Mormons on Mushrooms

Deconstructing Mormonism: Spiritual Bypassing w/ Stephanie and Kelli (#188)

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Mike is joined by Stephanie Brinkerhoff and Kelli Christine for a heartfelt and insightful discussion about their personal journeys out of Mormonism, the healing power of psychedelics, and navigating the complex emotions that come with deconstructing religious belief systems.

They explore topics like spiritual bypassing, the importance of embracing grief and anger, and how these raw emotions can lead to deeper self-understanding and growth. The conversation sheds light on the tension between wanting to leave the past behind and the continual process of healing from religious trauma.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • Stephanie's and Kelli’s individual journeys of leaving Mormonism and how psychedelics helped them through their transitions.
  • The concept of spiritual bypassing and why avoiding difficult emotions can block true healing.
  • The role of anger and grief in personal growth, and how to honor these emotions rather than suppress them.
  • How Mormonism’s focus on "happiness" as a measure of success can perpetuate emotional suppression.
  • The importance of internal family systems (IFS) and parts work in healing from religious trauma.
  • Breaking free from external validation and finding an authentic sense of self.

Notable Quotes:

  • "I realized I've been giving myself love this whole time—I just thought it was Mormon God." – Stephanie
  • "We have to be in that gestation period, in the cocoon, and trust that process before we can emerge on the other side." – Mike
  • "Our souls want full participation in the human experience, and that includes both pleasure and pain." – Kelli

Recommended Resources:

  • The Soul’s Code by James Hillman
  • Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships by John Wellwood (coined the term "spiritual bypassing")
  • Francis Weller’s teachings on grief and the full spectrum of human experience.

Connect with Us: Follow Mormons on Mushrooms for more insights and episodes on spirituality, psychedelics, and life after leaving Mormonism:

Support the Show: If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share it with others who may benefit from these conversations!

There we go. Well, welcome to Mormons on Mushrooms. We usually don't say that at beginning of an episode, but this might be our first one that we put on YouTube. So trying to be a little bit more on our game here. But welcome to Mormons on Mushrooms. My name is Mike. I'm one of the hosts. And I'm joined here by Stephanie and Kelly, who've been on the podcast several times. Stephanie, who has hosted several episodes and cannot wait to chat. Stephanie, why don't you start and just give people a little introduction to you. Yeah, yeah. So I left Mormonism about three years ago, which isn't very long. And I know that crazy. feels like. remind me, sorry, when you first came on, you weren't when you were first a guest, you were very recently out, right? Or OK, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I guess it's been, it's in like March-ish, it'll be four years. So guess it's been like three and a half years. And I, yeah, I had an experience with mushrooms as a fully believing Mormon. And after that experience, I was like, my God, I'm in a cult and left shortly after. And now I'm kind of still in like my transition phase, like figuring out where I'm going from here. But I just post a lot of like religious trauma content online and kind of I'm in that space a little bit as well as the psychedelic space as well. But I haven't really quite landed anywhere yet, but that's kind of where I'm headed in my life. Yeah. And well, thank you and thank you for being back on here. And Kelly. Hey, I'm Kelly and I left Mormonism like 10 years ago and I took mushrooms for the first time six years ago. And I've talked with Stephanie on this podcast about journeying through hell realms with psychedelics. And I feel... Like I'm more, guess we talked about on the last conversation, maybe like further down the road because it's been longer since I've left and more like settled in where I'm at with my spirituality. And yeah, I don't know. You could tell me more if there's something specific I should include about myself, but. is good for now and it'll come up. mean, one of things I'll say about you, Kelly, is I do think I left the church around a similar time, but I feel like you've gone through some like of the phases quicker than me. You know what I mean? Like you. I feel like, you know, for a while, I don't know how to describe it. I just feel like you've you've had like a lot of lived experiences that have really informed where you're at and you have a very embodied sense that really comes through that I. One of the reasons why you're back here on the episode, I just love to hear your perspective. Thank you. And you just you have been more recently, like you just recently got divorced, right? Just we're in separation right now. Yeah. But, yeah. And so I think that's maybe part of it too, is there's so much like solo exploration now that I think is a big part of it where it's, you know, had