I don't really understand. I don't really know. But some people that I have studied say, well, this was a culture that was completely different. So we have a really hard time understanding why all of these things were in place, because the culture and the norms, like everything, was completely different at the time. And remember, you have these Roman gods and these people are going to sleep with prostitutes as a form of worship. They are butchering, just blood in the streets, right. Like these, these mass blood sacrifices. So on the flip side, you have the other kind of religious space, the really like conservative space where people are coming and the temple has really turned into a place of trade and profit, where all of these religious leaders are making huge amounts of money on people that just want to be in the presence of God. And so here they are, you know, upselling goats and upselling sheep and upselling cows and upselling these sacrificial animals and saying that people have to purchase these in order to get to God. Then the priest would go in and do the sacrifice, and then he would enter the Holy of Holies. And there was this big curtain. And if the priest was unclean, he would walk into the Holy of Holies and be struck dead, which is why they would tie a rope to his foot. And I really don't quite understand why this was. I don't get it. Like I'm there to say, like, I just really don't understand why this was the way of things. It seemed really gory from my cultural perspective, but I didn't live in that time. So, you know, there's been really weird times in human history.
So you see Jesus and he's born in a manger, like born in an animal feed trough. You know, he's placed in this animal feed trough like the lowliest of lows. Like here, Mary has this whole pregnancy where she's afraid, she's a young girl, she doesn't know what's going on. And then she gives birth in a stable. Here she is going into labor. She's giving birth in a stable. She's being told by God, this is the chosen one. This is, you know, my son, but doesn't really know what's going on. You know, it's still really stressful. She's like, why me? And then she has to give birth in a stable and put Jesus in a manger. She's most likely had to go through nine months of being shamed and ridiculed and judged, probably dealing with the very real human emotions of shame, guilt, self-questioning, did I do anything wrong? Here she is, you know, pregnant just randomly. And God's telling her like, don't worry, trust me. Like this is going to save the whole world. And she's like, okay, God, you know I trust you. But also like, this is batshit. And I'm having to bear this very physically and on display, which was actually very dangerous at the time, too, because you could be put to death for that.
Then you see what happens, as you know, going back to the wise men or the Magi, they bring attention, them coming to this empire from a neighboring empire, and people knowing a little bit about what they're all about with the Zoroastrianism and their monotheistic society, they're surprised to see these Magi here, and it gets word all the way up to King Herod. So much so that King Herod brings them to him and says, go and search for this child, because the wise men are here looking for Jesus, saying, where is this child that is being born to be the King of the Jews? It says in the scriptures, you know, we saw his star in the East and have come to worship him. They're looking around for him, they're searching for him. And so, of course, King Herod says, you know, find this child for me. I want to see him myself. But what he really wants is to wipe out anyone that is going to be a threat to his reign.
And so the wise men see what's up. And they they go off. Even when they find Jesus, they just leave and go back to Persia. They don't go and let King Herod know, like, hey, we found Christ. They hid him from the king. And the reason that they did that is because they were told in a dream not to return to Herod. Can you imagine if they were just like, oh my gosh, listening to my dreams is satanic or listening to my dreams as new age, you're missing out on a message straight from God. But then what ensues over the next couple of years? What people kind of forget is that King Herod ordered all of the babies in Bethlehem and surrounding areas, all of the male children under two years old to be killed, and the word that is often used is slaughtered. And so, of course, Jesus is spared from this and his parents are able to protect him. But there is this history permeating throughout the society as Jesus grows up, because here we most likely have many women that lost their sons to the order that King Herod put out. And so as Jesus grows up, you see that he stands out not only because he's so smart and so gifted and he understands the scriptures because he just understands truth, because he is truth, but also because he's a boy that survived this mass slaughter.
The Life of Jesus
And then as Jesus grows up there, the talk of the town, she marries Joseph. She has another kid, but it's the talk of the town because it's very taboo to get pregnant before marriage. And so here they're very poor. You know, Joseph is a carpenter. He's an artist. And she has this really gifted son. And God keeps telling me that this is his son. And as weird as that might seem like, he's really gifted, but you have God in the flesh living this just very kind of what you would consider a lowly life. Just the son of a carpenter growing up in a kind of shunned family, has a brother, you know, he learns a craft, his father's craft. He becomes a carpenter himself, so he becomes an artist.
