What Do You Mean, "Pretty Spiritual?"

Introducing Pretty Spiritual, your spiritual best friends. In this podcast, the Pretty Spiritual team share personal stories and spiritual tools in an attempt to navigate this messy, imperfect, beautiful life. This podcast exudes wisdom, authenticity and humour.

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy,

Beautiful,

Imperfect life with spiritual tools,

What principles and our own personal stories.

So we're not experts,

We're not religious,

We're definitely silly.

We're honest,

Real and willing to share.

So join us as we connect,

Bond and grow together.

Hey everybody,

Welcome to Pretty Spiritual.

This is our first episode.

I'm Annie.

I'm Ella.

This is Lindsay and it's our first time so we'll be gentle on ourselves.

So gentle.

Just beyond gentle.

So you're probably saying,

What is Pretty Spiritual all about?

And we are three ladies and we live in the Bay Area and we are all living our lives in various ways and degrees with spiritual tools.

So we met through mutual friends and we're all trying to just make this life a little bit sweeter through spirituality.

So we talk about it all the time and we experiment with different tools and we're constantly kind of growing.

And the more that we started doing this,

Lindsay had the great idea that we should make a podcast about it because we're probably not the only people in this world who are looking at ways to incorporate spirituality just kind of into the everyday experience.

And we thought that by building a podcast about being Pretty Spiritual meant that we might be able to create a community and hear what other people are doing and just start a bigger conversation.

So this is our first episode and we thought with this one we'd just talk about what Pretty Spiritual even means to us and how the heck we got here.

So we're not experts,

We're not licensed,

We're not titled,

But we have a lot of real life experience with things being messy or hard or uncomfortable or painful and joyful and fun and just all those elements of what it looks like to actually live a spiritual life that's not this really maybe pristine image that we might have gotten from a book or from looking at different religions and just what it looks like for us.

So all three of us are going to share a little story.

I believe they're throwing me the baton.

Can I just say,

Ew,

Spirituality.

What is that even about?

So my name is Lindsay Pony Ryan.

Hey Lindsay.

Hi Pony.

Hi my spiritual friendies.

So glad we're all together.

It's so sweet that I get to hang out with my best friends.

That's really the best part of this.

I sure am hopeful that we can share some intimate things that may be helpful to other people.

In talking about spirituality,

I really meant it when I said ew.

I was certainly turned off by the idea.

And I love the name of our podcast as Pretty Spiritual.

I really think it's kind of funny because for me it's more like ugly spiritual or clunky spiritual or kind of spiritual.

And what that means for me is before getting started I was really disconnected from myself and I wanted to be that way.

I had disconnected from pains of growing up and being a prisoner of childhood.

And for me it was the only way to survive.

And moving on throughout the years and tending and trying to heal myself,

I realized that along the way I could and would maybe be able to connect with this intimate underbelly and get some real healing from that.

And I met Ella and Annie separately and we orbited each other and I always.

.

.

Gravitated.

Yeah,

I always looked up to them so much and I was like,

These girls would never want to be my friends.

That's a good narrative I have that I'm looking at.

And so it's been a really sweet to get to have these friends and get to explore narratives and internal explorations and things that I really just wasn't interested or didn't know could be useful or helpful to me.

And I'm going to pass it now because I haven't even looked at my notes.

So that was all me.

All unfiltered.

Thanks,

Lindsay Pony.

No problem.

Pure Pony.

Pure Pony.

Hi,

I'm Ella.

Man,

I'm really grateful to be part of this and here with you guys.

It's really sweet.

I,

You know,

In a general way,

A similar story where I just like as long as I can remember,

I've just kind of been uncomfortable existing and I tried to find ways to make it make myself less sensitive or like create a buffer between myself and reality,

My experience.

And luckily,

I got myself into some trouble with with those endeavors.