a beautiful relationship and we explored a lot in ex Mormonism together, but you're still kind of as a, exploring as a unit. And so now it's finally this time when it's like, wait, what do I want? I mean, I had the experience, I was alone this last weekend. And kind of going through that thing of like, I'm not used to being alone, you know? And like wrestling with, do I really want to do this or do I want to do this or don't want to do this? And find this like, well, I only have to answer to myself, but even that is hard to do when you've never really been alone or had to tune into your own moral compass. It's the beginning of a whole new journey. Yeah, here we go. Buckle up, buckle up. And Stephanie, are, so you have Stephanie Anne again, right? Is the Instagram? And before we hit record, we were going to start talking about some of this stuff. you, you, you are a content creator. I mean, with your hair styling and now your ex Mormon account, but I will. was coming up because today you had posted a reel of some of the comments you were getting for this. And I think it's going to tie into our conversation today. So can we talk about that first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was just a reel that was like a compilation of like all of the, I guess you would say, all the rude comments, all the mean things that people say to me. And I just compiled them all together and put them in a reel. Just to sort of highlight how, you know, it seems like being an ex-Mormon, the only way to really do it and be able to you know, live peacefully in Utah, especially is if you continue to kind of like play the game, like continue to play by the Mormons rules, which is like, okay, if you're going to leave, you got to do it quietly. You got to be really nice. And you, you have to, you know, don't speak out about any of the trauma that you've had or any of the abuse that you experienced because we have to remain comfortable as Mormons. It's your job still as ex Mormons to make sure we're comfortable. Otherwise, you know, you're going to be ostracized or you're going to be shunned or, you know, you're going to get all of these horrible comments on the internet, stuff like that. And I debated for a minute. I'm like, should I, should I post these comments? Like, does this seem too petty? Like, does this seem like I'm just being like a little, you know, like a mean girl, like a little bitchy bitch? And I thought about it I was like, first of all, you know, I think there's a difference between being nice and being loving. And I'm like so over being nice. know, nice is essentially like, let's continue to make the Mormons comfortable. But what feels more loving to me is being like, I will 150 % call out this bullshit. Like there are so many people who are. have been harmed by the church who are still being harmed by the church. And if like ex-Mormons, we just continue to play by the Mormon's rules of like being nice, quote unquote, it's just gonna continue, you know? So that was my thought process behind that. like, I just, I feel like even though according to our Mormon indoctrination and our Mormon upbringing, this would not be a nice thing to do. It feels like the right thing to do, you know? When you said not being petty, I mean, what's wrong with the little pettiness every now and then? what I'm saying, yeah. There's almost like this purity complex that I'm like repulsed by. know, anything that's like, you can't be petty. have to be, you have to be all, only the good things. I'm like, hell no. Thank like, it's the church that makes those rules, right? Like, you can leave and not talk about it. Like, what's the phrase? You can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone. But I mean, imagine saying that too about a relationship. I mean, I had this experience a few months ago where I was realizing how much the church meant to me in my life. I mean, for 32 years, it meant more to me than anything. Like I was in it, I lived it. And so to have a relationship with something so deep and then to say, okay, once you leave it, you can't talk about it anymore. that's bullshit. Right, and imagine any other sort of abuse or trauma to have somebody who leaves an abusive situation and for the rest of the world to just be like, like you need to get over it. You need to leave it alone. Like you can't talk about that. Like that would not fly for two seconds. Well, and so speaking of like getting over it, because I think that's what, you know, part of this podcast has been, you know, so this might be the first one that we release on YouTube, but we've had almost 200 episodes. Just on the regular platforms. And it's been mostly about this. Okay. We're at the state, we're angry at the church. We've we're, we're, processing our bitterness towards our experiences or trying to reframe them. But then it's kind of like this, okay, but now what do we want to stay in this space? We want to move forward. And I find that I kind of. go through cycles where sometimes it feels like I can leave it behind. Sometimes I feel like I can move forward. And then sometimes it's like, get roped back into it I get angry for a while and it goes like that. And so I'd love to hear maybe from you and