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Ever considered how a personal spiritual journey can profoundly transform your life? In today’s episode, I invite you to journey with me through the twists and turns of my evolving belief system. From a background of atheism and agnosticism, I've ventured into the depths of spirituality, now seeking a connection with God reminiscent of the devotion of biblical King David. My explorations have taken me through the realms of Eastern religions and metaphysics, and I'm currently diving deep into the teachings of Islam and Christianity, with a particular fascination for the figure of Jesus and the conversations that illuminate this path.

Joining me in this exploration is my wife Carol and Dr. Anthony Balduzzi, who together, help unravel the difference between knowing about God intellectually and truly embodying divine principles. We'll share with you an intimate conversation about how integrating the teachings of Christ into our lives has not just been transformative personally but has the potential to ripple out into the world. This isn't just about adopting a set of beliefs; it’s about how a profound spiritual connection can sustain us through the ebb and flow of life's blessings and trials.

Finally, we venture into the transformative power of gratitude and the constant awe we find in our daily lives, which often goes unnoticed. I share my personal realization of our dependency on a higher power for the simplest of things, like the air we breathe. This episode is an invitation to listen with an open heart, to engage in a community that values dialogue, and to perhaps rekindle or discover your own relationship with the divine. We hope to inspire a sense of wonder and thanksgiving that transcends the busyness of our lives, offering resources and insights for those eager to further their spiritual practice.

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What We Explored This Episode

(00:00) Exploring Jesus and Personal Spirituality

(03:35) Exploring Jesus and Religious Trauma

(06:36) Spiritual Practice and Jesus Connection

(10:45) Exploring the Concept of Christ Consciousness

(18:31) Accessing the Power Within

(22:03) Gratitude and Awareness of Higher Power

Memorable Quotes

"I want to be able to stand in front of the goliaths of my life and say, hey, the battle is already won because I've got my God behind me. And that's the type of faith and trust I have in my God."

"I'm constructing a hypothesis that feels like it would work well for what I'm wanting to achieve, which is a deeper relationship with a power greater than myself. And so I'm constructing a hypothesis and then I'm going to test that hypothesis and see if, in fact, it does help me improve my conscious contact with my God of my understanding."

"Every single thing that we have is only because of God and or your higher power, as you understand it. And I thought there for a moment. All the sudden, I started having these awarenesses of me breathing and I was like, wow, yeah, I'm dependent upon the God of my understanding for breath."

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Virtual Intensive Podcast Promo (Oct 8 - Nov 8)

