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On Leaving Religion
338 Plays1 year ago
Many people leave the religion of their parents as they search for an authentic expression of their spirituality. In this episode, Kevin Kaiser shares his own story of reckoning with the Westernized version of Christianity of his upbringing, and the depth he discovered both within it and outside of it.
* Join us at Little Soul School, a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and accessing the Akashic Records, a place that hold all of our souls’ histories—everything we’ve done in all of our lifetimes. If you’re looking for a deeper connection to yourself and a place to experiment and learn in a non-judgmental, open community of people, join us at https://littlesoul.school. No woo-woo, no fluff. Just fun and connection.
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Website: www.lauracoe.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Soul School' and Podcast Vision
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to Soul School with Laura Ko and Kevin Kaiser. On this show, we dive into life's biggest questions. Who are we? What are we here to do? And how can we fearlessly live as our truest, deepest selves? Soul School is the spiritual education you never received. So if you're ready, join us as we explore together. Soul School is in session.
00:00:25
Speaker
And we are back with another episode of Soul School. Hey, Kevin, how are you today? Good. Good. We're back. We're back. I'm so excited. I love doing these with you. Oh, thanks. I love doing it with you too. It's cool that other people can also listen in, from my perspective, on conversations that we have anyways. So it's like bringing all your friends along.
00:00:51
Speaker
I was describing it to a friend of mine and I was like, we're so weird. We get on phone calls and it's like, okay, so I was just reading this one chapter and it's like immediately we're just diving into... We both love philosophy so much and spirituality, it's just kind of odd people. Yeah, it's like what else is there? I know, right? Nothing. Nothing. So today we were gonna talk about a topic that I think
00:01:19
Speaker
I keep hearing about,
Kevin's Upbringing and Belief System
00:01:20
Speaker
right? It's not my history, my story, it's more yours, but it's definitely one that is spoken of and experienced of frequently in the communities that I'm talking to. And it's this idea of being brought up.
00:01:35
Speaker
in a rather conservative religious upbringing and a relationship to religion in a certain sense, perhaps rejecting that at some point and then finding your way into spirituality and what that all looks like and how that feels. And so I know that's been your path and I'm really curious and excited to hear you talk about it today. So maybe you could start with
00:02:02
Speaker
sharing, how did you grow up? What was your religious, your family's religious structure and belief system? And then what ultimately was the moment that you decided you had to pull away a little bit? How did that feel? Yeah. So I'm a good Midwestern boy. Grew up in Southern Indiana in a little place called Georgetown. So nobody knows where Georgetown is. So I tell people, I grew up about 20 minutes north of Louisville, Kentucky.
00:02:33
Speaker
and very, very Christian. So my parents were products of what they called the Jesus movement. The Jesus movement happened in the 70s when all the hippies became Christians. But my parents weren't hippies. And so I grew up, I have never not known being in church, at least when I was growing up. I mean, some of my first memories were
00:03:02
Speaker
My dad teaching us how to memorize scriptures out of the Bible. And, you know, so everything that comes with that. So I was, I mean, I was given that operating system from the very beginning. And the operating system went something like this. That, yeah, humans are inherently sinful. They're inherently bad.
00:03:32
Speaker
and then God made a way for us to not be so bad, right, through essentially blood, human sacrifice. And even as a kid, this didn't quite make sense to me at all. Like, I remember thinking as a little kid, well, why is God so angry? Like, why would God be so angry? And why would God be so angry at me? You know, because even as a little kid, I'm going to Sunday school and they're talking about how
00:04:01
Speaker
you know, God can't stand humans and it just didn't compute with me. And, you know, I know, you know, in hindsight that even as a little kid, I was a bit of a mystic. To me, I would just look around and I would see God everywhere. It just made intuitive sense to me that, you know, God is all there is.
00:04:27
Speaker
and it's the stuff that the trees are made of and it's the stuff that the air is made of and it's the thing that makes my heart beat and I just knew all of these things but you know like what tends to happen in organized
00:04:40
Speaker
religion, whether it's Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, like all of them, all of the isms. Your childlike wonder with the world starts getting overwritten with the code, with the operating system of your culture. And by the time I was into my middle school and high school years, I had lost a lot of the wonder.
00:05:07
Speaker
because it had been overwritten with this operating system that basically said, you really need to hate yourself.
