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- [00:00]
A
Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found
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B
a great car at a great price.
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A
No secret treasure map required. Did you have to fight a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. I'm walking into a church with its priesthoods and tithing and sex scandals and abuse of women, and I'm saying you've had a monopoly on some of these. Good stuff. I'm taking it back. I'm taking awe back. I'm taking ritual back. You don't own it. I'm taking confession back. But now it just means honesty and repair, not sin management. And we're taking spirituality back. And saying that I'm a spiritual atheist is just a shortened way to say that I'm taking all of that back. And anyone leaving that space that found value in any of that stuff, bring it over. We want it on our team. Just leave the bathwater.
- [01:23]
B
Over the years here at Conspirituality, we've come to see that many of our listeners feel a little lost after leaving a cult, transitioning out of fundamentalist religion, or letting go of using conspiracy theories to make sense of the world. They may have come to realize the supposedly enlightened guru they revered as holy or even divine had feet of clay or much worse. Or that the anti Western medicine, wellness and New Age beliefs they once found empowering were not only false but dangerous. What then is often the question. Are we now forced to choose between meaning, beauty, purpose, community, flow, state experiences and a sense of the sacred on one hand or on the other, a life of dry calculation based on emotionless science and reason obligated to sneer at anything too touchy feely? My guest today, Britt Hartley, has thought and written and posted extensively on social media about exactly this topic. She has a master's in theology, is currently working on a doctoral Dissertation, has a YouTube channel called no Nonsense Spirituality with 88,000 subscribers and an Instagram account of the same name with 255,000 followers. I think this is all built pretty quickly as well. She's also the author of the recently published book no Nonsense Spirituality, all the tools, no Belief required. Brit, thank you so much for being here.
- [02:48]
A
My pleasure.
- [02:49]
B
So I'm Julian Walker. You're listening to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudo science, and authoritarian extremism. You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or if you just want to get our bonus episodes right in your feed via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we appreciate your support. Okay, so Britt Hartley, here we are. I've enjoyed following your work for several months now, but what motivated today's conversation is that a long time prominent, you could even say famous atheist named Matt Dillahunty decided to launch a critique of your work. You were described as friendly fire, titled Spirituality is Nonsense, which is clearly a reference to your name, no Nonsense Spirituality. You've since responded. I want to talk more about your work in general because I think our listeners might find it really useful. But first, can you catch us up the drama here and what happened.
- [03:58]
A
So, yeah, I'm not sure how I got on Matt Dillahunty's radar. I don't have a team, I don't have a secretary. I'm, I'm still a pretty small fish in that, in that big atheist space, especially with atheist youtubers. So I'm actually not sure how I got on his radar. But essentially he made a video and what it really represented is like this thing is not interesting because it's me versus Matt Dillahunty. Like no one should care about that that much. What, what the conversation represents is this split that's happening in the atheist community. And that's why this is interesting. And Matt Dillahunty, the video specifically, but also just that kind of brand of atheism is just is so skeptical to the point that anything that sounds like spirituality, anything that sounds like religion, anything that sounds like woo woo is just instantly bullshit. Like we need to rid ourselves of this rationality is the only thing that we can depend on. And it's this very a kind of new atheist loves to debate form of atheism. And then there's this other aspect of atheism that I'm more aligned with personally that says, hey, we co evolved with Religion for a reason. There are tools here that have been housed in religion and spirituality that we can still be skeptical. We can still be atheists, but we can start to take some of these tools that can help people in the meaning crisis. They can help people deconstruct. This would be like Sam Harris, who also claims the word spirituality. This would be Elaine De Baton, who did this really incredible TED talk called Atheism 2.0, where he talked about, like, hey, we need to provide something more than just making fun of religious people. Like, atheism as a. As a culture in America has to be more than that. And so there's. The reason that the Matt Dillahunty video is interesting is, again, not because it's. It's some personal beef. I've never, you know, I had never met the guy before then. I had never even, you know, interacted on social media. It's interesting because, like, is something we need to talk about in the secular space, which is like, is there room in the secular space for what we're calling spirituality, for talking about things like ritual or transcendent experience? And one of the examples that I give in my video response is that 2/3 of atheists who do mushrooms no longer self identify as atheists after. And it's not because they believe in God again. They don't go back to church or religion. It's because they had an experience that they feel too embarrassed to talk about in atheist and secular spaces. There's no language for it. And so they find themselves having an experience that they. It's almost like they're having a full human experience that they can't take to their atheist friends. And so they start not calling themselves an atheist. And we have to talk in the atheist community about how there's a lot of people who are calling themselves agnostic because they don't want to be that annoying, militant atheist, or they're having experiences that they feel like atheism is too limiting for. So it's just part of the. This broader conversation in the secular community, which is how much of all this stuff that comes from religion and spirituality, how much of that can we take in to the secular community? And how much of it is bullshit that we need to push back on. And there are kind of two pretty clear stances in the atheist community that my conversation with Matt represents. Yeah.
