What Is Spirituality, and How Do You Know You're on the Path? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 96 minutes

Short answer: Spirituality, in simple terms, is knowing yourself at the deepest, most intimate level. Going deeper, it means recognizing that something bigger than you exists, whether you call it God, source, energy or the divine, and that you are connected to it. It shows up in your relationships, your values and your life purpose, and it often starts when you begin letting go of things that no longer fit. Its benefits include a clearer sense of meaning, steadier emotions, a stronger mind and less drama, because you learn to work with your energy instead of being thrown around by it.

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Key takeaways

• Simply put, spirituality is knowing yourself. More deeply, it's knowing yourself by connecting to something higher than yourself.
• Your finger is always in the "light socket" of the energy hitting the planet, so you're always moving something, whether you feel productive or exhausted.
• One of the first signs of spirituality is letting go: of relationships, money, routines, possessions or control.
• Getting "high" in the energies isn't the goal. Spirituality has ethics: you have to go back and clean up what you blew out along the way.
• Three core elements of spirituality are relationships, values and life purpose.
• Start where you are, respect those who've gone before you, know your journey is your own and practice what you learn. Simple steps like decluttering, rest, examining beliefs and time in nature help.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

Why spirituality is a buzzword right now (00:00)

Hello, and welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I'm Shelby Carino. You made it into the episode. Isn't that always the first step in our awakening journey?

We have to go that extra layer so we can see what we need to see, hear what we need to hear or feel what we need to feel. You just moved through the introduction, and now you're at the next layer of depth.

Today we're taking on the question: what is spirituality? It's interesting why spirituality is such a buzzword right now, and why so many people are questioning it. I want you to walk away not just with the logical definition, but with spirituality in a context that makes sense on your awakening path, so you can fill the holes you may have in your energetic field. Maybe you skipped this part of your frequency when you were waking up, or maybe you're not fully in the waking up process yet and you're thinking, "I don't even know what you're talking about, Shelby. I just clicked on this because I need to know what spirituality is." Let's do this.

Energy hitting the planet (03:16)

Spirituality is basically what's happening on the planet right now. The planet is on a fast-moving bullet train, and things are speeding up in ways that are honestly unexplainable. So much energy is hitting the planet, and because humans are made of energy, we're being bombarded with it every day inside our bodies. It affects our minds, our emotions and everything we are, and people are blowing up and blowing out in their energy fields.

Every time you reach a new layer of yourself, you're starting over, just at the next level. Sometimes you think, "I think I forgot what spirituality is," and you need to go back and revisit the basics of energy. I have to do that sometimes too.

In simple terms: knowing yourself (06:32)

I'm a teacher by trade, so I always like to teach the energy that's coming through. In simple terms, spirituality is about getting to the core of who you are. It's knowing yourself at the deepest, most intimate layer.

A lot of people say, "I know exactly who I am." I used to be one of those people: "You don't have to tell me who I am. I live with me every day. I know my patterns and my beliefs."

God forbid anyone came and told me who I was or saw that deep into me. Other people can see you, but we often have a very hard time seeing ourselves. Hence the spiritual ascension journey, a crash course where the veil lifts, energy presents itself and you get challenged on everything about who you are. You don't even know you're being challenged until you are.

So spirituality is about seeking a deeper meaning with yourself. And because you're seeking a deeper connection with self, you also have to seek a deeper connection with something bigger and higher than yourself. That's usually when we bring in our teachers.

Your finger in the light socket (09:20)

Here's how I explain it. Energy runs through our bodies, and we can feel it powering us up. At a certain time on the planet, we decide to "wake up" our energy. It's like sticking your finger in a light socket that's turned on.

What happens? You get zapped with that electric energy.

Think of the planet as the electricity, with light energy beyond what our physical eyes can see being sent onto the planet, and our finger is in that socket with the light never turning off. We may get zapped in a conversation at work, by taking in someone's energy while driving and feeling irritated, or by something in our dream state. Your finger is in that socket all the time, and there's no escaping it.

