# A Spiritual Atheist? (with Britt Hartley)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 10 Feb 2026, 51 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69846253/podcast858_spiritualatheist_britthartley.mp3

Britt Hartley is a religious trauma and deconstruction coach. She's also a "Certified Spiritual Director" at No Nonsense Spirituality. What does that mean? Can someone be a spiritual atheist? VIDEO of this conversation Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because.
[0:22] Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 2: I can already think of a few people who would
[0:58] Speaker 2: see the word spirit in the show title and check
[1:02] Speaker 2: out a spiritual Yeah, to be kidding me, blah blah blah,
[1:05] Speaker 2: and then they shrug it all off. But I think
[1:07] Speaker 2: it's a conversation worth having. I find it fascinating. I've
[1:11] Speaker 2: met a lot of atheist, non religious people whatever, and
[1:14] Speaker 2: they just say, well, you know, I'm spiritual. I'm not religious,
[1:17] Speaker 2: but I'm spiritual. And then we have to go further
[1:20] Speaker 2: and say, well, how do you define that? What's it mean?
[1:23] Speaker 2: And we're going to do some of that today and
[1:26] Speaker 2: hopefully the conversation you're about to hear will spur some
[1:29] Speaker 2: further conversations in your own life. So let's keep an
[1:33] Speaker 2: open mind and let's chat about a spiritual atheist. There
[1:38] Speaker 2: is video of this interview that is linked in the
[1:41] Speaker 2: description box of the show. Britt Hartley has a master's
[1:46] Speaker 2: in theology. She is a religious deconstruction coach and an
[1:50] Speaker 2: author of a book with an intriguing title, No Nonsense Spirituality. Well,
[1:57] Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to Brits about her life, life
[2:00] Speaker 2: and her work or past or present, and she joins
[2:03] Speaker 2: us today. So good to meet you, Thanks for coming.
[2:05] Speaker 3: Glad to be here.
[2:06] Speaker 2: So on your website, I got to start here. There's
[2:08] Speaker 2: this picture right front and center of you wailin on
[2:11] Speaker 2: a pearl drum set. Are you over there? Are you
[2:13] Speaker 2: a rocker?
[2:15] Speaker 4: I do have a punk rock heart, but for me
[2:18] Speaker 4: it's mostly Weezer. So I picked up Weezer when I was,
[2:22] Speaker 4: you know, fourteen fifteen, and luckily for me, you know,
[2:25] Speaker 4: not everybody's favorite high school band keeps making music.
[2:29] Speaker 5: Luckily for me they did.
[2:30] Speaker 4: And so I'm at heart, my deepest core, I'm a
[2:34] Speaker 4: Weezer girly, so I'm mostly usually trying to play some
[2:37] Speaker 4: Weezer song.
[2:39] Speaker 2: I don't follow Weezer, but I think, is it Weezer
[2:41] Speaker 2: that's remade a couple of classic Toto songs? Africa?
[2:45] Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, they did a teal album where they did
[2:48] Speaker 4: some covers and they did yeah Africa.
[2:50] Speaker 2: Okay, that's a d tour I didn't really expect to take,
[2:53] Speaker 2: but I just wanted to mention it. Masters in theology,
[2:57] Speaker 2: tell me about that. Tell me about your education.
[3:00] Speaker 4: So I was raised Mormon, and I did my undergrad
[3:04] Speaker 4: at BUYU and by then had left Mormonism in belief.
[3:10] Speaker 4: And when I just figured I just have the wrong religion.
[3:13] Speaker 4: You know, that's what people tell me when you're Mormon, Like, oh,
[3:16] Speaker 4: you just have the wrong Jesus, Like, that's what everybody
[3:18] Speaker 4: told me. So I go to Christian Theology School and
[3:21] Speaker 4: I got my master's degree in theology with a focus
[3:23] Speaker 4: on the future of American religion. And I got all
[3:26] Speaker 4: the way up to my PhD or to my dissertation
[3:30] Speaker 4: in my doctorate program, and it was when it was
[3:33] Speaker 4: time to sit down and actually write my dissertation that
[3:36] Speaker 4: I had to finally fully accept that not only had
[3:39] Speaker 4: I lost faith in Mormonism, and Christianity and Jesus.
[3:44] Speaker 5: But I had also lost my faith in God.
[3:46] Speaker 4: So I am still at all but dissertation because I
[3:50] Speaker 4: wouldn't know what to write now. My dissertation in under theology.
[3:54] Speaker 5: But that is my education experience.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Did that happen in BYU Bring Him Young University?
[4:01] Speaker 4: No? So my master's degree and the doctorate program was
[4:05] Speaker 4: with Thomas j ord and he's an open and relational theologian,
[4:09] Speaker 4: and that was at North Wind Theological Seminary. So that
[4:11] Speaker 4: would have been outside of outside of Mormonism by then.
[4:14] Speaker 2: But you went to BYU. I did, yes, So ideology first,
[4:19] Speaker 2: not education first. Would that be unfair?
[4:22] Speaker 4: It would be more so Daddy's paying for this, but
[4:26] Speaker 4: not that. So I rode that train as long as
[4:30] Speaker 4: I could when I was younger.
[4:31] Speaker 5: If I'm being totally honest.
[4:33] Speaker 2: So I'm going to ask a couple of questions I
[4:35] Speaker 2: know my viewers and listeners would like me to ask.
[4:38] Speaker 2: And there's some hot button terms that you use, and
[4:40] Speaker 2: I'm just curious as to how you define them. No nonsense, spirituality, spirituals.
[4:46] Speaker 2: I mean the root is spirit. A lot of people
[4:48] Speaker 2: get hung up on that. So how do you define spiritual.
[4:54] Speaker 4: Yeah, the language in the space is really difficult. It's
[4:57] Speaker 4: really difficult too because we don't have secular language for
[5:00] Speaker 4: a lot of these terms. So I am an outright atheist.
[5:04] Speaker 4: I'm very public about being an atheist. My technical title
[5:09] Speaker 4: is that I'm an atheist spiritual director. So after my
[5:12] Speaker 4: master's degree, I went and did an eighteen month program
[5:15] Speaker 4: in spirit in non religious spiritual Direction at the Center
[5:19] Speaker 4: for Non Religious Spirituality.
[5:21] Speaker 3: And essentially the approach.
[5:22] Speaker 4: Of that is, how do you get all the benefits
[5:25] Speaker 4: of religion and spirituality? So that would be things like
[5:27] Speaker 4: community and ritual in awe and states of transcendence and
[5:31] Speaker 4: wisdom and love and rights of passage. There's all these
[5:34] Speaker 4: benefits that we have from religion, religion being a cognitive
[5:39] Speaker 4: technology in many ways, and how do you get all
[5:41] Speaker 4: those benefits without belief? So, for me, what spirituality means
[5:47] Speaker 4: and I know this word is difficult, and it's okay
[5:49] Speaker 4: if this word triggers you and.
[5:50] Speaker 5: We want to use a different word.
[5:52] Speaker 4: But if we're looking at spirituality as a whole, especially
[5:57] Speaker 4: when we look at even non theistic forms of spirituality,
[6:00] Speaker 4: the best definition that I could come up with is
[6:03] Speaker 4: that spirituality is connection to your deepest self and then
[6:06] Speaker 4: connection outside of self. And for many people that connection
[6:09] Speaker 4: outside of self includes a God for me or a
[6:12] Speaker 4: supernatural element for me.
[6:14] Speaker 5: It doesn't for me.
[6:15] Speaker 4: You know, I'm connecting outside of myself in different ways
[6:18] Speaker 4: in you know, the story of humanity or in nature.
[6:22] Speaker 4: But to me, spirituality is really about that connection, and
[6:25] Speaker 4: we don't have in the secular world. We don't have
[6:28] Speaker 4: a lot of language for everything that's under the umbrella
[6:31] Speaker 4: of spirituality but secular and so it's one of the
[6:35] Speaker 4: difficult things that I would love to talk to you
[6:37] Speaker 4: about is how much do we reclaim these old words
[6:40] Speaker 4: or should we create new ones, because everybody's so triggered
[6:43] Speaker 4: by the baggage that comes with the old words.
