Spectrum of Spirit: A Digital Sanctuary for Spiritual Discourse and Community

Romeo and Juliet. A Shakespeare classic that almost everyone in the western world is somewhat familiar with. The story of two lovers who die before they really get a chance to be with one another. Through the boundaries set before them, the two creatively explore alternate routes to find a way to live and love one another for as long as they are alive. However, their imagination got cut short, and the story ends with love tragically being defeated. Some of the genres of the first stories from ancient culture live in the realm of tragedies, of messages not necessarily meant to soothe us, but to rattle some of the hope and imagination the audience members may hold. I believe these tragedies were intended to unsettle the audience, adding dirt to death, obscurity to love, and disruption to creativity. I believe the goal of these tragedies wasn’t to communicate concepts with clarity, but present the mysterious ways the forces of life play their part.

I believe desire can upend someone’s life, especially if it is a desire that comes as a surprise. I believe mortality can literally upend someone’s life, and each passing moment brings us closer to the end of some version of life. I believe creativity can upend someone’s life, the constant wrestle between artist and consumer weeding out artists and consumers whose appetite isn’t in the mainstream. Unfortunately, I believe this struggle is a part of our modern day experience, especially in capitalist societies, where we may not be able to crack the code to provide more sustainability to our economy, but we can prepare ourselves for the upcoming thresholds I can’t predict. Similar to Shakespeare’s tragedies, I am not here to assure you that everything will be alright and we will be saved. With this blog, I hope to confront some of the difficult questions of being a human, how tragic finding love, acquiring life after death, and discovering one’s creativity can be.

Deconstructing Comfort

Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, The Ultimatum, 90 Day Fiancé, are a few of the social experiment shows depicting people’s experiences within a relationship. These shows draw a huge audience, lots of engagement and fan clubs fixating on their support for one person and their disgust with others. Similar to exhibitions and competitions in professional sports, the contestants are treated like sports athletes, their fans ready to die for them or ready to kill them. I believe the passion around these shows isn’t just in the projection of a viewer’s imagination, but I believe this is representative of a fixation we have for finding love in our contemporary society. Social media has created pressurized vacuums for individuals to see the highlight reels of others they may be attracted to, and the lifestyle they live. These curated documents showcase the life some individuals live and can internalize pressure on consumers who feel they may not be doing enough to be around the friends/significant others they want to be surrounded by. Here, I believe, these shows are not just entertainment, but a mirror of one’s desire to find love and a possible reminder of the steps one is not taking to reach what some call a spiritual goal.

On the Highest Self Podcast, Sahara Rose sits with Brandon Collingsworth as they urge their listeners to stop looking for love¹. Jumping past the first 15 minutes, We pick up with Brandon speaking on those who continue to find themselves in toxic relationships. Brandon continues further, encouraging the audience to work on themselves to increase the effectiveness of the antenna, receiving vibrations that are clear and clean². Brandon believes that when one improves their antenna, the individual will be able to feel when others are energetically not a match for them, and challenges the listeners on whether they are willing to listen to that signal³. Brandon asks again in a different way, if someone can feel something is not right for them, are they willing to listen to that and not repeat a pattern they may have repeated before⁴. Brandon changes course, reflecting on what his therapist once told him, if something is familiar, even if it’s unhealthy, that thing will be comfortable for that individual⁵. Brandon finishes the rest of the quote, if something is unfamiliar, even if it’s healthy, that thing will be uncomfortable for that individual⁶. Brandon uses these sayings to launch into his next point, if a person has only known toxic energy/low vibrational humans, cheating, lying, etc. they might believe this to be parts of a normal relationship⁷.

I’m reminded of the image of a hamster on a hamster wheel, or a cat trying to catch a laser from a laser pointer. I believe love is a concept we can be encouraged to go after, to chase, to fulfill an innate desire that only the individual can explain for themself. However, we know the hamster running on the wheel will not get them higher on the wheel, move the wheel, or give them any sort of freedom. We know the cat jumping from surface to surface won’t allow them to feel the laser, touch the laser, and much less grab the laser. Yet, the thrill of pursuit keeps them going, until the necessities of survival shift their attention. I believe this can be related to the chase for love and affection humans experience in their lives. As Brandon talked about, people who are familiar will stay in their comfortable relationships, regardless of the amount of cheating, lying or any other harmful behavior occurring. I believe the illusion for the hamster is escape from the wheel, the illusion for the cat is the capture of the laser, and the illusion for the human is the repeatable cycle and pursuit of love without searching within. Brandon refers to this as the internal antenna, and I believe wherever you want to call it is important to develop a sense for those you can trust around you. I believe it is important to get comfortable with the tool Brandon suggests, to deconstruct the toxic behaviors one may have and may bring around them, ultimately reconstructing what is a “normal” relationship.

Cultural Comfort

With my current understanding, I believe there are stories of some sort of after life in almost every religious tradition I am familiar with. Whether the afterlife is a version of heaven/hell or a liberation/moksha from the cycles of life, there have been countless loopholes created by adherents of their traditions. There have been histories of leadership-enforced indulgences, self-inflicted harm, even to the point of taking one’s own life, to secure their belief in a pleasant afterlife. However, I question the value of investing in a life that is not in the present, but a “better” life that will come after your physical body stops breathing. I wonder if this could still be called afterlife, as the individual aiming to guarantee their paradise, aiming to please a superior being, may not be living in the now, and may only start their “life” after the blood stops pumping.

On the Cultural Apothecary Podcast, Alex Clark discusses what may happen after we die with the man of the hour Rau Comfort (not actually, but found it coincidental his last name is Comfort)⁸. Towards the beginning of the podcast, Ray raises a hypothetical about an individual who lifts their hands and worships god, saying the individual is advised to make sure they are prepared to reach out their hands and evangelize for god⁹. Ray elaborates further, one can be empowered to bark at their audience not caring what they may think of them, because Ray is leaving the next day¹⁰. Ray claims this is the ministry, this is the equipping and work of an Evangelist, to come into the local church and do what a pastor does not feel comfortable doing due to their authority¹¹. Ray believes the pastor could come down on the sheep, but if they do so, the sheep will scatter¹². This is why the pastor may equip an evangelist to come in, bark at the sheep, and confront them on their activity reaching out to the lost, where Ray believes churches genuinely grow¹³. Jumping 20 minutes ahead, Ray gives another hypothetical, introducing himself as Ray to a man named Fred, asking him if there is life after death¹⁴? Ray breaks character and assures his audience he hasn’t mentioned Jesus, god, heaven, hell, sin, righteousness, judgement, or anything that might make him uncomfortable¹⁵. Ray makes it clear he only wants his opinion and hasn’t asked anything besides if there is life after death¹⁶?

This podcast was quite intriguing to me, and I want to be careful with the words I say and how I present the thoughts coming through my head. I believe if you study anything hard enough, if you wrestle with the principles of any concept long enough, you will find paradoxes, contradictions, or conflicting information within the data. I believe this is the nature of humanity, a species that is constantly changing and adapting to survive and live in pleasure. Just as there can be contradictions between living for the afterlife and living in the present, I feel one can see some contradictions in Ray’s encouragement. On one hand, in an impersonal setting on the sidewalk, Ray is encouraging those who believe to evangelize through barking at them for their unwillingness to evangelize due to his belief this would not be comfortable for a pastor to do. On the contrary, Ray gives another situation where he gently asks Fred in a personal setting if he believes there is life after death, without using Christianese, to make sure Fred does not get uncomfortable. As I mentioned in the recount, I did jump twenty minutes in the podcast, so there could absolutely be context I am missing, however, I believe the point still stands. The contradictions in the presentation, which appears to be two different syntheses based on the hierarchy of the church, brings me to question what a religious adherent is learning. In these two scenes, it appears comfort is manipulated, and can be justified, so barking makes sense in one setting, and questioning makes sense in another. I believe clash is where boundaries can be broken, where people can think differently, where comfort loses its pull and culture can be reclaimed for each individual.

Art as Comfort

I once heard a belief that humans cry as babies due to their inability to explain the knowledge they gained as a spirit before gaining their physical body. As the infant grows and matures, learning the language of the people around them, we lose the knowledge of the realm existing beyond our five senses and humans spend the rest of their earthly life working to regain the wisdom they once had. Whether this belief is an experience that humans go through or not, I do believe children have a level of creativity that may leave as they pile on more and more experiences. What can be perceived as an innocent mindset of a child can slowly become a cynical attitude, building a world where the child is encouraged to focus on “realistic” goals and maybe even give up their dreams. I say this to say I do not believe creativity is a skill we have to teach, but is a skill we can benefit from protecting, and if lost, humans can benefit from restoring or relearning.

On the Artistically Married Podcast, Jake Akkerman and Brianne Steinburg have a conversation with one another on how they try to raise creative children¹⁷. In the section noted as, “Buddhist Wisdom: Understanding Suffering and Finding Freedom”, Brianne opens up discussing the four noble truths, life includes suffering, meaning life’s not meant to have suffering¹⁸. Brianne reflects on when they first read this in university, thinking life is so hard, but now thinks life is average, and believes the Buddhists are saying there are parts of life that are suffering¹⁹. If this is not the case, Brianne believes life would be full of only pain²⁰. Brianne states this to clear up that there are aspects of life like stress, dissatisfaction, loss, change, and discomfort²¹. To Brianne, this is all part of being a human, this is what teaches people and what they learn from²². Brianne believes when individuals get older, they look back on moments where they survived or built resilience, went through a change, due to those growing moments instead of succumbing to being a suffering being who deals with super painful moments²³. Towards the end of the podcast, Brianne makes the point of wanting to make the child secure, comfortable, and confident in what they are doing, and it’s not a big deal if they have downfalls or difficulties²⁴.

Jake and Brianne share a lot of wisdom from their own experience that I couldn’t fit within this blog, yet we have more than enough to explore the comforting mechanisms of art. I believe art is already inside of us, waiting to be understood, waiting to be embraced, waiting to be expressed. Like Brianne states throughout a majority of the podcast, life has moments of downfalls and suffering, and it’s not about how much someone goes through, but how they go through it. Brianne mentions how some people ascribe to the belief life is suffering or it’s a huge deal when they do an action that harms their dreams. Yet, Brianne encourages her audience that what’s in all of humans, and especially children, is their ability to create. I believe the more a child experiences, the more their life can be filtered through a perspective of difficulties, suffering and downfalls, not due to their own conclusions, but to the conclusions of the adults they respect. I say this to say, I believe we can all learn from art, which doesn’t judge, protects memory, and possesses its own story before an audience interferes. This is where I believe art can be the comfort humans can benefit from, not telling them what they want to hear, but telling them their own story, whether it resonates with them or not.

Invitation to Comfort

Invite your imagination. Read disregarding answers. Sit with intent. Balance comfort with discomfort. Hunt areas to deconstruct. Seek cultural demand. Be creative with your art. Invite aspects of death. Understand what you’re taming. Inhale what is sacred. Express everything. Question your gentle origin. Refuse the eternal. Echo your behavior.

Bibliography

1. Highest Self Podcast, “639: Stop Looking For Love And Do This Instead with Brandon Collingsworth,” podcast audio, January 27, 2026, accessed January 28, 2026, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1eYAeVpJccAZCEIhPX8Yo8. ↩︎
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