Kelly on this on like, what, cause I would love to be over it. I would love to not have to talk about it anymore, but at the same time, I do kind of like talking about it. So I don't know. Is that enough of a question? I guess. I mean, could say Stephanie and I have talked a lot about this and I feel like we did two completely different, well, we had very different journeys of leaving the church. Like I very slowly realized that the church wasn't true and then like gently transitioned and then I had like, you know, a year and a half of faith transition and then my ex-husband and I left together and then a couple of years later we got divorced. And I know that Stephanie's was like, all at once, like glass shattering, which I'll let you speak to your experience. But what happened for me was like, I left in my twenties and when I realized it wasn't true, it was such a relief to just be like done with the burden of the church, of like going to church and pretending that I cared about all the things that you have to pretend to care about as a believing Mormon. And so I was just so excited to be able to not have to think about it anymore. And so I took like a long time off of just like, my God, like kind of a teenager, like that's so dumb. I'm so over it. Who cares? I wasn't trying to be spiritually bypassing. I just genuinely was like, sort of like, there's such cooler things to talk about or think about. That was sort of like my attitude for several years. And I think that that was what was right for me. But then it wasn't until... my journey had taken me all the way to like where, and maybe I talked about this in our last conversation, where I felt like I had finally arrived at the promised land of, this was three years ago, so it was when Stephanie was leaving the church. I found myself living with an intentional community up outside of Seattle on Bainbridge Island with. like an elderly lesbian couple in their seventies that were running this intentional community, doing goddess worship, you know, pagan wheel of the year rituals. And it was like on the outside, it was reflecting back to me so much of what resonates with me spiritually. And yet, Even though I was living with these incredibly lovely people who I have these shared values with and spiritual system with, there was like the depths of me they couldn't see because they had no reference for my Mormonism. So I felt like I could only go so deep with them. And it was like, that's when I started to like binge Mormon content online, like just taking in all the Mormon stuff that I could. And then that was sort of like this return to my Mormon roots where it was like, this realization that Mormonism is my heritage and my ethnicity in a way. anyway, so that's kind of has been my journey with leaving Mormonism and starting to like find my balance with it. But Stephanie, I know that you've had a completely different process. Yeah, yeah. Well, one thing I want to say, you know, and just the process of leaving Mormonism, it feels to me like a lot of times there is still, once again, ingrained in us, internalized, not just externally, like Mormons telling us how to be ex-Mormons, but internally, we have these internalized, be redundant, we have these internalized beliefs about what it means to be a good ex-Mormon. And part of that is this idea that things like anger or even like bitterness or resentment or grief or all of those things are something that you get stuck in. So it's almost like, I'm in this place that I shouldn't be in. How can I get to a better place? And that feels just like Mormonism to me where it's like, everything that's in the shadow, everything that comes from Satan, We don't want those things. We have to move through it and get to the places where we feel good and get to the places where we only have loving thoughts and we forgive everyone. And we just feel like we are peacemakers. You know what I mean? And not that there's, know, ultimately like in reality, sure. Like that's, you can say maybe that's the ultimate truth that like everything is love and whatever, but. If you only aim for that and you only look at that as some sort of like higher standard that you're trying to reach, to me, it completely bypasses everything that it means to be human, everything that's beautiful about being angry, everything that's beautiful about being like, I'm actually not fucking over this. And I don't feel like I have to be. I don't feel like it's a hump I'm trying to get over. It's something that shaped me. It's something that's alive in me. It feels very... honoring and poetic and rich and deep to respect it and to go with the flow of wherever my process takes me instead of being like, okay, I'm gonna pathologize my anger because there's a ton of Mormons that are telling me to stop being angry. And there's a ton of ex-Mormons who say the same thing. They'll be like, yeah, well, it's almost like this hierarchy, right? Like, yeah, I used to be angry, but I got over it. You know what I mean? They can just like... you know, wear this badge of honor that they're now in a supposedly better place, if that makes sense. It does. And I've had the experience even recently of realizing how, and maybe it was part of being