Hey, it's David. Welcome back to A Changed Mind, a sanctuary for your spirit, a place where each and every episode I will remind you of the sanctity of the goodness of the future. Today we are getting into the Jesus question. What is the Jesus question you ask? Well, it's how should we think about Jesus? Some people have a lot of different opinions about this. The reason why I'm bringing it up is I didn't grow up in a Jesus family. I grew up in a family where my dad was Jewish and we celebrated Hanukkah and Passover, but I never read Torah or we never went to temple. And a Lutheran mother where we celebrated Christmas and Easter, but I never went to church or understood anything about the Bible. So it was a very non-religious family. In fact, up until my twenties and thirties, I considered myself, well, I would say I considered myself an atheist from like 15 to 25. Then as a result of some of the things I started reading in college, I became an agnostic, right? I went from, I don't believe, I believe there's no God to I'm not sure if I believe there's a God or not. And then at the age of 33, when I started working a 12 step program and going through the 12 steps, I became clear for me that there is a higher power work that I called God, but it wasn't a religious God. It was kind of like a universe, the geometric laws of reality. And then I'd say in my early forties, it took on the form of God. And recently I've been wanting to have a very personal relationship. Like I want a King David relationship. God, I want to hear God. I want to speak to God. I want to be able to stand in front of the Goliaths of my life and say, Hey, the battle is already won because I've got my God behind me. Type of faith, trust, have God. Rather the battle is some anxiety that shows up for me or something I'm trying to accomplish in my business or things that I see in the world that cause a disturbance for us. I want that relationship. I made that decision about three or four months ago at the time of this recording. And I'm going to share with you what's come out of that in terms of conversations I've had with people around the Jesus piece within all of, you know, my background was really coming through Eastern tradition, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Jainism. And then I started getting into metaphysics and understanding sort of the laws of consciousness. And I'm really committed right to understanding at a deeper level Islam and the Quran as well, as well as Christianity and the Bible. So I thought this would be helpful in sharing it with you. I hope that's the case. We'll see. You'll tell me. But I think there's also a lot of trauma. There's a lot of Jesus trauma. There's a lot of church trauma. There's a lot of people who like aren't even open to a conversation or hearing about, you know, this Jesus thing because of the people who were in church and what some of us experienced in terms of religion trauma. So I'm sensitive and aware of that too. I'm just encouraging you to be open to this conversation because I'm not gonna come at it telling you, you should think one thing or the other, or believe one thing or the other that what I'm saying is right. I'm just sharing with you kind of real time observations that I'm having around the Jesus piece and conversations I've had with some people who I really, really respect and admire around what they think. And this will be an ongoing conversation. I'm sure this is not going to be the last episode that I do around, you know, around, I guess what you would call Christianity or Jesus. I think there's a lot of value and I'm going to be getting into that in that episode, this episode. So if you, by the way, our first time listener, welcome. This is going to be sort of a different type of episode. It's interesting that you caught this one as your first one. I highly recommend you also check out all the other episodes we have on personal development 2.0, metaphysics, money block, overcoming health challenges, and frameworks teach. And if this is your second or more time back, welcome. Apparently we did something right together on our, on our first rodeo. And if you haven't had time yet, would you please, please, please, please, please, please, please leave me a rating or review. If you love this episode or you love others, it's the way that we climb up the ranks in the podcast world and expose this work to more and more people, which I think is really important work for people to be exposed to right now, Apple or Spotify. And if you're on YouTube, you get to see me in the studio. And sorry for the beginning of this episode. I think I was a little bit anxious. I wasn't actually, but I am now subscribe right on all platforms so that you get the latest downloads, updates, my downloads, your downloads. And if you're on YouTube, leave me a comment. Cause this is where we can act more in depth station. So Jesus, where are we going with Jesus? So, uh, I guess I'll unpack the story for you. It was about three months ago, four months ago, I decided I wanted to have a personal world. And as I mentioned before, uh, I'm not tremendously studied in the Bible. You know, I know a little bit, enough to be dangerous, but say a few things. Uh, and my favorite passage in the Bible is, is the story of David. And seeing David as a shepherd boy, strength, power, faith, uh, in his relationship, trust God that, that he had the power of God cause he surrendered. Uh, and he was able to communicate with him. My understanding, by the way, interestingly enough is after that victory against Goliath, David, um, moved into Saul's court, King Saul at the time. Saul felt threatened. And the long story short is Saul pursued David, destroyed David. And David ran something like 10 years. He sang like 80 psalms, something like that. And a lot of them were, were while David was running away from Saul and kind of saying like, God, where are you? And, uh, I can relate to that. I don't know if you can, you know, I've had, you know, I found God 12 step, a higher power of my own understanding. And it felt very, very connected, grounded in my lifetime felt like the, the, the general anxiety of life was lifted and then my life grew and I met the woman of my dreams and I created a business that I was really passionate about. And now I have my first child, I live in my dream home. And, uh, and so I wavered in my spiritual practice. It was like too busy with all of the things that my spiritual practice and, and, and higher power had materialized. And so I knew that I needed to get back into a deeper practice, especially as I'm having these conversations with you and wanting to be your friend, be your teacher and be your guide and be on the journey with you. It's like, I don't want this to just intellectual as we're expanding. I want to be able to embody it, be, um, from a firsthand experience. And so things have been shaken up in my life recently, you know, like things have been accelerated, almost forcing me to go back into my 12 step program. As I talked about a couple episodes ago and, um, almost an accelerated need to connect more deeply with. And I think it came out of that question that I asked, right? How can I have a more personal relationship with you? And so, um, fortunately I've got other people in my life who are, who are on the journey, uh, with me and I get to learn, uh, and I was able to have a wonderful conversation. My, my wife, uh, Carol and, uh, Dr. Anthony Balduzzi, who runs the fit father, fit mother, fit family projects. You have, if you're, if you're, if you want to be a fit powerful dad or mom for your kids, definitely check them out to huge shout out to Dr. Anthony, not just in what he's creating with father and mother and the fit family projects, um, but who he's become. Like I, it's an honor to be his friend, somebody I deeply respect. Um, when I have one of those things where, uh, I need to call someone to go, Hey, I just need to know what you think about this more than 50% of the time it's Dr. Ant. And, um, and I've been able to bear witness to his trans. So we had breakfast together at a wedding that we were at a couple of weeks, um, got to spend an hour and a half together, which we're great for. We normally don't that chunk time. And we just started talking about his experience and the importance that he feels really connecting with Christ. And, um, which was interesting because in, in his earlier stages of his journey, it was more about God. Uh, and it was, uh, probably a little bit more Eastern influence. He's a very intellectual, uh, he understood metaphysics. So these laws of the universe that are part of an intelligence, but all of a sudden this Jesus piece showed. And so I asked him, you know, what, what's this Jesus piece about? And he started giving me some of the, a little bit of the languaging, Carol, Carol and I, and he talked about this, this idea that like, you know, Jesus showed up to die for our sin. And I've never really understood that. Um, he did a good way of articulating it and I'm not going to try to rearticulate it to you because I want to, I want to share what, what I discovered, because that's the only thing I can speak powerfully to. Um, but it was very clear that he felt like, you know, Jesus was an important piece of the self-realization formula. And in our conversation, a couple of distinctions emerged, which I wanted to share with you and just offer up to you as a perspective on Jesus, not because you need to go study Jesus, follow Jesus, or be saved by Jesus or any of those things. A lot of the languaging that I've heard from, you know, even my evangelical friend, who is so strong in his faith, John Powers, who's one of the guys I called and said, Hey man, I want to reconnect because I want to surround myself with, you know, God-loving living, living fearlessly in God. Um, you know, he, he, he tries to explain this idea that Jesus died for our sins and, and, you know, that we're saved Christ and confusing. I'm sure at some point it'll be right, but here's what I did get clear on the Jesus. Um, I've realized over the last decade, as I've wanted to embody the quality that I think God or my higher power is encouraging in that somewhere along the way, I had this idea of God is inside of me and God is everywhere and I am God. And so the qualities of God are inside of me. Um, I'm reading a book by Florence Scovel Shin right now. She has a collected works. One is called the rules of the game or the rules of life. I can't remember the game of is what it's called. Another one is your word is your wand. And she has these beautiful affirmation like God is undefeated. Therefore I am. There is no confusion in God. Therefore there's no confusion in me. There is no anxiety in God. Therefore there is no anxiety. There is no restlessness in God. Therefore there can be no restlessness in me. Really powerful affirmations. And I really started getting connected to this idea of like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. And so over time, you know, part of the objective has been to become more like God, but that's a hard thing to wrap your mind around, isn't it? I mean, if it's just God, if it's consciousness, if it's this omnipresent omniscient, invisible force, my experience is, well, that's a pretty hard thing to embody. It's a hard thing to relate to. But what Jesus represents is the human incarnation or embodiment of God, the walking living God. So what I'm finding now is that that gives me a model that I can understand because God, according to Christian scripture, has shown up as a man on earth, right? And I'm not, this is not to say that like, you know, Christ was the son of God. I'm not, I have my own opinions around those things. That's not what this conversation is. And I don't really know yet that that's important. All the stuff that triggers people, like let's just set it aside. But supposedly Jesus represents a model of living as God. It's like, okay, now, now I've got a role model. I can, I can look at scripture to see how Jesus was or what people, how people said Jesus was, whether it's real or not, whether it's dark, does it benefit me? And I can try to embody those principles, right? Be like Jesus. That's something that I can strive for, whether it's attainable or not is another question, but be like God. I don't