I'm the Matrix, I'm Jonathan, and I'm left of center.
And I'm Rich, and I tend to lean a little bit more
to the right, but the bottom line is,
is together we try to look for the balance
of what it means to be human in today's world.
All right, let's get started everyone.
Welcome to Living in the Matrix, I'm Jonathan,
and this is my cohost Rich, say hello Rich.
Hey everybody, great to be back.
It seems like it's been a couple of weeks
and a lot has taken place since then,
but happy to have our guest back today.
Yeah, we've had some interesting moments.
We should have a topics episode pretty soon here
because things are brewing, a lot of stuff,
interesting stuff is happening,
but we have an absolutely fantastic guest today.
Her name is Ariel Lanning, and Ariel is a deconstruction
coach, helping people deconstruct from their
Christian faith to find their intuition,
overcoming their fear, and taking their lives back.
I love that idea, welcome Ariel.
Thank you, and thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here and talking with you guys.
Yeah, so I found you on Instagram,
and you immediately caught my attention
because you took, in the three first videos
that I ever saw, you took a very hard approach
to this is spiritual trauma and it's abusive
for people who have lived sort of the traditional
evangelical faith, that's a hard line,
but I wanna listen to that because I think one,
I think having known a little bit about your story
comes from personal experience,
and I wanna open up the space here for you
to sort of help us unpack your big idea
that you talk a lot about on Instagram.
Sure, thank you for that introduction.
Honestly, it was a very long time coming
and opening a very devout Christian faith of myself,
and then learning more and more about the human body
and what could not work, the two concepts
that would contradict each other.
So my goal now is to help people understand
that they can have spirituality without the rules
and without the constructs and without the foundations
that are toxic and go against human nature
and adopt what does work with them and move forward
and also have psychology, neuroscience, physiology,
and quantum physics support certain realms of spirituality.
So you can have the science and the heart,
you can have the semantics and the analytical,
you just have to find where they can come together
and they don't contradict each other.
And coming from an upbringing that was Mormon LDS,
Latter-day Saints, which is Christian,
people often like to try to say that it isn't,
but the church is called the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
So we believe in the Bible, but also not we,
past we believed in the Bible
and then also the addition of the Book of Mormon.
And so we did follow Jesus Christ.
But as I started studying my journey
and the concepts that really helped near and dear to me,
the contradiction started rewriting my beliefs
and then I would try to find healing modalities
that helped me heal the subconscious part
because I could know on a cognitive level
what I no longer agreed with,
but I could not help my subconscious and tissues
follow along until I did certain work.
So what I hear you saying,
because I know a lot about what you're talking about
especially the quantum physics
and the neuroscience around it,
you essentially realized you couldn't change
until you did something in your body.
It wasn't just here, it was also here.
And I completely agree with that.
I think that's the awakening that is happening now.
A lot of people are realizing theology lives
primarily up here in the way of most religions
is focus on the theology and the right way of thinking
and your body will automatically follow along.
And that's not true.
Your body is based on scripts
and you have to change your body.
And you found that out.
Tell me a little bit about how,
well, first I wanna go back and ask,
you have a unique story.
You were a devout Christian in the Latter-day Saints.
What were the contradictions
that kind of began the journey for you to go,
because why would you even deconstruct?
Well, the contradictions didn't become blatant
until I began a yoga teacher training
because I started yoga after I had my daughter.
But some of the things that happened up until then
started unraveling, because when you start yoga
and you start somatic work,
you start healing things from your past
that you didn't know were still tagging along
for the journey.
So a couple of the things that I went through
that were probably the most-
Interruption.
Was there a particular type of yoga that helped you with that?
Because I mean, there's this idea of yoga
where a lot of people are,
I'm doing it for stretching and exercise and limberness.
But then if you look at the Bhagavad Gita
and you look at other kinds of yoga,
there's actually deep spiritual paths in the yoga.
Was there a particular element that your instructor
was helping you with for our audience?
Because we've had both kinds.
Yeah.
Well, honestly, my yoga instructor
is trained in the Eastern philosophies.
And she also has a biology background.
So her majors in college were biology.
And she lives in a conservative town.
We live in North Texas.
So she approached it from a very scientific aspect
to make sure that it was obtainable
and touchable for our community.
And only once you've known her for a very long time,
will you start getting any more of the-
I don't know, I like the word magic sometimes,
but the woo woo, you know, people like to, from her.
It's crucial.
You don't really get, yeah.
She ties it all in so naturally
and she grounds it into our humanity
with such a foundation in science and her Eastern premise.
So everything she does makes yoga,
like we're all about modifications and breath work
and conscious breathing.
And it's very far from the Western yoga
that if I go to a Western yoga class, I'm really thrown.
Cause I've only been studying primarily from her for years
and I stay with her because of it.
So I wouldn't say it's a type of yoga.
I would say it was a, well, I guess yes Eastern,
but we still did all kinds like Hatha, Yin.
It doesn't really, they all helped me in that aspect.