separated. Cause I think there was a, there's been a part of me that's wanted to almost prove that you can still be happy and ex Mormon, like that, that, you can still be successful and happy and live a fulfilling life. And like externally. And so I didn't realize I'd been putting that pressure on myself to kind of almost be like a model ex Mormon to be like, look, I can leave, but I can still be loving towards my family members and friends who are still in the church. I can still, you know, keep my marriage intact. can still be happy. And, and then I was like, well, what, what bar am I holding myself to and how exhausting is that? And life is life. And, you know, staying in the church, leaving the church is no guarantee that your marriage is going to fail or even saying the word failed marriage. I did not have a failed marriage. had a super loving, successful, happy and rewarding marriage. And just like anything in life, sometimes things ebb and flow. And sometimes it's, it's time for new experiences and new, new things. And so it's still how much of my, and so part of my reason for even just like keep revisiting Mormonism. is to understand myself and my own psyche because that perspective, like I'm saying, that perspective that happiness is a gauge of how successfully I'm living my life is a very Mormon paradigm that I'm still unpacking and still realizing how much it impacts me. Go ahead, Kelly. see what you want to say. Just jump in. If you want to say something, you jump in. you have shared and I feel like there's so much that I wanna keep riffing on from what you've shared. But what it's bringing up for me about my own experience is that with my journey of leaving, I was so ready to just kinda let it go and move on. this is what I've, Stephanie and I have talked about this a lot where you can... realize that you don't have a literal belief in the truth claims of the church and feel like you've left the church, which is what I did, but I didn't actually deconstruct the structure of cult-like thinking that had a grip on my mind. And so I replaced my literal beliefs in the church with, I went straight into, because I was in college and I had all this stuff coming at me, so I went straight into like, environmentalism and liberalism and veganism. And I just immediately replaced all of the other beliefs that I had with new beliefs that resonate with me more. But I still was holding them in the mental structure that Mormonism gave me. So I just found new ways to be righteous and new ways to keep the commandments and new ways to signal that I'm good enough. Right. Because keeping the commandments means that you're good. You're doing something right. And so both of what you guys are talking about in terms of being good and being a model ex-Mormon and being happy, they're all still sort of like holding up the bigger structure that Mormonism has over our minds. And so it wasn't until I started to learn from like cult experts. Well, I think that I can't remember his name, doctor, I can't remember his name, but the cult expert. Stephen Hassan? See you. so. I learned a lot from him with Mormon stories and then Sam and Tanner with Zelf on the Shelf, like my really good friends have helped me to learn about how cult-like thinking can function in our lives beyond just literal Mormon belief. And so much of it has to do with, it comes down to this central worthiness. Like, am I good? Can someone affirm for me, some external source affirm for me that I'm a good person? And it's like, for me, was like, if I'm a vegan, and then that means that I'm not doing harm and I'm a good, you know, I was looking for all these ways that I could still not sin and still keep the commandments. anyways, so that has been huge for me is like recovering from being a good girl. And that's similar to what I'm hearing from Stephanie, like not. not needing to be a good girl and be just polite and never angry and yeah so that's that's what's coming up for me. And I love that point that like leaving the church is literally just the first step in deconstructing. And, you know, along with cult-like thinking, there are so many other things that need to be deconstructed in the Mormon psyche. Like so many ex-Mormons even still have an incredibly Mormon psyche because there's so much work that needs to be done to deconstruct. those deeply, deeply internalized beliefs. And to both of your points, like, you know, what got me questioning all of this was it, I started to really examine like, what is actually helpful? You know, is being a quote unquote, like being good, quote unquote good, is that actually helpful? Being a nice person, is that actually helpful? And to what you were saying, Mike, I can leave the church and still have a good relationship with all these people who are still in the church. And look, I'm so, whatever, I'm easygoing and I'm happy and whatever. It's like, is that actually helpful? And I've been thinking about, you guys know, Chappell Rhone. She's going through, yeah, of course, love her. She's going through all this stuff right now with fans, where fans are being absolutely batshit crazy. and she's putting her foot down and she's like saying no. And for some reason I keep thinking about this