The Path to Healing: Jon Labman on Trauma, Therapy, and Spiritual Growth (Inspirational)

In this episode, Reginald D welcomes Jon Labman, a licensed professional counselor and leading spiritual awakening expert. Jon shares his journey from a troubled upbringing in a Reformed Jewish home marked by trauma and bullying to discovering his spiritual path through the teachings of the New Testament. At 15, after fervently praying for a scholarship to an international school in Wales, he converted to Protestantism and embraced evangelical beliefs. Jon discusses his unique approach as a liberation therapist, blending both analytical and intuitive methods to help individuals connect with their humanity and awaken to their spiritual essence.

Tune in for an enlightening conversation about faith, healing, and personal transformation.

Jon's links:

Website: https://simplyawake.com

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SimplyAwakeLLC

 Playlist:  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3rtymGxmstKLU7RQ1XscVz

Transcript

Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D. On today's episode, I had Jon Labman. John is a licensed professional counselor. He's an author and also one of the leading spiritual awakening experts in the world. Welcome to the show, Jon.

Thank you so much, Reginald and Reggie, and I'm glad to be here. And I want your audience to give you lots of five star reviews and likes because you're doing this from the love of your heart. And I so appreciate the education that you're giving your audience. And I'm glad to be a part of that.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. And I'm honored to have you in my show. I'm definitely honored. So Jon, can you tell us about yourself and your upbringing?

Sure. Well, now I'm a liberation therapist, which means I combine both left brain and right brain learning and awakening to help people first know how to be human and then how to wake up to their spiritual connection to the divine that's already there. And my background is that I grew up in a Reformed Jewish home where I didn't really believe in God. And there was sexual abuse in the home, and there was other trauma. There was bullying at school. When I was 15, I started studying the New Testament, and I also applied to international school on the south coast of Wales in the United Kingdom. And I was supposed to not get the scholarship because the family was too middle class. We weren't poor enough. And I prayed for a whole month, because there was a postal strike. And I said, God, if you exist, please get me that scholarship. And I got it. And so I converted to Protestantism at that time and was an evangelical fundamentalist Protestant. And I won that scholarship, I went abroad, but I took my problems with me. And when I came back, I started college in the outskirts of Philadelphia at the Haverford College and basically had a nervous breakdown at the end of the semester. And, you know, I didn't know why I was dissociating, but that's an aspect of trauma that I've learned about since. Just felt like I wasn't in my body and like the whole of reality was disappearing, which happens in spiritual enlightenment. But if it happens before you're ready for it, you think you're going crazy. So I ended up leaving that school and going to an evangelical school down south. and started there, but I soon joined a commune in California that was trying to live like the early church and be one with the spirit. But after three months there, I became very depressed. They put me into a solitary, isolated confinement sort of retreat where they put me on a one month fast, water only. And by the time that was over, My parents were saying they were coming out to get me, so I flew home. They put me in a hospital, and I had electroconvulsive therapy for two months, which was for what they called then schizoaffective disorder, major depressive disorder. By the way, it was in those days in the 70s of really frightening treatment. I went back to college after that, but at the end of college, my mother was divorcing her second husband. And I had no place to go. So one summer I stayed at college and the next summer I was invited to stay in a church community, a church related to the denomination that I was in at college. And they taught me how to go in seminary and talked me into joining their group. And their group became a brainwashing cult while I was there. And because I had made promises to God and them to obey them in law and doctrine and life, I stuck it out for six years, more terrorized every day than the last. And finally, somebody tried to burn the church down. And rather than saying, oh, what are we doing wrong? The woman behind that cult and her family said, y'all are in sin. You're hiding secret sin and you're all suspended from communion. And while you're rebuilding the church, you better fess up your secret sin or you're going to be doubly damned to hell. And I fessed up what I thought was a sin, but they didn't think it was. So I then paced the floors for six months until I finally decided when I was carrying pews into that church, that I'd better leave. Now, they said, they gave us a bad choice. You can stay and be doubly damned if we haven't believed your confession, or you can go and be damned. And, you know, at that time there was an AIDS epidemic going on and they said, and you'll die of AIDS. So one day I just, all the other guys that I shared the house with were, out and I took the opportunity, packed my car twice and fled. Put everything in storage, fled and the next day I was in therapy and that therapist saved my life. She made me see that there was hope in me or I wouldn't be sitting in her office. If I'd really believed what they were saying to me, I would have killed myself. or just done self-destructive things until I died. But she taught me that there was hope in me. She also taught me that I had my own thoughts and feelings that I didn't know anything about. So she saved my life and she kind of put me on a path of discovering who I was and also gave me a model for what I wanted to do, which I finally did later in my life, which is to become a therapist. a lot of intervening story, including some actress training in there. But we'll go on to all that takes too much time. I'm too old. So there's the basics of how I got where I am.