[6:46] Speaker 2: I don't get hung up on spiritual as a descriptor.
[6:50] Speaker 2: When we're groping for language the birth of a child
[6:54] Speaker 2: or a transcendent piece of music, something that really transports
[6:57] Speaker 2: us somewhere emotionally, we may not be able to find
[7:00] Speaker 2: the language. So would that be an accurate way to
[7:04] Speaker 2: use spiritual? Is that how you are using spiritual?
[7:07] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[7:08] Speaker 4: Absolutely, And to your point, I think it does the
[7:10] Speaker 4: secular world a disservice when the only people who are
[7:13] Speaker 4: talking and giving language to those experiences is religion.
[7:17] Speaker 5: And then people.
[7:18] Speaker 4: So, for example, there was one study that showed that
[7:21] Speaker 4: two thirds of people who did know psychedelic mushrooms and
[7:26] Speaker 4: had a very transcendent experience didn't have language to be
[7:31] Speaker 4: able to talk about that in secular terms. And so
[7:34] Speaker 4: two thirds of atheists after that experience no longer called
[7:37] Speaker 4: themselves atheists. And I think a lot of that has
[7:40] Speaker 4: to do with the secular world being very scared and
[7:43] Speaker 4: allergic to some of these terms, and I think over
[7:45] Speaker 4: time we need to have space for those kinds of
[7:48] Speaker 4: human experiences outside of religion, or it does secularism a disservice.
[7:53] Speaker 2: How much pushback do you get from atheists.
[7:57] Speaker 3: Ieah, theists.
[7:59] Speaker 4: How much I get pushed back from everyone, And that's okay.
[8:03] Speaker 4: You know, it's a very controversial place that I find
[8:06] Speaker 4: myself in. But I get pushback from the religious people
[8:10] Speaker 4: who are very mad that I'm doing spirituality outside of
[8:13] Speaker 4: the bounds of religion and doing it really under the
[8:17] Speaker 4: umbrella of atheism. I get pushback from the atheists who
[8:22] Speaker 4: really just think all religion is bad and it's all bullshit.
[8:25] Speaker 4: We need to burn it all down the spirituality. We
[8:28] Speaker 4: don't need any of this, and so I'll get pushed
[8:30] Speaker 4: back from atheists, and then I get pushed back from
[8:32] Speaker 4: the New Age people because not only am I critical
[8:35] Speaker 4: of organized religion, but I'm also critical of superstition and
[8:40] Speaker 4: biases in its many forms. So I'm skeptical of astrology,
[8:46] Speaker 4: I'm skeptical of some of the New Age spiritual claims
[8:50] Speaker 4: coming out of that space. So it's a very tenuous
[8:53] Speaker 4: position that I find myself in that I want to
[8:55] Speaker 4: get all the benefits of religion. I want to get
[8:58] Speaker 4: all the benefits of secularism and rationality. I want to
[9:01] Speaker 4: get all the benefits of things like ritual and story
[9:04] Speaker 4: and narrative without going into truth claims like you know,
[9:09] Speaker 4: the planets affect human personality, and so I want to
[9:12] Speaker 4: take all the benefits of these places but avoid all
[9:15] Speaker 4: of the pitfalls of these various camps. And that makes
[9:18] Speaker 4: everyone mad. But it is resonating with some people, especially
[9:22] Speaker 4: people who are deconstructing from religion, who still want some
[9:25] Speaker 4: elements of a spiritual life but feel like they can
[9:28] Speaker 4: no longer believe. Is really the community that I'm finding
[9:32] Speaker 4: some resonance with. But I'm getting pushed back from everyone,
[9:35] Speaker 4: and that's okay, I don't.
[9:37] Speaker 2: Have this in my notes, But who writes the astrologies?
[9:41] Speaker 2: I mean it's funny because people are like, I need
[9:43] Speaker 2: to find out what the chart says, and no one
[9:46] Speaker 2: ever says, well, who writes this stuff?
[9:49] Speaker 4: Yeah, the people will say, like, this is just a
[9:52] Speaker 4: gathering of patterns, and so we can from the patterns
[9:56] Speaker 4: of the past, then we can get some information of this.
[10:00] Speaker 4: And I do think that there is some human archetype
[10:02] Speaker 4: work that you can do with astrology. I just don't
[10:04] Speaker 4: think it's the best tool for that because there's just
[10:06] Speaker 4: so many truth claims that you have to believe that
[10:09] Speaker 4: just have no science behind it. So I'm very critical
[10:12] Speaker 4: of astrology, and that certainly makes TikTok very mad. TikTok
[10:16] Speaker 4: is Skews Young Skew's female, so is more you know
[10:19] Speaker 4: astrology Taro forward than I am.
[10:23] Speaker 2: When we look at the Forer effect or the Barnum
[10:26] Speaker 2: effect when it comes to astrologies, it is amazing how
[10:29] Speaker 2: we tend to say that's totally me m.
[10:32] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's that bias. And then it's hindsight bias because
[10:38] Speaker 4: you can fit any pattern into whatever you want with
[10:41] Speaker 4: hindsight bias, so you can look at any chart and say, oh,
[10:45] Speaker 4: that actually fits my life story. And what makes biases
[10:48] Speaker 4: so strong is that you don't know that your brain
[10:50] Speaker 4: is doing it, and so you don't know that your
[10:52] Speaker 4: brain is fitting your life story into whatever the planets
[10:55] Speaker 4: are doing. And so once you take away the Barnum effect,
[10:58] Speaker 4: like you said, and hindsight bias, astrology just doesn't doesn't work.
[11:02] Speaker 4: This is why astrology is so bad at predicting the
[11:05] Speaker 4: future is because the future doesn't have hindsight bias.
[11:10] Speaker 2: Well, you can be an extrovert, but around company sometimes
[11:13] Speaker 2: you just feel shy and you.
[11:15] Speaker 4: Want to get away, which you know, if that's your
[11:17] Speaker 4: only if that's your only tool, yeah, if that's your
[11:21] Speaker 4: only tool for understanding human nature, like there is, there
[11:25] Speaker 4: are things to learn about human nature. But like you say,
[11:28] Speaker 4: that doesn't mean that you're necessarily this sign because these
[11:33] Speaker 4: are all aspects of human nature in general.
[11:36] Speaker 2: In the book, you used a term paralyzed by freedom
[11:41] Speaker 2: when it comes to people who are in we'll call
[11:43] Speaker 2: it a high control religious culture. What does that mean?
[11:46] Speaker 2: Paralyzed by freedom?
[11:48] Speaker 4: Yes, one thing that people will experience when they deconstruct
[11:52] Speaker 4: is they'll realize that religion does a lot to soothe
[11:56] Speaker 4: our four existential fears. And our four existential fears are
[11:59] Speaker 4: fear of death, which religion will usually address, fear of meaninglessness,
[12:04] Speaker 4: which you know, religions will usually give you a story
[12:06] Speaker 4: and a meaning and a purpose, fear of isolation, and
[12:10] Speaker 4: religions are pretty good at building community. And then fear
[12:14] Speaker 4: of freedom. And that fear of freedom one is one
[12:17] Speaker 4: that's not intuitive sometimes at first for people. We like
[12:21] Speaker 4: to think, or we talk in ways sometimes that if
[12:24] Speaker 4: we could just get rid of all the cult leaders
[12:26] Speaker 4: and all the authoritarians, we'll all be free.
[12:29] Speaker 3: But the real truth.
[12:30] Speaker 4: Is that we want authoritarians and we want people to
[12:33] Speaker 4: tell us what to do. And I guarantee you if
[12:36] Speaker 4: all leaders of every kind died today, we would recreate
[12:40] Speaker 4: them tomorrow. And we actually are so deeply in our
[12:44] Speaker 4: psyche afraid of doing life because what do we do?
[12:49] Speaker 4: Like it's hard to be a human that when someone
[12:51] Speaker 4: comes in with confidence and says, do these twelve things.