And as I started trying to look at how to put down the tools I had picked up to kind of numb out,

I realized that I would need to replace those,

You know,

Misguided tools with some actual ones that would work to just help me feel safe and comfortable in my own skin.

And so for me,

It's very much about spirituality is very much about how I can feel soothed and comfortable and safe being myself.

And unfortunately,

Usually that has to do with integrity.

And it's a lot of work,

Which,

You know,

I'm glad I didn't know that going in because who knows if I'd have been willing.

Yeah,

For me,

What pretty spiritual means in this moment is finding a way to not punish myself for being a human,

And to also shoot for spiritual ideals.

And it's like this thing of conventional and ultimate.

It's like,

Am I a human being having a spiritual experience or a spiritual being having a human experience?

And that was in my notes.

Oh my god.

So yeah,

It's for me,

It's really about how do I be in this world with all its complications and difficulty and suffering and do it in a way that really privileges spiritual practice.

Awesome.

I love you,

Ladies.

So what got me here was my life was at a low point,

Which I think is a common point entry for spiritual tools for a lot of people historically.

But the way I was going about my life wasn't working.

I was using things outside of me like people and approval and substances and material things to try to shape who I understood myself to be and to give me a sense of happiness.

But eventually that hit a breaking point.

It just didn't sustain.

And I couldn't get the ease I wanted in life from outside things.

And I kept trying harder and harder and it kept getting messier and messier.

So I didn't come to looking to spiritual tools in a very graceful way.

It was like a crash and burn.

It was messy.

It was sad.

It felt really hopeless.

But I think that that's what I needed and it was the best time to be willing to try something new because all those other tools that I had been using,

Like people,

Stuff,

Things,

My concept of who I was,

They weren't working anymore.

So it's like turning towards these spiritual tools instead of people pleasing and dishonesty.

People introduced me to honesty and courage.

Instead of avoidance and shortcuts,

I was introduced to showing up and working hard.

Instead of running as fast as I could for my feelings,

I was introduced to prayer and meditation and conscious contact with God.

So none of this was an overnight matter for me.

It's not like I woke up and life was a disaster and I'm like,

Oh,

I read one book and you know what,

I'm totally great.

I'm going to post to Instagram,

Post to myself with my coffee cup,

Grabbing life by the heels or whatever people do.

I like heels.

And it's solved.

It's been like years of discomfort and practice and kind of stumbling.

But the payoff is this really rich sense of peace that I have more and more.

It keeps getting bigger.

My heart keeps getting bigger and brighter.

The world keeps opening to me in new ways.

So for me,

Living a pretty spiritual life is holding close to this awareness that love and hope and grace exist beyond the material plane of my understanding and that magic happens beyond my scope.

And I love these girls because we talk about this stuff all the time.

It's so fun to experiment with it.

So part of what we wanted to do with this show,

And each week we'll have a different episode of a topic and how that relates to us navigating life spiritually,

And what we really wanted to do too is talk about the tools that we're using in day to day life.

So instead of these kind of random concepts,

It's like what does this actually look like in our day to day life?

If we get in a fight with our beloved,

If we forget to pay our electric bill or like whatever it is,

Like how do we use spiritual tools?

So we're just going to each talk about a different spiritual tool that we're experimenting with this week and like what that actually looks like in practice.

Amazing.

Of course,

We have so many tools.

I have so many to pull from right now.

Ella,

Would you like to start?

Oh boy.

That was,

That was cunning.

I like it.

Yeah,

I think we're gonna explore our kind of origin stories and by way of doing that,

Hopefully share some experience that might be useful to each other and maybe to you guys too.

So for me,

What happened is I was just uncomfortable,

You know,

For as long as I can remember.

And I started,

Like Annie was sharing,

I started picking up things outside myself to try to make myself feel safe or comfortable.

Alcohol and drugs worked pretty well for a while,

And then they didn't work anymore.

So I was trying to stop drinking and I wanted to kill myself.

And so the logical next move was to cloister myself in a Zen monastery in the wilderness.