Because we're always at a different layer of our energy waking up, it has you running an energetic race. Maybe it's fueling you and you're saying, "I'm so productive, everything's going great." Or maybe you're saying, "I'm a sloth today, Shelby. I can't move. I'm going to sleep, and then sleep some more."

It doesn't matter whether you're riding energy rushes or lying on the couch. You're still moving something.

When the energy explodes: my story (13:04)

At a certain point, the energy has to labor itself. It has to explode and let go of something you've been carrying in your body, your emotions or your beliefs. Eventually that bullet train, whether you're keeping up with it or sleeping through it, has to stop. Something has to happen, and when it does, it explodes your energy field.

For people who aren't fully awake in their energy, it often takes something dramatic to set off that bomb all at once.

That's what happened for me. My energy imploded and expanded all at once when my Kundalini energy flipped. But before that, my energy was already looking to expand; I just hadn't hit the wave yet. An angel card reader told me my energy was all over the place, and that's when I knew it was expanding.

A month later I went to an 11-day meditation camp, a couple of months after that I was on a 48-day forgiveness journey, and several months after that my Kundalini energy flipped. So for almost a year, consciously, that fast-moving train of waking up was happening.

Fortunately for me, and hopefully for you, I was really good at pulling in my teachers and resources and attracting what I needed so I could harness what was going on, even though I didn't know that's what I was doing. Things would just show up, and I'd pay attention. Some people aren't as conscious of that part of themselves.

So go back and think about when it started for you. When was your first sense that something was off in your world, that your inner life seemed strange? "Why am I calling psychics all the time? Why am I suddenly spending so much money? Why do I feel like I've gone off the rails?"

That's how waking up can feel. That's the energy. Fortunately, this is becoming a common conversation now, so we can get in front of the crash. People are used to doing personal growth with their mental mindset, not with their spiritual energy, and that's not going to work with what's happening on the planet.

That's why people are seeking out teachers in the metaphysical realm, looking for tools to calm this imbalance of energy.

If what I'm saying makes sense of how you're waking up, you're on a spiritual awakening path. This is spirituality: searching for a deeper meaning of yourself and realizing you have to seek a deeper connection with something higher than yourself. That's why people seek out psychics, mediums, shamans and healers, because they connect to the other worlds. But the real work of those teachers is empowering you.

My job is to provide the tools and resources to help you keep some stability and balance while your finger is in that light socket zapping your life all over the place.

The real meaning: something bigger than you (19:36)

Let's go deeper. If someone asks, "What is spirituality?" the simple answer is, "It's about knowing yourself." If they say that's vague, you can say, "It's about seeking a deeper meaning of yourself, and also a deeper connection to something bigger than yourself." If they ask, "You mean God?"

Yes, that's a start, or your higher self, energy or whatever you call it. No judgment on words.

Spirituality involves being aware of and recognizing something. You can't be on a spiritual path and not believe or feel that there's something bigger than you, bigger than the human body you walk around in. There's a bigger part to this puzzle than us and our little avatars going about the planet. Call it God, energy, divine source, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, whatever you like, but there's something bigger than you. And the key is that you are connected to it.

The problem is people aren't feeling the connection because they've been running ego: me, me, me, greed, and the human dimension of connection, which really means no connection. We've been robots, especially with technology. People can barely have a conversation or look each other in the eyes anymore because they're always looking down at their phones.

When you're depleted in spirit, what do you look for? Water. You look to get filled up and hydrated. As we go through this massive shift in consciousness and in our energy bodies, we're being depleted of spirit, because this planet has to get back to spirit.

That's why spirituality is knowing yourself more deeply in order to connect to something higher than yourself.

The first sign: letting go (24:44)

I work with people as they're waking up, and one of the most common things I hear is this. I'll get a call or a referral, and the person, or someone close to them, tells me they've been on a binge for two weeks, three weeks or a month and a half. The binges usually aren't long. I ask what happened, and they've kicked out all their friends, spent all their money, cut off their entire family, quit their job, or in some cases ended up with nowhere to live.