[12:55] Speaker 4: Here are your I don't know Jordan Peterson twelve rules
[12:58] Speaker 4: for life, or here's your eight foul path, or here's
[13:01] Speaker 4: your five prayers you need to say or whatever. It
[13:04] Speaker 4: actually gives us a lot of psychological soothing to say, Oh,
[13:09] Speaker 4: someone has a plan. All I have to do is
[13:11] Speaker 4: just follow this plan. And so what people will find
[13:13] Speaker 4: when they deconstruct is that usually one of these fears
[13:16] Speaker 4: will show up because the religion was soothing it in
[13:21] Speaker 4: some way. And for many people it's that fear of
[13:24] Speaker 4: freedom of this, like you step out of religion and
[13:27] Speaker 4: that first breath is freedom, and then that second breath is,
[13:30] Speaker 4: oh shit, how do I raise children?
[13:33] Speaker 5: What do I do?
[13:34] Speaker 4: Like? What is the purpose of any of this? And
[13:36] Speaker 4: that can be very paralyzing for people, where we'd have
[13:39] Speaker 4: to work on finding new ground, which can be difficult
[13:43] Speaker 4: the more you deconstruct, because the more you deconstruct, the
[13:45] Speaker 4: more you start heading into nihilism territory, where it can
[13:49] Speaker 4: be really hard to find your new anchors.
[13:51] Speaker 2: Does nature nurture play into Which of those really affect you? Like,
[13:55] Speaker 2: I don't feel like post religion. I gravitate to authoritarian model,
[14:01] Speaker 2: but there might be something else that's more my baggage.
[14:05] Speaker 2: Does it vary by person?
[14:07] Speaker 4: It varies by person. I can't tell you how much
[14:09] Speaker 4: is nature and how much is nurture. That question would
[14:11] Speaker 4: be above above my pay grade on the percentages of that.
[14:14] Speaker 4: But I can tell you that certain personality types will
[14:17] Speaker 4: show up in different ways. So the one that I
[14:19] Speaker 4: work with the most are the ones who struggle the most,
[14:21] Speaker 4: which tends to be people who are in low in
[14:24] Speaker 4: extraversion and high in neuroticism. That brain just suffers more
[14:29] Speaker 4: by nature, and it's going to need a lot more support.
[14:31] Speaker 4: People who are high in openness high in extraversion tend
[14:37] Speaker 4: to do well outside of religion because they can handle
[14:40] Speaker 4: a lot of ambiguity and their brains just tend to
[14:43] Speaker 4: suffer less. So they're enjoying life more so they need less.
[14:47] Speaker 4: So there are certain personality types that will, for example,
[14:50] Speaker 4: tend towards pessimistic nihilism or optimistic nihilism. I don't see
[14:54] Speaker 4: the optimistic nihilists because they don't need me. I see
[14:57] Speaker 4: much more of the pessimistic nihilists.
[15:00] Speaker 2: Talk about the word religion. I came out of my
[15:02] Speaker 2: faith around two thousand and eight. This was the time
[15:05] Speaker 2: of the new atheist. It was Hitchens and Dawkins and
[15:08] Speaker 2: Harris and Dennett, and their works were very instrumental for me,
[15:13] Speaker 2: and they went hard at religion and I think given
[15:16] Speaker 2: the context of that time, it may have had its uses, right,
[15:19] Speaker 2: I mean it was useful for me, But in my
[15:21] Speaker 2: own activism, saying the word religion as if it's a
[15:25] Speaker 2: monolith has proven really problematic because there's so many other
[15:30] Speaker 2: questions to be asked after that. Is it a fundamentalist faith?
[15:33] Speaker 2: I mean we're talking about hardline Baptist and Acostal, etc.
[15:36] Speaker 2: Catholic faith. Are you a progressive Christian? Are you a Buddhist?
[15:40] Speaker 2: Are you a secular religion like the Satanic Temple? Talk
[15:44] Speaker 2: to me about religion from your perspective, religion as a term.
[15:48] Speaker 4: Yeah, So the best definition that I've seen, and historically
[15:52] Speaker 4: this is a very hard thing to define because we
[15:54] Speaker 4: have so many different religions. How can we define them
[15:58] Speaker 4: in a way that include to all of them? So
[16:00] Speaker 4: the best definition that I've ever heard of religion is
[16:03] Speaker 4: that religion is what orients you in the universe.
[16:06] Speaker 3: And from that.
[16:07] Speaker 4: Perspective, you could say, like, it doesn't bother me when
[16:10] Speaker 4: theists say everyone is religious in some way, that doesn't
[16:14] Speaker 4: really bother me. I can get on board with that,
[16:16] Speaker 4: and I can I could explained my religion basically what
[16:21] Speaker 4: my community looks like, what my rituals look like, what
[16:23] Speaker 4: my family culture looks like, the people that I have
[16:27] Speaker 4: in my life who are alive and dead, who I
[16:30] Speaker 4: access for wisdom. So that doesn't bother me when people
[16:35] Speaker 4: say that everyone is religious. And I do think that
[16:37] Speaker 4: the new Atheists did get into trouble, even though Hitchins
[16:41] Speaker 4: was particularly influential for me, I do think they got
[16:46] Speaker 4: into trouble by by condemning all religion, and all religion
[16:50] Speaker 4: is bad when there is a certain aspect of human
[16:53] Speaker 4: nature that seems to be always religious. So we'll leave
[16:56] Speaker 4: organized religion, or will leave Christianity. But one of my
[17:00] Speaker 4: favorite books is Strange Rights, the Seven you know, New
[17:03] Speaker 4: Religions of America. The second that we leave a religion,
[17:06] Speaker 4: we tend to create new ones. So wellness culture operates
[17:09] Speaker 4: like a religion, or you know, there's all these kinds
[17:13] Speaker 4: of new religions that are popping up. So I'm okay
[17:15] Speaker 4: with the idea that religion is just how you orient
[17:17] Speaker 4: yourself in the universe, and maybe everyone is deeply religious
[17:21] Speaker 4: in some way. I'm okay with that. I don't tend
[17:23] Speaker 4: to lead with that, just because that can be very
[17:25] Speaker 4: triggering to a deconstruction audience. I'll tend to maybe use
[17:28] Speaker 4: different words, but but that, yeah, that doesn't bother me.
[17:33] Speaker 2: No, I can tell you right now there are members
[17:35] Speaker 2: of my audience who are pissed I'm not religious.
[17:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm not sure.
[17:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I'm not religious. I mean everyone is religious.
[17:45] Speaker 2: I don't believe in gods and monsters. There's no Holy Book,
[17:48] Speaker 2: there's no you know, there's no paradise, there's no pain.
[17:52] Speaker 2: I use sort of my own, you know, my own
[17:56] Speaker 2: mind and heart to try to better understand my place
[18:00] Speaker 2: in the universe, a finite existence. I don't go on,
[18:03] Speaker 2: or there's no evidence that I go on. I create
[18:07] Speaker 2: my own sense of purpose. How is that religion?
[18:11] Speaker 4: Yeah, when when you look at someone who's thriving, especially
[18:14] Speaker 4: when someone says I'm not religious, and you look at
[18:17] Speaker 4: someone who's thriving, they still tend to have all the
[18:19] Speaker 4: elements of religion. It's just not supernatural. So in just
[18:24] Speaker 4: the sentence that you just said, you have a sense
[18:26] Speaker 4: of how you ground morality. You have a sense of
[18:30] Speaker 4: meaning and purpose. You have community that you've built, you
[18:33] Speaker 4: have a work that you're doing with this podcast. You
[18:36] Speaker 4: have experiences that are meaningful for you. You have family, culture,
[18:39] Speaker 4: you have ritual, you have people that you read or
[18:42] Speaker 4: refer to for wisdom on life. And so if you
[18:46] Speaker 4: look at yourself as a non theistic religion or non supernatural,
[18:50] Speaker 4: you would still have the elements of human thriving in
[18:54] Speaker 4: your life. And those are the elements that I'm helping
[18:56] Speaker 4: people replace so that we're not throwing the baby out
[18:59] Speaker 4: with the bathroom when we leave religion. Or you can
[19:02] Speaker 4: hit nihilism or even for some people's suicidality, because they
[19:06] Speaker 4: don't have replacements for all those things that humans tend
[19:10] Speaker 4: to need to thrive.
