Episode 118 - Swapping Fundamentalisms

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[Music] you've likely heard the phrase out of the frying pan and into the fire but you may not know i mean i didn't until i looked it up is where that phrase came from there are these three old poems in the greek anthology that tell the story of a hare being chased by a pack of hunting dogs the hare runs and runs nearly being caught but finally eludes the dogs by running into the sea where it is then eaten by what the poet refers to as a sea dog i mean come on if you don't think that is a true story well i think maybe you need to re-examine what your thoughts are about what true means because i mean have you ever experienced something like that you know a time when you were trying to escape one thing a relationship a group a religion a constriction of some kind only to find yourself in a new situation but with a similar or maybe even worse problem you know escaping living at home only to find that that one roommate on earth who's even more annoying than your dad or leaving one system of restrictive beliefs only to find another restrictive set of beliefs on the opposite end of the spectrum i mean i know i'm not the only one who's had experiences like this given the fact that out of the frying pan and into the fire is a phrase uh and the fact that it goes back thousands of years to these poems about hares and sea dogs but it seems to me that this predicament of trading out one set of chains for another is a pretty universal human experience and that's we're going to be talking about today on the podcast swapping fundamentalisms welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody so i grew up i grew up in the church my dad was a worship pastor and we did everything from him being on staff at church to mission trips and we even lived in an rv and like traveled around doing church plants and things like that so we were pretty all in to the evangelical christian world my entire life this is my friend emily capshaw how could i describe emily to you she's this mystical psychonaut hippie full of love and life who wears a lot of beads and flowy dresses in other words she doesn't really look like somebody who spent a lot of her life in evangelical fundamentalism but as he'll hear in some of her story emily has evolved a lot through the years and in that evolution she found herself jumping out of the frying pan and well into the fire or shall we say out of the dog's mouth and into the sea dog's mouth that doesn't ring quite the same does it [Music] then i i mean i left a little while when i was in college because i moved to texas and even though we grew up christian it was still like non-denominational in the baptist world was a little much for me so but then when i i moved to l.a i was i was wanting just community i didn't know anybody here so i went to a church that seemed like the most loosely theological so i could handle it and loosely theological meaning like progressive yeah well it seemed seemingly progressive a trendy mega church you could say but it felt to me more like it was it was less like dealing with the issues and the questions i had directly more just like shoving them in a closet like this is here but we're not just not gonna talk about it and just be vague and so i did a lot of traveling and the more of the world i saw the more i changed them where it just wasn't fitting for me and i i developed this interest in eastern theologies and learning more about some other religions and so i kind of found myself through a friend in this la spiritual community that was more of like a guru structure so there's like a teacher and students of the teacher and it doesn't mean weekly or anything like church it was more of retreat based and like courses and different type of ceremonial experiences and breath work and all that kind of stuff so when you were living in texas going to school yeah were you already like woo-woo lady with beads and no i mean i was vegetarian which was pretty woo-woo to texans but that was about the extensive the exception like a little bit of a rebellious christian like i grew up in colorado so it was like tried to be somewhat natural and but i didn't like have a meditation practice i didn't do yoga i didn't know what chakras were yeah like that was not a part of me before i moved here but i still i was drawn to la because i was like kind of drawn to that kind of stuff and but and even at the church that i attended here when i first moved here they thought that i was kind of that way but i was not that way compared to what i came to find how far you can go down that road yeah but yeah and then she went far i went as far as she could go all the way um opposite direction so yeah so that was that group introduced me to to meditation and yoga and eastern theology and yeah crystals and theology meaning all the things what's what's really all of them so that's kind of what drew me to the group in the first place is i had this really strong desire to find a way i had this feeling that there was a truth in all of the religions and i really wanted to find what it was what i noticed now looking back on it that was the problem is i was trying to do that in a very legalistic and literal way which was not working but i was like these all literally have to be the same and i wanted to find what that was because i just had this feeling that there i had kind of seen that there was some truth there and some things in eastern religion that i didn't get in my christian upbringing but then there was a lot of contradictions that i just wanted to reconcile and make peace with and this teacher spoke from a place of pulling from the bible and the bhagavad-gita and all these different like scriptures and traditions and kind of pulling them all to one central point which that appealed to me because i was like this is what i've been looking for is like this is this here's an idea and here's where it's found in all these different things what i found though was that pulling together was pulling it into a very specific interpretation and kind of layering this additional story and then saying all of these things are backing up this theology one story still yeah yeah and that theology was very specific and very dualistic can we get some examples yes so one of the big the big things was around sex which had it was interesting because i'll say first i growing up in purity culture was something that was a big part of my journey and i found myself kind of going into something even in