Exactly. Man, that's something else. But, you know, it's powerful that you were saying that, you know, a lot of it is just your belief that what's in your mind and what you're thinking that can take you down a road that is not

the right road for your life. That's right. And you know quite well, because you're doing that same kind of work, helping people to unravel that wrong thinking.

Yes, exactly. And the thing about it, what I like about your story, Jon, is that, you know, I always tell people, if you have problems and things like that, you need to talk to a therapist. But some of the things I get from people who goes to the therapist, they'd be like, they don't understand me. They ain't been through nothing, no things like that. So it makes it more effective when you went down this road and you dealt with all these different mental states in your mind and things like that. You can actually relate. That's right.

And, you know, because I've suffered from PTSD, you know, and I didn't know that I was sexually assaulted when I was a kid repeatedly. I didn't know that until I was 52, because the mind is very good at dissociating. In other words, pushing all that so far in the background that you don't remember the details. You just know you're jumpy all the time. You're anxious, you're depressed. You don't know what the reason is. And so. I learned over a period of time that I really needed to work with all of me. And I had some teachers in the Eastern mystical traditions starting in the mid 1980s in New York City. who worked with massage therapy, with breath work, with counseling, with meditation, and with mindfulness. And eventually I learned and practiced all of those things, got licensed or certified in other than the breath work, everything else, and including energy healing. Got my degree in counseling and started working in 2000. I had a what you would call a Kensho or spiritual awakening in 2001. And then I began to incorporate that into all the work that I did. And now what I try to do is help people understand. Nobody ever taught us how to deal with our humanity, they didn't teach us how to deal with our bodily sensations, with our emotions and with our thoughts, we are taught to believe that If the thought's happening up here, it must be true. When in fact, psychologists and scientists will tell you 90 to 95% of the thoughts generating automatically in your mind are false or irrational in one way or another. And then those false thoughts produce a physiological reaction. We know they do that because if you're speaking out loud and you're hooked up to a lie detector machine, And you tell that lie detector machine a lie, your physiology changes, your heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure all go up, and as does perspiration rate. And so we know that thoughts either in the head or spoken out loud that aren't true, the body registers those in a negative way. We have a truth meter as body, as one of my teachers taught me. And therefore, we can be self-correcting if we learn to challenge those thoughts and also to look at the emotions that come from them, because mostly negative emotions are coming from false thoughts. And so most people are so embroiled in false thoughts, negative emotions and false plans for the future and false ideas about the future and all the anxiety that that creates. that they have so much trouble being human and just calming down. They can never get access to their right brain because all that's left brain stuff. And their right brain is automatically connected to the divine. And, you know, you have heard of mindfulness and meditation practices and prayer and centering prayer and probably have taught all that. That's how we gain access to the right brain. But we don't get that access unless we know how to deal with the left brain, the humanity, the thinking and the feeling. So when people come to me now because I work one on one most of the time, I first assess them and look at, okay, what's going on with you? And where's your primary pain going on in your life? Then I teach them how to deal with thoughts and feelings. And in the middle of that somewhere, I slip in meditation and mindfulness practice. And I show them that some of them are already doing mindfulness practice when they go hunting or fishing or golfing or sewing or knitting or cooking. or mowing the lawn and just getting lost in the scenery. So I try to help people, starting where they are, to go as far as they want to out of their suffering and into a sense of wholeness as a human being. That's the work that I love to do and what I've been doing for 25 years. In the meantime, once my own trauma came out, I also became a trauma treatment specialist. I became a suicide prevention specialist, even though that didn't prevent one person in my practice from ending their life once, which was horrifying. And that's the work that I do now with people. And I've summarized all that in a book called Being Human and Waking Up. And I'm going to give your listeners that. If they listen to the end of our broadcast, I'll let them know how they can get a free copy of that book.

Outstanding. We appreciate that. OK, man, but I mean, that's a great story, man. You do a lot of impactful things.

Thank you, from one person who is to another, I think. Thank you.

Thank you. So let me ask you a question, Jon. What inspired your journey into spiritual leadership?