[19:12] Speaker 2: So did you go through that angry atheist thing.
[19:15] Speaker 4: I did go through angry atheist. I did go through
[19:18] Speaker 4: Christopher Hitchens atheism, and it was kind of addictive, like
[19:22] Speaker 4: the you have a superiority complex when you're a Christian
[19:26] Speaker 4: or when you're Mormon, and then when you're like the
[19:29] Speaker 4: Christopher Hitchens at the table, and especially when I know
[19:32] Speaker 4: the Bible better than most Christians and so you can
[19:36] Speaker 4: Bible batch just so well, there is a little bit
[19:39] Speaker 4: of an addictive superiority to that and have mostly outgrown. Yeah,
[19:44] Speaker 4: that would maybe be a decade or two ago. For me,
[19:47] Speaker 4: But I would hope that I've mostly outgrown that phase
[19:50] Speaker 4: because there is some superiority to that that I don't
[19:54] Speaker 4: think is healthy.
[19:55] Speaker 2: Well, it's not just a feeling of superiority. I you
[20:00] Speaker 2: can see a temperature shift in my own work. The
[20:03] Speaker 2: first three four or five years, I was pretty hot.
[20:06] Speaker 2: I was very sarcastic. I was you know, I was
[20:10] Speaker 2: keyed up because of all the time I'd wasted and
[20:13] Speaker 2: all the boundaries violated, and I felt kind of stupid,
[20:16] Speaker 2: and I wanted to sound the alarm and show everybody
[20:19] Speaker 2: what I had discovered in the hopes that they might
[20:21] Speaker 2: as well be liberated. And I was just going twenty
[20:23] Speaker 2: four to seven, almost burned myself to ash, you know,
[20:27] Speaker 2: in that way. And then I softened and became a
[20:29] Speaker 2: lot more, I don't know, compassionate, and I took a breath.
[20:33] Speaker 2: Maybe you were the same way.
[20:35] Speaker 4: Yeah, And I do think that anger phase is good.
[20:37] Speaker 4: I don't think that we should skip it because people
[20:40] Speaker 4: will sometimes email me or ask me in coaching.
[20:45] Speaker 3: You know, how do I get to that compassionate.
[20:47] Speaker 4: More soft place because I'm just feeling so angry and anger.
[20:51] Speaker 4: We have this emotion because it's when you have a
[20:54] Speaker 4: boundary violation. Kind of anger is that thing that will
[20:57] Speaker 4: recreate that boundary. And if you were raised in an
[21:00] Speaker 4: organized religion, you probably have thousands of times that your
[21:03] Speaker 4: inner authority was violated. And so I do think it's
[21:07] Speaker 4: healthy to go through an anger phase. I think that
[21:10] Speaker 4: I will sometimes recommend people not burn all their bridges
[21:13] Speaker 4: with people with their people, because there may be some
[21:16] Speaker 4: relationships that you may want to survive this phase. So
[21:19] Speaker 4: maybe be careful of how your heat is burning other people.
[21:23] Speaker 4: But I'm a fan of leaning into the anger phase
[21:27] Speaker 4: rather than trying to go around it.
[21:29] Speaker 2: How much of that is determined by someone else. I mean,
[21:32] Speaker 2: anger is the appropriate response to injustice. Anger is the
[21:36] Speaker 2: appropriate response to somebody who plays the family card, the
[21:40] Speaker 2: clergy card, to cross a boundary into your life, to name,
[21:43] Speaker 2: blame and shame. I mean, anger seems like that should
[21:47] Speaker 2: be the healthy way to proceed.
[21:49] Speaker 4: Yeah, it is a healthy response, and it can be
[21:53] Speaker 4: very difficult for especially women coming out of Christianity or
[21:57] Speaker 4: women coming out of any patriarchal religion where you may
[22:00] Speaker 4: not have you know, you were told since you are
[22:02] Speaker 4: five years old that you need to smile or anger
[22:05] Speaker 4: is bad.
[22:06] Speaker 5: Anger is Satan.
[22:08] Speaker 4: You know, Satan is the father of contention things like this,
[22:11] Speaker 4: and so with repressed anger that you don't even know
[22:14] Speaker 4: how to access, that can be very difficult where I'll
[22:17] Speaker 4: even help women get more angry because you need to
[22:20] Speaker 4: be able to access this emotion that you shut off
[22:23] Speaker 4: when you are five years old. In this, you know,
[22:25] Speaker 4: patriarchal religion that really limited what emotions are, Okay, So
[22:31] Speaker 4: I definitely believe in that it being an appropriate response.
[22:36] Speaker 5: I just don't want it.
[22:37] Speaker 4: To be the only emotion that you feel forever, because
[22:40] Speaker 4: that's a place where I feel like people can get stuck.
[22:43] Speaker 4: You have more emotions, and you have more experience, and
[22:46] Speaker 4: you have more to you than just your anger. But
[22:49] Speaker 4: anger absolutely needs to be a seat at the table
[22:51] Speaker 4: and is an appropriate response.
[22:54] Speaker 2: Short break, I'll be right back as I continue my
[22:57] Speaker 2: conversation with religious trauma and deconstruction coach Britt Hartley hang
[23:03] Speaker 2: On speaking here with Grit Hardly. She is a religious
[23:14] Speaker 2: deconstruction coach and author of the book No Nonsense Spirituality.
[23:20] Speaker 2: I was speaking to someone about the paths out of
[23:23] Speaker 2: fundamentalism and how they are often different for men and women.
[23:27] Speaker 2: Where As I understand it women may gravitate more into
[23:31] Speaker 2: sort of wooy stuff. You mentioned the wellness industry and
[23:35] Speaker 2: astrology and that type of stuff, And men will very
[23:38] Speaker 2: often end up into conspiracy theories and often like hard
[23:43] Speaker 2: right type stuff and nine to eleven truth and Andyvax
[23:46] Speaker 2: and you know those types of things. I don't know,
[23:48] Speaker 2: have you done any explorations into the paths out for
[23:51] Speaker 2: different people?
[23:53] Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely, So what we're seeing from the data is
[23:56] Speaker 4: that men tend to leave for historical issues, historical reasons,
[24:02] Speaker 4: So they'll come across Christopher Higgins or Alex O'Connor or
[24:06] Speaker 4: someone like that and really struggle rationally with the concept
[24:10] Speaker 4: of Jesus and how much we created, you know, Jesus
[24:14] Speaker 4: to be a god afterwards. In Christianity, that would be
[24:16] Speaker 4: a common deconstruction for men and for women it tends
[24:21] Speaker 4: to be more relational.
[24:23] Speaker 3: I don't feel like I fit in here.
[24:24] Speaker 4: I have a gay brother, and I don't feel like
[24:27] Speaker 4: the church. The way my church talks about gay people
[24:31] Speaker 4: is represent is representative of my brother. So women tend
[24:35] Speaker 4: to have a more relational part to their deconstruction. Men
[24:38] Speaker 4: tend to have a more historical part to their deconstruction.
[24:41] Speaker 4: But individuals of course, can be all over the map.
[24:44] Speaker 4: That would just be a general thing I could say
[24:46] Speaker 4: about that. And then what we're seeing with men and
[24:48] Speaker 4: women is that women tend to turn to paganism for
[24:53] Speaker 4: their spirituality, and so especially with coming from so many
[24:57] Speaker 4: years of spirituality being so male centered, that there's this
[25:02] Speaker 4: rebirth of intuition. So some of that is you know,
[25:06] Speaker 4: the Tarot cards and the union archetype and inner child
[25:09] Speaker 4: work and shadow work and getting into your body and
[25:12] Speaker 4: divine feminine and nature and ritual and witchy stuff.
[25:17] Speaker 3: Some of that is a little woo for me.