my venturing out of like i'm gonna go the total opposite it was interesting how i was drawn to something that still had a really strong purity culture in it even though it was seemingly more like woo or different because it still felt comfortable to me and that was a big part of why i ended up leaving eventually but they had this idea so there was still the terms of like ego and enlightenment but the way to get there and what that meant was very specific and it had a lot to do with the way that you practice sex which was a very specific interpretation of tantra which in tantra there is this idea of conserving the sexual energy and using it in a very specific way but they kind of interpreted that to be there's one way to do tantra and that is to never have an orgasm because the orgasm is the original sin so when eve ate the apple she had an orgasm that was an orgasm in case y'all didn't know that's what happened there very literally um but yeah so it was essentially that that that story represents the orgasm the orgasm is the original sin it is why we have fallen as man and are now existing in a hell realm and we have to get back to heaven and union with god and the only way to do that is to rectify our sexuality by practicing what they would call white tantra rather than black tantra which is the bad kind of tantra and so and that's this withholding of the orgasm which would then awaken your kundalini and help you get enlightened basically so if you orgasm you cannot get enlightened oh boy so that's that piece of that theology in a nutshell oh boy oh boy so you can see that's how that could be somewhat problematic for someone coming from purity culture and also experiencing a lot of sexual trauma in my life i had been in therapy and a lot of deep self work and research for probably 10 years now and i am just now starting to make some progress and that's only because i have created some space from that community and i'm now finally existing in a place where i have no theology around sex like i have no shoulds of how it's supposed to be in a religious context and i'm seeing how important that is for me beyond my healing journey and why i was doing all this other stuff to try to heal and not making any progress and it's because i still had such a strong should in my head about how that was supposed to look so that was a big a big thing for me there was a lot of things and kind of why i left and how i let that go but that was probably the biggest one as i realized i needed to to let go of that story can you tell us a little bit about how how you started to know it was time to leave like how how did you get from starting to be a part of this community and feeling drawn to it and maybe even feeling some some kind of safety in the certainty of what they were telling you all the way to it's time for me to go what what happened in between there it was interesting because with the the sex aspect of it i never really got fully on board with that just like within christianity there was a lot of things that i i was like nah i don't know about that but i was still in the community and with that i think at any point that i was attending these events and kind of a part of this if you weren't in that community and you would have asked me i would have been like yeah this is crazy but just by being around it i'm in nine so i'm pretty good at like emerging faking it and like blending in but there still was this dissonance between this community that i wanted to be accepted by and then what i actually thought and that created essentially just a lot of shame and guilt and fear of like what if i'm wrong and they're right even though i never was like all in like preaching the gospel of the sublimation or anything it was like there was this guilt of oh this does sound kind of convincing what if i'm wrong and like i'm not because i really did want to get enlightened so badly and i was like what if they're right and there's all these things and they're saying that the buddha did it and jesus did it and like so i must do that and and then it kind of got to a point where i would say the more i was doing my own work outside of that space and learning still researching from other books and other teachers and listening to my own voice more then i was starting to kind of see through it a little bit really the the game changing moment was actually i had a mushroom experience outside of that space which that was something that was also very not okay was like you don't just you don't have psychedelic experiences outside the space it's unsafe the ego could take you over which that was i guess i should say another it has to be controlled yes yes so that's another two big pieces of the of the theology and kind of another thing to be careful of i think sometimes in spiritual communities is the definitions of certain things so you can take a lot of history and art and scripture and change the way it what it means by just changing certain definitions so because they had a very specific definition of ego and a very specific definition of enlightenment and how what to do with those things and how to get to those things then now i can take any text that mentions ego and enlightenment say see they did it they know because i've gotten you to think these certain ways about those definitions so yeah that and so because of that there was like we work with the ego in this specific way it has to die and dying to the ego means getting rid of all your imperfections which was essentially the seven deadly sins of christianity so lust and envy and all that stuff you have to completely eliminate all of those to become enlightened which can only be done by god essentially the divine mother who won't do that if you don't have your sexual energy doing all the right things so there was that aspect of it and so once i started because of that there was a plant medicine practice that was used to do that and if you don't do if you use plant medicine outside of the space then the ego is going to get stronger in you and it can trick you and like so that's unsafe and that was something kind of another thing i would say is to be careful of in spiritual communities is sort of a community group think where people are starting to under the the guise of accountability tell you what you can and can't do and sort of control your life and say oh this is just accountability sister like i'm taking care of you but somebody found out that i had done mushrooms and confronted me and was like we don't do that we you have your path you have your teacher you have your way to do the practices but i was like no i'm gonna do it anyway so i had this mushroom experience and had kind of like a crazy awakening experience and just saw through it all and came to i feel like i found what i had been looking for and i saw that this whole thing this whole search for truth and this theology that didn't have any holes in it and some kind of teacher and everything that i was looking for that brought me to this community i saw myself just chasing and running in circles and being so caught in my mind how it became so much about information and having the right answers and it became just these loops in my head and it all of that just kind of broke and fell and i just caught myself thinking what am i looking for i don't even know what i'm looking for anymore i'm just so caught up in all of this information because i love information i love to talk about these things and to study religions but it became so much about all this information all these shoulds and shouldn'ts and so much judgment against myself of what was again like posed as awareness and self-work words that we hear and can mean different things to us that became awareness of the ego and self-work was self-criticism so i would walk around saying oh i'm working on the ego and i'm becoming more aware and i'm on my journey towards enlightenment but what that meant to me at that time was a very unhealthy pattern of constant criticism of myself and constantly falling short and escapism constantly trying to be somewhere other than here and now which was another big realization i had in that experience that made me realize this isn't this isn't my path anymore was when i realized that that story and that theology was pushing me away from the moment instead of towards it and pushing me towards something else just like christianity was for me pushing me towards heaven and what was going to happen when i die it was this was also pushing me towards i need to do all these things so i can get back to union with god as if that wasn't something that i already had all the time and yeah i got i got in touch again with my own voice and trust it was able to trust that can you tell us a little bit about what that means for you like that i i'm over here saying yes you got in touch with your own voice yes that's so good but for people who don't know what that means what does that look like how how do you get there what does it feel like to be in touch with your own voice how do you know can you tell us a little bit more about that process yeah i think a lot of what caused me to look so hard for a teacher or a spiritual community was that i wanted someone to show me the right thing and i didn't want to believe the wrong thing and i didn't trust my own self to figure that out and so i think because of my evangelical background that it is either you believe the right thing or you believe the wrong thing and so i still kind of had that mindset going into going into this other group that i moved to after christianity and i realized at a certain point that no matter where i went and what i believed and what story i told myself that i was always with that guidance that was talking to me through all those things because that guidance is who i am and so there's no way that i can be away from that because that is that's the truth of me and so the idea that there is some guide or god that is only existing within certain theologies or certain stories or structures or spiritual communities or groups and that if you leave that group then you leave god or now you're astray or you're off the path people say a lot that used to really scare me and that's what kept me in the group but when i had this realization i am the guide it's me like i'm guiding myself and there's nowhere i can go nothing i can do nothing i can believe that's gonna get me away from my own guidance it was really the realization of who i really am that helped me understand that what that guidance was and what that voice was because my whole life that voice was something outside of me when i would hear it or it would speak to me it was like oh this is god that god changed from a masculine god to a feminine god but it was still outside of me and then i realized that it was within me and i learned how to listen to it a little bit better and it's it's a constant practice i would say for me too to to learn how to listen to it better and to become more in tune with how that speaks and now i'm at a point where i'm understanding i'm seeing that less of like a prayer meditation like voice from outside and more of my actual physical body communicating to me which has been a really cool transition to know how to listen to what my body is saying and to see that as the same also a guide also something communicating to me and not something to be feared because man did i develop a serious fear of my own body it was not to be trusted so and it's like it was a punishment like we're punished to be here in this body in this 3d world yeah one of the things that made me want to talk about this with you is there's a lot of people that that are questioning where they came from a lot of those people are christians and i think it's really interesting to see and i watched you go through a lot of this to see in a thing that has totally different clothing in a number of ways like you know drugs are okay in some ways sex is okay in some ways yeah don't have orgasm but it's like it would have been less restrictive it feels like oh it's free it's not it's not just about christianity anymore it's christ and buddha and like it sounds open and on the front it's this whole like opening up of new possibilities in a brand new world and then when you get into it there's still these like incredible restrictions and oppression against the body against the present moment against you trusting your own heart instead having to trust this guy this leader yeah there's just so much of the same shit i i think a lot of us when we are moving from one fundamentalism one system of oppression can we're looking for escape and then we find something that's comfortable but a lot of times we find ourselves in similar binds and that can be from fundamental christianity to woo land or to atheism or to anything it can be from uh you can just find a new prison for yourself with some of the same characteristics and i think that's interesting because a lot of a lot of people that are deconstructing they start asking like well where do i go what do i what do i find they're hungry for community and hungry for spirituality and for belonging but how do you avoid and this is a question we can open up for a conversation here for you too hillary how how do you guys think that we can move out of the oppressive places we've come from while being mindful of not getting trapped in some of the same stuff i wrote down before i came in here i wrote down four things to be careful of in a spiritual community so i can go through that let's hear it you want to hear i want to hear them so yes in your search for a spiritual community the first thing to be aware of i think is group think in conditional community so control that's presented as accountability and an idea of secret information or being special and an in and out mentality so if you're with us and you're in this community you're good in the eyes of god but if you leave you're not good in the eyes of god and you'll be shunned by the people involved so that's something that i found to be common in some different spaces and maybe something that in hindsight i would be aware of well that that sounds a lot like some of the characteristics of cult groups that that we've seen identified in thematic analysis right so from a research perspective like you mentioned some of these already but this is like their checklists that we can see empirically that show up in toxic cultic communities and one of them is that questioning or doubt is punished or it's discouraged mind-altering practices are used to suppress doubts and to encourage adherence to the leaders the leadership dictates in great deal detail what you're supposed to do and your specific behaviors including what you wear and the kind of places you go and like you were saying emily what like this is okay with us but not okay with them the group's elitist so there's special criteria like we're kind of we're better we have the answer there's an s for stem mentality but she said already that causes conflict with anyone who's not inside the group yeah that the the ends or sorry the whatever means is justified by the ends so that there is like an implication that this whatever we're doing here is going to be okay because it's going to get us somewhere that's even better that there's shame that comes from leaders in order to influence control members that there's pressure in order to behave a certain way there's a preoccupation with bringing new people into the group people are required to socialize primarily with the people in the group um and then there's supposed to be a kind of an or there's an expectation of devoting an an excessive amount of time or money to the group and group related activities so like that's externally from like a from a sociocultural perspective that's how we define a cultic experience that those are kind of some of the main criteria and it sounds like from what you're describing that there was a lot of that that was going on yeah there definitely was also what you just mentioned is everything was so expensive and there was such a pressure to do it because it was retreat based in core space right it was very high ticket and there was a lot of pressure even when i didn't i was like i don't have this money people like well just put it on a credit card and like god will reward you and it'll be good karma right so there was a lot of pressure of of that too which definitely was something that i yeah i would be careful of it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help is licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better health that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over one million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists this this reminds me like what kind of what we're talking about reminds me of something in therapy that we call first or second order change and it's when there's like when there's something that's going on that's not quite right necessarily and our way of coping with it is to engage in a certain behavior or seek out a certain community let's just say like uh i'm not okay as i am is this underlying fundamental assumption about life and i'm gonna figure out how to remedy that by going over here so first order change is like okay maybe i went over here and that's not working i went to you know to christianity or i went to you know to this school or i engaged in this kind of community and that didn't work but so now i'm going to switch and i'm going to look for the answer in this other place but the thing underneath hasn't really changed so the way that we see this showing up in therapy all the time is people saying like oh i'm not i'm not an alcoholic anymore but man i have an eating disorder or a shopping addiction or like i'm using a different substance so the thing underneath hasn't changed but second order change is our way of saying like oh whoa i can't just make these tweaks and how i'm trying to get my need met i actually have to maybe address the thing that's underneath and i think kind of as we're talking about this conversation people are in a religious fund like a fundamentally religious or a religious fundamentalism context and so the system with which they answer questions is i'm going to go outside of myself i'm going to find adherence to a particular set of beliefs and and if it's not this set of beliefs it's going to be that set of beliefs and what we're not doing went for people who leave the church or who leave certain faith practices is the thing underneath hasn't changed which is i'm always expecting someone outside of me to tell me what it's like to be good or to find truth so if we're going to think about not just shifting from one kind of fundamentalism to another kind of fundamentalism there needs to be a like kind of an addressing of the thing that's underneath which is like what does it mean to be me and and can i be present with myself and how do i cope with pain and where does truth lie is it always out there or is it sometimes in here yeah that's interesting because i feel like i at first i was like this is the total opposite of everything i've just come from and then by the time i was like oh it's time to move on i was like it's the same thing and it's because that's what i was bringing in because i hadn't healed those certain perceptions and so unconsciously i just found something that appeared to be really different but was still feeding the same unhealthy needs that i hadn't worked through i think it's interesting the commonalities of sex and death in particular like if a group can control how i believe i'm supposed to have my sexuality channeled like if i if i need their permission or their blessing for my sexuality and i need their permission or blessing or they have the key to what happens to me for eternity like that's some power yeah whether that's when enlightenment speak or heaven speak and the sex piece those are just really strong controls and so i i think that's a really interesting thing to watch out for and it can look so many different ways they can speak it in so many different ways but it's still controlling life and death yeah so here here's a kind of curiosity that i have in in response to this and i it's a not it's an unfinished thought because i haven't actually thought about it before in this way but when we're coming from one one way of thinking about the world like let's say for example uh truth and god and uh knowledge is outside of myself right and there's a kind of a push back on that we'll call it like a pendulum swing to the other side where we say like well no i have it all right here like it's in my body and it's in the right now how do you think we account for the fact that we can't ever fully see ourselves like with the eye right this is the classic metaphor like the eye can't see itself we need other eyes to see the eye i mean actually like the physical eye but also the kind of the self eye so i'm wondering like what do you think it looks like to have a mix between these or something that feels less like a reactionary or like a reaction formation to the thing that initially felt controlling and externally mediated how how do we blend these things where we are making space both to hear our own voice and to acknowledge we can't know all the things all the time and can't see ourselves fully like what does that look like to marry them yeah i think that's a great thought and question because when you think about our thoughts and what we're feeling you can't disconnect that from our environment you can't disconnect that from our experiences and yeah exactly and our culture and all of the philosophies and theologies that we have internalized so for me i'll just speak for my own what i do in as i listen to my own body and my own heart my own thoughts is always hold it as loosely as possible in that like oh there's a there's a feeling there's a thought there's an assumption there's a belief whatever and and as long as it's i think the more conscious of it in its fullness as you can be that you don't get lost in the thought being the believer of the being the the thought it's you know like i can have a thought that person seems less enlightened whatever that person seems like they have a foolish view of the world a really constricted view of the world that i find foolish i can believe that or i can just notice that that's something that's happening in me that that's a judgment in me that's a thought about what's happening so you can like always take a step back to like see my own assumption to see my own reaction to see my own thought about it and to me when that happens it kind of i'm slower to just react and jump into a sort of unhealthy grasping to to the experience to the belief that i know that my thoughts are coming at me from everywhere and that a lot of my thoughts should not be trusted and i know a lot of my emotions like while they should be listened to i think they should be listening to they don't need to be acted on they don't need to be i don't need to make decisions based on if i feel really angry that doesn't mean i need to act on that and follow my rage into being that in the world so for me it's just like as much the very question that you asked shows the kind of awareness i think like how can i be aware that even though i have this feeling this thought this impulse in me and i want to listen to that and pay attention to it that's not disconnected from things people have taught me that's not disconnected from the narratives my culture is brainwashing with with every piece of media and with every interaction with it like it's all going together um my first thought in response to that is that's still an individualistic process so you're still relying solely on your ability to trust your awareness of your thinking so at what point does does our ability to know our limitations of our awareness translate into us asking for feedback from other people or to taking in their input in such a way that we're not we're not assuming that we can be totally aware of everything that's going on because i think about even like what is what is awareness as a neurocognitive process and it's it's something that doesn't necessarily always tell us the truth about everything that's going on like we could notice things that are happening but there's a lot of stuff that's happening that we can't ever notice like i think about our subconscious processes like why is it that i'm more likely to turn left instead of right at that particular street why is it that i'm more likely to hang out with these people instead of those people why is it that i'm more likely to get tight in my body in this context instead of another context it you know it makes me think of the the really famous carl jung quote but until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate that there is all of this stuff that's unconscious and i don't know if we can ever be fully aware of the unconscious especially on our own like things have to happen interpersonally for us to be like oh whoa i didn't see that side of myself so i guess i'm curious about how you would take this from just a very individual process of like i'm going to be aware of myself knowing the limitations of your own awareness into a relational or social process that allowed other people to have a voice too i think one thing that i've come to realize is i've been really into the word curious lately it's been my word but i like to be curious about myself and other people and what they say which to me includes a sense of openness and not judgment because being curious is different than judgment but in that same way i would i would see anything that anybody or anything in my life is what information is giving me in a curious way and i think that a lot of different people and different things can be our teachers in different moments i think what i would be cautious of now looking at my past experience is having one soul person that is that voice and having maybe many people that are that and also not having somebody be a voice of authority just because they have a certain title or role but having to build trust through my experience in my relationship to where i can say okay this person has proved themselves to be trustworthy that if they give me some feedback or something to be aware of then i know i can trust that and then to still take that information and process it with myself but to be open to what different people might have to say that i know and i can see through their experience in the way that they've lived their lives whether that be an author that i'm reading or research that i'm doing or a friend in my life that i'm communicating with that they've earned they've earned my trust enough to receive that and then do my own work with what they've given me [Music] what do you think the difference between trusting somebody to get feedback you know whether that's a spiritual leader or a friend or a counselor or whatever and authority between the difference of trusting and listening to somebody and authority where you stop actually being conscious of that you're the one that has to still have a reason to trust that authority that you're still at the end of the day what else can you trust but your own heart even if you're trusting a person for a specific place in your own heart you still have to be the one to trust them yeah maybe i'm getting caught in semantics but i'm thinking about how authority is something that we're often told a person has based on a constructed structure of experience and status and power but those don't always go those don't always line up with trust so i think that there's a lot of people because they have authority that we automatically trust but then there's a lot of other people who don't have authority that we trust for whatever reasons because they've shown up for us time and time again i don't i often think about even people who've been suspicious of authority because they've been hurt that a person can identify that socially that person has a kind of power but i'm not going to trust them actually specifically because they have authority because they've been given some sort of status or power that feels that feels scary for me yeah so maybe maybe i'm misunderstanding what you're asking but i'm thinking about how they where you put your trust sometimes lines up with who has authority sometimes not based on what your life experience has been up into that point is that kind of what you're getting well i think what i was like i heard in your last question that's like sometimes you don't you can't trust yourself to know the best thing you can't see all of the you can't be conscious of everything and i totally agree with that there are a lot of people in my life that i trust to see things more clearly than i'm seeing things even about my i can't view my own behavior and how like i can experience my internal experience but i can't watch that from the outside i can use my imagination to try that can be helpful but so there's some things that like i trust my doctor friend hillary mcbride more on psychological issues and issues of mental health or menopause i'm you have a phd yeah in it so i'm gonna be like it's hillary she's correct i i trust that more than my feelings about what what happens in menopause with women um but i think it's a very common thing for people to have those sorts of authorities that they trust more than themselves what i don't think people are conscious of is that they still have to be the ones to make that leap that you don't get to hand off the entirety of faith it always is only in your own heart i have to be the one to trust doctor hillary bride i have to trust that you actually have a phd and that that means something that that matters and that you actually have study there's a bunch of assumptions that i have to make yes still in myself but to trust you and if i'm just unconscious of all that i can trust the bi if somebody wants to trust the bible as being the infallible word of god great but you have to be like why ah yes why what what are in what in you are you using to make that decision that it's trustworthy you don't get to pass it off and just say well i just do right or you can't but you're being unconscious of it and to me that's there's a there's where authority sometimes and trust right have a difference where like right you're shutting off consciousness in yourself because you've just handed off you're passing the bug right not taking responsibility for where you're where you're giving power away it's still your power to get right right so i'm thinking about decision making just in this way i haven't really thought of it like this before but as you're talking about it the metaphor that comes to mind is like a committee sitting at a table and you and your body get to sit at the head of the table and and there are going to be other voices at that table too that shape in a kind of committee form how you make decisions and what you do and what you decide is right or not but that you have to decide who's at that table and it's your choice and people don't get to just show up and have a voice that's authoritative you get to invite people in and sometimes you invite people in without knowing you're inviting people in because you've been told that's a person that should sit at the table that you know you're you know the bible or the pastor or your professor or your parents and you know there are going to be times when maybe those people even though you've been told these people should sit at the table in terms of your committee decision making about your life and what you value maybe they shouldn't and that like just what i said right there about parents uh is something that i hear come up lots for people in their kind of i would say beyond a faith deconstruction but in like a family of origin deconstruction realizing as an adult well some of the patterns that i was given as a kid don't work for me anymore as an adult and i get to be thoughtful about whose voices i want to move forward and maybe the stories my mom and dad told me about bodies or work ethic or marriage or relationships maybe maybe those stories don't work anymore and so mom and dad don't get a seat at the table the culture is saying because it's mom and dad they automatically have a seat at the table so whether it's bible or pastor or parent where we who are we inviting there and that there's a point in our life where we get to decide maybe that's not a person who sits on my committee yeah you're the only one that gets i think that's such a good example that's such a beautiful metaphor and clearer way of saying it and i said it thank you for that it helps me like because i think what happens a lot of times is people go well i'm sorry the president of the committee says that we have to you know believe the earth is 6 000 years old or whatever it is it's like you chose that guy you don't get to pass the buck yeah you can have somebody else sit there and it's a it's a kind of scapegoating and not a responsibility taking for your own life to pass off that power to other people there there's something in existentialism particularly logotherapy which is like an existential approach to therapy and the idea is that responsibility and freedom are always always intention and always needing each other and that you cannot have freedom unless you are taking responsibility for your life and so that means like you're not really free unless you're the one who's deciding who's up who's at the table who's on the committee and it could still be like you're saying it could still be a literis literalist view of the bible it could still be biblical inerrancy but you're not actually free unless you've thought through like who do i want here and i'm going to take responsibility now for the implications of that in my life so there what we do is we pass off responsibility feeling like then we can blame systems or people but then we're not actually free in an existential sense i was just thinking about that in context of kind of what brought me to these different spaces and like i did not choose the christian church i was born into that my parents chose that for me and i didn't really even choose this community it was i was introduced to it by a friend but it was very like it was a friend that had a lot of authority over me at the time and there was there was a need to please that person which then became a need to please the community and the leader and so even in my decision i don't feel like i really chose that consciously from that place and so that's something that i realized too when i decided to move on was like if i'm going to choose an external spiritual teacher or somebody like i want to pick them i don't want someone else to be like this is what's real and so you probably it's because it still was the evangelical kind of way of like you really i'm going to invite you to this thing because i care about you and i want you to be saved too so i felt like it was i was brought into it rather than choosing it and so yeah that's something that i think if i were to ever choose somebody to have any sort of spiritual authority in my life in the future i would just want to be really clear that i'm picking it yeah and then i have a clear distinction between that and knowing that at the end of the day all of these things are stories like any theology and any structure is like a story which can be really helpful and i can look back and see the way that the christian story and then this story of this other community helped me and taught me a lot of things and i can be grateful for that and the part it played in my process like i jokingly told you once like i have so much love for that guy he's just playing his part he's doing his role perfectly he did a great job being that role in my life and it brought me to where i am now but we have to know when it's time to let go of the story when it's not helping us anymore and i think that's where we get really stuck in these spiritual communities and these theologies is when we're we don't feel safe to let go of the story because we don't see it as that we see it as capital t truth and that we can't we don't have that power to say no i'm gonna change out these roles i'm gonna put somebody else here and i'm gonna restructure this because it's no longer serving me and my journey forward emily can ask a question about something you mentioned earlier just to go back into your story a little bit you'd mention that there was something about eastern religion that gave you something you didn't have growing up and so it sounds to me like even though you were handed this new community there was also a like a questioning that really was yours of like maybe there's something that's something that i didn't get and i want a little bit more of something that another approach could give me i'm just curious if you could tell us a little bit more about what eastern religion gave you that maybe you felt like you were missing yeah from the church to me it was about practice i felt like i didn't have practices being introduced to specifically yoga and meditation even though i feel like there was a lot of really specific ways of doing that that i don't practice anymore it it sparked an interest in that that led me to i went to thailand and did a pasta retreat and studied more about buddhism there and i've done a lot of yoga schools and learning more about the practice of yoga and that's that's kind of sparked my own individual journey of learning about practices that can actually help me and i think the thing that has shifted for me is before i was doing these same practices with the goal of getting somewhere else like if i meditate and do all these things and i'll like somehow get somewhere other than here like go to the astral plane or like whatever i thought i was gonna go and now i look at those practices with an intention of becoming more in the moment and seeing more of what is here being more in my body instead of trying to get out of my body like meditating to see to be more here instead of meditating to like float away and leave my body so yeah i think those pr those practices were what drew me in and my my experience with those practices and how i use them has shifted a lot but there's still such a huge piece of what i have at this point i would say i have only practice and not like no theology now and those practices can kind of shift and change depending on what what i'm needing or what i'm working through yeah now i'm kind of like a practice junkie does that answer your question yeah it does and i it made me wonder i mean we could never know this we could never have a randomized control trial of two two versions of your life emily but i'm curious about what would have happened if there was practices for you in your faith community growing up if that would have felt like it would have met your need or if there was something about being or trying something different that was more important like if you had those fake practices i mean what would have happened we could never know yeah i think there was probably another piece too because around the same time that i actually left church i had just gotten off of like a backpacking trip and seen a lot more of the world and met a lot of people that came from different cultures and religions and that kind of started to shift my perspective from this little bubble to seeing a wider thing and so there also was probably a deep sense for me that i didn't want to i didn't want something that i was noticing how my belief made everybody who didn't believe what i believed wrong and i started meeting people and seeing people that did believe other things and how beautiful they were and how healthy they were and and thinking man this just can't this just can't be and so it's interesting because then i i went to this other community that seemed to include all the religions because that was something that i really wanted but then found over time that there was still this this other people it was it was less of like a judgment towards that but just like oh poor them like they're just not gonna awaken maybe in their next lifetime you know like good for you that's how we thought of the baptists yeah it's like good for you you have good karma like in your past life don't get into heaven yeah probably yeah but but they're not gonna have a lot of jewels in them crowns for sure we've got to get those jewels and them crowns are there any things from that community that you still retain as central to your practices or your belief structure and maybe even in addition to that things from your christian upbringing i think from this most recent experience i still have retained a sense of the importance of being self-aware and noticing sometimes stuff comes up in us that is not ours and knowing how to see that and then let it go i think in is a really important thing with it which is in the yeah it's within the the practice of meditation and being self-aware of what's happening and the idea of ego even though that's shifted for me of what that means that there's still a practice and an awareness that i've gained from that community of noticing when i'm acting from a space or speaking from a space or perceiving things from a space that is not in tune with my truest awareness that ability to to notice that is something that i've i feel like i developed in that space and now i still use that in my life to notice when i'm not when i'm acting in a way that's unconscious so that's something i think that i've learned from it that i still maintain and just i learned so much in that space about art and history and anthropology and about all the different religious texts like it was like a college course it was so thorough and like today we're going to study this story of krishna and it was so in-depth and we're looking at like pictures of architecture and operas and and that side of it was amazing i gained so much valuable understanding of of all of these things and understanding energy systems and chakras and all of that like i still i still apply that so there was a lot of just knowledge and awareness to these different systems in the context of like an anthropology course or something like that that i feel like i gained a lot from that time and from my christian background i feel like it gave me a sense of that's almost harder because i feel like i've been removed from it for a while so it's hard to notice but it gave me some sense of a moral compass of wanting to do good for people and wanting to help people i think that a lot of churches and christians are really good about that and even when i was in this other space that's something that i kind of looked back on christianity and was like man christians were really good at helping people because this space was not it was all about i need to wake up who cares about anybody else because i'm trying to wake up and so there was no like philanthropy or helping people or like there was none of that anymore and so i really noticed whoa like on this side of my christian upbringing it was so much about giving and helping and then now it's all about just me waking up and my inner practice and like who cares about the world we just gotta do what we gotta do for us so that's something that i still really love about about that time in my life that's an interesting upside to being preoccupied with other people affirming what we're doing as being right or good or having some sort of like external locus of validation is like we we pay attention to what's happening around us like sometimes too much maybe to the point where we're letting other people decide if we're okay or not or good or not but there's also like an external gaze which perhaps might allow us to be like oh at that it i think it's okay to have some shoulds right like i should care about the suffering of others i should be giving of my giving of my resources in such a way that helps me invest in in people who don't have the same resources that i do and i think that i'm hearing you talk about that tension that like looking outside of yourself for someone to affirm your goodness is damaging but also could come with a shift to focus like to i think about lifting your head up and just seeing what's going on instead of just noticing the waking up inside yeah for me i think i i have to have a why i can't just have someone say you need to do this because the bible says or because god says or whatever it's like why and then i can give and love from such a deeper authentic space if i have a connection to it other than just dogmatic need to be right that's kind of what i found and that might bring me back to the same actions or the same things i've come back so many times to things like little bits and pieces that i learned from christianity or parts of the bible and seen it been able to see it with new eyes and say oh that's like what that's trying to say and that's what that means and understanding it from an experiential place instead of an idea yeah yeah well thank you emily thank you hillary thank you patrons thanks everybody this was a lovely conversation emily you where would you like to point people emily does like these really cool videos and her podcast yeah meta moon yeah so kind of the home base of everything right now is on my instagram which is my name emily.cop shop but i make poetry films there and um kind of just little tidbits of information to help with your journey and i do a podcast and yeah just some different mediums all kind of around the the journey that we're all unappealing and yeah looking for things that can help us along the way so i do that kind of through an artistic lens of videos and different things yeah emily dot capsule cool thank you all right thanks emily much love everybody thank you so much [Music] you