Losing My Religion

Sam?

Well, it's been quite a journey so far. I started this because I wanted to find answers, concrete answers, and there was a system that I believed to be true. I believed that. I believed my faith was true. I believed there was one way to have a family. And I thought if I was rich, I'd be happy. And that was the goal. All I wanted to be when I was a kid was a millionaire. And now that I am, I have so many questions about life and happiness and fulfillment and what happens when you die.

Is there a God?

What's the meaning of life? I thought by answering those, I would have freedom, I would feel peace, I would.

Feel purposeful.

My journey of faith began here. So I feel like it's necessary to really.

Begin the process of asking questions here, back where I grew up. So we're here in Cleveland, which is where I grew up. And we're here because the pastors that I grew up with are.

Are here.

My family is here. We're gonna interview some of the pastors that taught me growing up and see if their positions have changed to see what they think is true. Up to this point now, I mean, I've kind of gone from wrestling as a Christian to kind of throwing it all out to now saying, okay, if we're starting from scratch, what do we find? But after seeing me for a few years and hearing kind of where I am now.

How does that adjust your view of where I am, or what's your take?

Well, I think one of the reasons we bonded is over this issue, that there's no question too big for God.

But we have basically the same background in terms of how we were brought up. As I remember was there was black and there was white. There was heaven and hell, and there were two teams, and you had to decide what team you were on. And I have kind of rejected the dogma.

It sounds to me like you're going to need to. To come at him almost intellectually, like, that's very important to you, to have it figured out, to be able to wrap your mind around it.

As of right now, based on where I am in my life and.

Based on everything going on, I feel completely.

Unqualified to be the one going through this journey.

I moved from Cleveland to Austin, Texas, and when I moved here, I met a girl in the grocery store, and we went on some dates, and she was incredibly nurturing and loving and made me feel safe and accepted. Shortly after, we found out we were pregnant. Very quickly, I went from conservative, virgin, perfect Christian to I'm a Guy with a kid.

And there is so much inner junk that came from that.

But that. I mean, it knocked me up my ass.

That without question. Hardest thing I've ever gone through. And I felt so.

Unsure of myself during that time and so.

Floored that I was gonna be a dad.

That.

I just clung to this idea, true or not true, that there was some purpose and meaning to it all. And so I just believed that she was being born for such a time as this. I named her Esther for that reason.

What do you think about the whole thing that's doing today?

I think it's silly.

But maybe that's because I already had my. My experience with all of these things. I already had my 20s. I already drank and partied and never did drugs. But I guess this is his chance to finally experience what.

He feels everyone else got a chance to experience.

But it's not gonna be as great as you think. I'm just gonna say that.

But I'm not doing it for, like. Let's party. Well, I mean, I just know that some of the. Some people that I respect say that that was their most spiritual experience they've ever had.

I don't need to do drugs to go have a good time. This is like a rite of passage for me.

If you're gonna go exploring spiritual things wherever it leads you, and people say.

That'S what was the most spiritual experience of their life.

Why not?

What if it backfires and something goes wrong?

I'm in about as safe as an environment as you could get.

Yeah, but what if the drug itself. What if there's some interaction? See, as a kid, when you're doing these things, you don't think about that stuff. But as an adult, you're aware enough to have met people that bad things have happened to, and you know that they can happen to you.

But people have taken way more than I'm taking and been fine. All right, well, I think we're gonna go to Jesse's. Hopefully I may.

Come back. And I'm still Ryan Daniel Moran, and not.

Ryan Hugs the Trees Moran.

No, you'll be Ryan. The better version.

That's the hope, right? The better version. Ryan 2.0.

Thank you for your support. Pam. You're so sweet.

Just hourly check ins, okay?

You gotta check. Okay.

We are going to my friend Jesse's house. Jesse is one of my mentors, and he has this gift of. I just never. I never feel more like myself than when I'm with Jesse. And if I'm in a funk or I have a Life question. Jesse is the guy who can.

Really calm down my head noise. But we're going to Jesse's house not just to talk about life, but to take mushrooms, magic mushrooms. I've never touched a drug in my life.