[25:19] Speaker 5: Some of that I.
[25:20] Speaker 4: Think is really beautiful and empowering. I think that there's
[25:23] Speaker 4: that there's a balance between the two there. And then yeah,
[25:26] Speaker 4: the men tend to struggle more outside of religion and
[25:30] Speaker 4: in society. If I wanted to gather a group of
[25:33] Speaker 4: women together for lunch, it's totally socially acceptable for me
[25:37] Speaker 4: to call up twelve women and say, uh, you know,
[25:41] Speaker 4: I I don't know, I'm struggling with my marriage where
[25:45] Speaker 4: I just had an amazing spiritual experience and I want
[25:48] Speaker 4: to talk about it, and I'll sit at the table
[25:51] Speaker 4: and we'll talk about it. I'll even cry. All of
[25:53] Speaker 4: that is socially acceptable for women. Women tend to do
[25:56] Speaker 4: that very well. Even outside of religion, men are men
[25:59] Speaker 4: are struggling. Men are struggling because it's just not as
[26:03] Speaker 4: socially accepted to form community with other men outside of religion.
[26:09] Speaker 4: And so what we're seeing is that sometimes for men,
[26:12] Speaker 4: the only socially acceptable place that they have to have community,
[26:17] Speaker 4: to have friendship, to cry, to show the softer sides
[26:21] Speaker 4: of themselves, to reach out to people, to tell someone
[26:24] Speaker 4: that they love them is at church. And so when
[26:27] Speaker 4: they lose that, they tend to struggle a lot more
[26:31] Speaker 4: than women outside of religion, because women did better at
[26:35] Speaker 4: replacing spirituality and replacing community than men are doing. And
[26:40] Speaker 4: so what we're seeing with young men and young women
[26:42] Speaker 4: is this huge divide. It's very interesting. Probably the biggest
[26:46] Speaker 4: difference in studying theology and religion now compared to when
[26:50] Speaker 4: I started is when I started, it was universally true
[26:54] Speaker 4: that women are more religious than men. For the history
[26:57] Speaker 4: of the world, in any religion, women show signs of
[27:01] Speaker 4: more religiosity, and for the first time in human history
[27:04] Speaker 4: that we're aware of, young men are showing that they
[27:07] Speaker 4: are more religious than young women, because young women are
[27:10] Speaker 4: leaving churches, getting into paganism, finding community, finding each other,
[27:15] Speaker 4: and the young men are going back to religion as
[27:19] Speaker 4: really the last safe place that they feel where you're
[27:23] Speaker 4: rewarded for being masculine, and also the only place where
[27:26] Speaker 4: they feel like they can have community because they feel
[27:28] Speaker 4: like it's so difficult to create that in society outside
[27:32] Speaker 4: of religion, Britt.
[27:33] Speaker 2: Do you feel like that this explains some of the
[27:36] Speaker 2: thirty and unders who are jumping into the Joe Rogan,
[27:40] Speaker 2: Nick Fuentes, you know, the manosphere type thing, because that's
[27:45] Speaker 2: a tribe in which they can share grievances, have aspirations
[27:50] Speaker 2: that are similar belong I don't know, is there anything
[27:53] Speaker 2: to that.
[27:54] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[27:54] Speaker 4: Absolutely, there's a lot of feminine rage right now as
[27:58] Speaker 4: women are talking to each other and deconstructing patriarchal religion
[28:02] Speaker 4: and patriarchal society in general, and so there is this
[28:06] Speaker 4: return to religion as for many men the only place
[28:10] Speaker 4: where they feel like it's okay to be a man.
[28:13] Speaker 4: And that is one area where I feel like as
[28:15] Speaker 4: a society we can It's not that I'm saying that
[28:19] Speaker 4: it's women's job to create male spaces for men.
[28:23] Speaker 3: I think that men need to learn how to do that.
[28:26] Speaker 4: But I do think that we do a disservice to
[28:28] Speaker 4: our young men if religion is the only place that
[28:32] Speaker 4: they can go to feel like it's okay to be
[28:35] Speaker 4: a boy, to be a man, and we're losing them
[28:37] Speaker 4: down those right alt right pipelines, whereas women are not
[28:41] Speaker 4: going down those roads. They're creating communities, and they're creating
[28:45] Speaker 4: really intuitive, nature based, body based forms of spirituality.
[28:50] Speaker 2: I'm reading your book, I get to a specific part
[28:53] Speaker 2: and I can feel my eyes start to twitch. I
[28:56] Speaker 2: need you to walk me through this. As you align
[28:58] Speaker 2: atheism with nihilism. I've heard you use the term quite
[29:03] Speaker 2: a bit. You wrote, atheism has nothing to offer. There
[29:08] Speaker 2: is no inherent meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value in our
[29:12] Speaker 2: lives if we are an atheist. Is that what you're saying?
[29:17] Speaker 3: No, not necessarily.
[29:18] Speaker 4: What I'm saying there is that atheism by definition has
[29:22] Speaker 4: nothing to offer because it's a negation. All atheism can
[29:27] Speaker 4: answer is I'm not theist. If you ask, you know
[29:31] Speaker 4: atheism as an ism, you know, how do we build morality?
[29:34] Speaker 3: How do we build lives of.
[29:36] Speaker 5: Meaning and purpose?
[29:37] Speaker 4: It has no answer to that, it doesn't make a
[29:39] Speaker 4: positive philosophical claim on the nature of reality or what
[29:42] Speaker 4: is the good life. So by nature, atheism by itself
[29:46] Speaker 4: is just a negation of.
[29:48] Speaker 5: What you're not.
[29:49] Speaker 4: And I do find that in life we do need
[29:51] Speaker 4: more for thriving human thriving than just a statement about, well,
[29:56] Speaker 4: I'm just not religious, I'm just not Christian. I tend
[30:00] Speaker 4: to find that people thrive more when they are are
[30:03] Speaker 4: also something I like, you know, for some people it's
[30:08] Speaker 4: I'm stoic and I really focus my life on these
[30:13] Speaker 4: virtues and living up to the best version of myself
[30:16] Speaker 4: that I want to be, and blah blah blah, and
[30:18] Speaker 4: they're you know, Ryan Holiday stoicism, or or they have
[30:21] Speaker 4: some elements of Buddhism, or they're very associated with nature,
[30:25] Speaker 4: or they're very service oriented, or they've built their morality.
[30:28] Speaker 5: This other way.
[30:29] Speaker 4: So I do feel like you can build even as
[30:33] Speaker 4: an atheist, so that you can build meaning, purpose, a
[30:37] Speaker 4: states of transcendence, community, ritual, all these things. But it's
[30:40] Speaker 4: not the atheism that's doing it. Because atheism by itself
[30:44] Speaker 4: is to me just a philosophical negation more than it's
[30:48] Speaker 4: giving you anything. And so a lot of people need
[30:50] Speaker 4: more tools. And what atheism, or especially with new atheism,
[30:53] Speaker 4: was great for tearing the building down, it was less
[30:56] Speaker 4: good for what.
[30:58] Speaker 5: Do we replace it with?
[31:00] Speaker 4: And Sam Harris, I think, of the four maybe did
[31:02] Speaker 4: the most in replacement models. You know, he had the
[31:06] Speaker 4: moral landscape and some other things where we could start
[31:08] Speaker 4: to build some concepts to help people have the elements
[31:12] Speaker 4: that people need for the good life. But atheism in
[31:15] Speaker 4: general tends to spend more time, you know, tearing down
[31:21] Speaker 4: religion then finding really good replacements and building secular community
[31:27] Speaker 4: outside of that. And I do think that young people
[31:30] Speaker 4: are paying the price for that, because if we tear
[31:32] Speaker 4: down religion and don't replace it with something better than
[31:36] Speaker 4: what was it all for.
[31:38] Speaker 2: I lean into the quote by Robert green ingersol, the
[31:42] Speaker 2: more false we destroy, the more room there will be
[31:45] Speaker 2: for the true. And it's weird because I've got a
[31:49] Speaker 2: channel with the word atheist in the title. Although much
[31:52] Speaker 2: of our work over the past several years, I mean,
[31:54] Speaker 2: you can only debunk Noah's arc so many times, you
[31:57] Speaker 2: can only debunk Adam and even the Garden so many times.
[32:01] Speaker 2: And I speak a lot more about my humanism, but
[32:05] Speaker 2: atheism is part of that journey, right, I think isn't
[32:08] Speaker 2: the rejection of gods and monsters part of my rooting
[32:11] Speaker 2: my feet on solid ground living in the real world,
[32:15] Speaker 2: So that then a more self generated sense of purpose,
[32:20] Speaker 2: you know, humanism, that proactive philosophy about living that is,
[32:25] Speaker 2: I mean, that's a separate thing. But aren't they cousins.
[32:28] Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so.
[32:29] Speaker 4: And that's the exact reason why I don't just call
[32:31] Speaker 4: myself a spiritual director, even though that's my training and title.
[32:35] Speaker 4: I call myself an atheist spiritual director, which means I'm
[32:38] Speaker 4: I'm letting people know I'm starting with not the supernatural,
[32:43] Speaker 4: and I let people know from the get go I'm
[32:46] Speaker 4: not going to do any of this building with supernatural
[32:49] Speaker 4: truth claims that I can't that I can't justify. We're
[32:53] Speaker 4: going to find other ways to build. So, like you,
[32:55] Speaker 4: it's a very clear part of my journey, it's a
[32:57] Speaker 4: very clear part of what I do.
[32:59] Speaker 3: I'm very pro I'm very forward.
[33:02] Speaker 4: And how I use the word atheism, and it is
[33:04] Speaker 4: in my official title. But I do find that, especially
[33:09] Speaker 4: with young people who have less experience in this space,
[33:12] Speaker 4: who perhaps read and have conversations less than you do,
[33:16] Speaker 4: that if you don't know about humanism or existentialism, or
[33:20] Speaker 4: secular Buddhism or stoicism or philosophy or any of these things.
[33:26] Speaker 4: Then if it's then they're just atheists. And if you're
[33:29] Speaker 4: just atheists, there tends to be more struggling. There tends
[33:34] Speaker 4: to be more more nihilism. There tends to be what's
[33:37] Speaker 4: the point. And if I were to push you a
[33:41] Speaker 4: little bit, when we take away the things that are false, yes,
[33:45] Speaker 4: that can lead towards better grounding that we can build on.
[33:50] Speaker 5: But if you don't.
[33:51] Speaker 4: Have access to that information that you could need to
[33:56] Speaker 4: build in different ways, then it can also lead to
[33:59] Speaker 4: work monsters that fill in that gap. And this is
[34:02] Speaker 4: what Nietzsche talked about when he talks about God is Dead.
[34:05] Speaker 4: He doesn't talk about it like it's a celebration. He's
[34:08] Speaker 4: afraid of the political religions that rise up in that vacuum.
[34:12] Speaker 4: He's afraid of nihilism and consumerism filling that gap and
[34:17] Speaker 4: being essentially worse than Christianity. So yes, pulling away those
[34:21] Speaker 4: untrus can lead to more solid grounding. That's true in
[34:25] Speaker 4: my own life, but it can also lead to I think,
[34:28] Speaker 4: even more scary monsters than just Christianity, and I think
[34:32] Speaker 4: we have to be aware of that too.
[34:35] Speaker 2: Is Sam Harris, I know he meditates or he's big
[34:37] Speaker 2: into mindfulness. Is he like a secular Buddhist or something
[34:41] Speaker 2: like that.
[34:41] Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say so. I would say he's a
[34:43] Speaker 4: secular Buddhist.
[34:44] Speaker 2: Response like if I was anything, I think Buddhism right, mindfulness,
[34:50] Speaker 2: you know, not disconnection. But we live in a world
[34:53] Speaker 2: where every day is a fire hose to the face.
[34:56] Speaker 2: I don't think that we are wired for the amount
[34:59] Speaker 2: of actually the negative, but the information that is being
[35:02] Speaker 2: just thrown at us on the second by second basis
[35:05] Speaker 2: outrage culture. The worst of the worst is front and
[35:09] Speaker 2: center and disconnecting and centering and prioritizing. I don't know
[35:14] Speaker 2: what are your thoughts on meditation and mindfulness.
[35:17] Speaker 4: Yeah, I do think that he's a secular Buddhist. And
[35:19] Speaker 4: the reason that Buddhism aged so well and why so
[35:23] Speaker 4: many neuroscientists, especially like him, are our Buddhist or find
[35:27] Speaker 4: themselves in those spaces, is because it really starts with
[35:31] Speaker 4: the idea of death and suffering, and it's easy, like
[35:35] Speaker 4: it's very hard in Christianity to be a secular Christian
[35:38] Speaker 4: to kind of separate that and Buddhism. It's very easy
[35:41] Speaker 4: to separate any any kind of supernatural element that used
[35:45] Speaker 4: to be there, because Buddhism can handle the idea that
[35:50] Speaker 4: we don't have free will, or the concept of no self,
[35:53] Speaker 4: that you have no soul, that you have no really
[35:55] Speaker 4: fixed self. So for someone who doesn't believe in the supernatural,
[35:59] Speaker 4: doesn't believe in free will, doesn't believe in a soul,
[36:02] Speaker 4: Buddhism still stands up to all of that and still
[36:06] Speaker 4: has tools for how to yeah, for how to suffer
[36:10] Speaker 4: less in your brain, and people find that very helpful.
[36:14] Speaker 2: You mentioned psychedelics. We got to talk about that. I mean,
[36:18] Speaker 2: just picture you. Are you sitting back with you the
[36:21] Speaker 2: orb of colored light, and you got the doors playing
[36:24] Speaker 2: in the background, and you're something you know, psychedelic. I mean,
[36:28] Speaker 2: tell me about are we talking journeys into an actual
[36:31] Speaker 2: place or is this just the pinball of the brain,
[36:34] Speaker 2: the pinball machine of the mind firing.
[36:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, to me, this is all happening at the level
[36:40] Speaker 4: of the brain, But it doesn't mean that it's not extraordinary.
[36:43] Speaker 4: So I've had I would say, maybe ten journeys, specifically
[36:49] Speaker 4: with psilocybin, which has been very helpful for depression.
[36:53] Speaker 5: For me.
[36:54] Speaker 4: I do a large dose about once a year for depression,
[36:56] Speaker 4: which has kept me off SSRIs, which has been great.
[37:00] Speaker 4: I always have what people call bad trips. So some
[37:02] Speaker 4: people talk to God and go to heaven and have
[37:05] Speaker 4: this amazing positive experience. I usually like just lay on
[37:09] Speaker 4: this floor right here and cry, and I usually have
[37:11] Speaker 4: a hard time of it. My brain is quite neurotic,
[37:14] Speaker 4: so I tend to have difficult times. But I learn
[37:17] Speaker 4: a lot from these journeys, from spending some time in
[37:20] Speaker 4: my subconscious and it's helpful for depression. And I used
[37:25] Speaker 4: to do it more. I used to do it maybe
[37:27] Speaker 4: every six months, and now I do it less and less.
[37:30] Speaker 4: So for me, the trick is I think that these
[37:33] Speaker 4: tools are helpful for resetting your nervous system to remember
[37:37] Speaker 4: what it's like to just be, especially for hyper analytic types.
[37:41] Speaker 4: I think it can help you process a lot of things.
[37:44] Speaker 5: I think it.