Just depends on the teacher.
Were you going to her as a coach or a somatic practitioner?
So I've seen her as both,
but she owns the yoga studio in my town
and I also did all my yoga teacher trainings under her.
So I've been studying under her since 2018 or 19.
So that's the kind of yoga background that's,
before that I started with yoga with Adrian on YouTube.
So back to my question about what were those sense of
things that didn't make sense?
Help us understand what those were.
When I was 19, I had a high school sweetheart of four years
and he was not religious,
but we had fallen off the path of my Christianity
because we fell into poverty.
And so my parents' mental health fell
and mine did as well along with my siblings,
but I was the oldest.
So I got out of the house the quickest
and was on my own and had three jobs.
I was in community college and working as a model and singer
and doing all the things I could do
to be a young successful adult.
And then I had a crush on a female that I met
and I could not deny it.
And I finally realized that I had language for it.
Even though I had crushes when I was younger,
there was no vocabulary.
It was just this untouchable thing
that I learned to fragment.
I learned to like shut the doors and compartmentalize
these aspects of myself into a way
that like they didn't exist.
And then when I realized that I had this thing
I could not deny, when I left him for her,
I left every healthy thing that I had in place
because since I had this subconscious belief
that I was this unworthy sinner,
when I stepped into that role, I embodied it entirely
and stepped into a lifestyle of complete chaotic,
unhealthy dynamics in every, any aspect.
I dropped my college, I lost my jobs.
I moved in with my girlfriend,
drank ridiculous amounts for about two and a half years.
I really lost myself in a depression as well.
And then that boyfriend committed suicide
and then the guilt toppled and I became like definitely ill.
I would say I lost 50 pounds in a couple of months
and developed allergies to all the basic ingredients
like wheat, corn, dairy, scallops.
There was a couple others, but I couldn't eat anything.
And I got pregnant with my daughter
and the pregnancy saved my life.
And so then once I had her, I was like, okay, well,
I gotta figure out how to be a healthy person
for this little person.
And so I started yoga and that's where mindsets started
to really reset themselves and reorganize them.
And I could feel the pain without becoming them
and understand that his choices were not my fault.
And he didn't pass away because I chose to date a female
and explore who I was as a human being.
So that's one of the aspects that really had me
turning around in circles when I was debating
whether self-love was this concept that I could approach
and actually embody or if self-love was kind of
this selfish thing that at least the Christianity
around me was preaching was not of God.
You know, we were, he's first, I am second,
that kind of thing.
And in order to heal the self, it had to be a rewiring
of the internal narrator to be the parent
that was the most loving parent you can ever imagine
and really set your boundaries and honor the self.
And I had to learn that that was okay to do.
Yeah, wow.
That is some powerful stuff there, Ariel.
I mean, I'm just so much going on.
In one of your reels, you talked about the dangers
of purity culture and we've seen in the evangelical side
of things, a guy named Josh Harris who wrote a book
called Kiss Dating Goodbye.
You might've heard of that book,
but he actually basically looked back and he,
I think he not only divorced his wife,
but he basically said, I lied, this is a terrible thing.
It was for the books.
It was a joke.
It was not true.
Tell us what you, help the audience understand what
the damages that you saw from purity culture
and what we can probably do to help change that.
It seems like it's lost the favor that it had,
let's say 10, 15 years ago,
because everybody had the purity rings
and there was such pressure, right?
And you could just see the people breaking.
So what in your mind is the trajectory?
What are the underlying pain and suffering
that come from it?
And then what do we do to get out of that kind of mindset
to get to a healthier place in your mind?
With purity culture, I think it's unhealthy
for both males and females.
And to start off with the idea that so many young men,
especially in the LDS church are really preached to
that their fulfillment is based off of finding this person
who will make their home everything they've ever dreamed of
and fulfill the wishes of God
and that it's God's wish to have as many children
as possible and that is how you make heaven on earth.
And it puts such an unreachable goal of happiness
on this responsibility of another individual
and actually removes their power
of actually finding their sole purpose
and passion that could fulfill them
in so many more ways than a relationship
because relationships don't make us whole.
I also think that that puts a lot of,
it projects into a lot of resentment
because once you do find, if you do find your soul,
find if you do, if that's your goal is the ideal subservient
pure in quotations woman
and you think you've accomplished that
and then you're still not happy
because there's so many other aspects of life
that need to be managed in order for a gradual,
even state of balance in life.
And once they realize they can't have it through her,
there's a resentment and they don't understand always that,
and I hate saying like they, like everyone,
but it's a large group of what I'm observing
that it's not her responsibility
and that there's nothing wrong with their relationship,
but maybe there's something else unfulfilled within them
that they could go find.
And a lot of times in Christian counseling,
it's turn to God more, pray to God more,
a lot of advice that doesn't actually help
with reestablishing the missing pieces
that usually come from the upbringing.
And then on the other side of it,
you have women with so much repressed sexual shame
from being told specifically in LDS as well
is that we're responsible for men's reactions to our skin
and that they can't control their thoughts
once you reveal like some skin,
it's your responsibility to monitor there.