where I'm like, you know, all of these celebrities have had to sort of play this game of like, well, we gotta be nice to our fans because they pay our bills. We gotta be nice to our fans even though they're overriding our boundaries, even though this is abusive, even though this isn't okay, we gotta be nice. And I feel like it's very similar for ex-Mormons. It's like actually, Maybe it's not helpful to be nice. Maybe it's actually not helpful in the long run to do something that appears to be nice that's just going to continue to perpetuate the harm. Well, something about because of all the like suppressed emotions or suppressed things, I guess, in Mormonism, you know, sexuality, obviously being high up there. Anger is probably even higher. mean, angry anger. There's like no safe expression for anger. You know, even when you get married or it's like, and I've realized lately how good anger feels like it feels so good to just like, and it feels like. getting back in touch with a part of me that's like, no, I don't want to do this. And I love that you bring up Chappell Rhone because what she, like when I see some of those videos that she posts about like, you know, complaining about the fans and like all this, cause she went from, I mean, the height at like, no one knew her to like the height of fame in like a year. And she's saying that, look, I've already given you my gift. I've given you my music. I don't owe you anything else. And if you want to stop listening to my music because of that, stop listening. And it's like this belief enough in her and her art and her expression that like, people will listen whether I'm nice or not. Like, so I'm just going to be me. And so when I think about like, if someone asked me the question, like, are you happier after leaving? I've been out of the church 10 years now. I would say both. I felt higher highs and lower lows and everything in between. But above all, I feel more authentic in my expression and authentically me than I ever have before. And that's a relief. It's just a relief. Yeah. I don't know if anyone can resonate with that, but. I can, I can. I Kelly can. We both can. Well, I mean, I was going to say when I was hearing Stephanie talking earlier, like, is this helpful to be nice? It's like, what actually is helpful is to be honest. And there's, like, I was listening, I heard a clip from Jeremy Rannells, who wrote the CES letter, his like excommunication hearing. And I was listening to a little portion of it. And like what was resonating with me was him pointing out like, this is not honest. The way the church is presenting information is not honest. And it was like, it shook me of growing up. It was a mind fuck because I knew that I was being asked to be puritanically honest, but I could sense like that actual honesty in practice wasn't truly valued in Mormonism. And so now we get to have this opportunity to practice that, to be honest and authentic, including honoring and owning the parts of ourselves that are fucking pissed and that are saying no, even if it ruffles feathers. Yeah, yeah. And like as we originally started talking about this, like before we started recording this podcast, we wanted to, we were having a discussion or wanted to have a discussion about spiritually bypassing, which is so prevalent in Mormonism because it's essentially the idea that like the good emotions are the only thing that you focus on. And if you have enough of the good emotions, then the bad ones, don't like you can just ignore them. You can push them under the rug or you can somehow magically heal them with just the good emotions. And, you know, to speak to what you were saying, Kelly, about being honest. What I have found is that like you can't like number one, spiritually bypassing leads to incredible amounts of like. Dishonesty within yourself about, you know. what you're actually feeling and what actually feels good to you, know, in like speaking to, you know, like we just learn, we learn to be nice to everyone around us, but to not include ourselves in that. And when you really, when you really start to get honest with how you're feeling, what I have found is that, It's way, way, way, way more fulfilling and better than whatever the church was saying about like, only these good, we only want these good emotions because they feel good. It's like, I feel a different sort of better now than I did before. Does that make sense? Totally, and I think a lot of when you talk about spiritual bypassing, it's almost an avoidance of grief. And I would love to get Kelly's perspective on this too, because I know Kelly, you've done a lot of grief work. But I feel like, for example, I lost someone really close to me about a year and a half ago, really close to me. And I feel like grieving my loss of the church helped me grieve this loss, which has also helped me now grieve the loss of my marriage. Because what it... taught me is that all emotions are valid and sometimes they don't seem rational. You might be feeling an emotion like, don't know why I'm feeling this and you might never know why. You might not, but the fact that you're feeling it, it's okay and it's valid. And when you go through the grieving process, you might feel a mixture