Religion, Fear, and Control
00:05:19
Speaker
There's a lot of... Dude, I just need to take that in for one second, right? That's just... I brought that up with my... I pointed that out to my mom recently and she said, oh no, Christianity doesn't teach that.
00:05:36
Speaker
But I pointed out to her several things that we had been taught growing up. I mean, using scriptures to really justify this idea that there's something inherently wrong with human beings. And I went to a Christian university. I went to Oral Roberts University. So not just evangelical Christian, but charismatic evangelical Christian.
00:06:02
Speaker
way off in the right. So people dancing in services, church services, and speaking in tongues, and all kinds of things that people from the outside looking in would be like, man, that's crazy.
00:06:18
Speaker
But even then, like at the core of all of it was this idea of fear, judgment. You basically had to get it right. Because if you didn't get life right, you would spend an eternity burning in hell.
00:06:39
Speaker
Okay, I'm having like a, you know, when Oprah had her Super Soul Sunday, she'd pause and be like, wait, wait, wait to the person I'm having a moment. I'm having a moment Kevin, because it's like, oh, right? Like, oh, so many people ask me in readings, am I in the right path? I want to know that I'm getting it right. And I'm always like,
00:06:58
Speaker
why does everybody have this? But so many people I think are raised with a religious structure that tells them there's a way to get life right, otherwise you're going to hell. And so it's like the stress of that idea is high. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can look back throughout history and see how fear is wielded as a weapon to control people.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I think this is one of the things that people see with politics and institutionalized religion over time is that one of the best ways to keep people in line is through fear. And what is the greatest fear of all, but what happens when we die? Well, they would have an answer saying, one of two things isn't gonna happen. You're either gonna spend eternity in bliss or you're gonna spend eternity in eternal torment.
00:07:56
Speaker
And it just made no sense to me, because essentially, you would have to be born in the right place to the right people with the right information, and then you'd have to accept the right information in order to make the right choices in order to choose the right God.
00:08:19
Speaker
And I just started asking questions in my college classes, because we had to take things, general education courses around the Old Testament or the New Testament. And I'd ask questions about, well, what happens to the person who was born before Jesus was even around, or someone who was born in a country where this wasn't even part of their culture at all?
00:08:47
Speaker
you know, what happens to them? They weren't part of the lucky sperm club. They weren't born in the right place and they're at the right time. You know, are they screwed? And so, you know, I started teasing all of these different questions out
00:09:04
Speaker
that for me were really, really big questions. And I would have friends that would say, Kevin, these are dangerous questions because you're gonna confuse yourself. You just need to accept what everybody tells you. Wow. Yeah, and I remember there was this one time, I was in my mid 20s,
00:09:30
Speaker
And our church had done a... It was a men's event. It was a men's retreat weekend.
Challenging Traditional Beliefs
00:09:35
Speaker
And for those not familiar with this, guys, they'll go on a retreat, it's like a camp, and usually there's somebody who comes and they'll speak, and they'll speak out of the scriptures about some topic. And this weekend, this guy was talking about Samson, the story of Samson and Delilah, and how Samson was this really strong guy
00:09:57
Speaker
And he slept with this prostitute and he got captured. The Philistines cut his hair off, right?
00:10:09
Speaker
and he loses his powers. So in this story, Samson gets put into this public building. They've gouged down his eyes, they cut off his hair, and they've made a spectacle of him. So this place is full of men, women, and children, is what the Old Testament says.
00:10:29
Speaker
And so Samson says this prayer, and he says, God, give me the strength one last time so I can take vengeance on my enemies. And the Bible says, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, and he put his hands between these two columns and pushed the columns over. The building collapses, kills everybody. So this is what the guy taught on, and he was teaching on the like faith.
00:10:56
Speaker
And we're all sitting around in a circle and everybody's saying what they got out of it. And finally the guy comes around to me and he says, Kevin, you're really quiet. What did you get out of this? What'd you get out of the teaching? I said, well, what I got out of it was that Samson was the first suicide bomber. And he was like, what? I said, yeah, and the story basically, it's God sanctioned suicide.
00:11:23
Speaker
murder, suicide murder, because the power of the Holy Spirit came on Samson, not so that he could do something good, but so that he could take revenge. So does that mean suicide is okay in some instances? And the guy's jaw dropped. He's like, I'm not sure what...
00:11:45
Speaker
not sure what you mean. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? So those are the kinds of questions I started asking. And I was told you need to stop asking these questions and then
00:12:01
Speaker
You know, I just decided I'm only going to believe those things that I can know for myself directly. But how did you come to that decision? So like take us, so you're in college, you're in this really conservative place where it's, you know, parroting what you grew up with. How did you get to a place where you finally said, you know, was it a slow burn shift? Was it like a left turn moment? Like what was the impetus for change? Cause I know you today, I mean, clearly you've moved far away from that. Yeah.
00:12:31
Speaker
It was both. I mean, it was a slow burn at first because I saw that... So I grew up in Christianity and Christians were... All of my friends and all of our leaders and all of the people were saying that they had the exclusive claim to the one truth that would bring fulfillment and happiness in life.
00:12:58
Speaker
And they were some of the most unhappy people that I knew. And I was too. And so it was saying one thing and then the experience of life was something else. And so it just didn't pass the smell test anymore because just as many marriages were failing as my friends who weren't Christians,
00:13:27
Speaker
just as many of the Christians I knew were as greedy as the people that I knew who weren't Christians. So there was nothing different about their lived experience other than what they did on Sunday. I see. Right. And just little by little, they just kind of chipped away at me. And then when I worked in entertainment management for 10 years and
00:13:57
Speaker
many of the clients that our firm worked with were in the Christian space, publishing their big brands. And if I named some, people would know immediately who they are, so I won't do that. And I found that they were no different than anybody else.
00:14:20
Speaker
And what I was most hungry for was a real experience, like a direct experience with divinity, because I'd had glimpses of it and tastes of it over the years. I just knew that whatever it was that we were trying to describe and trying to
00:14:44
Speaker
wrap in our beliefs. It couldn't be held by our beliefs. I mean, it was, it was like trying to fit the ocean in a thimble, you know, and walking around saying, Hey, we have the truth. And it just stopped working for me. And so one thing that I keep hearing on repeat, and I'm curious for you is in rejecting maybe the way that things were presented to you young, there's a certain second phase though, where there's a fear of getting
00:15:15
Speaker
I don't know what word you want to use, indoctrinated or brought into faith in a way that doesn't feel good again. How do you have faith in spirituality without feeling like it's kind of replacing the same thing that you had growing up that you've now rejected? So how did you start to think about
00:15:33
Speaker
the spiritual texts, right? I know that you love them so much from the Tao Te Ching to whatever it is, right? Like you love all of these different Eastern Western philosophical ideas that base themselves in the not knowing and all these really beautiful spiritual ideas. So how did you bring those in? Did you resist them at first? Did you have that sort of fear, oh my God, I'm going back into the same basic box again?
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't feel that at all.
Exploring Personal Spirituality
00:16:05
Speaker
I mean, to me, it was it was just exploration because I had already decided that and I knew that anything that I could read was just somebody else who was trying to make sense of something that they had
00:16:23
Speaker
experienced, right? It's like the daddy chain. So, Latsu, he has all of these wonderful proverbs and things that he talks about. And it's like the Buddha say, it's just a finger pointing to the moon. And rather than
00:16:41
Speaker
like looking and going toward the, in the direction of where the finger was pointing, you know, most people stop and they suck on the finger for comfort, right? Rather than like going and exploring. So I decided, Hey, all of these are really cool maps.
00:16:57
Speaker
the really cool maps that will show me, like, try this. Have you thought about that? And I found that they were all essentially saying the same thing. Which is? Which is there is one mystery. We call that mystery God. And if you think you can figure it out,
00:17:22
Speaker
you're kidding yourself. You cannot know the ocean. I can't go and explore every single inch of the ocean and know it intimately, but I can experience the ocean. I can go jump in the waves and I can experience the ocean and that's what I wanted to do. I didn't wanna read about the ocean.
00:17:50
Speaker
I didn't want to hear other people's opinions about the ocean. I wanted to find out for myself. And all of these texts and books and things people were talking about were simply pointing to, hey, here's where I found some answers for myself. Yeah.
00:18:10
Speaker
But it ultimately led me to this period of time where I essentially burned the boats, burned the ships on the beach, and decided, I'm going to put everything aside that I've ever learned, anything anybody has ever told me, and I'm only going to believe what I can experience directly.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, I know we're going to have a show on it because we've already talked about it, but just quickly, I mean, just to, you know, not leave people out there feeling like this is always sunshine and rainbows. Decisions to go experience it for yourself and to leave the structure as well. A lot of people are unhappy in these, you know, religious frameworks. Going out on your own and experiencing it for yourself,
00:19:03
Speaker
definitely is a struggle in a different kind of way. So just that experience of the ocean, as you put it, like trying to experience these philosophical spiritual beliefs in your own life,
00:19:18
Speaker
you're like directly faced with the realities of the limitations of your ego and your stories, your frameworks, who you are. It's a really tough process in a different kind of way because it's this breaking down that I know we're going to talk about.
00:19:40
Speaker
later, but I just do want to say, I know you. I mean, I know that process, right? It's been a long, arduous, challenging, but beautiful road, right? Oh, it's been amazing. Along the way, I've lost friends. I've lost family that are very, very committed to their own view of the world. Yeah. And from my perspective, without
00:20:08
Speaker
without really questioning what they think and believe and what they've been taught. That was one of the first things that came to my mind, and this is one of the reasons why our family eventually had to leave
00:20:27
Speaker
the church community where we'd been in, in Tennessee, and it was... I said, if God is not big enough to handle my questions, even as I'm screaming those questions in confusion or anger or whatever it is that I'm experiencing, if this infinite God isn't big enough to not feel threatened by that,
00:20:57
Speaker
it's way too small. It's no God that I would ever want to know. Because to me, I look around and the nature of life itself is it's abundant, it's grace. Life's not easy. Life is not easy. Existence is not easy. But there is this beauty to it that I could just never
00:21:23
Speaker
wrap in this smallness that I had learned. But yeah, you're exactly right. It's really hard. To this day, there are people that I really love that were deep friends, but we parted ways because they couldn't be in a friendship or relationship with somebody who didn't believe the same things, which to me felt like a huge loss for them.
00:21:51
Speaker
But I also mean, as you step into defining your own experience of this stuff,
00:22:03
Speaker
It's like if you accept the structural thing you're saying in the early part of your story, don't question it. Just accept it. There isn't that deep analysis of oneself. There's not that time, that reflection into what does all this feel like in my own body? What does this all feel like in my own experience? As you do that, which I know we're going to talk about more, it's a really, really stressful process at the beginning to confront
00:22:32
Speaker
your thoughts, who you are, if I'm not my thoughts, then who am I? Oh my God, all these things I believe to be me, maybe aren't me, right? Like all of that stuff. So it's kind of like, it's like a new challenge in a different way and it's beautiful and the payoff is worth it. But right? Didn't you find that transitional phase?
Impact of Leaving Church and Redefining Beliefs
00:22:52
Speaker
I mean, I know because we talk about it, but these sort of
00:22:57
Speaker
breaking down of all the structural norms that you've projected. Yeah, that part of the process has not been fun. I went through a period of time where I actually questioned whether I was sane. Yeah. That's a pretty common... It was yesterday. Two days ago.
00:23:17
Speaker
But that's a pretty common thing because in order to be free and happy, you don't have to acquire anything. There's nothing new to learn, but you have to drop stuff. Right. And you have to drop everything. Well, Kevin, not just stuff, but you got to drop who you think you are. Exactly. And who you think others think you are.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if, if you are, if you're deeply committed to that process and I was deeply committed to that process, um, it will be, I mean, it will be the most thrilling, uh, fierce and vicious, um, process that you go through because nothing will be spared nothing. I mean,
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah. And once you start, this has just been my experience. I always feel a little sorry for people who come across my path because they were like, yeah, no, Laura, I want to do it and everything. And I'm like, okay, you know, but once you open that door, you can't close it.
00:24:27
Speaker
You can't. Yeah. And so it's like this one way ticket into a different way of seeing the world, but it's like, oh my God, some days can I put the blinders back on? I don't know. I have so many friends that are on this path.
00:24:44
Speaker
if you want to call it a path, this experience. And they all say something similar. They're like, I wish I was, I feel like that guy in the matrix is eating the steak and says, I know the steak isn't real, but man, put me back in the matrix. Just let me stay asleep. That's right. I wish I could go back. That's right.
00:25:03
Speaker
And I've said that myself many times. I've even said it to you. And you were like, Kevin, you know, that's not what you want. You know, that's not happy. I mean, it's my favorite like crisis of consciousness story. I'm like, I told it on the previous episode where I was like, I'm done with it all. But I get so angry sometimes at the stress of
00:25:34
Speaker
conformity, right? The beliefs that, you know, just like none get spared. And there's a time where you're like, okay, like uncle, I am tired of shedding and shedding and shedding. I mean, it's hilarious because my first book was called emotional obesity, shed the weights that keep you from your authentic self. Like clearly this is something that I wanted for, that's like over a decade ago. But
00:25:58
Speaker
It's like, you know, you go to the gym and you work out and it hurts and when you build muscle, it tears before it gets stronger. And I think of that, you know, it's like when I'm doing the emotional workout, the spiritual workout, it's not really different from going to the gym. It's like things tear to make more space so that you can break open more and
00:26:20
Speaker
I'm writing a book called Beautifully Broken. It's like breaking open to break through to break down to break into more of myself, but it is a tearing to open to build more.
00:26:34
Speaker
I wish the process was a little different, right? Community is critical in that process, right? I mean, I don't know what I would do without you and several other people where I can freak out sometimes, but you can't really shut the door even if you do have that emotional break.
00:26:58
Speaker
And life always finds a way in. My son calling in the middle. There's the break. Hey, but this is the way life is like this, right? The reality of life is not as we expected. It's messy. One of the people that really helped me
00:27:22
Speaker
on my own journey was Richard Rohr. And Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk who he's written extensively about sort of the Eastern view of Christianity, because Christianity is an Eastern religion. And we as Westerners don't see it. We see things through the Enlightenment age, the age of reason lens. And I began to see that, especially in Christianity,
00:27:52
Speaker
I began to see the beauty again in it the same way I saw it in Taoism or in Buddhism. And it was like each of these cultures and each of these perspectives where they were describing a facet on this diamond.
00:28:09
Speaker
this infinite diamond. And it reminded me of something that C.S. Lewis said many, many years ago about how God shows up in the cultures, in every culture of the world in its own language, in its own way. They have their own ways of describing
00:28:29
Speaker
this mystery and the beauty and the struggle of life. And I just began to take all of those and I just learned from whatever resonated with me.
The Growth Process and Community Support
00:28:45
Speaker
And I found that it was very beautiful, but it really was a death process. You know, there was birth, there was death, because there is no resurrection without death. There is no renewal, rebirth, which is I think what our, that's at least been my experience, you know, of like the birth of these identities that we have. And then in order to move beyond them, there is a dying that happens.
00:28:45
Speaker
And
00:29:13
Speaker
And dying is never, it's not romanticized. It's not a romantic thing. I think the overused metaphor, the caterpillar becoming the butterfly is still maybe the best one there is because the caterpillar has no concept at all what butterfly is.
00:29:33
Speaker
no concept. All it knows is its own existence. And then it basically destroys itself in the process of becoming what it will eventually be. But it's that goo phase. Wow, I've never heard it described that way. That's so beautiful. Yeah, that subliminal space, that goo phase where it's not a caterpillar anymore and it's not a butterfly yet.
00:29:58
Speaker
It's this goo inside of the cocoon and I spent many years in the goo stage and wondering if I was going to die that way. Is there any hope? I went through times of depression and does anything matter? Do I matter? Is there any meaning to life?
00:30:21
Speaker
And I think all of those are really necessary. Those are the dark night of the soul that I don't know that there's any way around that. The only way out of the stories is through them, through the darkness to what's on the other side of it. And it can be lonely, which is why, like I say, community is so important, having people in your life that can walk with you.
00:30:51
Speaker
Well, Kevin, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure so many people can relate to it.
Invitation to LittleSoul.school
00:30:58
Speaker
And thank you for chatting with me again today. My pleasure. My pleasure. And thank you for being my friend. Thank you.
00:31:08
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this week's episode and I really hope that you consider checking out the Little Soul School, LittleSoul.school, where there's a community of people dedicated to soul growth, soul learning, and the Akashic energy.
00:31:25
Speaker
a space that holds all of our soul's histories, everything we've ever done in all of our lifetimes. Because they're looking for a deeper connection to themselves, a place to experiment and play with spirituality in a non-judgmental, vulnerable, open community of people. No woo-woo, no fluff, just fun and connection. Come check it out, littlesoul.school.