And side note, I doubt anything Jesus put out was fast fashion, right? Or like fast furniture. I feel like he really probably understood those days where he's like carving this furniture and carving this wood out and working with this wood and working with the trees. He is working with his hands and connected to nature and in that kind of creative space. So again, he's really exploring humanity, the depths and the hardest aspects of humanity. And then when he's 30 and actually begins his what's called his ministry, you see, over the course of the last three years of his life, he is sharing something that is, for whatever reason, extremely, extremely dangerous to the political climate of the day. Because although you have the Roman Empire and you have the religious leaders of the time, like warring on most things, they are both incredibly threatened by what he has to say and the type of response that that is giving to people. People are following him and they are threatened. And you see this man who is hanging out with kind of what at the time would be the lowest of the low. He's hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, known scam artists, people that are completely shunned by society. And not only is he hanging out with them, he's not preaching at them. He's not judging them. He's really enjoying his time with them. He's getting to know them. He wants to understand who they are. He drinks with them. He eats with them. He breaks bread with them.
You know, you see the woman who has had multiple partners. And in the scriptures it says multiple husbands. And the Pharisees and Sadducees are the religious leaders who are commanding, you know, are saying, stone her, stone her, and trying to rev up the people and say, you know, this woman is evil. She needs to be put to death. And you see Jesus just start writing in the sand, just nonchalantly just you just start writing. And I love it. It's just so passive aggressive. And all of a sudden, these religious leaders realize that he is writing all of the things that they have done wrong, or all the sins that they would say are sins. And I wonder what these sins really were. I have a feeling they are the same sins that they were accusing her of. And Jesus says, whoever has not sinned, you can throw the first stone.
He's walking around just turning water into wine, enjoying the company of people, telling people to just sit at my feet and just relax like my burden is so light. It doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be the way that all of these people are acting. I'm bringing you something different, something revolutionary, something new. You know, he's going to lepers and he's healing them and telling them, get up and walk. He's showing people their own power. That's what people don't understand, is he was handing the power back to the people. He was saying, you don't have to go through all of these channels in order to be in the presence of God. I am here now. I am here, and obviously over time this escalates and then somebody gets to one of his dear, dear friends, Judas, in a moment of weakness, in a fit of greed, the political climate is getting worse and worse and worse, and Jesus is in more and more danger, because now the political climate is shifting, and the Pharisees and Sadducees are working with the Roman Empire to put Jesus to death. Now, at the end of the day, the Roman Empire was the final say, and the religious leaders did have to use politics to say, this is what we want to do.
The Roman Empire at the time didn't really want to get involved with matters of the church. They were kind of just like, these don't concern me. But then you have like one of the main Pharisees at the time, he's like ripping his robes off in front of these Roman leaders, having a fit and just saying, like, I can't live anymore. Unless Jesus dies. This is the end of all that is. These religious leaders are out of their minds, threatened by Jesus and His message. But through all the stress, the sweating of blood, the cries out to his father, he never, ever relents. He continues on his path in his purpose, to the point of death. And in that moment you see that here God has come to earth to share the truth, to free people. And they did not have ears to hear or eyes to see. And they demanded him to die. They couldn't stand the truth so much. They were so triggered by it that they had bloodlust. They needed to put it out, put the flame out, however that may be.
And then you see that as Jesus dies, the sky goes dark. The whole world is in mourning, the sun goes dark. And I think of how scary that would be. What has happened? Oh my gosh. Uh oh. And then you see that this big, thick curtain that is within the temple protecting the Holy of Holies rips down the middle. This huge, heavy veil is just ripped down the middle as a symbolic representation that now everyone can come and worship at the altar. There's no longer a need for any outside source. Now, for some of us, we've heard the, you know, we've heard the verse like your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
And, you know, we say like my body is a temple. Like I take care of it. I like, eat well and I exercise, but we don't really understand because we don't have temples like they had in those days. Temples were places that people came to worship God. It was the only place that they could come. Right. And whether that was, you know, temples were throughout the society. It wasn't just the one true God. It was all of these kind of gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire. And within these temples were altars to be worshiped at. And what would happen at these altars typically were blood sacrifices. People were sacrificing animals, huge amounts. And this goes back to that. Like this was a society, a culture of really a lot of bloodlust. A lot of death was taking place. This culture, this society was beating to the drum of death, boom, boom, boom. And so when that when that curtain was torn and now anyone could enter into the Holy of Holies, that was a symbolic representation of the death is done. I've satiated the bloodlust. I have come to pave a new way. This is a new world.
Now we have entered a new age, which is why the representation of Jesus rising from the dead is so powerful. Because in a culture of death and destruction and bloodlust, to have someone rise from the dead and defeat this death, which was permeating the culture, it's affecting every single individual that was having to be around this energy. He was saying, it's done, it's finished. So if we no longer have to go into the Holy of Holies to meet God, where is the temple? Where does God now reside?