Actually, it was a confusing inspiration. At first, I wanted to be one of those great leaders that I'd studied with. And over time, I began to realize that that was the wrong model for human beings, that we really don't belong in models or hierarchies where we're putting someone on a pedestal and trying to be like them, what we actually need is to be shown that we are already unique and equal and special in that way that we're entirely unique. There will never be another creature like us in the known universe. And so what I've tried to do, rather than be one of those teachers, and honestly, too, I think the Lord has prevented me from being one of those teachers, you know, is I've been kind of set here to teach people, you've got everything you need right here, you just have to access it. Don't look at me and think I'm somebody special. let me reflect to you that you are already what you're looking for, that you already have awakening within you. You just have to uncover it. Your connection to the divine is sound and is present as the breath coming out of your nostrils. And so that really has inspired me. It's sort of that empowering people rather than being the cult leader or the special teacher or, you know, the the saint who hugs millions of people every year and is thought to be, you know, an avatar. I wanted to just bring spirituality and healing to people as an equal.

And one thing, you know, I realize is that. A lot of people, I feel, you know, whatever they go through in life, a lot of the overthinking and things like that, and like you just mentioned, everything that you're looking for is right inside of you. Right. It's right there. You're looking for all those other places or people or organizations or whatever the case may be, you know, to make you whole or get you to walk in your purpose or be who you really are in life. But it's all inside of you. Because like you said, that's not another you. You're your own authentic self.

That's right. And your authentic self. I mean, in the Hindu tradition that I'm most familiar with, They say, this individual consciousness, so Reggie over in that chair over there, is God itself sitting on the chair. Exactly. And the Sanskrit for that, three words of Sanskrit, only about the only three I know is, I am Atman Brahman, right? This individual consciousness is Brahman or God itself.

Exactly. And I've heard somebody say that before, and it makes you look at it in a certain way. You say, okay, we got God, he's up there and he's a spirit and all of this stuff, but the work has to be done through us at the end of the day. And that's just what people got to realize is that when you're here on earth, you're here for a specific reason. When you get that in your mind, Then you can get rid of all the negatives, all the crap, because once you get aligned and know what you're here for, you can stay focused on it. But as long as you don't know it, you're going to be all over the place.

You know, it's an important part of becoming a whole human being is understanding your uniqueness and then using as many of the gifts as you can, as often as you can, preferably in your vocation or your occupation, but just in general in your life. If you're doing that, you're going to feel a very deep sense of satisfaction. And it does help. But it's also really helpful just to start with certain basic practices like challenging every thought, in your mind that makes you feel bad. You start to challenge those thoughts, you create a new set of neural pathways in your brain that says, is that thought really true? What about that one? Oh, and there's that one again. I've heard that one 500 times this week. That's still definitely a lie, right? So we, you know, we, once we understand our uniqueness, It is a great motivator, but the other great motivator is if we're suffering as human beings, and it's not because of outward circumstance, something's wrong. I'm sitting at my desk eating my sandwich and before that, I'm feeling great. And after that, I feel like crap. Then something's going on up here that some people call stinking thinking. In AA and NA meetings, I know they call it that. And that's going to mess you up and could be messing you up for the rest of the day. So that's also part of, hey, if I want to serve in my unique capacity, I got to get rid of all the stuff in the way. And so I really like to help people do that. And I've outlined the very simple ways for people to do that.

And that's the thing about, you know, simplicity is the thing. I interviewed a guy one time. I never thought about this out of everything I do. He mentioned something. He said, you know, when I wake up every day, he said, I never had a bad day. You know, I have situations. But I don't have a bad day. He said he don't put that in his mind that I got a bad day. One situation for one moment did take the whole day.

Well, that's right. And, you know, I talked to somebody about that this week. I said, you realize that, you know, that was only an incident that lasted about 10 minutes, but now you're calling the whole day bad because of that incident. I said, do you realize you've kind of ruined the rest of your experience? And like him, we want to confine the difficulty to that time period which it's going on. We don't want to spread it out and make it seem like it's the whole of our life.

That's it. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's very, very powerful. So John, out of all you do, what are the biggest challenges you've faced on your journey? And how did you overcome them?

I think fear is always the biggest challenge on the journey. And you overcome it by understanding that a lot of it is based on, well, there's two bases for fear. One is our mind responds to any person, place, thing or activity that's new as if it's threatening. And there's more adrenaline in our system. And we have to understand that that's natural in order to do anything new at all. The second thing is we have to look at what our thoughts actually are that are preventing us from doing what we really want to do and to see if they're truthful or accurate. I mean, you know, if I'm going to try to repel down the face of the cliff and I've never done it before and I think I can watch a YouTube video, you know, and learn how to do it. I might be upside down my head broken open you know by the end of that attempt. So there's some thoughts that I really want to take seriously like yeah if I'm going to repel down a cliff face I need to learn from somebody else who's an expert. But there are other things like Oh, no, there's alien bases on the dark side of the moon. I've got to go dig a shelter in the backyard and, you know, put a year's worth of goods in there and hide everybody like, yeah, I don't really want to pay attention to that one, you know. So I think it's really fear and overcoming fear. But also the other big thing is in the Western traditions, religious and spiritual traditions, we're taught that just because we were born as human beings, we're wicked or bad or wrong or not good enough. So the other big challenge that I've always had, and not everybody that I work with has this, is it's kind of like the black hole of the mind. It just pulls everything in gravitationally, just destroys your life if you believe that you're not good enough, you're bad or wrong or wicked just because you were born. And so I think those two things together, the fear that you have to really confront directly and that really deeply held belief that there's something wrong with us as human beings. Those are the two things that I've overcome that I think are the most important things to overcome for human beings.