know. For me, it's like, good luck with that one. So for a long time, I didn't think the Jesus thing was necessary. If you wanted to become self-realized, if you wanted to be spiritually connected, if you wanted to have faith, personal relationship with a God of your understanding, because remember, I came out of 12 step recovery. So it's heavily emphasized. It's a God of your own understanding, whatever you want to, however you want to describe or envision your God, hey, go for it, right? All that's important is that you believe that there is a force in your life that can, that wants to, or will lovingly intervene to support you in doing the things that you're not meant to do or that you can't, right? God can do in my life what I cannot do. And that is meant to allow me to relax, trusting so that I can enjoy my life and be productive as a human being rather than living in the anxiety. So it was like, well, okay, what do I need Jesus? Well, if you want to model God in you, you can't do it. I can't do it as God in me, but I can model this character, right? Individual, however you want to view it. So that's one reason why I think Jesus is valuable in the self-realization in the spiritual connection equation. And one of the great teachers I studied was Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote a book called Autobiography of a Yogi. And he brought up Christ a lot. And he talked about Christ conscious and the important understand Christ. And he talked about how the Christ consciousness is inside each and every one of us. And I think there's value to that too. See, what I'm coming to believe is that God in the presence of a man on this planet brought the God energy to a different level of accessibility on them. In other words, there was a living embodiment or incarnation of what we're calling God that came with the frequency. And when it came with the frequency of God, it left that frequency of God on the planet after Jesus left. It's kind of like Edison came with the frequency of the light bulb. So even though Edison has passed, we still have evidence of the light bulb. In fact, each and every one of us has light bulb in our home. What I'm saying is I'm coming to believe it's just my own understanding through intuition and conversations that I'm having, right? I'm constructing a hypothesis that feels like it would work well for what I'm wanting to achieve, which deeper relationship with a power greater than myself. And so I'm constructing a hypothesis and then I'm going to test that hypothesis and see if in fact it does help me improve my conscious contact with my God of my understanding. Right? And by the way, it may, it may not actually be causative. It could just be correlated, but I'm building a hypothesis. I'm going to test the hypothesis. I'm going to see what the result is. I'm applying as best as I can a scientific method to this experience of self realization. So Edison came here and we have light bulbs in all of our homes. Christ came here and we now have Christ consciousness inside each and every one of it. That's what scripture leads us to understand. That's what great metaphysical teachers are teaching. It's what some of the Eastern teach teachers. I, if you're on YouTube, I'm putting here Paramahansa Yoga is up on my wall with my council of influencers teachers. That's what Paramahansa Yogananda said is that Christ consciousness lives inside each and every one of us. That's an important concept because now we have God consciousness inside of us. That means there's a part of my consciousness that has all of the qualities Christ represented and embodied as he walked the earth, that high level of frequency, that ability to see the truth that there is no disease and to miraculously heal that's inside of. So I have the ability to see the truth of my own physical maladies and to heal myself, to be able to be with people who were betraying him, right? That's, that's what the history or the story showed. All of these examples so that I can be with people no matter who they are and still be in absolute love and compassion. So not only do I have a model for how to be as best as I can be or as close as I will be over the course of my life, self-realized meaning, living as God in God's own version of me. Not only do I have a model for that and looking at Christ, but I actually have the toolkit inside. I have the Christ consciousness. It's not external. It's not something I have prayed to that's up in the sky, right? It's not something that I have to look to anywhere other than inside of me. And knowing that I have all of these qualities, capabilities, abilities, right? In other words, Christ did not experience scarcity. He lived in the truth of abundant. That's how he was able to feed 5,000 loaves of fish. Well that means inside of me is the capacity to not experience the illusion of scarcity and to live in abundant and to be able to through the God energy that is inside of, allow that God energy to work through me to create abundance in my life regardless of any circumstance situation. And again, the specific languaging I'm using is depersonalizing it because I think it's, we want to make sure, in other words, our ego will insert itself that while this power of the universe that represented itself as the living embodiment as Christ and all of the examples of miracles that were performed, that energy is already within me and can be utilized to perform similar types of miracles as I continue to learn to be more and more and more and more like the role model. But make no mistake, the energy is the energy of God itself. The energy is the energy of Christ itself. So in that we stay humble, right? We can perform miracles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But knowing that what's actually performing the miracles is the Christ consciousness or is the God energy, right? If we think it's us, now all of a sudden our ego wraps up in it and now we're cut off from God. So I think these are very valuable framework to be entertaining. Uh, and we don't, we don't have access to it. If at least as far as I'm aware, someone who's studied in the Torah may say something else. Someone who studied in the Koran may say something else. So this is not, I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm sharing based on my limited perspective and sharing place of wanting to create more access all of to living in faith, to relaxing in God or our power of our own and to being able to, um, activate the Christ conscious, the power with inside each and every one of us through these perspectives. And I'm sure there are other perspectives and if you have them, definitely you're on YouTube comment below, right? Send, send, send me an email because I'm, I'm wanting, because I'm wanting to have a deeper personal relationship, right? With there are a lot of Goliaths that are showing up in our own individual lives. There are a lot of Goliaths showing up in the world and I want to, I think the way through, I know the way through to changing our own lives. It's also changing the world to do it from love and do it faith. And we see just the opposite of that taking place right now. You know, at the time of this recording, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a great example of that and talked about how I think approach that from, uh, from, from a compassionate standpoint, which will produce better results and break the cycle of despair and destruction that's happening. There are several episodes ago, if you want to go listen to my take on the Israeli Hamas conflict, but we're seeing right now that there are a lot of Goliaths in the world, a lot of conflict. And so I think that what we're being called to, uh, is to a place of cultivating and nurturing love within ourselves. And part of that is cultivating and nurturing the love that our higher power has for us. And that this, this Christ piece plays a really important mechanism in terms of act. You know, if you remove Christ from the equation, I don't know who you're modeling to try to be like God, right? All of the qualities that are represented and that we see allow us to be powerful. And even if you accept this idea of Christ as a role model, just Christ as a role model, right? I'm not saying you got to accept that. He's the son of God. Some, you know, that's all language. Um, but then you think it's external and you don't realize you already have the internal access, right? Then now you're always seeking external. So I think those are two really, really important conversations and they came out as a result of my conversation with Dr. Anthony and Carol with Gabriel, our child at breakfast. And I'm just going to leave you with, with this. And I'm so curious to see what you think again. So definitely leave me some comments. Um, Dr. Anthony's at the very end of our conversation said, let me put a bow on and I want to put the bow on it for, for, for you as well. He said, one of the things I've realized is that, um, it is important, uh, if not critical, if not the ultimate objective to be aware in each present moment we experienced of our 100% dependability and requirement on God, that every single thing that we have is only because God and, you know, or your higher power as you understand it. And I thought there for a moment, all of a sudden I started having these awareness, me breathe. And I was like, wow, yeah, I'm, I'm dependent upon the God of my understanding for breath. I'm dependent upon the God of my understanding. Wow. What a mirror. Um, then I just got present to the fact that I was sitting in a chair in a restaurant, dependent upon the God of my understanding of gravity. I didn't create right. I believe a higher power. I believe the, the, the brilliance of the intelligence of the universe. Uh, I don't, I don't believe in the chaos theory of maybe just sort of happened. Or even if it was chaos theory, I put it within the context of a, of a, of an intelligent, a supreme intelligence omniscient omnipotent intelligence. I'm like, wow, I'm so, so grateful for the fact that like we're able to have this experience and have this physical life because we have this. And then, you know, Anthony had to leave for his flight and I'm like, wow, the miracle of flight. Like I never would have been able to meet Dr. Anthony in Austin, Texas for a wedding from our home in Puerto Rico. You know, if this were a hundred years ago, we'd have to get on a boat and go to Florida and then train and get Austin. It'd probably be like a four week journey or crazy like that. There's a risk of, you know, of a high risk of not even making the entire journey. I'm like, wow, what a miracle. Then I started realizing that, wow, everything I see in my reality is a miracle of God, right? It's started as an idea conscious, you know, all of the light bulb. Wow. That was God's gift to Edison and to humanity, right? Television. Wow. That was God's, the radio. That was God's gift. The iPhone. Wow. That was God's gift to humanity through Steve Jobs receiving that and then materializing the iPhone into the world. But it wasn't Jobs, right? It all starts out in consciousness. It all starts out with God. And so I want to leave you with that. Um, it's an interesting experience if you allow yourself to contemplate it, but for a few moments that every single thing in your reality, you're dependent upon your higher power. What ends up happening is you just shift into a natural Thanksgiving and an awe. And I think that practice is Anthony was encouraging. It is a wonderful practice for beginning to transition that habit of anxiety, the habit of fear, the habit of busyness, all of these habits that separate us from this personal relationship that I think we would all want with a higher power of good habit, right? It's an, it's an antidote for that separation. So I'm trying my best to do it. I'm not doing it more than I am, but I'm doing it more than so as a, just part of my next level process and practice of, you know, receiving what I asked for a deeper relationship, a power greater. Hope you love this episode, different episode, huh? But it's what we're going to do from time to time. I think it's important. I think this, this is the most important conversation and there's a lot of edge to it. So thanks for sticking with me. I love you and I'll see you in the next.