- [07:31]
B
And it seems like that sort of more conventional or familiar argument would say, well, you're going down this road where, you know, you're. You're leaving an opening for things that are Vague. And that sort of imply that there's something beyond our everyday experience that can be accessed. And that just really, it just sounds like you're taking some sort of superstitious or supernatural set of beliefs and wrapping them up in new language and therefore that, you know, we should be suspicious of that.
- [08:03]
A
Yeah. And I think we should always keep our suspicions. Like, I never want to advocate for leaving rationality at the door. I will never again, as an ex Mormon, go into a space where I have to check my skepticism at the door. I'm never going to do that to myself again. So, yes, there is a valid concern that by even using the word spirituality, we're smuggling in some bullshit that we don't want. And, you know, that's a valid concern, but I think overall it's still better to do so, because I think the meaning crisis is something that we have to address. And there are tools in that umbrella that we call spirituality that I think can help people. And also, I don't think that there's a better word. You know, Sam Harris spent hours, days to try to find a better word for his book Waking up than spirituality. And we just don't have one in secularism, which is why we come up with these dual terms like secular atheist or. So secular spirituality or spiritual atheist. We don't have a word that means states of transcendence and awe and community and ritual and rites of passage and meaning and purpose. We don't have a secular word that encapsulates all that. So some of it is a language issue and some of it, you know, but. But to me, I just. I'm really a big fan of not letting religion, having, have the monopoly over this word that I think it does. Secularism and atheism. I think it does us a service to try to recapture this word that religion has had a monopoly over. I think that that helps us more than hurts us. But I could be wrong, which is why we need to have these conversations.
- [09:42]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll. We'll find out. So I'm glad you mentioned it, because you grew up Mormon and then left the church. And like many atheists, certainly like all three of us hosts on this podcast, you've maintained a deep interest in religion, in studying religion, understanding religion, how it functions, the needs that it serves, what can be toxic and dehumanizing about, but also, as you've just been saying, what might be worth salvaging. So, curious about your journey, how all of this that I just described led you to the work that you're Doing now?
