God, Religion, and SpiritualityGod, Religion, and Spirituality
Katherine Arati Maas
Katherine Arati Maas reflects on how addiction, early religious experiences and a powerful moment in a yoga class pushed her towards sobriety and a personal spiritual path. She contrasts religion and spirituality, sharing how meditation, yoga and nature help her reshape her understanding of God in recovery.
0:00•28 Jun 2016
God, Religion and Sobriety: Katherine Arati Maas Shares Her Spiritual Story
Episode Overview
- Addiction is described as a "spiritual dis-ease" that cannot be healed by ignoring the inner life.
- Sobriety began when Katherine heard a powerful inner message during yoga telling her to stop drinking.
- Meditation, yoga and self-realisation teachings became key tools for rebuilding her spiritual connection.
- She highlights that religion can be dogmatic, while spirituality is about lived experience and what you feel to be true.
- Nature, simple acts of love and daily practice are presented as ways to feel closer to God in recovery.
“I received a message within my body, so it came from within. However, it wasn't me... there was like a balloon floating over my head saying, stop.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? This conversation with host Katherine Arati Maas takes a raw, honest look at how God, religion, and spirituality can shape sobriety and recovery. Aimed at women in recovery from alcohol, drugs, food issues, or any pattern that’s no longer serving them, the episode blends story-telling with gentle questioning.
Katherine shares how she grew up in a Protestant church, sitting in pews and zoning out, never really feeling a personal connection to God. As a teenager and young adult, she tried on labels like agnostic and atheist, partly because religion didn’t feel "cool" and partly to distance herself from politics tied to faith.
Katherine talks about travelling to India for silent meditation retreats, studying Buddhism and Hindu texts like the Bhagavad Gita, and then encountering Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which she says "changed my life." Through self-realisation practices, meditation, and yoga, she began rebuilding her inner life and even reconnecting with the teachings of Jesus in a new way, calling herself a kind of "yogini Christian." She draws a clear line between religion as a man-made structure and spirituality as lived experience, stressing that you can be religious without feeling spiritual, spiritual without religion, or both.
Alcohol entered the picture at 14, escalated through her twenties, and left her, in her words, "spiritually bankrupt." The turning point came during a yoga class: "I received a message within my body... there was like a balloon floating over my head saying, stop." That inner voice led to sobriety and a deep spiritual search.
Again and again she returns to the idea that addiction is "a spiritual dis-ease" and that many of us feel a deep malaise when we ignore our inner life. By the end, you’re left with practical questions: What does God mean to you? What do you feel to be true, not just think? And are you ready to let your heart, not just your head, have a say in your recovery?
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