So then you have for one, a resentment of you're carrying,
you're carrying all of their reactions that's on you, right?
The kind of the, we talk about that one all the time,
but not only that, but there's so much shame associated
with holding this thing that could potentially
be the downfall of another thing
that then the sexual chakra, the second chakra
is actually suppressed energetically.
And we can't even be the embodied sexual human beings
we would want to be at our best with our,
even our one partner,
if we were in a monogamous Christian relationship,
because there is so much shame associated
with the women and the female anatomy
that there is no embodiment, especially in the bedroom.
So you have two aspects looking for,
well, somebody, they just have these expectations
that are unobtainable with the preliminary
or the building up of the mindset.
If I rounded that about the way I wanted to.
You go back to, you've mentioned several times
this idea of loving yourself.
And what I heard is, because I experienced this as well,
is within the Christian culture,
it's never the idea of love yourself,
it's the idea of deny yourself.
And I think denying yourself is the fullest embodiment
of loving yourself, but loving yourself has to come first
in order to understand why to deny yourself.
So if you, how hard was it for you to look,
because I've struggled with this.
I think this is one of the central questions
of all human beings is,
it's hard to learn to love yourself.
It's easier to just ignore it.
What was that journey like for you
to really begin to say, oh, loving myself,
not denying myself, but loving myself, what was that like?
What'd you feel?
That was a very gradual process and unraveling.
And it didn't come full circle, full opening
until I opened a very huge trauma from childhood.
So if I wanna preface this with a little trigger warning,
about, I've been working on self-love
and fixing the inner narrator
because there's a big shame spiral if I mess up.
Oh, of course you did.
Of course this is your luck.
This is how things happen for you.
This like kind of a shame.
It's the unworthy script.
Yeah, yeah, and an unworthy script.
And so I've been working on reparenting that inner voice,
like it's okay, it's not a big deal.
We'll pick it up.
It's not a big mess.
We're only two minutes late.
And last year in EMDR therapy,
I was working on what I thought was religious trauma.
And we were in, we started at my baptism
because that's what was coming up.
And so in the memory, I'm walking into the tub
and I can remember where everybody is,
the white, the man that's going to baptize me.
And I'm feeling at age eight,
cause that's when you got baptized in LDS,
that the tub is gonna like turn red
or that Jesus or God is gonna just announce from the skies
that I should not be getting baptized.
Like this thunderous voice is gonna like boom in.
And so many of my therapists are like,
well, that's a very big fear for an eight-year-old.
Like what could you have possibly done?
So we had to go further into the body and ask.
And then I was in my childhood playhouse
that I hadn't visualized or even seen in 20 years,
25 years and with a foreign hand on my thighs.
So we opened an essay, a childhood essay from age four
that I had repressed and it was a reoccurring incidence.
So it happened more than once.
And because of the repressed memory,
I did not feel like I should have even been baptized.
And I had to, and I had all this shame
thinking like I was gonna be found out
since I guess age four.
So once that happened last year,
my mom actually denied it and said that I was a liar
to my siblings.
And I had to learn to be my own support team.
I had my therapist and I had a couple of best friends,
but therapists are expensive.
And it's a very heavy process to remember that bit by bit
and accept it and hold it.
And so in having to learn how to hold fractioned
four-year-old me who had went into hiding
when that happened, I really regained the ability
to talk to myself as I would wanna speak to a child now.
What happened to you by learning with that?
That's an amazing tool to be able to speak to yourself
as a child.
How did that help you?
Instead of speaking to myself like I was
this shameful, angry teenager,
which I guess is the voice that was kind of internalized
all this time and full of suppressed anger and rage
for these things that I hadn't been able to hold
spaciously with love,
finally being able to, I couldn't even ever see myself
as a child until I found her.
And then being able to see that child
and know that she was worth the same grace as my own child.
Wow, that's some deep stuff.
You're literally not able to experience
what it actually should be like for every young child
because of that trauma was pushed back there.
One of the people I've been studying a little bit lately
is Carl Jung, he's a very famous psychoanalyst.
He was out there during Freud and I like him better
because he didn't make everything sexual
even though sexuality was a big part of it.
Freud was definitely, sexuality is the root of all
malbehaviors, but can you give us some examples
of some particular things that you did
to help pull that back?
Because what Jung would do,
he would go through dreams, right?
He would do dream analysis, right?
And they would tell these stories and go,
and some of them didn't make any sense at all
until he dug a little bit deeper
and then he found some extended circumstances.
So what in those particular practices were you doing?
Behaviors, actions, thoughts, meditations
that helped find that childhood
and what did you actually do?
Can you explain that or is it hard to describe?
So are you talking,
this would be the EMDR practice specifically then?
Yes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Ashley
because I'm not familiar with that term.
Oh, that's okay.
We could flush that out there,
help us understand what that was.