So I did that.

I just,

I love reflecting on this because it's like,

I got what I needed regardless of what my motives were,

You know,

It's like I didn't want to kill myself.

So I moved to a monastery and what I got there was a lot of practice with meditation and other spiritual tools too.

So when I when I lived at this Zen monastery,

There's this metaphor that I'm going to use in Zen.

The metaphor is the mountain,

Which is the monastery and the marketplace,

Which is,

You know,

The so called real world.

So when I lived at this place,

I was,

You know,

On the mountain and how I felt about that was like,

I am so spiritual.

I live in the woods and like I meditate all the time and like,

I'm just really advanced.

And yeah,

I wanted to talk about that with people and I couldn't understand why they didn't praise my efforts more.

And then when I left the mountain and came to the marketplace,

I was like,

Oh,

My God,

You guys are the badasses.

Like,

It's pretty easy to meditate when there are like,

Scary people in robes who are basically forcing you to do it,

You know,

And then I came,

I left that really like safe,

Structured container and came back out into the world after a couple years and turns out this is the harder way to do it.

I love that I got some on some like really cellular level,

I integrated the tools I learned when I lived at this place.

It wasn't it,

You know,

It was invaluable.

I think that it saved my life in a lot of ways.

And it prepared me for the kind of work I have been trying to do since I left.

Yeah,

It's like,

How do I,

The point of being on the mountain isn't to,

You know,

Kind of be by myself and like achieve enlightenment and then like,

Exit reality.

It's like,

How do I use the experience I had on the mountain and make it available in the marketplace because that's where people are suffering,

You know,

Like,

I mean,

Let me just say people are freaking suffering on the mountain too.

But like,

If I if I bring what I've learned to other people,

Then I have the opportunity to share my experience and learn from it and to feel grateful for all of it,

You know,

And so the tool I guess I'm it's I guess it's more of a principle,

But it's the principle of acceptance.

And it's it's this movement toward accepting myself as spiritual and as human at the same time instead of thinking about things in a kind of black or white all or nothing way,

Which is really habitual for me to use the the tools I've picked up along the way and let my experience be this rich and confusing and messy tapestry of learning how to be alive and as much as possible not,

You know,

Judge it or want it to be different than it is.

So yeah,

I guess that's what I talked about.

How about you,

Lindsay?

Wow,

So many great tools in there.

I feel like you've really covered the gamut.

I could definitely be very quiet right now.

It's good because I just noticed myself in judgment.

So putting it down guys.

Thank you.

Of myself.

Oh,

It's wonderful.

I'm doing enough judging of myself that no one needs to.

Yes,

Yes.

I guess the one I would that's most useful I think and that I'm in so much desperate need of right now is awareness.

Before when I was choosing not to live a spiritual life and to be completely disconnected from my spirit,

I really didn't have any awareness of that.

Everything was happening to me.

I had no control.

I had no agency and that could continue to go on today.

And this idea that has been really useful that someone talked to me about,

We're born in life is pain.

And then the idea of all of this added extra suffering of our own making.

I like where it says our problems were of our own making.

It's the same idea as that for me.

And so I really need this awareness of myself and self investigation so that I can see,

Okay,

Life is pain.

It's hard to be alive.

People are dying and it's hard to navigate and my judgment of myself.

And so guaranteed pain,

That's the price of admission and to being alive.

So how am I suffering today?

What am I doing that's making added suffering?

And so the awareness piece is really important and also the willingness to sign up and be willing to look at myself and take responsibility in those areas has been really hard.

It's taken me so long today as I was doing my stretches because I made a goal for Monday,

Wednesday and Friday to do,

It takes 30 minutes,

27.

I don't need to distort it like it's more.

I couldn't believe how the willingness was there.

And the girls and I talk about this a lot,

Like how willingness is such a power like greater than ourselves.

It's either there or it's not.

When it comes in,

It's just so amazing that I'm doing my stretches without all this debate.