[37:45] Speaker 4: I really think that it can do a lot. But
[37:48] Speaker 4: I think the trick is rather than chase the next
[37:51] Speaker 4: psychedelic high or psychedelic experience or psychedelic combination, I think
[37:56] Speaker 4: the trick is open that use these tools to open
[38:00] Speaker 4: that door. And then learn how to get there with
[38:02] Speaker 4: your conscious mind. So if you spend an hour looking
[38:06] Speaker 4: at how beautiful a flower looks, which is very common
[38:09] Speaker 4: when you're on mushrooms, people tastes and sounds and what
[38:14] Speaker 4: you see is just so extraordinarily beautiful. But I don't
[38:18] Speaker 4: want to be on the mushrooms all the time to
[38:20] Speaker 4: experience that, and so I want to train my brain
[38:24] Speaker 4: more and more to be able to go into those
[38:25] Speaker 4: places with my conscious mind. And I think that tends
[38:28] Speaker 4: to be the best bet is Yes, I think these
[38:31] Speaker 4: things can be used as tools, but you should be
[38:34] Speaker 4: using them less and less as you go, as you
[38:37] Speaker 4: learn how to access these states in your conscious experience.
[38:41] Speaker 2: Is one of the dangers that it becomes avoidance behavior.
[38:44] Speaker 2: I mean, it's a lot easier to check out and
[38:46] Speaker 2: take a trip, right.
[38:48] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not addictive in the sense that it's like cocaine.
[38:52] Speaker 4: But what I do find with people, and I've had
[38:54] Speaker 4: many clients like this, they start having their work life
[38:58] Speaker 4: over here and then their trip life life over here,
[39:00] Speaker 4: and they're not integrated, and so they'll just do Okay.
[39:03] Speaker 4: I got to get through through three shitty weeks of work,
[39:07] Speaker 4: and then I got I get to go on my
[39:08] Speaker 4: ayahuasca retreat and then I get to try. Oh, on
[39:11] Speaker 4: this time, I'm going to try MDMA plus psilocybin and
[39:14] Speaker 4: then end with MDMA and see how that goes. And
[39:16] Speaker 4: and that tends to split your psyche so that it's
[39:21] Speaker 4: just not integrated and intends to be very unhealthy for
[39:24] Speaker 4: your long term you know, mental space. So what we
[39:27] Speaker 4: want to see is lots of integrating the trip into
[39:31] Speaker 4: your life so it doesn't feel like your trip self
[39:34] Speaker 4: and your you know, work self are just two completely
[39:37] Speaker 4: separate lives and you want to So I really recommend,
[39:41] Speaker 4: and sometimes I do for people like reintegration sessions where
[39:43] Speaker 4: we talk about what happened on the trip and then
[39:46] Speaker 4: we integrate, you know how, whatever we learned, how do
[39:49] Speaker 4: we integrate this into your life. And then I do
[39:54] Speaker 4: think that we need to not have those two lives
[39:57] Speaker 4: be separate, because that's really what I see is. And
[40:01] Speaker 4: then people start to get sucked into that world too,
[40:03] Speaker 4: where I've lost people down these rabbit holes. I have
[40:06] Speaker 4: a friend who doesn't talk about you know, the news
[40:09] Speaker 4: anymore or anything in this realm because he's exploring the
[40:13] Speaker 4: sixteen dimensions of consciousness. That he discovered on mushrooms, and
[40:17] Speaker 4: in some sense he's gone, you know, like I've lost
[40:19] Speaker 4: him in some ways to the rabbit holes of the mind.
[40:23] Speaker 4: And so there are dangers, and I think the more
[40:25] Speaker 4: that we do this in a healthy way, where you
[40:28] Speaker 4: have a sitter, you have a guide, you have reintegration,
[40:31] Speaker 4: and you're not just doing your work life and then
[40:35] Speaker 4: planning your next trip that tends to be healthier long
[40:38] Speaker 4: term or else people get lost in these spaces, people
[40:41] Speaker 4: lose their minds.
[40:44] Speaker 2: More of my conversation with Religious Trauma and Deconstruction coach
[40:49] Speaker 2: Britt Hartley continues, and just a second, thank you so
[40:59] Speaker 2: much for listening and your support on Paytreon. If you
[41:02] Speaker 2: would like to be a supporter of the broadcast, you
[41:05] Speaker 2: can get the show early and commercial free if you want,
[41:08] Speaker 2: a lot of people don't even care about that, they
[41:11] Speaker 2: just want to support the broadcast, and you're greatly appreciated.
[41:15] Speaker 2: Paytreon dot com. Slash Seth Andrews continuing my conversation with
[41:22] Speaker 2: Religious Trauma and Deconstruction coach Rit Hartly. I'm fascinated. I'm
[41:29] Speaker 2: going to ask another question. You can share as much
[41:31] Speaker 2: as you're comfortable with, Okay, but as someone who is
[41:34] Speaker 2: never I don't have a trip life. I've never gone there.
[41:39] Speaker 2: What are we talking about? I mean, are floating in space?
[41:42] Speaker 2: Do you fly? What kind of stuff are we talking about?
[41:47] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very hard to explain. It's very difficult to explain.
[41:51] Speaker 4: But it turns off, you know, scientifically, it turns off
[41:55] Speaker 4: your default mode network, and it turns.
[41:57] Speaker 5: Off your your ego.
[41:58] Speaker 4: And you'd be surprised how much your your ego is
[42:01] Speaker 4: really driving the bus. And you have this internal chatter
[42:05] Speaker 4: about that's that tends to be negative, where you're comparing
[42:09] Speaker 4: yourself to others, where you're freaking out about this or
[42:11] Speaker 4: that that doesn't really matter, and it's just this intense
[42:14] Speaker 4: internal chatter that's usually the focus of your mind. And
[42:17] Speaker 4: on psychedelics you turn all of that off, and it
[42:21] Speaker 4: a little bit feels like what you would feel like
[42:23] Speaker 4: as a child. When I was a child, I didn't
[42:25] Speaker 4: wake up and say what is the meaning and.
[42:28] Speaker 3: Purpose of life?
[42:29] Speaker 5: And God? This late stage capitalism this and how do
[42:33] Speaker 5: I deal with that?
[42:34] Speaker 4: And oh, somebody tagged me in that photo and I
[42:37] Speaker 4: look stupid and and just this obsessive nonsense. When I
[42:41] Speaker 4: was a child, you go out and you just put
[42:43] Speaker 4: your feet on the grass and it's just you just
[42:46] Speaker 4: play right, and as adults we forget how we've forgotten
[42:50] Speaker 4: how to do that. So for me, it feels more
[42:53] Speaker 4: or less like I'm a child again, and that internal obsessive,
[42:57] Speaker 4: ego driven chatter is completely gone on and you can
[43:01] Speaker 4: explore other aspects of your of your subconscious mind, which
[43:05] Speaker 4: more or less can feel like a dream. So it's
[43:07] Speaker 4: a dream that feels very real. But is that ego
[43:12] Speaker 4: part of you is just so gone that you feel
[43:15] Speaker 4: at one with the universe. You can feel your fears
[43:19] Speaker 4: come up if you've been repressing some fears that you
[43:22] Speaker 4: haven't dealt with, and that can be scary. You can
[43:24] Speaker 4: feel like a kid again, where it's just you just
[43:27] Speaker 4: feel good to be alive for no other reason than
[43:30] Speaker 4: it's a magical to be alive, which is a feeling
[43:32] Speaker 4: that as adults, you know, we've numbed out for so
[43:35] Speaker 4: long that we don't feel that anymore. And each trip
[43:38] Speaker 4: is a little bit different, but it's hard to explain.
[43:42] Speaker 2: Do you remember or is it like a dream where
[43:44] Speaker 2: you wake up and it immediately you know, fades from memory,
[43:47] Speaker 2: And what did I dream last night? After a trip,
[43:51] Speaker 2: do you keep the details?
[43:53] Speaker 3: I tend.
[43:54] Speaker 4: I tend to remember quite a bit. People remember some.
[43:57] Speaker 4: At higher doses, you'll start to forget more and more.
[44:00] Speaker 4: The lower doses you can be quite present during most
[44:04] Speaker 4: of it.
[44:05] Speaker 3: So yeah, I remember it.
[44:07] Speaker 4: But I also have integrated these experiences, so I've talked
[44:11] Speaker 4: about it with someone or I've journaled about it, and
[44:13] Speaker 4: so that also keeps the memory there.
[44:16] Speaker 2: Okay, well, I didn't mean to derail the You know,
[44:19] Speaker 2: this is not nany Hartley talks about shrooms. Is not
[44:22] Speaker 2: the name of the podcast.
[44:23] Speaker 4: You know.
[44:24] Speaker 2: I get nervous about any of that stuff, mostly because
[44:27] Speaker 2: I'm terrified I'll wake up naked at the zoo or something.
[44:31] Speaker 4: You know.
[44:31] Speaker 2: I just being out of control frightens me. But it
[44:35] Speaker 2: is one of those bucket list things where I'm like,
[44:37] Speaker 2: I wonder what that might be like.
[44:39] Speaker 4: And it tends to be very good for egos that
[44:43] Speaker 4: don't like losing control because you learn to let go
[44:48] Speaker 4: a little bit and see what's going on underneath the
[44:50] Speaker 4: surface of your illusion of control.
[44:53] Speaker 2: I need to. I've got to deal with some issues.
[44:55] Speaker 2: Brittany Hartley. You use a word in the book another
[44:59] Speaker 2: hot when you the word sacred. Now, this has a
[45:03] Speaker 2: lot of baggage with me and a lot of people,
[45:05] Speaker 2: because when I hear sacred, I hear off limits. It's
[45:08] Speaker 2: kind of wholly. You know, you're not allowed. It's almost
[45:13] Speaker 2: like sacrow sanct if it's sacred. But how do you
[45:16] Speaker 2: define the word.
[45:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very common in patriarchal religions are created by
[45:23] Speaker 4: not just men, but priest classmen. And what that means
[45:27] Speaker 4: is they're creating the scripture and the rituals and the
[45:29] Speaker 4: pilgrimage and the prayers and the things that you do
[45:32] Speaker 4: and things that you say, and you need the priest
[45:34] Speaker 4: class to do it, which sets it apart. And so
[45:37] Speaker 4: the word sacred can have those kinds of connotations where
[45:40] Speaker 4: this is off limits, or this is not available to everyone,
[45:43] Speaker 4: this is exclusive, and that tends to happen with patriarchal religions,
[45:48] Speaker 4: which are more or less written by priest classmen. What
[45:52] Speaker 4: I'm talking about in the sacred is not something separate
[45:54] Speaker 4: from life, and we get that much more in feminine
[45:57] Speaker 4: forms of spirituality. This is one area where I feel
[46:00] Speaker 4: like I've been more influenced by feminine forms of spirituality.
[46:04] Speaker 4: So for me, when someone asks me what my spiritual
[46:07] Speaker 4: practice looks like. I'm a mother. I don't have time
[46:12] Speaker 4: to sit on my mat for two hours to meditate.
[46:15] Speaker 4: I don't do long pilgrimages to BALI. I don't have
[46:19] Speaker 4: this kind of separation of this is my normal life
[46:22] Speaker 4: and this is like this is the sacred and this
[46:24] Speaker 4: is the profane that has a religious organization to it.
[46:29] Speaker 4: For me, you know, having a spiritual element to my
[46:32] Speaker 4: life is very infused in my life. So when I
[46:36] Speaker 4: wake up, I say Momento MORII And I will sometimes
[46:40] Speaker 4: wake up on my deathbed where I'm ninety five years
[46:43] Speaker 4: old and my body's broken and my mind doesn't work,
[46:46] Speaker 4: and I'll sit there for a second. It sounds morbid,
[46:48] Speaker 4: but I find it incredibly helpful. And then I get
[46:51] Speaker 4: to jump into my now forty year old body where
[46:54] Speaker 4: my kids, you know, where my kids are little, and
[46:56] Speaker 4: oh my back doesn't hurt that bad, and it just
[46:59] Speaker 4: helps me very present in the day. How do I
[47:02] Speaker 4: want to experience this day? What's important to me? And
[47:05] Speaker 4: before my kids get off the bus, I take one
[47:07] Speaker 4: breath just to make sure I'm present for the emotional
[47:10] Speaker 4: onslaught that I'm about to get from my children and
[47:13] Speaker 4: my community and my work and what I listen to
[47:17] Speaker 4: and when I'm podcasting, when I take my dog over
[47:19] Speaker 4: here on a walk, it's just infused into my life.
[47:22] Speaker 4: There's no way to separate to me what is sacred
[47:25] Speaker 4: or what is spiritual from what is life. And we
[47:28] Speaker 4: get that more from feminine spirituality when it isn't written
[47:32] Speaker 4: by priestclassmen.
[47:34] Speaker 2: For those who have been really compelled by what we've
[47:37] Speaker 2: just been talking about and they wanted a religious deconstruction coach,
[47:41] Speaker 2: and I go to your website, what are we looking at?
[47:45] Speaker 2: I mean, I know the process is probably different for everybody,
[47:48] Speaker 2: but can you give me the elevator speech?
[47:51] Speaker 5: Sure?
[47:51] Speaker 4: So, unfortunately I am doing a cohort. I'm teaching sixty
[47:57] Speaker 4: people in how to do spiritual direction with the the
[48:00] Speaker 4: Center of Non Religious Spirituality, so I'm not seeing my
[48:02] Speaker 4: own private clients at this time. However, I would say
[48:07] Speaker 4: when I started doing spiritual direction, it was mostly religious
[48:10] Speaker 4: deconstruction the.
[48:12] Speaker 3: Coaching that I was doing.
[48:14] Speaker 4: But over about the past two years, my focus has
[48:17] Speaker 4: really been in nihilism and existential crisis, and there's a
[48:20] Speaker 4: lot of reasons for that. The deconstruction space, there's a
[48:24] Speaker 4: lot of resources there's a lot of podcasts, there is
[48:27] Speaker 4: a lot of coaches, there's a lot.
[48:29] Speaker 5: Of religious deconstruction coaches.
[48:31] Speaker 4: I just feel like there's a lot of resources talking
[48:34] Speaker 4: about how to deconstruct religion, and the space that I
[48:37] Speaker 4: feel like there's less resources and where we're starting to
[48:40] Speaker 4: get more need, especially with the meaning crisis growing with
[48:43] Speaker 4: gen z is coaching less in religious deconstruction and more
[48:50] Speaker 4: into that what you said earlier, which is like I'm
[48:53] Speaker 4: tired of just talking about Adam and Eve what's next.
[48:56] Speaker 4: And I'm doing much more work in that space now,
[48:59] Speaker 4: in in helping people who feel like they are in nihilism,
[49:03] Speaker 4: who our existential have existential depression. And so I do
[49:09] Speaker 4: courses and in that space, and I do coaching in
[49:12] Speaker 4: that space that I'll open up again soon, but as
[49:15] Speaker 4: of right now today, I'm focused on this cohort and
[49:19] Speaker 4: so I'm not taking private clients, but I can refer
[49:21] Speaker 4: people and have a lot of resources on my YouTube channel,
[49:25] Speaker 4: and there's some resources in the book, and again there's
[49:28] Speaker 4: courses that I have on death or meaning a purpose
[49:32] Speaker 4: or nihilism that you could see there.
[49:34] Speaker 2: Okay, cool, Well I'll link to you and your site.
[49:37] Speaker 2: No Nonsense Spirituality dot com and of course that's the
[49:41] Speaker 2: name of the book and many I think will be
[49:44] Speaker 2: interested to further take that journey. And you've been so
[49:47] Speaker 2: kind to spend an hour with me to talk about
[49:49] Speaker 2: all of this stuff, and that's an honor to be
[49:51] Speaker 2: able to hang. I appreciate you being here.
[49:54] Speaker 4: Let me know when you want to come up to Boise, Idaho.
[49:56] Speaker 4: And I call it mushroom soup online so I don't
[49:59] Speaker 4: get in too much trouble. I make a delicious bowl
[50:02] Speaker 4: of mushroom soup if you ever find yourself in Boise, Idaho.
[50:05] Speaker 2: Friend, Oh, mushroom soup sounds like code to me, but
[50:09] Speaker 2: I'm interested. So it's been a real joy.
[50:14] Speaker 4: Thank you again, Yeah, my pleasure.
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