If you hit it right on the head, you know, I always tell people a lot of times, man, when your thoughts and your feelings, I mean, it dictates your life. That's right. You know, I mean, when you look at it in that perspective, and it's like, break it down into two things, your thoughts, and your feelings. That's all you got to deal with right now. That's right. It will dictate your whole life. You know, so you got to figure out, you know, what you think, how you think, Yeah.

What are you feeling? And why? And then also even, OK, I'm feeling this. What do I do with it? So one of the other things that I did after I left the call was I had a trained voice. I had two Broadway coaches telling me I could sing on Broadway. And I had to learn to be an actor to do that. So I went to method acting and discovered you could create all kinds of real emotion in your body that an audience could feel. based on a story you made up in your head. In other words, a lie. And so if you don't know that the feeling is coming from a lie and you act on it, it's going to make your life a mess. But if that feeling is coming because, for instance, your grandma just passed away, you never realized how deeply you loved until she died. Now you realize you've got this huge heart and you're grieving for her for years, right? Then it's like, oh, that's useful information. The insight is I have a deep level of love for other human beings. I only found that out because of my grief. But now that emotion is going to move me to be more loving and kinder and to be more involved in people's lives and to show them attention when they need it. And that's the right use of emotion, but nobody ever teaches us that either because they never got it taught to them. So it's even, what do I even do with the emotion? And honestly, most of us, we're just ignorant about our emotions until somebody finally says, do you realize you're feeling angry right now? And you're like, oh, oh, I guess you're right. And especially if they say it in a way that's not making it wrong, that you're feeling angry. Right. So, yeah, we understand a lot of the same things, you and I. And I think your audience probably gets a kick out of that because they probably know you really well and know how much you understand. Here I am, a novice, recognizing this about you, and they're thinking, oh, come on, this guy doesn't know Richie very well.

Yeah, yeah, we got a lot in common. We got a lot of, you know, same thought process about things, because I just feel like, you know, such as yourself, got a passion for people, want to help people. And try to do it the best way you can and try to teach them the right way to do things, the right way to process things. At the end of the day, because people would come to me with stuff, John, and I'm like, and be all on fire. I mean, over the top, I'm like, man, it was just this. Okay, fix it. You know, we're good, we all right, you know? And they just lose it. It's just one thing after another, they're thinking this, they're thinking that, they're like thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I think a lot of that, when you're in that state of mind, that you're always just over the top about every little thing that doesn't go right, or you're away. So I think it creates more anxiety and all those other things that come on people.

Right. And, you know, it's very hard to be understood if you're always reactive and popping off like that. It's very hard for anybody to empathize with you. And the other thing I would say is if you're having that level of reactivity a lot, you may be a trauma survivor yourself. You may have PTSD. You certainly have some kind of nervous system condition that's bothering you. And that could come from a long history of being traumatized. You know, and lots of people are traumatized for lots of reasons. You know, growing up, I was one of the only Jewish kids in my school. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm guessing that you suffered prejudice in the South growing up, you know, so just the trauma of not being seen on a regular basis because of your race or your religion. that's enough to give you enough tension and anxiety in your system, enough guardedness on a regular basis that you are ready to pop off. Or either that or you're just so tightly bound that nobody can get in and nothing can then get out. You're just sort of withdrawn, right? That's kind of two reactions we see to those problems. I think Because nobody recognizes our emotions with us, or very few people do, we tend not to recognize them ourselves. Then we don't know what to do. We're just confused and all over the place and kind of digging ourselves a hole. Not helpful, right?

No, not at all. Not at all. And let me ask you this question, and I'm pretty sure there's some people out here in this situation. What advice would you give someone who might feel trapped in some type of manipulative group or environment, you know, things like that, you know, some people get bound on a lot of things, you know, saying that, hey, this is the way life's supposed to be, or even parents raising kids, like, hey, this is what your life's going to be, this is what you're supposed to do, and everybody feels, you know, trapped, you know, in life and can't live the life they want to do. So, what would you say to someone that feels like they're stuck in something like that?

Well, I think if they're physically dependent on the people that they're trapped with, they've got to find a way to become physically independent of them. And, you know, it's very complicated because if they're just emotionally or mentally trapped or they're trapped by doctrine or dogma or thinking that they're going to disappoint God if they leave this group, then they have to look deeply inside of themselves and say, can I absolutely know that this is the final word on life or reality or God? Do I really know for sure that these people are telling me the truth? Because everybody has an inborn sense that something's off, if it's off. If somebody's lying to you or you're lying to yourself or they're manipulating you, you will feel it. You will feel resentment about it. And that's real emotion that could be used to give you some energy to change your circumstance. But, you know, if you're physically dependent, you have to change very carefully because you don't want to be homeless on the street and starving. Right? You've got to find a way to get some money together or find a safe place to go, like a shelter. I know women in domestic violence situations who go to shelters, kids who end up in shelters. But it's really important to reach out to a safe person and tell them you're in trouble. And that's the beginning of the way out. And, you know, it could be a grandparent. It could be a cousin. It could be a best friend. It could be a best friend's parents. You know, and if you're being assaulted at home or beaten, or you're in some cult that's making you work 100 hours a week, somebody's going to help you. When I lived in the cult and I was leaving, I fortunately had a job in an engineering firm. I ran a word processing center when it was new technology in 1981. And my boss, if it wasn't for her, I would not probably have had a job and a home and a car. and that woman is still my friend to this day. We still see each other a couple times a year, even though she's about 45-50 minutes away. So there is somebody that you know who is a safe person for you if you're in that stuck situation. Go to them first and then talk it out with them, figure out how to get out of the situation without losing your livelihood, your home, your safety. That's what I would start with. And, you know, in terms of cults, I certainly work with people who've come out a lot of different kinds of cults, and even people who consider some of the major denominations to be cults. I work with a lot, for instance, of former Catholics, who really got disenchanted with the church because of the priest scandals. And they really are very spiritual people. They really love God and want to know God. But they can't tolerate that somebody is telling them how to have a relationship with the divine, since they are already that and already have that in them. And so, you know, there is plenty of help. You just have to start looking. And then also, you have to listen to the inner voice that says, this doesn't feel right to me. Something's wrong with this. And don't just dismiss that as, oh, I'm being bad. But if you keep having that, you've got to say, how come I keep having the same thoughts? This isn't right. Maybe I ought to listen to myself. And that's also important to get out of that stuck situation. Don't let somebody else give you two bad choices like I got. Like, well, you can move the pews back in the church and be doubly damned to hell, or you can break your vows and leave the church and get AIDS and go to hell. I'm like, wait a minute, who's making those choices for me? Somebody else. Are they the choices that I would make for myself? No. Oh, maybe there's something wrong with those people. Maybe they're not so holy after all if they're using fear to intimidate me into doing what they want. Maybe they're just manipulating me with their doctrine and their dogma. And that's often the case. You know how employers can manipulate you into doing too much work. And so your parents can, your teachers can, anybody in authority can, because we're raised to think the authority is right. But that is often not true.

And I look at it like this. If it doesn't feel right, 9 times out of 10 is not right.

Correct. You have a deep intuition of what's true. And if your body is in even small anxiety for a long period of time because of some outside force, you got to be looking closely at that and saying, is that person scaring me? Is that the way I want to live my life? That's a long answer again to a short question. I hope it's OK.

No, it's okay, because it fell into my next question, so you answered everything.

Okay, good. All right.

So, I love it, Jon. I love it. So, lastly, how can my listeners follow you on social media or on Substack and learn more about your work or purchase your books?

Well, thank you. First of all, again, I want to ask your audience to give you likes and five star reviews, to thank you from their hearts for doing what you do, and to find me, I'm going to give them a free PDF copy of my latest book, Being Human and Waking Up, and they can get that and a free 15-minute consult by writing to me, support at simplyawake.com. So that's all they have to do, right, to support at simplyawake, which is all one word, .com. And when I have their email, I will send them a PDF and a link for a free 15-minute consult. And I'll also send them all my website and other information in that email. So they don't have to remember anything, but support at simplyawake.com right now. That'll give them everything else they need. 

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, John. Thank you so much. You're very welcome, Reggie. Jon Labman, man, I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by. It's been a blast. I mean, I really enjoyed you. 

Thank you so much. And I enjoyed you too. Yes, sir. Many blessings on your work. All right. Same to you. 

Same to you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Real Talk with Reginald D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk with Reginald D, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. See you next time.