Hello everyone and welcome to the Awaken Together podcast.
I am Jenn and today it is just going to be me and my husband Danny as our special guest.
So if you've listened to the past two episodes, Kat and Kyle did an amazing episode on science
and spirituality and I want to give a big shout out to Kyle for sharing his vulnerable
side and sharing a piece of his story.
It was really beautiful to hear and yeah, I absolutely love the episode.
And then last week Kat did an episode by herself in replacing what was supposed to be me and
Danny's episode, but I was given this terrible cold.
Not sure really what it was, but now Kat and Kyle's household is still sick and I had to
be quarantined for 14 days and ironically the day I came back to the family when I felt
like I was finally feeling better, it was the day of the eclipse.
So nothing is coincidence there, you know?
But anyway, today's episode me and my lovely husband Danny are going to unpack religious
deconstruction with spirituality.
A lot to say on this topic.
Honestly, I get very passionate about this, so I'm excited.
So without further ado, let me introduce you to Danny.
He is a behavioral therapist.
He has also been unemployed this year as we've explored traveling the country and kind of
having a soul search year.
He's been running his own business and I couldn't be more proud of him.
So let me introduce you to Danny.
Hey everyone.
Glad to be here as a first time guest on the Awaken Together podcast.
Little fun fact, Kyle and I actually work on the sound for the podcast.
So the two husbands get to do some of the sound design.
They're the best.
But yeah, glad to be here.
And I guess today we're going to be diving into spirituality and religious deconstruction.
And yeah, we'll see how it goes.
Yes.
So a little background in case you haven't heard me kind of mention this in little pieces
throughout the episodes, you know, Kat and I have shared with you guys.
But I grew up in the Christian church and I was every single week, usually twice a week
church attendee.
We did frequent Bible studies.
My parents host many Bible studies even now.
And I think like a really good summary to show like how deep in that world I was is
that I was previously engaged to a pastor's son.
I was so deep in that world.
And as I fell into kind of a more spiritual life journey, I had to reflect back when you
talk about shadow work and looking at your past.
A lot of self work had to be done to kind of figure out my place between what was feeling
like two different worlds.
And Dani, I would love to hear kind of just from the outside observer of watching my struggles,
which I know you've seen the good, bad and the ugly.
Just what you've kind of seen is I've unpacked it all over the years because you've been
right at the front line, right at the front line.
Yeah.
So Jen's spiritual journey, we've known each other for over 10 years.
And in the beginning, I knew she grew up in a religious household.
Church was a big part of her life.
But it wasn't until we started dating that I really started to understand some of the
side effects that came along with that childhood.
And I would notice that Jen often struggled with feelings of shame, feelings of guilt,
and especially feelings of judgment from her family and maybe more impactfully from God.
She would be in tears over this.
It was clearly traumatic for her to explore spirituality in a direction that was anything
other than what had been preached.
That was very different from me.
With my upbringing, I never felt those feelings of shame or judgment from the church or from
my family.
So seeing Jen go through that was not only new to me, but shocking because I hadn't seen
somebody struggle in that way with spirituality before.
So yeah, Jen, what are your thoughts on all that?
Yeah.
I think Dani has watched me have hundreds of breakdowns over the years because just
to give a little background, I was raised really strictly in Christianity.
It was always taught that the Bible had the exact formula of how we should live our lives.
And every single thing that was not mentioned was really frowned upon exploring.
And so with that, your whole entire life as new things get introduced to you, you're constantly
under this mindset that evil is trying to get to you or that it's darkness creeping
in or that you must have done something wrong because all of a sudden you're being taunted
by temptation.
And they give you all these standards to thinking that end up impacting basically anything you
explore as you get older and are exposed to new beliefs or new perspectives and just different
people.
So yeah, the guilt was not a joke.
The fear was not a joke.
It was all really intense.
And Dani, upon dating, I remember a really big fear that we're always taught that we
need to find someone that has a similar faith to us.
And although I had dated previous people after that pastor's son that obviously explored
different concepts of belief, it still made me nervous.
There was still this internalized guilt of if I really want to marry someone and spend
my whole life with them, I've always been taught that they need to somewhat think like
me, which is very messed up looking back in retrospect, but it's the reality.
So I remember me and Dani dropped into some tough conversations pretty early on in our
dating.
I remember one of our first dates deeply discussing what we thought of existence.
We were at a Mexican restaurant, you remember?
And deeply discussing.
I ate about five bowls of chips and salsa.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure on the table.
But I remember I really wanted to know where his head was and all of that, because in my
mind, I was terrified of...
I felt such a deep love for Dani.
I think I knew right away he was my soulmate, but I was terrified of like, oh no, what if
we live life together and our faith is so different and it comes back to bite me?
I remember still having a really...
This was before deconstruction had even started.
This is before I knew religious trauma even existed.
Yeah, do you remember?
I do.
And I remember you being very emotionally relieved when I agreed to go to church with
you for the first time as a couple.
Because at that point in my life, it had been a long time since I had explored religion
and it kind of cast it off when I was in my teen years.
But I loved you and that was very important to you.
So it made me reconsider faith and Christianity.
I just remember when I agreed to go...
Yeah, you were just like over the moon.
Yeah.
Honestly, it was really just the guilt side of that internal negative inner voice was
what was telling me like, oh, make sure you can at least get him to go to church with
you.
I just had so many little just nuggets in my mind from all of the church dialogue, all
of the things my parents had told me.
So it was just a relief that you were open-minded to that concept.
It wasn't even so much, I needed a lot out of it.
I still think we pretty much lived in our truce with each other.
But at the same time, I was still struggling with what to do about my religion and how
to hold on to that as I was getting older and responsible for my own decisions.
It was still impacting a lot for me.
And then as I fell onto yoga, that would have been really before we started dating, but
it definitely grew a lot stronger as I moved to West Virginia.
I lived about an hour away from Danny.
This is earlier on in our dating years, but the yoga mat was where I was finding like
the most relief.
And Danny would watch me enjoy my yoga practice.
And then all of a sudden I would just get overridden with guilt because my parents were
also continuing the conversation with me that yoga was not something Christians should practice,
that it's not mentioned in the Bible, and that if anything, it's probably worshiping
another God.
I remember when you started yoga teacher training, you were on the phone, I think with your mom
and Jen was in tears, like hysterical because your mom was basically telling you that practicing
yoga is the same as worshiping a false idol and your heart was broken.
So early on in the days, like I had this overwhelming sense of fear that why was something feeling
so good and then at the same time didn't line up with the faith that my parents expected
me to have for my upbringing.
And yeah, my dad has an entire blog post, why Christians shouldn't practice yoga.
I mean, it went really deep, but at the same time I felt incredible and had to honor my
inner compass, although the guilt was so bad.
I continue to kind of push that to the side, but it's scary because even as you're rediscovering
all these things, the voice in your head does tell you maybe this is one giant temptation
to get you off the path.
Like when you get told that, like your whole life about every single new concept, it's
impossible for that voice to not be there in some capacity.
And so yeah, yoga teacher training was great.
To my mom's exact fear, it unlocks the door to way more open-minded thinking.
It wasn't a catalyst to take me to the dark side.
It was remembering that the religion had really boxed me in.
It had made me feel a lot of resentment, not only towards myself, but I also felt a lot
of judgment towards other people that live differently than me because I didn't understand
it.
And yoga teacher training was the start of a really beautiful journey.
And so yeah, then we'll take it a little closer to now.
A lot of new things have fallen onto my path, even in the last three years since me and
Danny have been married.
We moved to Denver, obviously got away and kind of created our own safe space, which
I think kind of unpacked all of the religious trauma probably deeper than ever before because
it felt like it was kind of me and Danny's little bubble.
Yeah, it was a new world.
It was, it felt like a really fresh start for us, similar to Kat and Kyle.
But yeah, then astrology fell onto my path.
I started working with Reiki healing and energy work as I've shared on this podcast, really
started studying into alternative ways of healing, got deep into meditation.
So many, so many cool things, lots of reading, and I think Danny has watched me have so many
breakdowns usually in the bathtub.
Oh yeah, bathtub.
There are many bathtub book and candle nights and not just this is not to say that it was
just Jen having a calming bath.
This was like right before the bath.
Jen is shaking uncontrollably.
She like, it's essentially a panic attack and I had never seen you do that either.
Yeah.
So that was shocking.
I had so much nervous system retraining to do.
So let's talk about, let's kind of gear the conversation up towards fear because I think
this is important.
This new kind of, maybe you've experienced this, maybe this is something that just like
hasn't landed in your circle, but just to share some perspective, a lot of the Christians
right now, you know, Christian can still have a giant scale to it, but I think a lot of
the people really within the church, within kind of that stereotypical Christian mindset,
I don't mean that judgmentally.
I'm just trying to kind of paint a picture, but there's a real worry that this giant new
age and spirituality movement is extremely alarming and needs to be stopped and people
need to preach their faith like never before.
And that message is truly being shared.
I have several friends right now that are still kind of in the church world more than
I am, more than I am for sure.
I have definitely separated myself from a lot of that, kept pulling me back into old
patterns and limited ways of thinking.
But yeah, there's a message being sent out that this stuff is evil and that it's a trick
and that it is pulling people away from God.
And so I think we need to delve into that just slightly because I recently had a conversation
with a girl that went to my yoga retreat.
She's a health coach and is deep in the spiritual world.
Her name's Anna and we did a little Instagram live talk.
She had a girl go to another wellness, healing, meditation retreat with her and then come
back home and immediately apologize publicly for attending that event and said she's so
sorry.
Was that an astrology event?
It was just a very spiritual retreat and she came back and said, I'm so sorry, that was
all evil and I just didn't realize that I was doing something that was wrong and I just
want to take it all back.
And I had also experienced another Instagram account where a girl had taken down all her
Enneagram stuff and said, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was going against the church and
I was doing something wrong and I just want to take that back and I'm just seeing this
kind of guilt cycle repeat itself where people are getting really torn down that are a part
of kind of both worlds simultaneously and are falling for the side of, oh crap, I'm sorry,
let me stay in my lane, let me stay in my box where I am safe and I'm doing what God
is wanting me to do.
Well, and what I've been told is okay to do.
Exactly.
So yeah, let's unpack that a little bit, shall we?
Well, I guess I'd like to ask first, what was it about this retreat that this girl was
apologizing for?
Yeah, when we were unpacking it, me and Anna, it sounded like, yeah, she just, it was a
lot of deep meditation work.
It was a lot of breath work.
It was a lot of kind of goddess energy, which comes into that woman empowerment and that
deep self love.
And so I think that's the first thing to go over if we're talking kind of the new age
movement.
I think one of the biggest fears is that it is the self journey.
It's not a lot of the outside viewpoint is that it's taking God out of the picture and
putting a lot of emphasis on self.
So do they think it's like selfish instead of selfless?
Yes, exactly.
I think there's a huge tie to being, I think there's a lot of dismissiveness in kind of
the unveiling of more trauma work and inner child healing and deep therapy and psychology
and the studying of why you do what you do and the advertising that it's all a part of
this self love journey.
My mom has said this to me tons of times.
Well, it's not about you.
It's about God.
And the fact that we still have this tear up that doing all these beautiful practices
that help you relinquish the identity blocks that you've held onto, the control you've
held onto, the limited beliefs that have kept you from fully authentically expressing who
you are in every moment.
And when I would argue those things get you closer to God.
Yes.
And exactly that.
When you take all that stuff down, whatever God is to you, you feel it deeper and more
authentically than you ever have.
I think it's the greatest thing to point to a higher power.
And like Kyle said in the science and spirituality episode, you start seeing God in everything.
You no longer are looking at people through a lens of they're different, they're wrong.
I'm so right.
It actually is way more selfish in the religious, often the religious mindset.
It's a very, we have it right.
You have it wrong.
When you do the self love journey and your internal world has been looked at and you've
gotten a curiosity to your own body and your own way of thinking and you're more conscious
of it, you don't look at anybody with a lens of judgment or a lens of they're wrong.
I'm right.
It really takes the veil away of feeling as much of a difference or a disconnect between
you and other people.
And yeah, the new age practices are-
Oh yeah.
I've heard your parents say so many times, like, I don't like this new age stuff.
And I had never even heard the term new age.
I've never heard that so many people say it so many times until your parents.
Yeah.
I saw a TikTok where this Christian account was like, which talk is trending right now?
We have to be vigilant.
It's happening.
I know that people are falling for the wrong side.
And he was crying.
He was tearing up.
And I remember feeling that all the time as this stuff entered my path, but it was, everything
was so beautiful.
But the voice of the church was like in my ear.
All of that programming that had been done on my early mind was so close.
And yeah, the spirituality practices are to help you deeply connect your mind, body, and
spirit.
And it goes so much deeper.
I find that a lot of people that are still deep in that kind of religious dogma are often
struggling with connection to their body.
They still will dismiss a lot of their body's ailments as being something they just need
to pray for a little harder or something that...
Yeah, they even can punish themselves for feeling like the disconnect.
There's not as much of a exploration on mind and body connection.
I think the dismissiveness even in the mental health sector gets kind of summarized as being
like maybe I need to pray more or maybe God is punishing me in some way.
Right.
Well, and I was just going to add people who choose to stick with the church after doing
their own spiritual journey, at least now it's like a conscious thing where they've
explored other stuff and now this is what they truly want to do.
I think that's an important point to make is that it can lead you almost right back
to your starting point, but with a completely different perspective.
One that I think, yeah, as we talk in and awaken together, you see everything kind of
through a different lens.
I personally, I think the Bible can be where you can get inspiration at times.
I often don't use it because it can be a trigger for me, but I do remember looking back on
my past and I would ask kind of similarly that I do now with my angel cards and my tarot
deck, I would ask, just give me something to lift me up.
I need to hear like a message and I would open the Bible and read something that would
inspire me, give me a little boost.
I do think some profound messages can come out of it, but I think the problem is the
Bible first off has been, you know, retranslated a lot of times.
And if you look at the way Christianity is studied and other cultures besides America,
it's presented a lot differently.
I think we've gotten so used to, it's kind of been like kind of a collective insanity
in that the messages have now been, we've heard so many sermons and there's kind of
this like the shield over people's eyes on how to interpret it because they're also not
realizing that the amount of times they've heard sermons structured a certain way has
spilled over into how they're interpreting everything.
The pastor mentality as being the anointed one at church and no one else in the church
would be as anointed and not being able to necessarily, you know, split up the messages
or go over multiple perspectives within them.
I think there's just been a lot of closed mindedness that has been accepted.
I just think it's interesting that so many people take life lessons almost exclusively
from this text when we know that scientifically you should never put all of your eggs in one
basket so to speak.
You should never write your thesis based on one reference, right?
You have your entire work cited page.
You need to be looking at tons of different sources, not just one.
And yes, of course, the Bible was written by many minds and many perspectives, but to
pull all of your information and live your life based on something that is dated is just
fascinating to me that people make that commitment.
Yeah.
And I think that brings a good point.
You know, it was always taught that the Bible was a very like holy text.
Those people were very inspired to write all the books that they wrote.
One of the arguments I give to my mom, you know, I think it's very touchy to bring up
like, well, it's just a book wrote by man.
I think that gets very touchy because they, you know, I think it's very taught that it
was kind of an anointed text or a very spiritual text that was given from a higher power.
And this is the argument I tell my mom.
I think there's been many, many beautiful books written since that were also very divinely
inspired.
I think if we think of creative energy as divine energy, then the creativity that hits
you that makes you put something out into the world is coming from a divine, a divine
source.
And we've had many beautiful books written that have been new perspectives that could
have been just as divinely guided as the books that made up the Bible.
And so I think it's, I think we have to look at the other works of art, the new forms of
creativity, the new messages that have come and been brought to us as being just as valid.
The new age.
Trigger words.
Take it out.
I'm just kidding.
So yeah, I think it's really important to keep that in mind with any system that is
pushing more fear or even the movement that is pushing to box this, these spiritual kind
of new age practices into fear is that fear dysregulates us.
Fear makes our body sick.
Fear adds so many poor qualities to your mental, physical and spiritual health.
And so anyone that's trying to make you fear more, fear is taking that connection away
from you and fear is the opposite of love.
And I think in the, the, the text of the Bible, you have to be very careful.
It does say fear not a lot of times, but people take these very specific Bible verses and
use them to create their entire reality when a lot of the terms that are used in those
Bible verses, like the one that talks against witchcraft, witchcraft wasn't even a known
term at the time of the Bible being wrote.
So we have to look at how the verses have been modernized and interpreted differently.
I think there is a lot that can be delved into that as a completely separate talk.
But if that's something you struggle with or your family brings up often and they quote
these very specific Bible verses to you, I think the best answer you can have is I'm
not going to let fear pull me away from what I'm here to do in my divine connection with
the universe, my God, whatever it is, because when you have that true divine connection,
the fear really does fall away.
I've experienced that myself and it took really delving into the world of spirituality, which
pushes a lot more for mind body connection than I think the kind of religious dogma and
the preset religions that have been kind of followed at least in America's way of doing
it.
The body speaks huge volumes and I think the practices that encourage you connecting back
with your body and aren't telling you that your body is creating sin for other people
or the purity culture of blah, blah, blah.
The purity culture continues to perpetuate a disconnection from your body, a disconnection
from.
It really can perpetuate abuse and abuse on yourself and what you tolerate because you
just you're missing that link of mind, body and spirit.
And so I think the practices can only enhance.
I want to say one other kind of ranty thing, but I really do believe that when we look
at all these religions, Kyle, Kyle brought this up in their episode as well.
I think all religion is was people trying to make sense of the unseen.
It is a bunch of people's interpretation of spirituality kind of taken a little bit further.
It's created more strict rules.
You know, the perspectives have turned into kind of like a full script on what you should
and shouldn't do.
But in reality, if we look at that all with a lot less harshness, it's people all curious
about the same thing.
And I think religion is trying to understand the mystery of our existence, the beauty of
this divine power that we can tap into.
And I think it's important just to remember to keep softness and curiosity as we explore
this and get back to the way we probably were when we were first trying to figure it all
out, where we discuss the wonder and discuss the little moments that happened to us that
were profound and beautiful.
And yeah, remembering the starting point instead of the predetermined scripts that have been
shared generation to generation.
Well, babe, it's been really fun to be along the ride of your spiritual journey over all
these years.
And I am so proud of you for where you are now compared to the spiritually shy girl that
I once met and dated and married.
And now we have a dog.
Thanks, babe.
And thank you for continuously providing a safe space as I, you know, my beliefs shift
and move.
And, you know, you've always spent a very safe space to share beautiful experiences
that have happened.
So thank you for allowing me just to grow and find the version of me that, you know,
I want to be each and every day and allowing me to safely shift when that version changes
based on, you know, my perspective.
So thanks for the safe space.
You're welcome.
Yeah.
And thanks to all the listeners.
The final thing I want to leave you with is we are doing one final episode next week.
That'll be our season one finale episode.
We are going to be hosting on December 18th a free event to any of our listeners.
We'd love to have you join.
Our information is on our Instagrams.
We're going to guide you guys in a full moon ceremony and have an open discussion on any
of the questions that have come up as you've listened to our episodes previously.
So you can check out our Awaken Together podcast Instagram page.
We will share a links for sign up.
It's going to be on Kat's website, Catalyst Living.
That's K-A-T-A-L-Y-S-T, living.com.
If you want to sign up and join us, we would love to have you.
Thanks for all your support and we will see you next week for our final season one episode.
Bye.
Bye everybody.
Bye.