of intense anger, intense guilt, and then that cycles to sadness. And then it cycles to a joy because you have some happy memory about the person. And then it turns into almost a relief and you're like, now I feel guilty for feeling relief even. grief is such a tricky, like, sorry, someone just walked in, so I had to close the door. But it's such a tricky ball of like a knot and you just like pulling the strings and unravel and process it. And it's okay to fill all of it and have spaces where it's okay to fill all of it. And I know you've been in those spaces before, Kelly, so I'd love to get your thoughts on. I mean, I can just affirm what you're saying. It's sort of like the antidote of spiritual bypassing is tending our grief. And there's the impulse to, as we see a lot of times people leave Mormonism and then go into new age spirituality, which can be all about love and light and transcending the human experience and, To me, the ultimate expression of love is honoring our grief. One of my grief teachers, Francis Weller, one of the first lessons he teaches is that everything we love, we will lose. Which Stephanie, I know you love that, I say sarcastically. I love that that's a fact of life. Well, and just real quick, contrast that with what we learned in Mormonism of like, no, this is going to be forever and this family, this unit, or, know, families can be together forever. And, and things, this happiness will last, it's eternal happiness after this. And so you have this mindset that like, if it's good, it will last forever. It's the opposite. And it, almost, it blocks that grieving process and, and allowing us to let go of those things, even if we love them intensely. Yeah, I feel like my ultimate, ultimate transition that I went through with leaving Mormonism was going from the I know that you have that you're indoctrinated to claim I know the church is true. I know, I know, I know to like, I don't know. And just really like the free fall into the not knowing and finding that actually opening myself to the great mystery is where my most profound spiritual connection lies. And in that, I found a lot of benefit from the teachings from Buddhism and Hinduism about impermanence, that there's really no solid structures. We take ourselves to be solid, we take this life to be solid, but everything is just. we're living beings that are in process and there's not really anything to hold onto other than just continually refreshing our willingness to receive the mystery of the unknown, the groundlessness of existence. It's continually dissolving and re-emerging at all times. so, yeah, it's like... we have to, we have to, in order to keep our hearts open, continually be tending our grief and letting ourselves love as everything is continually dissolving and changing. so it's such a fundamental shift from the pretending that I know in Mormonism to mysteriously feeling this strange sense of comfort and peace in the release and the freefall and just opening into the unknown and the continual changing. That's, you know, that's the only place where I have found peace is in learning to continually open again and again to the always changing, always dissolving nature of reality. and how different. Did I? So good, yeah. beautiful. Yeah. And, and just a second, what Mike said, like how different that is than what we were taught in Mormonism. And it's so ironic that the very thing that Mormonism tells you to avoid and tells you to, it's scary and dangerous and whatever is the very thing that opens your heart to the deepest kind of love. and, like, you know, talking about tending to your grief, I don't feel like in Mormonism you can access you can't really access your grief because you're not there's that like spiritual bypassing is literally built into the doctrine, the doctrine, you and, so that's what's been surprised, like the most surprising thing to me when I've been tending to my grief, that to me, that's the same as tending to my anger. It's like they're, they manifest in the same way. It's like, it's, it's grieving all of the times that my autonomy was taken from me, that my boundaries were crossed. It's grieving like injustices, you know, and just like the more that I have stopped pathologizing my anger and my grief or any of my emotions that supposedly came from Satan, not that grief came from Satan, but basically all the everything that leads up to your grief does. Once I stopped like pathologizing that, that's like where the richest openness and love to life that you can possibly feel starts to come in. And then you have all these Mormons on the internet that are like, you need to get over it. And I'm like, I would never in a million years do that to myself. What a disservice to myself to just bypass the deepest, richest aspects of being a human being. It's... that's so beautifully said. I love that Stephanie. So beautiful. it reminds me of, so I've been rereading, you guys familiar with The Soul's Code by James Hillman? James Hillman, he's the founder of, right there, there it is. That's the book. Such a good book. Highly recommend it. in that book, he, so, you know, there's that quote, like, are divine beings having a human experience. And whether that's literally