But I know many, many people who have said that their most spiritual experiences have happened on magic mushrooms. Jesse being one of them, and he's someone that I know will help set the right setting and also kind of guide me through the process to let whatever's gonna come up come up. So we're on our way to Jess House to go on the first adventure, if you will. We'll see what happens.

How do you usually consume them? Are they like. I just have.

I expected them to be in pills, but what I got was.

This is total of 6 grams.

Okay.

I imagine. But I'm just curious if it's. If it looks like what you're used to.

It's.

Yeah, those are good.

One of the things that you want to keep an eye out for sometimes is mold, but there's. It's few and far between.

These are pretty fresh. Yeah. What, if anything, should I expect to feel or notice, depending on, you know.

Lots of different factors. But one of the things that you can count on most of the time is you'll begin to feel this sensation, like, right in your solar plexus and different for different people in terms of timing. I've seen people experience it like 10 minutes. Some people, it's like 30 minutes. But after you dose, after you ingest somewhere in that time period.

And we'll go through some just breathing and different things to kind of ease into it. But you'll. You'll notice it. Oh, yeah. Oh, some. Oh, something's happening. And so you'll begin. You're very lucid during the whole thing, very aware that something's happening. It's pretty cool. And it's. It's like a blooming or a blossoming. You feel that just this. This radiant feeling from inside your solar plexus and just feeling very, very relaxed, very mellow, like you don't have a lot of energy. You don't want to get up and, you know, move around.

How I feel about my business, how I feel about my purpose during this time, and I'm curious to explore that. So, like, I brought a journal. I'm actually really curious to go through. I journal a lot when I'm stressed, and I'm curious how I perceive that when I'm fully open.

Some people do experience.

A lot of emotion, and that's a Very.

Very healthy thing. It's a beautiful thing. And if someone's not used to experiencing a lot of emotion, that experience of energetic release can sometimes kind of freak people out. Like, what's going on? You may feel good.

You may feel really good. This is going to be awesome.

Cheers.

Good.

That.

Was not fun.

That was not party time.

That was.

Dreadful.

I love you.

To be continued.

Oh, I hope. I hope the rest of the days.

Are easier than now.

Onward.

We have not seen each other since I was really wrestling and trying to find answers. And now I may have kind of gone from wrestling as a Christian to kind of throwing it all out to now saying, okay, if we're starting from scratch, what do we find? So I guess my first question is, why do you believe that Jesus is the exclusive way to God?

I think that you can, you know, E.O. wilson said there are a hundred thousand world religions, I think so I think it's possible to break religions up into families, though, broad families. You know, if you have an Eastern family of religions and you have kind of the humanist family of religions, that would include Marxism and things like that. And then you have the Judeo Christian tradition. And there are certain distinctions within those that get me to the Judeo Christian. So, for example, you know, the Hindu pantheon of 330 million gods that have to be placated, you know, is immediately kind of a roadblock for me or, you know, in Buddhism when the goal is to eliminate desire and you say, well, don't you have to desire to eliminate desire? I found that it had these kind of immediate contradictions. You know, humanism, I find no way you can't get from the materialism of the is to any kind of an ought. So I find all of humanist ethics to be groundless and baseless. And the more I listen to materialists try to explain to me why I have moral obligations to people outside of my gene pool. It makes no sense at all. So, you know, you kind of begin, at least in my mind, looking at these families of religions that come to something that we would say the Judeo Christian tradition, which has produced the greatest societies. And I get there's this big question about whether America is a Christian nation. But you do see that the Judeo Christian, the fruit of that system, if you will, has produced great civilizations, all the other world religions. And I think it's. I use all knowingly that I'm using a superlative. It has the what you need to do as a person to placate the gods, that the starting point is myself. In other words, it's performance, yielding salvation, hoping to get to God's approval. And Christianity brilliantly inverts that order, doesn't it? It says, no, it's about what God did to rescue you. And by means of coming to an understanding of what God has done, then you obey, but you're accepted. And then you obey all the other world religions that you, you do stuff to in order to please God. So in Islam, for example. Right, which would be. I know it's a Judeo Christian religion, but it's very clear when you talk to a Muslim, it's about doing the right things to please Allah.

You can make the counter argument that God has stacked the deck for people to have, be. To suffer and have eternal damnation, and that it is, there's a, there's a very narrow road into finding salvation. And that doesn't seem like a loving God to me.

Yeah, I think, you know, setting, you know, setting us up.

To.

You know, that's where you say, you can't, as a Christian theologian, you know, you don't want to put words in God's mouth that are not abundantly clear. But you say, well, each human being that's ever lived is under God's wrath. I mean, no person is accepted. So what's rare is actually those who God in his mercy rescues. That's what's special.

That sounds like a tyrant in the sky. The assumption that we needed rescuing in the first place, that the world was created to put conscious beings into a state of constant suffering or eternal damnation unless God intervenes. It's like breaking everyone's leg and then choosing who I will, who I will fix, and then asking to be thanked for fixing your leg.

If even one person is condemned, do you then say God is vindictive and an egoist, or is the only alternative to my position universalism?

Hmm.

Because it sounds to me that the only alternative to the kind of systematic theology that we have is universalism, which I.

Or, or the.

Or the assumption that we are not damned from the beginning in the first place, or that there is no God.

But don't we have to be damned if God's perfect?

Right.

I get if you have a different definition of God, but you can't. It's like if you're a judge and everyone's violated the law and you just all of a sudden start pardoning people, are you a just or an unjust judge? You're an injustice judge.

I understand.

So in your view, it seems to say, unless there's like a Universal pardon. No matter what a person does or what a person thinks, that God's on the hook as being a sadist. And what I'm saying is no God in his mercy has been able to save some from that fate.

And for that, he to be praised and glorified because all of us are condemned.

Austin is so smart. I had a hard time kind of pushing back against a lot of his opinions.

He.

He. He thinks a mile a minute, and it's all brilliant. And, And I found his. His viewpoint compelling just because it was so if this, then, then. And if this then, then. And he was very logical in his thought process. But it still felt like to me, that structured belief system felt like it was missing something. It required me to believe in something that I can't see or experience. It required me to.

I hate to use the word faith, but it requires me to take some big leaps in logic in order to assume that all of it's true.

I was taught in the same church that we were in for a long time. And my perception of how you've evolved in your spiritual path has been that maybe there's a bigger picture than what I was brought up to see. So how have your views evolved?

I think, you know, for me, it's. That's what life is. It's an evolution. It's learning, it's growing, it's transforming. God becomes real to me, not only through my conscience, through other people, through experiences, and also through the. Through the Bible. So, yeah, I think God reveals himself in many ways. I think God is speaking all the time intellectually.

That's the. The battle I'm having of. I appreciate the freedom to explore, but at the same time, it does feel like at the end of the day, there's kind of a goal and a truth that needs to be discovered.

Yeah. And that's where Jesus comes across as pretty exclusive, right? Because either the guy was completely insane or he was speaking truth when he said that he was God in the flesh and that he is the only way to have a relationship with God. And, you know, as a pastor, it's been really hard reconciling certain things with my faith I just had. Less than a year ago, I was on a motorcycle trip with a best friend who was killed on the trip.

I've never felt more out of control than that moment. I've never questioned my faith more than. Since that moment, I've preached in our congregation. I disagree with God on this issue. I think he got it wrong. And I think God is big enough for Me, to be honest with him about that. And I think it's sad that some people grow up in homes where they can't have those conversations. I feel like that's where you're at, you know, in some ways, is you're learning how people believe and, and how different people approach life. And it's a shame that as you look at certain people who identify as followers of Christ, that they actually turn you off more to the faith and turn you toward Jesus.

That seems to me to be where most of the debate happens. It seems to be where most of the church spends their time and their energy is wasting this argument on.

If anything they believe is through threatened, then their entire sense of who they are and what they believe comes crashing down. And I feel like I'm coming back to the same question of what is the ultimate goal then in your mind? Is it to find?

Is it to find Jesus? Is it to conclude something specific? Or is it to always grow.

In the image of God as you believe he'd have created you?

I feel like my perspective on life is that while I agree with you, most of us as Christians miss the point and we end up arguing about the peripherals, but we miss the bigger picture of what God's trying to say to us. And over and over and over again, I would say God is, has been speaking, will continue to speak, speaks in many different ways. And this is the one thing he wants, wants us to know. I love you, but I think that's my goal, is to grow in the love and the grace that God has created me with so that someday I'm ready to live in eternity with Him. And I think that, yeah, truth many times can be elusive. But I also think that we base truth upon our past experiences, what we know, our own research.

And sometimes that truth leads us one way or another. And I think that's why God maybe gives us different denominations, different churches, different experiences, spiritual experiences, because I think he knows what each person needs. And what I need is probably quite a bit different than what you need. It sounds to me like you're going to need to come at him almost intellectually, like that's very important to you to have it figured out, to be able to wrap your mind around it. And. And I'm just saying at times I think you have to let some of that go.

I really respect.

Who he is and how he presents himself, but I didn't feel like I got the.

The like, takeaway. I didn't feel.

Like I could get the.

Nugget of truth out of it besides the idea of non dualistic thinking which to me suggests that there might not be an absolute truth. So I kind of felt like there was a little bit of a mismatch in.

The way his point was being communicated. Of on one side there was.

Some room for interpretation and on the other side.

There was still.

An absolute. And I didn't really feel like I got closer to an answer as a result of that. But I still think his viewpoint is more, more much more evolved and much more well developed than almost all of the Christians that I have met in my life. And I really appreciate the fact that there is less legalism and less of a dogmatic approach in Dave's thinking and that does mean a lot to me.

What is it that you seek?

Truth.

I'm guessing you've always felt there is something off you. You have a guiding factor inside you and that's how you've become a success. And you listen to your intuition. Two, I'm guessing you started out as.

Christian background, very conservative Christian, always felt like something wasn't right in the belief system.

Yeah, I actually started out in a very similar way. I was also raised Christian, very dogmatic. But I'd always ask questions and get them very upset and I'm like wait a second, that doesn't make sense. And I drove them crazy and basically ended up stumping them or having them give up on answering.

What is your opinion of the person of Jesus?

I'll probably offend quite a few people, but the cartoon book character Jesus.

I mean he's Cloud cowboy superhero that people want to see.

The real Yeshua is a much different person. He came and simplified it to two love one another and love God. I'll simplify it to one love, just love. That's my message. It's a way to feel. It's a vibration. So the highest of dimensions radiate at the energy of love. So if you hold love in your heart, you're holding the energy of the Creator in your heart.

I always had ferrets, didn't know why and I got the message. These guys, it's like lightning or something when you're healing and they will actually almost like kiss you with their nose. And if you put it on your third eye, you can like really feel, feel it. Especially when you're in a very deep meditative state. She is the sweetest ferret I've ever owned.

Hi sweet ferret.

Well, I'll show you the temple. Basically I have set up, if you'd.

Like, a temple in your house. Yes.

Oh.

Yeah.

So I actually sleep inside the pyramid and I keep adding, adding to the grid around it.

Tell me what we're going to do in the healing room to first start off with.

I'm going to do a couple.

Exercises or a couple techniques using the power of my mind.

So when I'm doing a healing session, I can basically pull any grief, any heavy energy, any sadness, any negative energy, and I pull it in there and transmute it into light and love energy. So the inner sun basically burns it up, reprojects it out as love energy. While I'm working on you, not only will I be guiding you, but I will also be working with my energy to open up and help you do this. I will teach you how to be a healer. Now imagine after you've said goodbye, closing your eyes and letting go, stepping out of your body.

I think I'm. I'm getting closer to.

Realizations in the journey. And experiences like this are.

Interesting if nothing else. I don't think I had any intellectual changes about what I believe or what I think is true.

I remember when we were talking with Dave, he's talking about the both and philosophy rather than the either or philosophy. And it's kind of where I lean is I think really we are looking all for the same thing at the end of the day. And there might be multiple ways into that.

Sam.

My family deciding to be involved, kind of last minute, that meant the world to me. So back in October, on my birthday day, I decided to start the journey with.

Just an experience that a lot of people that I respect had said they had gone through. That was a spiritual transition for them. So I did four grams of mushrooms.

What was it like?

I have never felt.

More.

Connected to God and more desiring to go back, but also.

More freed of the dogma. But as soon as I processed through that, it was like, here I'm here, here I am. It was like I came home. It was like the most connecting experience I've ever had. It was, it was unbelievable. It was wonderful. That was the lesson. I should have stopped at the lesson, but I. I took some more and then it became a very dark experience.

So you're on this search for truth.

And you're introducing these chemicals into your body to alter your search for truth. Does that make sense to you?

There's a reason I wasn't using some.

Pharmacological drug. I was interested in. Just like a plant based experience.

All right, you know, I'm so supportive of your search for truth, but do it in a Truthful manner. Introducing drugs into your search is not searching truth. It's mind altering stuff. It just confuses the issue.

Maybe. Or maybe there's something to be discovered there.

If Jesus came to show us a certain way to God, do you think that means that it's okay to find other ways?

Jesus said he was the only way.

Ah.

Because I get really frustrated with, like, the dogmatic, here's how you do it. Here are the rules.

Way of thinking.

You know, I grew up in a really Catholic home. And in my world as a kid.

There was right and wrong, black and white. You know, I had a picture of God sitting in heaven with his checklist marking off every sin that I ever did wrong.

So did I, though.

You did?

Oh, yeah.

And I was terrifying.

Taught that the. That the Catholic Church was the only right church. In fact, you know, we weren't allowed to even visit other churches when I was growing up.

Obviously, that's not my position anymore. When we didn't have you and Kelly baptized, Grandpa Moran wouldn't let us in his home.

Home.

Really?

Mm. Mm.

And he wouldn't come to ours.

I'm really surprised right now. I don't think that ever occurred to me. But you and dad felt like you had the dogmatic background and you went into a faith that gave you some freedom from that holy crap, we're not so different after all.

I kind of clung to the moment because it felt like. It felt really special. And that was when my mom talked about her leaving her faith. And that connection with my mom of realizing that we had both kind of gone through a similar thing, and all of a sudden, we weren't so different. That was a big moment. There's something else going on. I haven't talked to anyone about this, but right after you visited Austin, Pam moved out.

This trip.

You're kidding.

So Pam moved out while I was. While I was on a trip. And I don't really know what it looks like moving forward. I don't know what our relationship looks like. I. Everything feels like a burden right now. Everything. I just. I feel really.

Burnt out.

Exhausted.

Yeah. In the same way, I don't like systematic, structured theologies. I don't really like systematic, structured relationships either. That feels really boring and empty to me. I don't know that I'm cut out for that. So maybe I'm just destined to have really complicated relationships. I don't know.

I love that you're on this search. You said to me one time, mom, would you want me to pretend I believed something that I didn't.

No, I wouldn't. You wouldn't be honest to yourself or anyone else if you did that. So I commended end your journey.

And what if I don't conclude?

I can't even go there in my head.

You know I want you to be there, right? I want you to be there with me forever. Eternity forever.

What if that's not real?

I'm banking on it being real.

I think my mom got the connection that I made, but I don't think it landed with her because it. I think she still feels afraid of what we're doing. I think she still feels threatened by the fact that I might believe what she has concluded to be the case. Me not being a Christian and me going to hell in her mind is really scary to her. My brother told me that he told his wife for the first time that he had doubts about his faith and it caused a lot of conflict.

Uh, do you call yourself a Christian?

I question everything. I was talking to Ellen last night for a long time and basically all I could say for sure is there's a lot more questions than there are answers to. I don't know anything 100%. I'm not saying that I don't believe in God, but I can't say for sure, sure that I do either. I think anybody that thinks 100% there is a God is lying to themselves.

Like the whole notion of.

We'Re separated from God because of sin is a non starter from the beginning. That's where I stand right now. And that our attempts to try and figure it out actually lead us away from whatever that is and. And that the connection is more something that needs to be peeled away rather than.

You reach the right belief system.

I think I approach it similar to you, that I need facts and I need things to be proven. To me, that's how I base everything I do at work is I need evidence. And I feel like there's not enough evidence, concrete evidence that I see to base my whole life off of that information.

Yeah. And I think if we had been encouraged growing up to ask questions and it was okay for us to wrestle with those, I think it would be different. I think the fact that it was so black and white.

For me anyway, made me feel like I had to choose one side or the other. Have you resorted to kind of just being okay, not knowing and being done with that, or is there a desire to seek one side or the other?

I think I've determined that.

I can't think of anything that's gonna convince Me enough that I'll buy into it 100%.

I see a lot of negativity in the world and in people, and I have a big question, at least for me, is what kind of God would let that happen? And how does a kid dying of cancer glorify God? Or, you know, how does somebody getting murdered? How can that be part of his plan? That's all good.

I don't know. And I.

Readily admit that I don't know. And it's a lot harder to be fully invested in a Christian lifestyle admitting that you don't know that that's true, and you don't know if you're spending your time wisely by investing your time and, you know, basing your life off of those things.

I'm not thrilled about mom watching this because I feel like.

She'S assumed that I was 100% on board with everything that she believes.

Throughout my time in Cleveland, I watched it progress from them not talking about it to them fighting about it, to him being willing to talk about it for this project, and then them kind of, kind of reconciling it by the end of my trip and him saying to me, you know, I feel like I have a little bit of freedom around that topic now. That was big to me. You trying to get down? Give Daddy a kiss.

So moving forward, next, I think we're going to need some new experiences, some things I've never done before that really shake up what I believe is true. And I think we need to talk to some people whose views have changed really dramatically and find out why they either believed and now don't believe, or they didn't believe and now they don't believe. Do. And I know that doesn't come easy. People don't change their minds easy. And I think we need to talk to some people who made that dramatic of a shift.

Okay, we're going to my buddy JP's house. He is very thoughtful and very intellectual, but also.

Mindful. I guess I wanted to ask him what he's concluded, if he's concluded anything. I feel as though I'm finding some. Well, not resolution, but some peace. And so I wanted to get the viewpoint of somebody who is kind of on the opposite end of finding peace, meaning he's really found a lot of peace in what he believes, although he's not really religious. So I'm excited to just tell him where I'm at and get his perspective. So I really wanted to get his opinion on where I am.

Look at that.

Ryan, good to see you.

Do you have a place at which you've arrived that you believe is true.

Here's what I believe to be true is that I'm not certain of anything. So I feel a certain truth in I don't know. And I realize to me that sounds like very non dogmatic. Yet at the same time I think I've probably gotten pretty dogmatic with my non dogmatic view of I don't know yet. Nonetheless, that's what I would call my delusional opinion, my truth that what I know is that I don't know. I'm not certain of anything. And when I look at people who are absolutely certain of the spiritual realm, the God realm, they look like they're full of poop to me.

I come from that world. The world is like it is this way. Last night at the conference, we got into a really nice deep conversation about this project and this journey. And there were several born again Christians at the table. And one of them was more dogmatic than the rest. The more dogmatic person is like, well, that's your opinion now. You just haven't discovered the truth yet. It is extremely like this is the way. And that always felt intellectually dishonest to me to be so sure that you'll never be persuaded differently.

Sure.

I think I view it that is just not honest.

I think the human mind is not capable of comprehending what's beyond the comprehension of the human mind. And I think my mind would love to pretend the truth can fit into the comprehension container of my mind. Yet like at a visceral level, I don't feel that that's true.

I miss having that certainty of knowing where my soul is gonna go when I die, or even the certainty of I know I'm right, so I have a filter through which I can judge the world, I can judge other people, I can justify my own actions because I have this pillar, like this pillar that I cling to. I think some of the most uncomfortable points in my life have been when I didn't, I had lost that and I saw the rest of the world and I couldn't. I couldn't cling to either one. I couldn't cling to what I believed to be true either. And I just felt completely lost. And it was so painful. But. But now I'm reaching the point in which I'm okay letting it all crumble. And now I feel freer than I ever have because now I can pursue truth and I can question without feeling under any threat because I don't have any.

Framework that's now threatened.

There's a thought I have sometimes which is like, what's the purpose of life? And then another part of me says, well, the purpose of life probably isn't to try to find the purpose of life. Trying to find the purpose of life might actually interfere with our ability to live the purpose of our life. So. So I think truth, whatever it actually is, is something that is lived through us, through our life, through our actions, not something that's just comprehended by our mind. And I think the more I have tried to, like, live and like, let's comprehend the truth, the more I am not living it. And I think that that puts me more on the sidelines of life and it doesn't feel good. So I like to live life to the fullest, not to sound cliche. And I think when I do that, when anybody does that, maybe we're actually living the truth. And it's just. It's so multidimensional that our minds can't comprehend all the truth that's flowing through us because it's not in the language of thought and belief. It's maybe a wiser language than that.

Going through this project and this journey, there is. I'm always asked, well, what did you conclude? And when I started this journey, it was, I have more questions than I have answers. And now people are like, well, what about now? I have even more questions and I have. I have joy in exploring and growing. But the minute that I turn around and act like I have the answers now, I just. All I have realized or learned is that the more you honestly seek, the more you peel back the curtain to more mystery. Yeah. Rather than there being any concrete answers.

But I think reaching conclusions, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think they might be foothold hold steps as we're walking along in our journey.

And I think especially when we don't trick ourselves into believing that this is a conclusion forever. So I think we do ourselves a better service when we realize, here's a new belief for now. Here's the best conclusion I have for now. And I sure as hell hope I don't agree with this in a year or. Or else it means I haven't grown.

Hmm.

Yeah, it feels.

It feels safe to reach those conclusions. Like, I'm done. I don't need to learn anymore. Yeah, it feels safe and secure. Now I have. I can justify myself and judge other people.

I have a really easy filter through which to see the world. But that doesn't seem meaningful or purposeful at all.

I think, I think I just like.

It'S got my brain gasm.

Which is that part of the purpose is just to keep expanding.

Yeah. And I think nature's a amazing teacher. And astrophysicists tell us the universe continues to expand. And I think that maybe reflects some of our nature. Like if we live in accordance with nature. If you just, you know, zoom out enough on nature, you eventually have the universe. If we live in accordance with nature enough, we realize like, oh, that's actually in my best interest. But when you fall out of accordance with nature, like when you behave differently than the way nature behaves, maybe you're eating artificial stuff, maybe you're not getting any sunlight, maybe you're not getting any water, you're not expanding, you're violating the laws of nature. And I don't think that actually helps anyone's health physically or psychologically. I think expansion is one of the pieces of wisdom that nature teaches.

You go to the jungle and the jungle is always expanding.

I've spent time in the jungle and around the houses. They're always having to trim the jungle back because the jungle just wants to expand.

I'm good. I just got my mud big. Aha.

Thank you.

So for the last three days I've been hosting an event with my company called the Capitalism Conference. It's a three day summit that I do for entrepreneurs and investors. And because of this journey that I've been on, I've been really open and public about my challenges and the struggles.

What's interesting is I have found this journey to be much more about self discovery than it's been about anything else. And maybe that was the point of it the whole time. But I was having a conversation with one of the attendees at this event yesterday who had a religious background. And I've been really open recently about challenges that I've never talked about before, about things, traumas that happened in my childhood, about.

Habits in my life that I've struggled with and wanted to change. And he had reached out to me because our lives were very, very parallel. And the things that we struggled with, the challenges that we have.

Things that are really uncomfortable to talk about, things like body image and.

Emotional challenges and depression and suicidal thoughts. And.

What'S interesting is when we started to go down the rabbit hole a bit, they were so similar that there had to be a kind of a common thread between us. And I said, his name's John. And I said, john, did you grow up religious?

And I didn't know this was actually our first meeting. We got really deep on our first meeting. But he said yeah. And I said, you grew up in the evangelical church. And he said yeah. Studying the Bible was actually the thing that like caused my skepticism and ultimately led me to walk away. Sure. But it wasn't the Bible itself. It was the belief that the Bible was the like infallible word of God.

Bart Ehrman says the same thing.

Bart's smart.

Yeah.

I don't have any problems with the Bible, none. I feel like I could argue back and forth up and down when people bring claims against the Bible because I think they're short sighted and reading out of context. But it's equally short sighted on the Christian side when they start applying labels to it like infallible, perfect, word of God, comma on no, it is, it's the reflection of authors and their experience of their cultural and their experience of God. And I will even give credit to the claim that it was, it was divine inspired. Yeah. If it, if it is, if it's done with the understanding that it was, it was those individuals best understanding of God at the time telling the story of God revealing himself to people in the context that they lived. But to act like it's divine and perfect today, come on, you're now creating a story to try and justify our worldview.

Well, I feel like the problem with that claim is that oftentimes it's not clearly articulated or elucidated. And so I feel like a lot of the meaning is lost in interpretation. So I don't talk about those kinds of things because frankly, I mean there's a theological debate, I mean there's the EPS Evangelical Philosophical Society and they have, you know, they have conferences where they talk about what does infallibility mean. And they argue about that.

Yeah, because they know it ain't true. They know that it's not infallible. They know that they can't take it and read it into, into their.

What does infallibility mean?

Well, I don't know what it means to you. I know how it's applied in the Christian church. I know how the mainstream Christian, which is what I was, interprets it. And that's problematic.

Where do I think he's landed? I mean, at the end of the day I feel like faith is an inevitable reality, especially in the life of an entrepreneur, but just in life in general is that we all have limited experiences, we all have limited knowledge, we'll have limited resources. And so no matter what we do in life, we're going to have to trust in what we know now and live according to that in the future, fulfilling I guess, his destiny of preaching. But he's on his own journey, a different direction as far as as his personal beliefs go. So that's an ongoing journey for him. He asked me about what my definition of God was, and the definition I gave was the being from which all things flow. That's a weird definition, but I mean, God is the ultimate source of reality. And he said, yeah, he can agree with that definition of God that he thinks he's leaning towards there being something like that. So he's clearly not an atheist. But he also said that.

He.

He didn't think that God was external somehow. I think he thinks it's something part of humanity. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. He's still on his journey for discovering reality. And since I do in the end think that God is the ultimate source of reality, I think that he just might rediscover that. It'll just be different from what he left.

I was.

I've done a lot of personal searching and.

Personal work in this period of my life. And one of the things that I have done a couple times now is I go to a festival in the desert in Nevada called Burning Man. And I was there with a buddy of mine, Aubrey Marcus. He gave a talk at that event that just rocked my world. This Aubrey was in a very serious car accident about two weeks before the event. And he almost lost his life. Half his face was ripped off. He lost the sense of smell.

He doesn't even remember the accident.

And he was talking about how.

Because his face was now different and mangled, and he has scars all over his face and his nose and his lip will never look the same. He had a lot of this insecurity come up about, well, am I still valuable even though my face is mangled? He realized that he had this underlying feeling of.

Maybe he wasn't enough or not good enough. And I just had this thought of, well, is this in me? Do I have this feeling? Does this show up in my life? And fortunately or unfortunately, when you're away from all distractions for a week, you've got nowhere to hide from your inner junk. And so I started to look at my goals. I started to look at all the things that I was working towards. The money, the success.

The number of followers.

The abs, the body fat percentages.

And it just hit me for the first time. Whoever wrote these goals is sad. Whoever wrote these goals is operating with some sort of a feeling of I have to do Something to make myself better.

Just for the first time, they started to ask myself the question, you know, how would my life be different if I believed that I was already enough? If I was already good enough? And some people, I think, ask that question and they conclude that they're not good enough and therefore they need a savior.

And so they have this.

Spiritual awakening of.

Thank God that I'm saved, Now I'm whole, now I'm good enough, now I'm free. I wonder if there isn't one level deeper than that, that maybe we were just always enough. Maybe we were just. What if you were just.

Always.

Infinitely and divinely loved and capable of infinitely and divinely loving other people? People or other things? What if?

Yeah, I. You know, it's funny. Ever since that revelation, I now look at.

Our true nature, our core, our source, as being that.

Divinity.

And the idea of the fall, the idea of the separation from God is.

When somewhere along the way we lose that.

We have to return to it in some way. Some people find it in religion, some people.

Believe they have to be saved. I wonder if we just have to return back to.

That divine nature that's within us.

So where I'm at right now.

And again, I am always open to being persuaded differently, but right now.

I view God.

As this.

Ever present.

Divine source.

That is.

Everything.

I lost my religion.

But I think I found God.

That's what they told.

When I was young.

Sa.