- [10:14]
A
Good question. So I'll just, you know, I could do my whole Mormon story, but I'll just do a piece of it. So when I, I left Mormonism because of a dive into polygamy, and everyone who's Christian just says, oh, you have the wrong Jesus. And I was like, okay, I just have the wrong Jesus. So I go into kind of traditional Christianity and theology school. I specifically was studying open and rel theology. And what I got good at in theology school, which led me to my complete loss of faith, was I got really good at, you know, tell me a society, tell me its hierarchy, tell me how dependent on agriculture it is, tell me about its flooding, tell me about it, and I will give you the God that they would have created and I would be right. And I got really good at it, not just societally, but also individually. Like, tell me your core values and I'll tell you who your Jesus is when you read the Scriptures. And I got really good at it. And at the beginning it was just like, oh, these are different facets of God and God's revealing himself to man. I had apologetic ways, but then the further I got in it, I began to realize that, oh, I think we're the ones creating God rather than God creating us. Because I could see as soon as the society would change, the God would change too. And I could predict what would happen and how that would happen. And so that to me opened the door to looking at secular arguments for why we co evolved with religion and the cognitive science of religion and their arguments for why we are the way that we are were better than the theological ones. And I lost my faith. But what I needed in that moment is that Mormonism or Christianity, they had given me an identity, a community, a way to raise a family, rituals, holidays, a liturgical calendar, meaning, purpose. I mean, they had given me a lot of tools to help me function in life. And for me, the death of God, some of it was freeing, but a lot of it was terrifying. I didn't know how to reorient myself. I didn't know how to make decisions. I didn't, I didn't know how to raise. I didn't know how to live a meaningful life when you know that it ends. I didn't know how to face existential fears that now came up with the death of God. And so for me, a lot of my work is how can I get all the tools that were the reasons why we co evolved with religion, all the tools from that space, dust off the dogma and the bullshit and actually get tools for living, you know, a life on the other side. And I found, like. And I found that just leaving religion was not enough for me, that I still needed tool for life. And so secular spirituality really helped me rebuild. And I think it's a space that secularism and atheism need a lot more of. I don't have to abandon my atheism or my skepticism to dive into, for example, like, the science of rituals or the science of transcendent experience. I can keep my skepticism with me and still value some of these things that have been previously housed in religion. So that's kind of what my work is now. I'm really about the baby and want to get rid of as much bath water as possible.
- [13:16]
B
Yeah, that's well said. And it strikes me that some of what you're naming is, okay, there, there are religious frameworks that give us plenty of bad answers to important questions. And so when you let go of the bad answers or the, or the answers that are maybe incomplete or problematic in certain ways, it's not enough to just get rid of those now. The, the questions remain, right? Like, how do. How do I live my life? And, and what, what can I draw upon? And one of the things I, I often find my. About religious scriptures is, you know, I can name a hundred different books that are. That are more useful and insightful and wise and have advanced our. Our human inquiry further than that scripture on this topic and this topic and this topic. And why, why not draw on that stuff?
- [14:02]
A
Yeah, definitely. So, like, for me, like, I have books that are now like my scripture, right? And then I have, like, it's really great for kids, for example, to hold hands at dinner time and say something to mark your values. Now, I didn't want to do a prayer anymore, but I wanted my k. Have that. It really reduces anxiety in children. So, okay, what's something that I can say? What's, you know, I used to have Christian art on the wall. What's something I can put in the wall that represents our family values? Now, what's something that I can do on Sunday to do moral education without it, including scriptures about genocide and slavery? Because there's got to be better moral books than books that include genocide and slavery. So it's, it's. It's almost like using the template of religion because religion evolved with us to respond to human needs and kind of reordering that so that we don't need any bullshit or any supernatural beliefs at all. I do all of this without any metaphysical beliefs at all these are just tools that help you to live for me, the good life.
- [15:05]
B
Yeah. And it's interesting too, as you're talking, I'm thinking about there's almost a division in there as well between finding better answers or more evidence based tools for dealing with the different anxieties that religion has. Has been used for traditionally. But then there's also. There's another piece in there which is tolerating uncertainty. Right. And, and accepting the unknown. And in fact having the unknown and the uncertainty be a doorway into awe, which is which. Which has all kinds of spiritual overtones but is categorically different than saying, well it's, it's, it's because of this God that this proph. Existed and that's, that's where the unknown inevitably leads.