They're letting go. The first sign of spirituality is really when you let go. Depending on what's going on in your life, you may let go of a relationship, money, your children, control, job opportunities, socializing, the clothes in your closet, the flower bed in the front yard, or washing your car. Something starts to let go, and you start pushing things out of your life.

The reason is that the spiritual energy inside you is saying, "What you're doing isn't good enough for me anymore. I want more. I want to go to the well and drink water." That's your Holy Spirit, your higher self, your God presence saying, "I'm empty, I'm in a drought, I need more." So your energy pushes everything out.

If you don't have a mentor or a structure of guidance to help you through that letting go, so you don't create a lot of drama or trauma, especially if you have kids, or break yourself financially, emotionally and mentally, then if you're listening right now, take this as a sign that today is your day. Maybe today is when you finally get yourself in check, get your energy under control and follow a process.

Getting high vs. cleaning it up (28:56)

The misconception is, "I'm waking up! My energy is expanding! I'm full of love and light!" Great, you're getting higher.

But all the lower stuff beneath you is still there. The more expansive you become, the more there comes a time when you have to go back, look at the choices you've made and clean them up.

I'll ask people, "So you're really high in the energies right now?" "No, I'm not." "Oh yes, you are. Now let's look at your personal life. How are your relationships? How are your finances? How's your mental stability? How's your spiritual escapism going?"

I go through these different areas until we get to the truth: you're not doing okay. When you expanded, look at what you did around you. You may have blown out a child, a spouse, a partner, your parents, your siblings or a job. Usually it's relationships.

And then you say, "I'm free! Love and light, namaste, everything is great."

Often I find those people are smoking marijuana. "I'm so connected, Shelby." Really? Then why are you still smoking?

You don't need to get any higher. This is common, because they don't want to come back down and look at what they let go of. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Isn't that the godly thing?

It's not to just get to God and our higher self right out of the gate and forget everyone around us. That's not ethical. It's not good for the people around us. You have to take care of them.

It's like someone who passes without taking care of their human life; the people left behind have to clean it all up.

There are ethics to the spiritual walk. We don't get to get high, forget everyone else and ignore the damage we created. Nor is it ethical to stay in the high and keep creating drama and damage when you have the power to grab the bull by the horns, get your mentors and teachers in, quit looking for answers and start looking for processes. How do I process through this, rather than staying in the swirl, having a fleeting good day when everything lines up, and then crashing a day later? Those are the peaks and valleys of the energies.

If spirituality means recognizing these feelings and shifting our beliefs so we can expand our senses, our sight, hearing and touch, then we have to be willing to learn a new way to maneuver and navigate the energy. It won't blend with what we know in the third dimension.

Thirsty for spiritual water (35:00)

Because the spirit body is depleted of connection and senses, we're thirsty for water, and the water is spiritual information. Most people go to church, because we've been taught that's the source of water. And it is for some people at different levels of their awakening, because it's a place where we do God. At other levels, people may turn to Reiki, drum circles, spiritual retreats or meditation, connecting to God differently, through a different layer of personal expression and connection.

When people reach me, they've usually been on the bullet train going fast, fast, fast. They've usually blown out their relationships, their money and their ability to hold themselves together. "I don't have anything, Shelby. I'm broke. I have no relationships. I need you to help me."

I'll say, "Okay. You spent your money over here, or you wrecked your relationship, before you pulled in the right information on your timeline. So why am I the one who has to come save you or adjust to you?" That usually gets people.

By the time they reach me or someone like me, it's often because their ego didn't want to listen. They only wanted answers. They didn't want to manage their energy or see the damage they were causing, until all the decisions had been made and the energy blew up on itself anyway.

Then it's, "Let's start putting you back together." "I can't afford it." Well, if you had enough to afford blowing yourself out, you'll need to find enough to put yourself back together. There's a balance.

If you didn't care about your relationships and blew them out, you'll need to care about relationships if you want them to come back. You're having to get to value. What do you value? Most people don't value spirituality because they don't value themselves.