And this is just a simple way that I'm bringing it in to express it to you all here.

The awareness piece and the pain that comes along with all of that of like this rigorous self examination and self appraisal.

That's a big part of spirituality for me today is to remind myself to be willing that I'm committed to looking at myself.

But the spiritual piece,

The spirit like investigating my spirit,

Like the choke up in my throat,

The glee in my heart,

My unspoken dreams,

My imperfection and inadequacies.

The attempt at spirituality is feeling and dealing with all of these and doing it with all of you.

I love it.

So beautiful.

Thanks so much.

I love how you deal with us.

So my tool right now is just super simple and it's part touch and part reaching out to something outside of myself.

So I have a very anxious brain and it starts to race uncontrollably sometimes.

And I have professional tools to help me with that.

But also sometimes I just need like in the moment management of discomfort.

And I just put my hand on my heart and take some deep breaths.

And this is a really simple gesture but there's for me there's so much soothing in it.

It's just this tactile reminder that I'm right here right now.

I'm okay.

I'm safe.

And it gives me a bit of room around whatever's making me scared or freaking uptight or anxious or whatever it is that I have a relationship with a spiritual entity,

With the God of my understanding and it lets me tap into that as a resource instead of just Annie thinking uncontrollably Annie thoughts about what's wrong and how she needs to fix it and blah blah blah.

So it's super simple but putting my hand on my heart,

Taking some deep breaths,

It just puts me back in the moment.

It connects me to my understanding of God and it gives me a little bit of peace.

So I've been using that a lot lately because we're doing a kitchen remodel and it is such a privilege and a blessing to be able to do a kitchen remodel and everything is going wrong.

So classic spirituality.

Yeah it's so much daily just drama of things that I think are dramatic like discord,

Problems,

Challenges,

Things to solve.

And so it's a tool I've been using multiple times a day and it really helps me.

So that's my tool I would say for the week but actually it's been for the last three months that our kitchen remodel has been happening.

So each episode we're going to talk about a different topic and how it relates to spirituality.

Lindsay why don't you tell us about our upcoming topic.

Ooh!

Upcoming topic!

Well of course we would definitely love for you to email us at PrettySpiritualPodcast at gmail.

Com with anything that you would like for us to talk about.

That would be,

We would love that so much.

But of course we have plenty of things to talk about and we were calling it traveling while spiritual.

How could we?

How can we?

Exactly.

How can this happen?

Maybe some tips or just some experience on what it's been like to travel and what that looks like.

That's what I got.

Love it.

Perfect.

I can't wait.

I'm packing my bags right now.

So good.

Well thanks everybody for being here.

Y'all are the best,

Our little spiritual friendies and we hope to hear from you and we'll talk to you soon.

Bye!

We definitely love you.

Bye!

Goodbye everybody!

Reviews

Enjoyed this very much. I love that you don't interrupt each other all the time. I love that the podcast is shorter and not an hour long. This is good work. Ty.

Welcome and hope to hear more! Namaste 🙏🏼

What a great fun podcast and what lovely ladies! I like the conversational aspect of this and can't wait for more! 💜x

Thank you that was interesting- looking forwards to more !🙏🌸🌺🦋

What a lovely honest sharing. Thank you ❤🙏

I was raised in a fundamentalist denomination that kept me from loving myself, others who were different, or "sinning". I became angry with "god" & all "churches" for the "fairy tales" they peddle. In short, I became an agnostic. I finally found peace and self love through the gift a my divorce, Dark Night passages, and having fallen in love with meditation. I am now probably an Omniest, much more at peace. Perhaps, then, one way of defining spirituality is by love & peace, both within & without. Namaste.

Beautiful discussion showing the underbelly of what it looks like to connect within, loved that phrase. The love, respect and admiration you have for one another came through loudly, so beautiful for you to model what healthy friendships with others and with ourselves looks like! NAMASTE