true, it's definitely metaphorically true. There's a part of us that craves transcendence and then we also have these animal bodies. And so we're always in this tension between our animalistic instincts and living in civilized society. And he has this chapter on what he calls growing down. And I love that. And he talks about the Kabbalah and the tree of life where the roots are actually in heaven and the tree grows down. And so I just love that symbolism that like, okay. And you think of it in Mormonism. It rings like similar to what Mormons believe that we know we were spiritual beings and came down here to have an embodied existence and gain a body. But it's almost like in Mormonism, we believe that we were just supposed to like dip our toe in the water, like come down, get a body, but then keep it pure, keep it clean. get married in the temple, lock ourselves up in that way, and then just hold on and grip and then die, and then we go back to transcendence and not really live an embodied existence with the pains and sorrows and pleasure and ecstasy and everything this existence and this, yeah, has to offer. And I just, I've been rereading that chapter. I love it, because yeah, go ahead, Kelly. No, I'm like cheering with what you're saying. But I mean, I recommend people get that book. And if anything, just read that chapter of all the whole books here, you should read the whole book. like, because for me, it's like, you know, I think James Campbell had the quote that like, joyfully engage in the sorrows of life, like, you know, like, there's something to that being here. I mean, we're here. So and kind of this embracing of all that is instead of Wait, we're only going for the good parts. Yeah, 100%. I just mentioned Francis Weller earlier and something that he says a lot of times is your soul came here for full participation. our souls don't discriminate between pleasure and pain. Our soul, like the higher, larger self, the bigger self that we are, I really feel wants to experience what it is to be a human being and like wants to receive life as it's presenting itself to us and it it's like ooh sensation you know like the whole entire all of what it means to be human and that's why i always make the distinction like in buddhist teachings the first noble truth was that life has suffering, not that life is suffering. But that's just step one. That's not the end of the story. It's like the way out of it is really by embracing it. Like there's another quote from Ajin Shah, which I know this because I've listened to so many hundreds of hours of Jack Kornfield talks, who's a Buddhist teacher and Jack Kornfield's, his, Buddhist teachers named Ajahn Chah, and there's a quote from him. There's two kinds of suffering, the kind that you run away from, which follows you everywhere, and the kind that you turn towards, and the kind that you turn towards is, that is your liberation, that is your opening. And so it's like in the process of just turning towards what our lives are, what's all of that's arising as what it means to be human, including grief and anger and whatever other aspects of the human experience as Mormons, we were taught to believe was coming from Satan or taught to transcend or bypass. It's like actually liberation is found in embracing it and acknowledging this is part of the gift of life too. All of this is part of what it means to be a human being. Beautiful. And I just, it brings it's cause there's a similar quote. we're doing a lot of quotes, but like, there's so good. Carl Jung has this quote, like what you resist persists. so that ties into that and, you know, tightening into like anger, you're talking about Stephanie, like if, unless you're, you feel it, it's just going to be there. it's going to be there under the surface. And so if you're in that experience of anger, being that experience and, know, and I mean, I guess that's the thing about. bypassing, don't bypass it. Don't, and don't already jump to the next step. There's something about, you know, as we learn from nature, there's the cycles of death and rebirth and we see it everywhere. know, there's, with death, there's always rebirth, but if we're jumping to the rebirth and you know, it's like, we have to be in that sometimes we have to be in that gestation period. have to be in the cocoon. have to be in the womb for however long that takes before we get birthed out to the other side. And, And trusting that process, but also not trying to jump in or bypass that process. I know. And I really feel too that these aspects of us don't really, they don't really obey the rules of time and space. Like it doesn't feel like a phase to me. It feels more like a living thing that's inside of you that exists there. And sometimes you're in relationship with, you know, your anger and your grief. Sometimes you're in relationship with your joy and your pleasure. It doesn't feel like a a phase. feels like, this is an aspect of a living thing inside of me, which is why I, the whole concept of spiritual bypassing is so, it makes no sense. It's like you guys are, you're missing out when you, when you just like pathologize or try to get over something. You're literally, I feel like we only bypass what we are afraid