- [15:47]
A
Yeah. And this is the one of the straw men that I really called out of Matt Dillahunty's video because when he was talking about the definition of spirituality which included awe, he kind of defined that as something out of the ordinary. And so his example was the first time you listened to the Beatles after they went to India and George is playing a sitar and it's Indian Thai music that's out of the ordinary. So awe is just a word for, I don't know, something that's different for you. And that to me is actually str. Straw manning. The science of what we have on the Science of Awe. We can see awe in your brain. We can see when you're experiencing it, but also we can study it in your behavior. We see that you increase generosity, that you decrease resentment, that you feel like you have more time, that you feel like you're more aligned with your core values. And so these experiences that Matt kind of straw man just saying, oh, it's anything out of the ordinary. No, we have solid science showing that your default mode network in your brain calms down the one that's self obsess and neurotic and your ego and you feel more connected. It changes your behavior. We can track all of that with science and say this is something within the realm of human experience. And I don't have to claim anything metaphysical about that to say, hey, this is something good in my life. How do I experience awe outside of religion? Kind of curating these moments for me and calling it God. How do I actually experience this? And that's going to open up a different kind of path, which I would say is a spiritual path. But I think mat underestimated the science that we have on something like awe, that it's More than just hyperbole, because he just called this hyperbole that you're just exaggerating. And to me, I think we have a lot more science saying this is something that humans experience that we need to talk about. We need to have language for otherwise religion has a monopoly on anyone who has that experience because they're the only game in town.
- [17:42]
B
It's so interesting because I feel like you're, you're on different philosophical streams, right? He's essentially saying you can't rely on, on what has traditionally been called religious experiences in an epistemological way to make claims about ultimate reality. And you're saying, well, yeah, but those experiences, there's a reason they are ubiquitous in human cultures across time. Because they, they, they provide some sort of sense of, of expansion and meaning and depth and connection and, and of what we only know how to call the sacred. And as long as you're embracing the phenomenological sort of ubiquity of these experiences in ways that we can then scientifically show are beneficial, you don't need to have that extra step. You can remove that extra step of saying, well, this proves that there's an immaterial realm or that God created all of us.
- [18:32]
A
Absolutely. Because he talks about that in his video. That spirituality is some proposition that you need to have evidence for, to claim. And like you're saying, like it doesn't have to be that way. Like we have done, especially in the west, we've done spiritual in a way where we have these lodge, you know, we have these prepositional truth claims about God or Jesus or, or, you know, the Quran or whatever it is. But that is not how. That is not, that's, that's not in the definition that he even used. That it has to include prep. Propositions, logical propositions about the metaphysical. That was not in his definition at all. Which is why Carl Sagan says, hey, in this definition that I'm looking at in the dictionary for spirituality, it doesn't say, it has to include the. And so Carl Sagan was very comfortable with using the word spirituality. Like he said, science to me is spiritual. Like he used that word because for him it didn't require that you have to use the supernatural. And so I think Matt is really coming at this from a post Abrahamic religion tradition where you, where you look at religion as what it's claiming about metaphysics and then you have to prove it. But I think that's just a very limited way to look at the word spirituality. And that like you say we can look at this from bottom up. That it appears that humans have these experiences. I don't know what they mean about the metaphysics of ultimate reality. I don't claim to know. I let that go a long time ago. But we can still build life from the bottom up rather than top down. And he's only looking at spirituality as if it has to be top down. It has to be. It has to be theology that you prove from the heavens down. And I just think that, that, that may be like what we've done with Abrahamic religion, but that's not all of what spirituality is, and that's not specified in the he even used.
- [20:23]
B
Yeah, it makes me wonder how much of this is. Is temperament based. Right? What, like, what kind of person are you? Because I feel like something you and I have in common. And I think we would have in common with Sam Harris as well. And even though I know a lot of our listeners don't like Sam Harris for various reasons, which is fair.
- [20:37]
A
Like all the. Yeah, that's fair.
- [20:39]
B
What we, what we maybe have in common is like, he's a longtime meditator. He's someone who's taken a lot of psychedelics. He's someone who started off as a philosopher, like, really interested in and studying religion, like you and I and like my colleagues here. Like, what. What's really going on with this and what. There's a curiosity about entering into experience. And so I know that's something you and I have in common as well as contemplative practices as this sort of rich source of an experiential spirituality that doesn't involve cognitive closure around any sort of supernaturalism. And I want to know if that sounds right to you in terms of your process, because I know that right now, and it's. It's maybe a fairly recent thing or something you fairly recently started talking about in public. You've been studying Sufism, them. I don't know if you love poetry as much as I do, but I'm a huge fan of Rumi and Hafez, and I've been teaching yoga for 30 years, and I have so many of those poems just in my mind to use at different moments when I'm. When I'm pointing to specific experiential doorways. And that all makes perfect sense to me. But I know that both, a lot of atheists, or perhaps even people who hear this podcast and don't know about that part of my life, they're scratching their heads going like, wait, what are you talking about? And Vice versa. Like all the people who've studied yoga with me for 30 years when they hear that I do all this work that's profoundly scandalous, skeptical and opposed to pseudoscience and debunking cults, they're like, but wait, shouldn't like that, that doesn't make sense. Aren't you one of us who believes all of this kind of more woo woo stuff? So how do you personally unpack all of this in terms of now being open about your Sufism and your exploration you even refer to as mysticism. So tell us more.
- [22:13]
A
Yeah, I'll do, I'll do kind of two different, There's a lot in there. So yeah, there is a difference between what Matt and I do in the world. And so my argument that I did at the end of the was I kind of just said, hey Matt, like I'm not at all trying to do what you do. Like he has a space in the secular world and value in what he does. Like you need, when you have theologians, especially the ones that are bullies, you need someone who's going to be really tough in those scenarios. And Matt Dillahunty does it better, does that side of things better than anyone. And so my argument to Matt was like, I don't need to be you and you don't need to be me. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm not arguing that Matt all of a sudden turn in, you know, to some woo spiritual guy and start being a spiritual director. That's not his role in the world. My argument to Matt was in secularism. There's space for both of us. There is space for hard hitting debates where people can watch a chess match of arguments play out in real time, which can sometimes change people's minds and change people's perspectives. And there is value than that. Like me as a, as a religious person watching Christopher Hitchens absolutely changed my mind on some of the value and valid validity of some of the arguments used by theologians. Like it was helpful to me. There is space for that, but there's also space for what I'm doing. There's also space for what you're doing and, and, and you know, the yoga and the poetry and all these things and there's value in it for one, you know, that hard hitting debate side of things there, especially women, they don't tend to orient themselves in that way. They tend to be more relational by nature. By nature. Nurture, I don't know. But you know, there's a lot of women that are really turned off by that kind of behavior, that they just don't want to participate in secularism or atheism, if that's what it's about. And so there's got to be, there's got to be more space for exploration of the fullness of what it means to be human, of, of how to raise children, of how to have peak experiences and have language for them. For someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali who, you know, left Islam but then ended up in Christianity, like, one of my arguments is I think that we as secularists failed her. Like, if all we do is debate, if all we do is just tell people they're wrong about religion and she's in an existential crisis with no tools, getting nihilistic, and she ends up in a Christian church. You know, I think people like me in this space do help. Like, and so my argument to Matt was, hey, we can be, even though we have different roles in the secular space, that's fine. But there's room for what I do, just like there's room for what you do. Now, as far as studying Sufism, I find that mysticism is a really great place to explore spirituality outside of religion. Because what mysticism is, is mysticism focuses on the experience of what people have called God without putting any language around it, without putting any dogma around it, without putting a religion around it, without putting a building around it. So when you get together with mystics, there'll be Sufi mystics and Christian mystics and mushroom mystics and atheist mystics, and they all get along because nobody's converting each other. There's no truth claims, there's dogmas. These are just different paths and different ways that people experience the kind of transcendent experiences that we were talking about. And so for me, it's been a great place to explore experience based spirituality without getting drug into all of the theological debates around it, which is what religion does. And I find that there are tools there. So I've been working with my sufi teacher for 20 years now, and I find it to be a valuable space for inner work and exploration. And I'm totally, totally, to use other words than God, because for me that word comes with a little bit of baggage. And I can explore that space and still hold on to all of my skepticism and atheism. It's okay that I consider this to be something happening at the level of the brain. That's fine. Nobody cares in mysticism because it's about the experience, not about the dogma. So for me, it's just been a great place to explore and get more tools for life that don't require faith, which is what I'm about.
- [26:33]
B
It's so fascinating because I honestly, and not to, not to blow you up too much, but I feel like that that's a rare combination of things. Right? And I think this is one of the reason why old school atheists are a lot more skeptical about what the type of things you're saying. I agree with you. I have the same sort of experience. But it's like I feel like for most people I've ever encountered in this domain, the deeper, often the deeper they go into experiential practices that deconstruct, you know, psychological defenses that open them up to certain emotions that, that flow states and ultra states of consciousness. And Samadhi, you know, deep meditation, it tends to end up blurring the lines around reason and evidence. It tends to, to, to lead to having more openness to magical thinking. Right. About how, how the world works, especially in the new age community. Right. People tend to say, well you know, I, I was, I was maybe skeptical when I was younger and then I sat with this guru and I had this, this big sort of energetic or, or consciousness expanding experience. And now I think everything happens for a reason. And you know, when I bought my house it had to have certain numbers in the address or else I, I didn't think it would have, you know, it would be synchronistically auspicious for, for, you know, the numerology of my, my wife or whatever. Like there's, there's a way that these, there's some kind of overlap in there that I think is very, very, very common. And I'm just curious what you think about that. If you've observed that with, with a lot of the people that you work with, if, if you've had those tendencies and sort of thought your way out of them or if that's just not the case for you, that for you those things are really clear, which is actually how it's always been for me. It's been like, no, that's an amazing experience. But it doesn't mean that the, the everyday outside world functions in any. The outside world is untouched by my experience of transcendence. I just returned to it in a new way. But there's nothing like the world is not somehow now magical or supernatural.
- [28:41]
A
Right. This is somewhere where I have to credit Mormonism for giving me my skepticism. So because I was raised Mormon and Sam Harris has said this about Mormons, he said that no one is more ardent in their atheism than ex Mormons. And one of the reasons for that is that Mormons have had experiences around historical truths that turned out not to be true. So like, I've had experiences that, you know, you're singing a song about Joseph Smith, you're feeling something in this kind of collective effervescence or whatever, and you start to think, oh, Joseph Smith is a, is a prophet. And then, you know, because Mormonism is a young religion and a record keeping religion, we can know more or less who Joseph was. And like, he wasn't someone, especially as a woman, that I would really want to follow based on his behavior, not just in, in participating in pulling polygamy, but the really awful, abusive ways that he practiced his polygamy. And so what's great about ex Mormonism is you have an opportunity to have feelings around things and then find out that the historical truth claim around my feeling turned out to be like certifiably untrue. Like the church had, has had to rewrite that narrative because the Internet came out and what, what they were claiming was not actually you, what happened. And so what that gives you is for the rest of your life you no longer trust that just because you have a feeling, it tells you something about ultimate reality. And that is a gift. That's a gift that I got from being Mormon that for like forever after that. I never fall into the trap of. Because I experience something everybody else's experiences are, but I've tapped into ultimate reality. Reality I just don't have, I don't have the hubris for that. Like, I like the amount of hubris that that requires. And I know that I've been wrong. That's the great thing about being an ex Mormon is like you were fundamentally wrong about some pretty big things. And that just means that I can go and experience these things and never think that because I experienced it, it tells me something about ultimate reality. I may not, we may not even be interacting with whatever is ultimate reality as the biased, superstitious creatures that we are. So for me, it's, it's, it's a benefit in that way. And you're right, it's not a very common space because I'm too spiritual for atheists and I'm way too skeptical, too skeptical for religious people or New Age people. But what I find, you know, that that doesn't bother me. Like, I, I've, I've got one life to live and so I'm doing my thing and I'm happy to just do My thing. But for me, the benefit of that middle place where you don't abandon skepticism, you stay really grounded in the. The science, but you're also very open to experience and tools and aspects of the good life. It gives you the best of both worlds. It gives me the benefits of religion and spirituality that we can still show science saying that people who are religious, they tend to live longer. They tend to have, like, there's still markers of well being from people that are religious that we have to take seriously. So for me, I feel like I'm getting all of the benefits of religion and spirituality with none of the dogma, with none of the patriarchy, with none of the, you know, having to do mental gymnastics to make genocide the right thing to do and all of that, all of that, I can really put all of that aside. So for me, it's. It's the best way to get the best of both worlds without being so consumed by skepticism that you have no other tools, or so consumed by your experiences being real that you've lost, you know, you've lost your grounding and now you're in some spiritual dimension and whatever. I think I can avoid both of those places by being in that middle space.
- [32:33]
B
Okay, so that brings us nicely to our last question. Brit, you've built a career as a spiritual director, a religious deconstruction coach, as you term it, someone who talks about all of this online every day. What kind of advice do you have for people who find themselves in perhaps a disorienting, lonely or empty dark night of the soul after exiting fundamentalist religion or cultish groups, which is often more the case here, or immersive conspiracism or faith in pseudoscience? I know there's probably several sectors of our audience that just up and identify with one of those. And could you also say a little bit about the other side of it, which is supporting friends or family members who may be going through that kind of transition?
- [33:19]
A
So to me, the. The, the dark night of the soul, as someone calls it, or some people call it, or, you know, the death of God, it was very painful for me, and it was very disorienting. A lot of people feel like the ground has dropped underneath them because there's no anchors anymore. Like, you've lost all your psychological and social anchors. You've lost any way to orient. And. And so for me, though, there's a really great treasure in going into that very difficult space that we call the void or nihilism, which is that anything that is really not inherently meaningful for you falls away. And so if it looks like the world is just building sandcastles where nothing matters because the wave is going to come, then the question becomes, what are the kinds of sandcastles that are worth building just for the experience of it, like we did as children, we didn't think as children that I'm going to build this sandcastle because it is going to last forever. We built that sandcastle because we were in the experience of it, and the experience itself had value. And that got me. Instead of, like, trying to find ultimate truth and then patterning my life, I started to have a different approach of, like, in the meat suit that I find myself in spinning on this space rock, in this absurd situation that I find myself in, what are the things that are inherently meaningful to me at the level of experiences, level of experience? What are the people? What are the causes? What are the things that I find myself standing for and standing against? What are the ways that I reduce suffering? And when you start to. When you really accept that, like, I'm going to die, I may not ever know why we were here. What is the one life that is worth experiencing even though it ends, it gives you a really, really authentic life. When you just decide that I have this one life, these are the things that make life inherently meaningful for me. And so I started building, like, not knowing where it was going to go. I started putting all my effort into the things that were inherently meaningful to me and, and my work. And I started to, I would call myself a spirit, an atheist spiritual director. Is that a job where I'm following someone's footsteps? No, like, I'm 100% making it up as I go. But it's the thing that, like, most called to me that I wanted to do. I wanted to talk about this very deep space with people without having to. To do it under the umbrella of a religion. And so there is this treasure in that void nihilism space where if you can really connect with the things that are meaningful for you and your core values and start making decisions for more of that internal compass, you get a life that is worth experiencing even though it ends. And so I was suicidal for a while, and then about a, you know, maybe two or three years later, when I was getting some more tools and my life started to improve, I found myself waking up one day and just being excited to experience the day that, like, I'm alive and I get to experience these things. I get to have this conversation where we're talking about being human. This is like Building sandcastles for me. Like, if if wasn't recording and it didn't go out into the world, I wouldn't consider it a waste because I just had a lovely time building the sand castle with you because conversation is how I play. So there is a treasure there where you can really start to intentionally build an authentic life worth experiencing. And my book, no Nonsense Spirituality Is, is really about that. Now, as far as friends and family members, I have a little bit different of a response. I. I don't think that friends and family members who have not gone there can really go to that place with you. I have yet to have someone in my life. Even people who really love me go to a place of, you know, the void, or deep, deep philosophical nihilism with me. And so my advice for that space is not to put pressure on relationships that they have to go there with you. It's to understand that you are in a place that brains resist. Are in a place where you've lost all anchors and brains will resist that place. Because even if someone loves you, even if this is your mom, to go there with you means that they have to abandon their identity and their community and their meaning and their purpose and everything about them. And the ego part of their brain is going to put up a wall to not do that, because it's painful, because it's disorienting, because it's hard. Like it's hard to build a life from the ground up. And so for me, I think it's far better to just understand your friends and family that unless they've been there, you can't force them to go there with you because their brains will resist them from going there. And they won't know that that's why they're doing it. They won't know that they're doing it. And so don't think that because your mom can't understand you or why you left religion or why you're struggling or whatever, don't think that it's because she doesn't love you. It's because her brain cannot go to that place with you and is putting up walls. And she doesn't even know that she's doing it. She still actually does love. For me, I think it's better to find people who have been there and gone through it. Find those deconstruction voices from that particular religion or cult or whatever that you're from to connect with. And don't force, don't push people into the void just so that they can understand you, because that even May not be good for them. A lot of people will not survive that place. That may be unethical to do so. So rather than do that, find people who are where you are and connect with them versus trying to force your and family to go there, because that's going to be painful for both people.
- [38:55]
B
Good advice. I'm thinking, too, about people who may have, for example, gotten sucked down the QAnon pipeline. And as part of that, maybe there was some sort of interaction with evangelical Christianity, because there's a very high correlation between those two things. And now maybe they're. They're coming out the other side and you're the person they're talking to and they're saying, you know, I'm. I'm deeply depressed. I've. I've lost my whole community. I just. I can't listen to that stuff anymore. And that's all they talk about. How do I make it through this feeling of now being so disoriented?
- [39:30]
A
Like, the reason that religion is so successful is because it makes it really efficient to just get your identity, meaning, purpose. If I walked into a Mormon church, they would just give me all the tools for life. Now they're going to give me a lot of baggage too. But that's what makes religion so efficient. So there is a way to rebuild, especially as you reconnect with yourself and as you learn about your own brain and especially learning about cognitive biases, which I know you talk about, is really helpful to understand what your brain was doing and why. And I think all of that is really helpful for rebuilding. And as far as rebuilding community, there's something really beautiful that happens when you're at rock bottom, which. Which is that you're willing to put forth the effort and intention that maybe you wouldn't have before that. So for me, like, I had nobody when I went through. I was the first one in my family on both sides to go through a Mormon deconstruction. It was isolating and alone. But it got so bad that I was like, I'm willing to do anything to find someone to talk about. And so even though it's a little awkward and someone might say no, I would just say, hey, like, I really like your vibe. Can I take you out for a cup of coffee? Now? Before then, I wouldn't have done that. Like, oh, that's weird. That's awkward. Ooh, that. But, like, I'm gonna die. Like, I'm gonna die. And I'm. I'm. I gotta find someone to talk to here. And it gave me the courage. And so I think what that even though that place is really hard, it can can give you this existential courage of I want to find some people to connect to in this life and do life together. I'm just going to start asking around. And even though I live in Boise, Idaho, which is very conservative, very Mormon, very trumpy, I just started being very authentic and taking off my mask. And yeah, sometimes people just call me weird and I just, like, look like a psycho. And socially, it's awkward, but because I know deep down, like, I'm going to die, like, whatever you say to me, like, you're future worm food, I'm future worm food. It's fine. Say whatever. Because out of those 15 coffee meetings, I found one person that I really connected with that was looking for someone like me too, to just take off our mask and be human. And now in Boise, even though I live in a very conservative area, like, I have more friends than I have time to hang out with because I just started to be more authentic. So intentionally building community, intentionally building a life with some existential courage, because this is all you've got, can end up on the other side, giving you a better life and a better community than the one that you're leaving behind, which is true for me and true for my clients.