But they do value not feeling pain, not feeling emotions that don't feel good and not feeling out of control. So they seek someone who can calm them down in the moment, and once the feeling passes, they go right back to what they were doing.

Spirituality is about getting control of yourself and knowing how you operate on an energetic level, so that as you connect to something higher, you're safe to be around and don't have to blow everybody out, even though that will happen at certain parts of the journey.

Relationships, value and life purpose (40:36)

Anything we study has elements that make it up. If I had to break spirituality into elements, the first would be relationships. We're relational beings, and if you don't know how to do relationships, you're in trouble. If you're blowing out your relationships and they're not ethical, you're not doing well.

When I woke up, I blew out my whole family. It was my mom, dad and sister, and it started with my sister, which was very purposeful and needed to happen. Then it happened with my mom, then my dad, and the three of them went on together doing their own thing while I went off on mine. That was the contract.

But I still had to make sure I was ethically cleaning up parts of my generational line, even though we'd separated. They just weren't on the same path of awakening. Once I did that, all my relationships started changing. I began attracting people I needed in my life who weren't draining my energy, because I'd let go of the closer relationships that weren't good for me, with people who didn't want to know themselves more deeply and shift.

As an empath I was picking all of it up, until I said, "You go figure it out. I'm going over here to clean myself up." Relationships are one huge element of spirituality, and they're a big focus of my work, because I've had experience on all sides of the fence.

The second element is values. When people crash out their lives and show up on my doorstep, they're usually looking for God. What it exposes is their lack of value, because they reach me after spending all their money and creating all the drama and chaos somewhere else. They say, "I don't have anything to give you, Shelby."

It's like a person at the end of their rope who ends up back in church at the altar, on their knees, crying, "God, I don't know what to do. Help me. I have nothing." And then bursts of inspiration come in and teachers show up.

So I work with people differently. "Okay, you blew this out. Let's see where we can start building value in your world now. Let's have a five-minute conversation; that's enough for now."

Somewhere you have to put the value in. If you think you can put your life back together completely by yourself, I encourage you to try, and please write a book about it, because I'd love to know how someone did it without ever listening to a teacher or following a process. There's value in listening to the ones who've gone before us.

The third element, which grows out of that, is life purpose. When you're on that fast-moving bullet train, whether you're keeping up or sleeping it off, your relationships change, your values change, and so your life purpose changes. When you make a quantum jump, a vacuum of energy happening all at once, you usually change something in your relationships, your job and your home.

In spirituality, what are we all trying to figure out on a deeper level? Our life purpose. What am I here to do?

Just as religion teaches, you have to come to the water of spirit empty. You have to humble yourself and remove judgment and ego. You have to come with your hands open, ready to receive. If you say you want it, and it shows up, and you don't climb into the boat and start paddling, whether it's a process or a simple nudge like "buy a cookie mix and make cookies tonight," because you think you know better, then you're not empty yet. You have more falling to do.

That's why I tell people they can come to me to put out a fire, but the fire will come back, because they haven't changed what ignited it. They don't know how to manage the flame. It gets expensive to keep calling someone to put out fires. If you want to learn how to navigate the fire you're starting, tend it and eventually put it out, that's a different conversation, and it costs far less in the long run.

At this stage of spirituality, you're working on life purpose, value and relationships. It's the most stubborn thing we all go through, because we like to be in control, and we have to learn a different kind of control. When spiritual energy moves through you, you can feel like a puppet to it, here, there and everywhere. I teach people how to manage the energy while still letting it flow.

How you know you're on a spiritual path (50:52)

So how do you know you're waking up? A lot of things happened to me, just as I'm sure they're happening to you. One big thing was that I asked a lot of deep questions about topics I never would have asked about before. I come from a bloodline where psychic energy was very strong, which is common for many people, and I started asking about end-of-the-world prophecies, Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce. I don't even know where I was pulling those questions from.

Then I got very interested in life after death. Sylvia Browne was a big influence on me back then. I'd obviously had signs of spirituality my whole life, but it intensified when that spiritual energy began moving and my first marriage ended. I married at 26 and divorced at 30, to someone I shouldn't have married, but it was purposeful.

That led me to look at my relationships. I wanted deeper connections than I'd had before. I started feeling for people, having a lot of empathy and crying at the drop of a dime. All that heart energy was opening.

Those are examples of spirituality: you feel for people, you're more empathetic, you ask deep questions, you wonder about life after death, and you're more invested in humanity. You actually care about people instead of running away from them.

A faith-based view of spirituality (54:08)

Let's look at it from a faith-based, biblical angle. There, spirituality might be described as lending a holiness to ourselves, or as a discipline of the spirit, which is really what I'm about: disciplining the energy to behave. It's also been called the gift of the spirit, where your energy wakes up and gifts present themselves, like an expansion of your senses, which I call your spiritual communication channels. Or it's the life of the spirit waking up.

So on a human level, spirituality is getting to know yourself more deeply and connecting to something higher. On a faith level, it's the gift of your spirit, the discipline of your spirit and the holiness you're stepping into. Where there's sometimes been a disconnect in religion is in praising something outside yourself, putting a figure on a pedestal and then forgetting about you.

Spirituality isn't about worshipping someone higher than yourself. It's about becoming that version of yourself. That figure may be someone you value and an example you follow, but it doesn't mean you put all your faith there and stop doing your own work. You still have to do self, and that piece isn't always taught.

Where to start (57:52)

If you're maneuvering through this, here's what I tell people who are waking up. First, you're not the first person who has woken up to themselves and connected to something higher. Second, you can do it on your own, run in circles and create a lot of damage and trauma, or you can get a mentor or teacher, discipline yourself and follow their process if it makes sense to you.

To do that, you have to respect the ones who have gone before you. I respect my mentor. I had a lot of teachers when I woke up, people who did Reiki sessions, drum circles and the like. But when my mentor showed up, it was clear she was my mentor, not just someone doing a modality people explore when they first discover energy.

I'm not diminishing any of that, but there's a difference. I thought, "This person knows her stuff. She's not of this world, but she's definitely successful in this world." I'd call her Buddha or Yoda, more often Yoda.

Everybody has a spiritual teacher who shows up; you just have to decide whether you'll let them be your teacher.

When they show up, respect that they've gone before you, and hope the one who shows up is exactly the one who's supposed to. If not, they're the one for that moment. When I did my 48-day forgiveness journey, it was with a psychic I met at a wellness expo, a man in his sixties, and I instantly respected him. By the time that journey was done, things with him didn't end well, and I had to ask, "How did this happen to me?"

But I respected him until he gave me a reason not to, then I took it as a spiritual learning and moved on. My mentor has never given me a reason not to trust her in all these years, and my husband has known her since he was 16. You go through different learnings, but always respect the ones who've gone before you, good, bad and different.

Third, know that your journey is your own. You won't have the same journey as me, your best friend or even your partner. That doesn't mean you have to be alone in it. You can have guides, teachers and mentors, but you have to walk it out and decide whether you'll be disciplined enough to listen to what needs to be done, because it's new and we haven't been taught how to move this way.

Fourth, start where you are. You can't go back and wish it had been different. Some people come to me for one session, and I meet them there. Others want the whole process.

Others just listen to a couple of podcast episodes or follow me on social media for a while to see who I am. Great. Start with what you're comfortable with and build from there.

Then get quiet so you can listen to your higher self and to what God is saying. What help do you need? Somewhere you know. When the help shows up, be willing to receive it, and then practice what's coming in.

When people take a course, I tell them that going through it was just downloading information. The real work begins when you practice what went into your system energetically, and sometimes you go back and listen again, because you're working the energy between lessons. The teacher gives the lecture and the assignment and sends you off to practice.

When you're waking up, you'll have a lot of questions. I wanted to know everything, and sometimes I didn't get answers. It's okay not to get the answers you want, because in spirituality it's all about yourself, and you have your answers. An unanswered question may mean you're not there yet and have more practice to do, or you need to strengthen your connection to God or pay attention to the teachers around you.

Also, just because your life gets better for a few days doesn't mean you're fixed. We're never done.

As you get better at managing your energy, you can swing the other way: "I don't know anything, and everyone else knows everything." You lose confidence and listen to everyone. Don't do that. Keep your senses and intuition open, but be wary of thinking everyone else is right.

Not everybody is right and not everybody is wrong; there just is what is. Use some discernment so you don't get thrown to the wolves or let people take advantage of your awakening process.

Simple practices to support your awakening (72:20)

So how do you set yourself up, even if you're already awakened? You're always awakening at another layer of the onion, so in spirituality we're always back at the beginning. You complete a loop and think, "Finally, I'm at the end," and the next layer shows up, and you feel like you're back at the start, because you are, at another level.

You can always go back to simple things. Declutter your house, your car and your closet. Catch up on your sleep, because in awakening sometimes we sleep way too much, sometimes not at all, and sometimes we're in and out. Decluttering gives you a calm space to sleep in, because all those items carry energy that can irritate your system.

Be open to discovering and examining your beliefs, and be conscious and intentional about them. In awakening, your beliefs will be challenged, sometimes in ways you don't see coming. Spirituality is about expansion, so you have to be able to expand your mind and explore new ideas and different levels of belief. That's how we learn and grow.

Go outside. Walk your dog, ride your horse, feed the cows, walk by yourself, dig in your flower bed or go to a nature trail. Connect and commune. And be conscious that you're taking care of yourself, because you're letting go of a lot of what has been cluttering your vibration, thoughts, emotional body and energy body. Give yourself the best foundation to launch from.

Playing your role bigger, and spirituality vs. religion (75:36)

The purpose of all this is to recognize that your role in your world is even bigger than you think. Spirituality takes what you do every day and expands it into something else. I always knew I was supposed to be a teacher. I loved everything about it and went to school to become one.

I loved teaching, but I wasn't passionate about the subjects. The one I wanted to teach, PE, I never got a job teaching. I always taught reading, English and speech, unless I taught elementary, where I taught everything. Eleven years in, I loved my students, but I thought, "I can't do this anymore. This isn't teaching to me anymore."

That was my spirituality waking up. I'd held a value for teaching for 11 years and it was purposeful, but something wasn't right. So I jumped ship and explored other ways of teaching: personal training, group exercise and network marketing. I was still leading and teaching people, but differently, and I was trying to free myself from depending on one way of taking care of myself on the material plane, because I was moving toward my greater life purpose.

Had I not left teaching for personal training and then health and wellness, I never would have met the psychic who put me on the forgiveness journey that blew open my Kundalini energy, expanded my psychic energy and led me to what I do now. So look at the role your life is playing right now, and be okay to play it bigger.

Spirituality helps us cope through changes we don't understand yet, while we're still navigating the waters. Through that, you develop a new belief system. When asked what they believe, spiritual people often say the same thing religious people say: "I believe in God" or "a higher power." Some people say they don't believe in anything.

At the end of the day, whatever vehicle you use to reach your higher awakening and discover the spiritual power within you, there are different roads to get there. Being spiritual and being religious never have to be pitted against each other. They're both roads. It's how well you're working your road. It's still that belief in God, or the higher aspect of yourself, that you connect into.

When you're going through this, put practices into your world. Have a routine that makes it easy to connect and take care of yourself and puts you on some kind of discipline. Many people start or deepen yoga when they get into spirituality, and you don't need a class; you can do chair yoga at work. It slows you down and connects you to your breath.

Some people take up meditation and guided meditations. I went to a Vipassana meditation camp for 11 days, silent for 10, and had a profound experience. Not everyone can do that, but you can pick a meditation online and do it. Write in a journal every day to connect to your thoughts and feelings; even a dream journal helps.

Join a spiritual community. Believe it or not, ShelbyRADIO is a spiritual community, even though it's a podcast. You want to be around people who are exploring and growing the same way you are, so you don't feel weird or alone.

As you contemplate these questions, it may bring up friction with people close to you. If you go to church and people notice you're changing, they may say, "You're moving away from God." I've heard that one a lot. No, you're actually moving closer to God.

Religious family or friends may say, "If you're going the spiritual path, you're being selfish and making it all about you." But you're doing exactly what you're supposed to: making it about your faith, the God source within you and connection. Religion often focuses on worship outside of self. Spirituality goes inside of self to get to self.

Spirituality is the disassembling of beliefs and conditioning that may or may not have served us, and then filling up with the information and magic we weren't taught, which doesn't have to be hidden anymore because the veil is lifting. When you change, people who are used to things staying the same can feel upset, because they sense they're losing influence over you and your ability to decide for yourself. In spirituality, people understand expansion: you have your answers.

What do you want to look for? What feels right? Does the process you're following feel right?

If someone comes to me and I know exactly what they need to do, it doesn't matter what I know if they're not ready. I can lead people to the water, but not everyone drinks at the same time. That's why we search for information and knowledge, because we're trying to work through a feeling until we figure out the next step. Most people don't want to feel the trial by fire of awakening, but it's part of it.

The benefits of spirituality (88:12)

To wrap up: this is a long episode, and there's a lot of energy in it, so you may want to listen over a few days. What are the benefits of spirituality? It gives us a platform to discover the meaning of our lives: why we're here, our purpose, our value and the kinds of relationships we're meant to have.

When we go into the deeper side of spirituality, it gives us the potential to improve how our physical body processes energy and emotion, because emotion is energy in motion. It lets us clean out mental cobwebs, get mentally strong and healthy, and grow emotionally, because we're going through a cleansing and rebirthing process. When those things change, we can cope with the drama in our lives more easily, because there's less of it.

We're better able to handle stress and anxiety, because we have the tools to balance and harmonize the energy and to be in control of things we were never in control of before. Spirituality isn't a mental process. It's vibrational and energetic. Not only will you discover what you're here to do, but you'll improve your life physically, mentally and emotionally because of the work you're doing in the spirit. That's a win-win.

If anyone had told me I'd be living the life I live now, I'd have said, "I can't even see that." If you'd told me podcasting existed, that I'd have my own podcast, or that I'd be teaching about energy, I'd have laughed and said, "You're crazy," because it wasn't within my understanding at the time. I wasn't there yet.

Spirituality is walking the path of your own righteousness, because you're walking in your own spirit and the discipleship of your life, your relationships, your values and your life purpose. No one can interfere with that. Along the way, you meet people you build relationships with, learn values from and see living a life purpose you aspire to. That's why we honor those who have gone before us, because somewhere they figured it out, they had the mentor and the teacher, and that's how we shift, grow, learn and change.

The spirituality conversation is a game changer. If you need to listen to this episode over and over and get something different each time, great. If you know someone going through this process right now, share it with them. This topic never gets old.

It's ever evolving, because we're all waking up at different levels and times. Thank you for listening, and have a good day.

Frequently asked questions

What is spirituality in simple terms?

Spirituality is knowing yourself at the deepest, most intimate level. More deeply, it's knowing yourself by connecting to something bigger than you, whether you call it God, source, energy or the divine.

What are the first signs of spirituality or spiritual awakening?

One of the first signs is letting go, of relationships, money, routines, possessions or control. Other signs include asking deep questions you never asked before, wondering about life after death, feeling more empathy and caring more about humanity.

What is the difference between spirituality and religion?

Shelby describes religion as often focusing on worship outside of yourself, while spirituality goes inside to the God source within you. She sees them as different roads to the same place, and says they never have to be pitted against each other.

What can I do to support my spiritual awakening day to day?

Declutter your home, car and closet, catch up on rest, examine your beliefs, spend time in nature, and add practices like yoga, meditation, journaling and community. If your sleep is very disrupted or you feel exhausted, please also talk with your doctor.

Where to go next

• Start here: my free 16-minute audio, When You Don't Feel Like Yourself
• The course: Trust Your Intuition, to hear and trust your inner knowing
• Listen next: What Does It Mean to Wake Up Spiritually? 10 Key Truths
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions