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b"Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.\\nInner Critic episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-inner-critic-1612153312/\\nThe Jewel ritual: https://atheopaganism.org/2015/03/05/the-jewel-a-solitary-ritual/\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nS4E26 TRANSCRIPT:\\n----more----\\n\\xa0\\nYucca: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca,\\nMark: And I'm Mark.\\nYucca: and today we are talking about psychological freedom. So, to do your practice, to feel, to be vulnerable, all of that good stuff.\\nMark: Yeah, because this is so often a challenge for folks who are first coming into naturalistic pagan or atheopagan practice, especially if they're deconstructing from other religions that are much more about conformity and obedience.\\nYucca: Right.\\nMark: There's that feeling of being watched. There's this sense of shame about either doing it wrong or that you're doing it all at all.\\nThere's\\nYucca: Just that judgment, all of that. That icky judgment all over the place.\\nMark: it's just a real minefield, and so we wanted to talk about it and make some suggestions and just normalize that this happens, right? This is, yeah, this, this is a real thing. There's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling it. And maybe there's some things we can suggest that might make it a little better.\\nYucca: Right. Because this is something that comes up a lot in different words but a thing that people deal with, right?\\nMark: hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when they're first entering the practice, there are a lot of people who are like, Well, I don't do rituals, but I go for walks in nature. And that's fine. That's perfectly fine. If your experience of a ritual is going out for a walk in nature and having that kind of communion, there's nothing wrong with that, and you don't have to do anything else if you don't want to.\\nBut there is something about investing a place in a moment. in deliberate psychological manipulation of yourself in order to get freer and happier and wiser.\\nYucca: Mm hmm.\\nMark: And that really is what our, our path is about. And there are so many voices in our society and especially in the mainstream religions that discourage you from being freer and happier and wiser.\\nYucca: Yeah.\\nMark: That we We want to help facilitate movement in that direction.\\nYucca: Right. So there's a lot of different things that could be contributing to this. One of the things may be the critic voice. And we've, it was quite a few years ago but I think one of our best episodes where we talked about the critic voice, and I'll put the link to that in the show notes if anybody hasn't listened to it before but that critic, that, that voice has a, a function, right?\\nIt, it came about trying to protect you and there, there may be some of that happening when you are When it's, okay, so, when you get a wound, let's say you get a cut it, when you need to clean that cut out, you need to do it, because otherwise you're gonna have dirt and sticks and whatever it is inside that wound, but it hurts, and so you have this instinctual response of pulling your arm away, not putting your arm under the water and washing it out, and sometimes that critic is Is the, that instinct to pull the arm away and not let that happen, protect, stop it, don't let it happen.\\nSo I think that's going on to a certain extent, and then also, we aren't, we don't really learn in our culture how to really check in with ourselves and be really honest with ourselves, especially when it is the vulnerable. Right? We're taught to just kind of look the other way and, you know, man up or, you know, whatever the particular phrase is for whatever your gender or culture is, but it's, it's like, we are encouraged to be soft and be okay with the parts of us that are soft.\\nMark: Right, that's absolutely true. Particularly for men, but, but, it's true for everybody.\\nYucca: Right. That's why I use the man up expression,\\nMark: Right.\\nYucca: Which, you know, it happens"