Energy and the Spirit
Now, if you haven't listened to episode two, The Bioenergetics episode, I highly recommend you listen to it, even if you need to pause and go listen to it and come back. You got to listen to it because we talk about how there is this energy, there is this force behind everything alive, behind everything that is in motion, the vibrational frequencies that are buzzing and humming throughout the universe. And it had never made more sense to me to really start to understand physiology and start to really see God within the body and study bioenergetics. The burning bush episode where Moses is out in the desert, you see this guy that feels extremely inadequate for the job that's put before him, and he's like hanging out next to this bush. And all of a sudden this bush catches on fire and starts talking to him. I mean, anyone would be really weirded out. And then, like, Moses is asking God like he is and he just says, I am like, he just he's like, I am.
And I never really understood that concept until I started to really understand energy and all of energy. Right? Energy is kind of the more masculine thing that keeps all of life held together or in motion, the action behind life. But then you. Also have the feminine side or the the more mysterious flowing, kind of more chaotic, but formed force, the vibrations and frequencies behind that energy, the energy and the frequencies are all in one.The word became flesh and dwelt among us. The word. What is the word? You know, “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into to the world.” Do you really sit with that? Do we really sit and wrestle with that? Do we really, really think about it?
This word set things in motion and it is light. And John was a witness of the light and and this true light lighteth every man that cometh into the world, something shifted with humanity, with Jesus coming, something eternal, universal shifted the Holy of Holies, the altar, the temple, something revolutionary happened where God was able to enter a new temple. And so when we say God is with us, we need to really ask ourselves what we mean by that. Is it this guy in the sky that's just kind of like floating around us? Like, what does that mean? And some people will say, well, you know, I carry the Holy Spirit. I have the Holy Spirit in me again. What does that mean to you? What does it mean?
You know, you see, towards the end of Jesus's life, he's about to ascend into heaven towards the end of you know, you can read about about this towards the end of John and he's talking to his disciples, all his close group of friends. They're still in shock. You know, they thought he died. They've been through a lot, they thought he'd died. They mourned him. And then he's showing up, and he has wounds in his hands and his feet. So it's not a ghost. It's not them imagining anything. They're touching him. They're feeling him. They realize he's alive. And they finally recognize and realize that everything that he promised, everything that he taught, everything that they were so excited about, they just wanted to follow him. And kind of an excitement is really true. And you see this shift happen in the disciples, because now they are going to go out and they are going to preach the gospel, and they're going to continue on with this revolutionary information that's so threatening to the powers that be at the time, that they will probably also die.
And they will probably be made examples of just as Jesus was. And so now they're really like, oh my gosh, I should have paid closer attention. I need to learn more. Like I need to teach me, Lord, you can't leave me now. You can't leave us. We need you now more than ever. Like you've only revealed so much truth. And we've only spent so much time together. And Jesus says, you know, if you love me, just keep my commands. And then, you know, he says, and “I will ask the father, and I will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the spirit of truth. And he goes on to say, the world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you before long. The world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live. You also will live. On that day you will realize wise that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” I don't think he could have been much clearer than that.
The New Temple
My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God lives within me. I am an altar that I can worship at the feet of Jesus at any point. I am in continuous presence with God. If I obey him and keep his commands. And what does that mean, right? Like a lot of people think again, back to the authoritarian father of like, you do this and you won't get punished. It's not that. It's I want the best for you. I want to work all things together for your good, and this is what you should do to get there. Like you will live your best life. You will have this light within you if you live this way. Here is this gift to you. And of course, with our inflexible human minds, we've taken this and we have turned it into this black or white extremist point of view of like, do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, this rigid set of rules. Because we live in a very masculine, structured society where it's that shadow masculine, that imbalanced masculine that needs power and control and manipulation, which is always afraid of true power. But we don't live this way, right? Like we do really believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Do we take God at His word, or do we believe we're kind of this rotten flesh sack?
And it does go back to kind of the ancient Greek influence that has really permeated the truth. You know, the ancient Greeks were very much Stoics. They tended to split the body and soul. Their philosophies of the time were very much that the body is evil, and the spirit is the only thing that is good. You know, the intellect, the spirit. And this is really a form of Gnosticism that has impacted the church more than people really understand. This is not a Christian belief. This, or I should say this is not a scripture based belief. This is Gnosticism or dualism that has really entered the church, the split of soul and body, of spirit and flesh. But I really think that Scripture couldn't make it any more clear. Like, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, or you are not your own? Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? Like? Could it be any clearer? He even refers to his creations as the body of Christ, right? And I don't understand how you can say like, yeah, you're the body of Christ, you're the body of Christ again, is treated as another talking point, but you don't really understand this fully. If you don't understand the body, you couldn't even comprehend it. Comprehend it. Because really what he's saying is you're a cell in the body of God. And what do cells do? They create energy, vibrations, ripple effects. They are in constant co-creation mode, constantly holding this energy, taking things, transforming them, being these energy receptors and creators.
Why are we not asking these questions? So if you're going through a spiritual journey and you are in the trenches of doubt wherever you're at, I want to let you know that you already have the truth within you. It's very clear you can get inside your body, get back in your body, get back into your spirit and connect with it. The truth lives within you. Jesus said it himself that he is going to leave us a helper that is even, even greater than he. He's going to continue the truth on within us. We get to expand the potential right? Go out and preach the gospel, go out and claim this to the universe that you can meet God at your altar within your temple.
And our God is so powerful and so non-threatened that he makes things mysterious. Like he can make things very clear and spell it out for us. But he wants things to be, I always say like he almost has a flair for the dramatic. I love that about him because like, I have that too. And I see it. I'm like, I see you. And this marvelous creator, like he's creating this whole story, right? Like he's an artist painting his masterpiece. And he makes it so clear, right? He writes it in the stars. He writes truth within nature. It's it's woven throughout creation. It's written within our bodies. The truth is evident for all eyes to see. He doesn't care what you call it. He really is non-threatened by the use of words. He doesn't care if you call him God. He doesn't care if you call him the universe. He really doesn't care. He just is. He is who he is, and he always has been and he always will be. Nothing you can do can change him, but he can change you and the force behind you. That is the thing that allows you to draw every breath, that allows you to stay in motion, that allows you to experience life. He doesn't even command that you worship him. He invites you to. He would love to meet with you. He wants to meet you in his temple. He wants you to come to the altar and worship him. He delights in it, but he's not going to force you. Jesus said it himself. “You know I have told you this while I'm still with you. However, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you everything. He will remind you of everything that I have ever told you.”
So when you say that you follow Jesus, do you follow Jesus? And when we're getting elbows deep in the trenches and we're trying to really wrestle with our belief systems, we need to just ask ourselves, what type of God do I worship? Do I worship the God that gets down in the trenches with me and wants to be elbows deep in humanity, relishes in humanity, loves us despite the chaos, actually uses the chaos to create incredible things alchemize our pain into masterpieces? Do you really trust God to lead you? So why are you sending condescending DMs? What are you so afraid of? Why are you so afraid of other belief systems? Why are you so afraid of Satan? Everything is so scary to you. Why? If you really believed what you believed and you really had strong, impenetrable beliefs where you were formed and concrete, you'd be able to try on someone else's shoes and still prefer your own. You'd be able to get in someone else's head and say, I'm going to get down in the trenches with you and just try to really understand where you're coming from. Like, I really want to know you. I desire to know you. Why are you so threatened? Why can't you do that? Why can't you expand?
Take off the Scales
And so I'm not going to leave you with a bunch of resources to go read or things to do to fix it, or action steps. What I'm going to encourage you to do is start seeing, take the scales off your eyes and for the first time in your life, allow yourself to see. See the triune nature of God and how there's so many threes and sixes and nines and twelves woven into the universe. Understand that God sees everything in numbers and math, but he also sees things in song and sound and vibrations and colors. Men and women are a reflection of two halves of a whole. When Scripture says that Eve was taken from his rib. But if you look at the real original text, it says from his side and and scholars actually, you know, some scholars actually surmise that this meaning behind this is that he split man in half and put his two, two sides of his essences, or two facets of himself within each being. And so you see this pattern of threes again, right? This triangle, you see so many triangles where God is at the top, right, God is all consuming. And then you have Jesus on one point of the triangle and the Holy Spirit on the other. Right? So you have the all encompassing God, and then you have Jesus as a representation of the one who takes action the Redeemer, the Savior, the provider, the protector. And then you have the Holy Spirit that's coming in and mothering and nurturing everything to fruition, bringing truth and beauty and wisdom and life. He is the great Mother and the Great Father.
You can look around and see the natural order of things. You can see different facets of God's personality in flamingos and platypus and hippopotamuses and rhinos and hummingbirds. You can see his vastness and his all encompassing beauty. All of creation is a reflection of who he is, his complexities, every essence, every facet that you see before you is of God. Because any artist knows, any creator knows that all of your work is somehow a reflection or a facet of who you are, your personality and aspect of you, an attribute of you, is always going to be reflected within your work. So every time you sit down to enjoy that delicious meal, or you have a beautiful experience, or you scrunch your toes in a riverbed, a snowflake falls onto your cheek, you are being reminded of God's attention to detail. You are being reminded of who he is by studying his creation. There is nothing you need to do or fix. You don't need any more outside sources to give you evidence. You need to learn to see the evidence for yourself, to trust your own eyes, your own ears, your own nose, your own gut. To remember that the God of the universe resides within you and within all of us. And it is the thread that connects us all. Lay back on your life raft and trust. Live. Do exactly what he made you for. And if you don't know what that is, trust him to help you figure it out. You make a move, he makes a move within the work. You find more of him. Stop saying sorry for being who you are. Stop feeling guilty for reveling in the pleasures that he provided for you and gave to you as a gift. Be with him in the present moment and I'll leave you with this to close out.
Remember the story of Mary and Martha, where there were two sisters and Jesus was visiting with them in their home. And so Martha is just bustling around the kitchen, and she's just doing all these things and doing this and a little bit of that, and she's being a busy body, you know, she's she's busy and she's also, you see, over the course of the time where Mary, her sister, is just sitting at Jesus's feet, just soaking up everything he has to give her. She is just reveling in this gospel message, this idea that God is within me. He is with me. All of this pain I have been feeling with this culture and society, we have been living in all this. The bloodlust that was sucking my soul out of me. All of this wrong. It's going to be made right. She's just sitting at his feet, just soaking it up and you see Martha just getting more and more agitated and irritated, and she's just getting mad. And she finally she just is snapping, and she wants Mary to come help her, like, come help me in the kitchen. And she even comes to Jesus and she's like, why do I have to do all this work myself? Sound familiar? Don't you care, Jesus? And he answers in his very Jesus way and says, you know, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.”
To me, I see Martha as a representation of our trying to fix it and do this and do that and do this and do this and jump to this and jump to this. It's a really a symbolic representation of our lack of trust and surrender and just sitting and being present, reveling and just soaking in our existence. And it pains me. It pains me that there are so many women out there living in a box and a prison of their own making. That has nothing to do with God, has nothing to do with Jesus. And sadly, the God that they worship is false. He's not the true living God. He is a God of their own making and their own imagination, and is a product of their own perception of reality, and they are refusing to meet God at the altar.
Thank you so much for listening to the Fully Nourished podcast. We did it. We made it through season one. We made it through the foundations, and I so appreciate you for sticking with me through it all, for allowing me to share what's on my heart and my mind, and just have this creative project that brings me so much joy. I'm just going to take a small creative break to really restore my energy and renew myself. And I hope you really enjoy joy this season with your family or friends. Or if you need solace too, that's okay. And if you're hurting right now, I just want to remind you that everything that you're going through is working out for your good, I promise. And even when it doesn't feel like it's okay or it's going to be okay, just when we feel like we can't take it anymore, we break free out of the box like I did, and we expand and all the pieces fall into place and we're like, oh my gosh, I survived it.
And when you understand physics, you have to understand that when energy breaks up, it needs to break up and become chaos before it can be reformed. And so when you're in the chaos, you feel like it is chaos. But don't worry. Allow the energy to settle, trust, surrender. It's going to be okay. And if the journey feels hard, just remind yourself that when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly in their chrysalis, their body turns into this black goo. So they go from a caterpillar to black goo, and then the black goo turns into a butterfly. And then all of a sudden, the butterfly just breaks through its chrysalis, just expands and breaks free and just flies away. It's this beautiful, floating, feminine, magical insect that used to be just like this kind of gross, hairy caterpillar. And so if you're in your black goo season, just remind yourself black goo is a period of rest and rejuvenation preparing you for something great. Don't try to rush yourself out of it, because if you do, you're just going to feel like black goo spilling out of a chrysalis. But as weird as that was, I just want to let you know that I see you soon.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
Check out Kossma Beauty* and get 10% off your order (discount automatically applied at checkout)
Nourished Circle
*This is an affiliate link that provides Jessica Ash Wellness with a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Connect with Jessica:
Have Sunday tea with me! Sign-up for my Sunday newsletter where I share what’s on my brain from the nutritional to spiritual: https://www.jessicaashwellness.com/email-subscribe.
Join the Fully Nourished community! Follow me @jessicaashwellness on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicaashwellness/