I wrote this post exactly a year ago today on Facebook, and it just came to mind today in a conversation with a friend. My friend is Christian, and she said she was feeling a little uncomfortable talking with me about her beliefs, which I totally understand! I have been angry about so much of Christianity. A lot of it is harmful. I actually made this category, Religious Deconstruction, as a space to express a lot of that anger and the healing from it. But the couple times I put fingers to keyboard to write something about it, I found my anger was gone. The anger needed to get out through my writing, and I've honored that every time, in other spaces. And I feel like at this point, it's kind of...out of my system. I don't have the energy or desire for it anymore. But I still wanted to put something in this space, so I went back to find this old post that came to mind, and I found I'd written it exactly a year ago today! Amazing. So I'm resharing it here. It's all still true for me, with additions, like at this point, I've also stepped into Paganism, with Hecate and Demeter as my patron goddesses. I have a big time angel team. Anyway, here's the story of my religious deconstruction:
I've been wanting to share something for months now. It's my weird and wild transition from Christianity to where I am now. My beliefs. My exploration. I want to add that if you're a Christian, you might not want to read this. But that's up to you. I just think it's something you have to be ready to see, and if you're not, that's cool. I respect your journey and beliefs. But this stuff excites me, and I love sharing. Not to change anyone's mind. Just to share my own experience because I love it. Alriiiiight. Story time. So after I left the church, a friend posted a link to this podcast called Mark Explains Everything, and the episode name was Uncensored Christians. About people who loved God but had been burned by the church and felt like they didn't fit in. Drew me right in because that was me. It was a three-part series, wonderful stories. And at the end, Mark told his story, which was that he was a pastor or training to be a pastor, and he went looking for answers to some inconsistencies in the Bible. He set out to prove the Bible, but he kept finding more and more confusion instead. He eventually watched this documentary that shared that the story of Jesus...the story of a savior born of a virgin who came to spread a message of love and then died to save humanity and ascend to the heavens...was plagiarism. And that this story had been told over and over in pre-biblical history in different cultures as a way to explain astrological events. (The astrological events is key for later!) As soon as he said that, my stomach dropped. Because I remembered my youth pastor telling us this at one time too. He had said people would use it to disprove God, but we shouldn't let it sway us because Satan went back in history and planted those stories. I believed it back then without question. But now...I didn't at all. My whole world suddenly felt so hopeless. Was everything I had believed and experienced my whole life a lie?? I mean, I experienced real connection and miracles and spiritual things. For a few days, I decided I wouldn't think about it, and I would just keep on keeping on. But I can't be someone who lives in cognitive dissonance. So I finally said, "God, I don't know if I'm even talking to anyone right now. I just want the truth, and if you're real, I need you to show me how that is." All that kept coming to me was "energy energy energy energy." So I looked up everything I could, listened to every podcast about energy. It was something I had already started to explore about six months before. I was intrigued by Reiki, which seemed no different to me than praying and "laying on of hands." But those six months before, I read that during Reiki, you thank (name of Japanese diety they call the Healer), and I shut that down real quick. "Jesus is the only healer!" And never thought of it again. But as I learned about energy, and I started seeing all these similarities in different cultures and religions, it dawned on me that we're all believing in the same divine being and basically believing the same principals and seeing the way the divine works in the same ways, but everyone calls it different things and then goes to war over semantics. So I stopped calling God "God" and decided to explore for myself what this divinity was. Spirit? Divine? Source Energy? Universe? I had this moment one day when I was by an open window, and a breezed touched me so deeply and beautifully, and I thought, "Ahh, THIS is God." But as soon as that name popped in my head, my experience shrunk into that old box I used to be in. I let go of that name and officially grabbed onto the belief that Universe (whatever you want to call it, I like all the names) is bigger and more expansive than I ever knew. And yet...is as simple as a breeze through my window. Later, I was talking about this with a friend (who is actually a Christian), and she told me that reminded her of a word called "Numa," which means breath of God. After that, I recognized that name all over the place, spelled in different ways and from different cultures...all talking about this "breath of God." Fast forward, I'm coming a bit into something called "Christ Consciousness," which is where we go back to the beginning. Back to when the story of Jesus was told to explain astrological events. So at that time, I thought, "What if the story of Jesus is just so important that it had to be told in the stars? And it surpasses time and culture, and this divine being showed up in different parts of history and different parts of the world?" Just a couple weeks ago, I heard on a podcast I listen to about Akashic Records, that this lady channeled Jesus in the records and it was revealed to her that he's a STAR BEING. Star being! Story told in the stars and interpreted in tons of different times and cultures? It confirmed for me what I felt from the beginning. And I feel like Christianity just took it and turned it into their own agenda, but he was real. (I honestly haven't worked with Jesus much since I left the church just because I'm taking space to heal and detach from the old way I used to believe.) And I believe there are a bunch of guides like him...Mary Magdeline, Buddah, angels, ancestors, our higher selves...so many more, all a part of this Source Energy. Just as much of a part of Source Energy as we are, except they're more ascended. But we're all divine. And we all ascend a little bit every life based on how aware we are and how aligned we are with our purpose here. So that's my big wild story. I'm just always excited to learn more and expand because none of us has all the answers or has everything right! But I think the key is learning from each other and being open, and since we're one, we all make a complete picture somehow. It's exciting because we can learn forever and ever and still experience newness and even change our minds about things based on new experiences. I'm open! And amazed. And expansive.
So as I told my Christian friend who was feeling apprehensive about sharing her beliefs, I don't really give a fuck what you believe as long as your beliefs aren't harming anyone or you're not trying to push them on other people. I see so many common threads in all the different belief systems! I feel like we're all exploring different facets of the same thing. So I'm am DOWN to talk about it. We don't have to be on exactly the same page for me to appreciate and respect where you are in your journey and your beliefs. Spirituality is unique to each person, and yet there are threads that connect us.
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