So much like a lot of work with either somatic exploration
which you would kind of follow in your own experience
or even what I've studied in clairvoyant healing
is you follow these sensations that have symbolisms
and open up for different meanings.
But in EMDR, you're very in the somatic experience.
So especially with a childhood essay,
there's a big chance that your eyes were closed.
So there isn't always a visual that starts off there.
But so we followed the discomfort
and a lot of people struggle sitting with discomfort.
That's why it is sometimes very difficult
to begin these processes.
And so with the images that I did have,
that's where it was our access point is what she would call it.
So I had the memories and the visuals from the baptism,
but I mean, we didn't know we were opening the child essay
until we were there.
And so you kind of go into what you remember
and follow along and it's very much like a sentience.
I kind of have forgotten all the dynamics,
but once you're in it, you're like,
oh, I'm in the tub facing this way
and the audience is to the right.
Everybody's ground level, they can kind of see me.
There is a man here.
I can feel an arm and an arm here and an arm here.
Oh, that's where his hands were.
I can see the visual now.
I forgot they did it that way.
I can feel the slippery tub.
I feel fear like my heart's pounding out of my chest.
And then she would say, okay, can we go into that?
So I would take a deep breath and prepare to do so
and I would follow the fear in my chest.
And she would say if it doesn't have a color, a texture,
and we might explain it that way.
And then instead of explaining it as an emotion,
we'd explain it as tightening,
as if someone's pushing on my chest.
And then we would dive it in and breathe into it.
And I like to explain it like it's a helix ball.
You know, they kind of like the toys that open and close
as I kind of feel it that way and it opens.
And when you breathe into it and you stay with it
and you bring the awareness, it continues to open.
And every emotion only lasts chemically for 90 seconds.
So if you can stay with the trapped emotions,
trapped emotion for 90 seconds
without adding on new emotions with thought process,
you can process through that emotion
and release it from the tissues.
So we'll stay with that emotion.
And then as it, and then it kind of might dissipate
and something new might come up.
And then she's like, what are you feeling now?
Now I feel this sensation.
And so we would follow it bit by bit,
deeper and deeper into the essay
and then the details of all the things that happened.
And of to four-year-old me.
Yeah.
I mean, this is where I think, Jonathan,
this is where the unified field
and this is where we're seeing the melding of things, right?
Of physiology and time, right?
This is the kind of stuff that is really fascinating for us
because the more we tap into this,
I mean, what you just described
is a nonlinear time experience, right?
That you literally are, it happened, you forgot it,
but yet it's still here brought to the front.
So it's almost like you're right there.
And we've got a guy we like named Dr. Joe Dispenza.
He got to go back to his eight-year-old, right?
And he's like looking over him, right?
And he had these fever dreams that he relished, right?
And it's like, this is the kind of stuff
that is fascinating.
And this is amazing.
It's terrible what you had to go through,
but what you're describing is so powerful for future,
you know, for people who are suffering.
I mean, talk about a good demographic to have,
people who have gone through trauma,
who've deconstructed from Christianity,
you've got a very big open audience.
I can tell you that right now.
There's a lot of people that are hurting right now
that could definitely take advantage
of listening to this podcast.
Well, I think we've been taught our entire lives,
especially in the Christian tradition,
that we're really supposed to look to the pastor,
you know, be our guide and our teacher.
And, you know, if those bounds are ever crossed,
but it's, for the most part, we live a passive experience.
And what I love about Ariel's story and your process,
because it sounds like a lot of somatic practices
that I've experienced in the past,
is we're learning that human beings can heal themselves.
Because I had a very similar experience
in February, Ariel, or in March.
I went to Hawaii and I sat with myself at a location
that my 11-year-old self was basically lost
because his parents just got divorced.
And I was there for the first time in 25 years,
and I go, oh my God, I've got undone work.
And I sat with myself and I just sat there
and cried with myself.
And it was one of the most healing experiences.
I just, and it was very helpful that I was there.
I always suggest people go back to the scene of the crime,
because it's the easiest way
to release a lot of the energy again.
And I did that, and I realized,
I have a big hand in healing myself.
I have that capacity.
And that's what I love about your story, Ariel,
is that you're taking responsibility for yourself
and saying, wait, something isn't working.
I am this person.
I wanna figure it out,
but I wanna learn how to love myself.
And so getting through that journey
of really going back and taking care
a lot of that negative energy,
what was the fruit of that?
What happened after that?
Because a lot of people are afraid to really do work
because they're afraid of what will happen after that.
Of which thing specifically?
Well, you have this EMDR experience.
Did you feel a sense of release from that?
Oh, absolutely.
Or was it a continual, yeah.
Because I've had those where there are deep sense
of release, sounds like it was for you too.
Yeah, I feel like it was probably a six month process
of sitting in it because I went to therapy every other week
and every other week we'd open up a little bit more details
and then I knew who it was.
And then I knew the words that were said.
And then I knew the next time it happened
and I knew why I did this.
And each bit of it processing
while being called a liar
from somebody who had been my best friend my whole life
was really heavy.
And I was like, I'm gonna go back
to the first time I heard that.
And I was like, oh, it's really heavy.
And I was very much in the cocoon for a while.
But I've heard some people say,
oh, I'll just leave it there.
I want nothing to do with it.
And I'm like, oh no, no, no.
I mean, I understand everything now
and I can feel things on such another next level,
especially in different aspects of my life.
And I found a piece of me that was lost.
And then finding this piece of me,
that was lost and fragmented.
And it explains so many things.
It's just like click, click, click, click, click.
I wouldn't change it for the world.
I'm so grateful that it came out.
And actually I thought it was the perfect timing
because I was on this mission to learn,
to teach my body that it could trust itself last year.
And I finally let it,
it finally trusted me enough to open that for me.
So, and allow me to see it and hold it with compassion.
So I felt like I had really accomplished something
that I'd finally deserved to know about this information
and to hold it in a compassionate way.
Yeah.
Ariel, do you think that there's healthy examples
of Christianity out there?
I mean, I love Jesus.
You know, that's my deal.
I think he's amazing.
I think that the church has caused lots of pain
and hierarchical power.
If Jonathan and I are actually leaning strongly
towards universalism where everybody will be reconciled
to God at the end, that might not be attractive to you,
but the idea of having a hell and people to die
and last there forever is a really powerful
kind of compelling event to actually join the fold.
And if you take that away, for instance,
which some of the early church believers, you know,
believe that, hey, God's gonna take care of everybody
at the end because man's stupidity isn't greater
than God's love, right?
I guess what I'm trying to get at is,
do you believe that the early, the apostles
and Jesus had a good message?
And do you believe that there's healthy church communities
out there today, or do you think it's all just a big lie?
I believe that Jesus had a good message,
and I believe that there was more to Jesus
than what is allowed in the Bible.
I do, I have heard of books removed
where he does speak on the type of love
that I believe in now.
I have seen Jesus in meditation, and he said,
forgive me for what they've done in my name.
I don't link Jesus with Christianity.
I believe Christianity is what was made of his love
when mankind tried to conceptualize something
that could not be conceptualized.
And since it was done so long ago,
I believe that their intellectual levels infiltrated that
and also therefore kind of stunted spirituality
and its ability to flourish because of the rules
and concepts in the box that they put on something
that was ungraspable.
So to say, can we have a healthy Christianity?
Well, the foundation of Christianity believes
that in the concept of sinners
and that Jesus died for your sins.
And so in that aspect, I do not agree and I do not believe
because in that aspect, you have to believe
that we were born inherently bad and I don't agree with that.
And the concept of that actually impairs
our cognitive thinking mind
and the what we think about ourselves.
And that has to be something we heal and fix later in life
in order to touch all the aspects that make us total now.
But if you separate Jesus and Christianity
and if Jesus was just Jesus in his own spiritual name,
then yes, I can love Jesus.
I do love Jesus.
Of course.
So because you have such a Christian background,
does the cross mean anything to you?
Doesn't have to be religious,
but does it have any meaning now for you?
Mormons don't actually wear crosses,
but it actually somatically hurts my heart
when I hear it or visualize it.
And I think it's because of how much healing work I've done,
there is this, I just feel the pain of the incident
and the betrayal and the actual pain.
It's just a horrific thing.
And so I see it as like,
as if you were watching a horror movie.
It's almost like it just makes my heart ache.
Just so you know, Ariel,
I actually wrote a book in 2010 called
Discovering the God Imagination
that did say exactly what you said,
which is we got it wrong in the garden.
God never lost touch with good, ever.
It's human beings that did.
And so what the cross is,
the reason why I ask about the cross is,
the cross is Jesus saying, okay, I'm God.
This is how far I will go to let you realize
I still love you no matter what.
There is no disconnection.
It's all somatic.
It happens in the brain, in the amygdala
that cuts you off from the default mode network
and you're disconnected from your God self.
And I wrote a whole book on it because we got it wrong.
We did, we got it wrong.
Evangelical Christianity got it wrong.
And if you begin with the idea that God's declaration
in Genesis one, seven times, it is good, it is good,
it is good, it's not about the creation,
it's about the judgment.
So God, and then we get to a point
where there's this tree that asks one question of duality,
are you good or evil?
Well, God's already given you seven times you're good
and then they get it wrong.
That's the story.
So it's human beings recovering from ourselves.
So I want you to know, I think you're spot on.
And I think that's your heart listening to somatically going,
yeah, the cross was a screwed up situation,
but it did reveal the nature of grace.
That's the one value of it that I think is undeniable
is that it's basically proving the reality
that grace is how the system operates.
Yeah.
And I think he did it because nothing else was working.
I mean, you've gone through cycles and cycles
and cycles of violence and recapitulation.
And no matter what happened,
no matter how many miracles happened,
it was just the same old thing.
And it's all about politics and it's all about power.
And he's like, I'm doing this for you,
not you for me, right?
I'm trying to show a way here.
So, yeah.
My theory is the first 6,000 or the last 6,000 years
in essence around that amount of time.
We've lived in a masculine age and the polls have flipped
and we are beginning a feminine age
because what the feminine does is it connects
to the body somatically.
The masculine is all up here and the feminine is saying,
okay, we need balance because things are way out of whack
and it's been so far out of whack forever.
And we're shifting.
And that's why I think people like you are standing up
because the polls are shifting.
We need a feminine balance to this ridiculous sense
of masculinity that has dominated capitalism, history,
religions, all religions are started by men.
So it's a shift.
That's why I wanted to bring you on Ariel
is because I think you have a great story.
But one of the things that I love about your videos
is that you have this almost mama heart
that comes out in them.
Like I always said, if there's anybody in hell,
the first people that are going there after we die
are mothers.
And I sense that in you because you have this strong sense
of fuck you, we're worth more than that.
So thank you for your videos.
Thanks.
I like that.
And it's a dark feminine embodiment.
Yeah, that's the one there.
Mama bear is saying, I'm gonna do whatever it takes.
Yeah, but you know, Jonathan,
you just brought up something also interesting
is that women are trying so hard to be men
in the leadership role, right?
Women are trying to be the patriarchal roles
and they're not tapping into the power that they have
with their own.
And we need to appreciate what the divine feminine,
what that true strength of the feminine is
and let that be a leader.
And that's why it was always in priestesses, right?
That's why, I mean, it could be that men founded
all religions, but there's a lot of strong female leaders
across a lot of indigenous places where they are the bad-ass
in the neighborhood.
They know-
Always better leaders.
Yeah, they're fast in.
They keep the peace, they have the structure,
they're better organized.
There's a lot more going on right there.
And I think what we have today, like in the United States
is we've got people who are being inauthentically female.
They're trying to say, I can swear and be all the,
and I can say all the things and do all the things
and I can make it look like I'm the man
that's supposed to be there.
I wanna shift gears a little bit and ask,
Ariel, does the Church of Latter-day Saints
have a strong concept of hell
or is it sort of in the background?
Actually, it's much different than
the mainstream concept of hell.
They have three different kingdoms.
So there's not so much a fiery pit of hell with Satan,
but this like waiting place where you can go,
but you don't get to be with your,
the baptized top level Mormons.
Yeah, you get the celestial, terrestrial,
and telestial or something, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's the fun of them.
Yeah.
I haven't heard the term since I was like 18,
so I don't remember them, but yeah,
there's different levels and it's a little different
than the typical, yeah.
And you can baptize your loved ones on behalf.
So if you're worried about somebody, Jonathan,
you can bring them into the fold, I believe, right?
Is that correct?
It's called Baptisms for the Dead and it's,
yeah, it's kind of creepy.
Yeah, well, of course, I agree with that, but.
We have a lot of, yeah,
the Christian church has a lot of creepy ideas.
Yeah.
That's definitely true.
Yeah.
So Ariel, help me understand how you help people heal from,
someone comes to you and says,
hey, I would love your help, how do you help them deconstruct
and heal?
So initially we would do a meditation where we explore
where they have the biggest fears still residing
within their subconscious and in their bodies
and highlight the most important ones,
what they wanna work on the most.
And then we would meet weekly and I teach them
how to track emotions and process them,
run them through an example,
and then we will continue to do so
as they come up in our sessions.
But also they can follow a worksheet
that if they come up with one,
or if something rises in their body while we aren't meeting,
they can kind of jot it down and process through
and see if they can get any insight on their own.
And then when we meet, I also have lessons planned
for the analytical reasons of why,
of the actual concepts within Christianity
that manifest as physical or mental disease in the body.
And so we follow a little bit of neuroscience,
psychology, anatomy, and really get down
to the technical terms so that you can learn
with your analytical mind why this makes sense
and then also be following along somatically
so that we can actually release the programs
that are still there.
So help our listeners understand the differences
between those two.
So analytically, we can know something all day long
in our cognitive, our prefrontal cortex, in our mind.
And we could study a book and we can know something's true,
but until we've actually made our subconscious agree
with that, our body's going to have a chemical reaction
when we hear anything that opposes it.
So if you continue to be triggered by something
when you hear it, it means that some part of you
still on some level might agree with it
or have some unresolved trauma around the concept.
And I was trying to think if I had an example
of the top of my head of something
that I had processed recently,
but nothing is coming up to share.
So you can know something cognitively,
but on a tissue level, you have to teach
the subconscious first and then release
whatever stored emotions are stored in the tissues,
the fascia and actually release it from the body as well.
And so how does that come out in the body?
How does someone know they've released
those types of elements in the body?
The fascia, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, specific-
I love the detail of what you're presenting.
Yeah, so sometimes like, if you know what the fascia is,
it's a bioelectric conduit, the connective tissue
in the body, it's that spider webby stuff.
Whatever is in the body has a layer of it.
It connects everything.
And energy in the body is emotion.
So it travels through the fascia.
And when something is too overwhelming
for normal function to keep going as it should,
then proteins surround that and trap it in the fascia.
And then the fascia gets tighter and tighter
as we get older and we don't work through these things.
And that's kind of one of the reasons for stiffness
and uptightness and certain beliefs.
And so that's why in yoga, sometimes you'll be deep
in a stretch and there'll just be tears.
And we're like, why am I crying?
We're like, it doesn't matter.
It's okay, just let it go.
Let it flow.
But if we were even walking through something,
we don't have to be stretching.
We could be walking through an emotion,
walking through a memory and touching it.
If we can hold it for the allotted amount of time
to release it, you could feel tingly like a release,
like a internal somatic shift of,
I just say lightness.
And you'll kind of feel it moving through the body,
oftentimes tears will come
if you have a new perspective on something like,
oh my God, I've been thinking this way this whole time
because of this one incident when I was five years old.
And it's just mind blowing.
Sometimes you'd cry tears of joy,
sometimes tears of sorrow for that part of you
that went through that.
But mostly a somatic shift, sometimes emotions flow,
sometimes, I mean, all kinds of emotions can come with it.
Chills.
Yeah.
Now, was this also done
through a certified myofascial therapist?
Cause I've actually had that done
where they're stretching and it's not a fun,
like a little sweetest massage, right?
There's like stretching and then
there's this like level of emotion.
I actually did, like I was like teary.
I didn't even know what the hell was going on,
but she said, that's good, right?
And it's like, but is that what you were doing?
Or was this, this is not necessarily
a certified myofascial therapist.
This is like doing, walking through a process,
you're holding that sense, that area,
or you're doing the yoga
and it's just going through those normal processes.
Or do you have to be intentional about it?
And do you work with somebody when you're doing it?
Or is it happening on your own recognizance?
So it can happen under your own cognizance.
And then you can do it through,
there's so many different modalities that do this.
Like that's why my release, fascial release happens.
I was trying, I was blending it with another thing.
What's another thing I've done?
Musc, bio, I don't know, I've done so many things now.
I'm trying to blend in the names together,
but yeah, you can do them through the physical therapies
with somebody who's certified in those things.
You can do it through stretching.
You should, you can do it through meditation.
You can do it through, a clairvoyant healer
can host something for you,
or you can talk your way through things
with a step-by-step process.
There's also EFT tapping to help rewrite the belief.
But yeah, that you could, there's so many ways to do it.
It's actually so fascinating.
It's fascinating.
Ariel, do they know yet biologically or chemically
what causes the proteins to stay in rapid?
On a chemical-
Is that like the biological response to fight or flight,
saying, okay, protected at all costs, or is it,
do they know what causes the proteins to do that?
If you don't, it's okay.
No, I just, all I know is that on that aspect,
no, not any more chemically than what I said,
it just to make sure that normal function can continue.
But before, but more than that, no, I don't know.
Okay.
Because I would imagine that's where a lot of our
inflammation comes from, are those protein buildups.
Because it's, I think what most people suffer from
is reaching a point in their life,
especially mid-life and later, is where you're just like,
okay, I'm good now at ignoring the shit.
And you can get to where, and all of a sudden
you've gained 30 pounds going, I wonder why?
It's easy to transition into that mindset of just
ignorance is sometimes bliss, it's not,
but it feels like it, because you don't have to feel
the negative effects as much by ignoring them.
It builds up and then manifests as a physical impairment.
And your body's like, fuck you,
we're gonna deal with this, yeah.
There's a lot of pain in the body with this.
Yeah, it's like, and sometimes I think the body shouts
through what is almost feels like self-sabotage,
where it's like, why the hell did I do that?
Because that's my body telling me that I've got to,
I've got to deal with this.
Your body won't let you keep it forever.
And if you're not listening, if you're ignoring it,
your body is gonna do something
that's gonna get your attention.
So part of your-
Can we stop and save?
I'm down to a sliver and I wanna make sure-
So if we lose you, we'll just deal with it
in the recording, okay?
Awesome.
Ariel, I wanted to ask, because it's a central part
of what I believe is, have you ever heard
of Dr. Hawkins' consciousness scale?
I don't think so.
Okay, so in it, it's a scale of zero to 1000
that measures the frequency of your body at any point.
And zero to 200 are all negative experiences
and 200 is courage.
What do you think looking back gave you the courage
to take that risk with your coach?
Because his theory is that once you get over it, courage,
the rest is all positive.
And it seems like that was really a pivotal point
where you stopped and dealt with the stored negative energy
and it really had a profound effect.
But what is it that made you finally say,
I've gotta deal with this?
Because I think that's what a lot of people
are really struggling with in life is,
how do I develop the courage to finally deal with this?
It began when my daughter was born
and I refused to give her the mindsets that I had developed
and how I had grown up with.
And from then on, it was,
we're going to do it what it takes,
no matter how hard it is.
But it was definitely not linear
and all positive experiences from there.
There was a very- It never is, yeah.
Yeah, a lot of ups and downs, but always worth it.
I think it's great.
I mean, Jonathan, this is the chicken with the egg, right?
We get to a place where we basically say
we fake it till we make it, right?
And we're like, okay, because I dug down inside,
I'm saying the words, I'm a millionaire,
or I've overcome this hurdle and you're projecting that,
even though you don't really believe it necessarily.
We think there's even magic in that,
but to have an external catalyst,
I think that that's also true.
That's the thing we talk about.
Do we create our own existence, our own experience?
And to me, when we look at Neo in the Matrix,
I believe that he was always looking for something,
but Morpheus came in and helped him.
I thought Morpheus was the first one-
And Trinity revealed it too.
Well, that's true.
But Morpheus was looking for him,
and Trinity with the love connection
made him know what was going on.
It was still external to him.
And that's why I like your story,
because maybe you'll go back in time
and you'll see something happen in your own mind
that made that, and you can cause your own self
to be the person that did that instead of your daughter.
But I still like believing that.
I still believe that there's guardian angels,
there's the divine that wants to help us,
whatever it is in the cosmos,
that I think it's helping us to become more awake right now.
I don't know if you've talked to people
who feel like they're waking up a little bit,
they're looking around and they're saying,
okay, this is a little bit of a shell here.
And friends in the church,
or things you've been told by the government,
people are starting to wake up and see this.
And I don't know if that's something cosmic
that's doing it or it's just something internal.
And Jonathan, I think you're still always under the belief,
we create our own destiny, if you would, right?
Is that, are you still,
do you believe in externalities to kind of come in
and help out or do you believe that we cause our own,
you know, deity, if you would?
Let me answer it a different way.
Victor Frankl wrote in his book, Night,
one of the most amazing books I've ever read, he says,
the people who survived Auschwitz
were those who created a catalyst outside themselves,
because I think in the moment of death and suffering,
or death and chaos, we don't often know
how to fight for ourselves,
but it's easier to fight for someone
we believe is worth loving.
And so we project it outward
because we don't know how to do it inward.
And by projecting it outward,
we develop enough courage to do it
and then eventually turn it back on ourselves.
And I think that's what you did, Ariel,
is you saw it in your daughter and said, well,
because I asked the same questions.
I learned to love my kids before I learned to love myself.
Yeah.
But by loving my kids,
I realized maybe I could love myself.
Yeah. That was my trajectory.
And I think yours seems similar,
is you found the love for your daughter was real.
I don't know if you then turned it back, but I'm sure,
I mean, when did it sort of click in for you?
I just, I think within the few months of her being alive
and always staring at her and watching this innocent thing
and how pure she was and that the only way,
the ways of the world were going to sneak in
and hurt her was through me.
And knowing that in those moments,
I knew that everything needed to be questioned.
Love it.
That's awesome.
So we're gonna close the show,
but, and Rich, I'll give you a chance
to ask a final question.
Errol, if you were to meet someone and they,
they just wanted sort of a meaningful reason
to begin the deconstruction process,
what would you tell them?
I think that they would know,
and only they could decide if that was the process
they were ready for.
So I could never convince someone if to take that step.
It's just a knowing somatic that something's not okay
and I want it to be okay.
And I'm allowed to be okay.
I'm allowed to be well.
Yeah.
I guess my question would be,
do you think there's hope for Christianity
and organized religions,
or does it have to be totally deconstructed
and some kind of new process needs to take place?
And what's your opinion in terms of
knowing what you know and what we've talked about today,
what's the best path forward, I guess?
Eliminating the rules of spirituality.
I mean, that they've applied it through religion.
The only way you get to your own path of free exploration
is through the freedom of choice
and the ability to follow the intuitive drive.
And we can't do that if we're following
any mainstream head guru or priest.
Ariel, here's how I would say it.
Because I'm thinking, I want to say it exactly
what you said in a different way,
which is all the church has to do
if it wants to get serious,
is embrace the reality of how far grace goes.
Because what grace does is it completely obliterates it.
It says there's only one law,
and that's the laws love you and everybody else.
That's it.
You follow that, you get all the freedom,
but all the responsibility.
And so Ariel, I love that.
I think that was a fantastic way to end.
You have been a fantastic guest.
Thank you for coming on.
I wish you the absolute best in what you're doing
to influence people to begin the deconstruction process.
Because we're not asking people to give up,
we're asking people to give up the worst
of what has kept humanity down.
And I think you're way ahead of a lot of people,
so I wish you the very best.
Rich, any final words?
No, I have a little pleasure wishing you the best
in your journey, and let's hope for healing going forward.
This country needs it a lot, the world does,
and we need better voices.
So thank you so much.
Absolutely, thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
All right, this has been another fantastic episode
of Living in the Matrix.
I wanna thank Ariel for joining us.
Rich, thank you.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
It's hot out there.
No matter where you're at, it seems like heat's everywhere.
So have a wonderful weekend.
Much love, everybody.
So let's get started.