of. or what we're ashamed of. And when you take out the fear and the shame, it's like everything that exists inside of you becomes this like, you just like fall in love with yourself. You fall in love with yourself in a way that you never could inside of Mormonism because you believe that half of you is being just, you know, coming from Satan essentially. Do you, feel like Steph, is that sort of, I know you had kind of like a breakthrough yesterday. I don't know if you want to share anything about it, but is that kind of happening for you? Is there anything more that you would want to share about your own experience? I'm Mike. had a breakthrough yesterday in therapy. And this, was doing this. Okay. Basically I, I realized through doing a coaching session with an IFS coach that like I am Mormon God. And that like I had like, everybody has such a different relationship with Mormon God with what they perceive Mormon God is. Some people think Mormon God is like this asshole. who's like gonna judge you. Other people feel like Mormon God is like this loving witness. And mine was more of like a loving witness, which we've talked about on the podcast before. But I like made this connection that that loving part of me that I thought was Mormon God was actually just me. Like, you know when you do parts work and you're like, here's a part that's holding this belief. Here's a part that's holding this belief. Like I literally had a part that was like, I am Mormon God. And so all of those years of feeling like, I was getting something from an external being, like the goodness was coming from this external being. It was actually just me giving it to myself, you know? And I feel like doing a lot of work around unshaming all aspects of me is what has allowed me to get to this point where I can recognize, actually I've been giving myself love this whole time. I just thought it was a Mormon God that was giving it to me before. It was crazy. It was like one sentence that this therapist said and I was like, shit, I am Mormon God. Ha ha ha. can I say more? feel like I don't want to tell your story for you, but I feel like you've had like, IFS you referenced in it for people who don't know it stands for internal family systems. It's like being with different parts of yourself with this intention of cultivating like a strong sense of self and a self that can be present with all of the different parts of you that might arise. So everything is welcome here. It's very like. a method that's very in tune with the conversation that we're having. It's like all about radically welcoming everything that comes. And you, it's like you've, you've, you've liked the parts work, but you've kind of like always hit this block. You've always were like, I don't have, we, think we talked about it in the last conversation. You were like, my like loving witness was, was heavenly father God. And then, so she said, cause she, what did she say? She was like, you, making a new embodied. yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, have you ever had a therapist, Mike, that will like have you embody the thing that feels foreign in you? Similar to how you do dream work, where you try to embody, yeah. I've had that in dreams a lot where they'll invite me to kind of go back into a different, like the, the person who wasn't the me in the dream, the I in the, yeah. That's exactly what it was. And then as soon she did that, I was like, I'm Mormon God. I've just been pretending to be Mormon God this whole time, but it's really just me. my gosh. I love that stuff. Cause we started, you know, the conversation, I Kelly, you had mentioned about like always seeking for something outside of you, you know, and external validation. mean, I used to have this when I was Mormon had this, even after Mormon, I mean, it still continues to this day, actually. Maybe that's part of the podcast is like this compulsive need to confess because when I confess, I get, I usually get an external validation from someone being like, you're okay, Mike, you're okay. And like, okay, I'm okay. But to find that within you. is that's a huge breakthrough. Yeah. Thank you. If you guys have questions, come to me, because I am Mormon God. I'm going to start my own religion. We've been looking for you the whole time. I have to stop. So I thought I had 20 more minutes, but I have to go. can you guys continue the conversation and wrap it up? I'm sorry to leave you, but I want to keep going. I don't know that I have tons more burning. mean, this is just such a beautiful topic that I'm sure we could keep going on. I had one thing that I wanted to say, but I don't know about you, Stephanie. Did you have more that you wanted to make sure we covered? I felt like we pretty much covered what we were going to talk about. Okay. Cause I didn't want to wrap it up here. Cause I feel like we were so in, I just like there a couple more questions, but like, yeah. Yeah. And she was taking a test after I thought I had 20 more minutes, but she's waiting. I just, we've been talking about this phrase spiritual bypassing, which one of my teacher's teachers, his name is John Wellwood. And so I have like so many good books. This is John Wellwood. This book is called Perfect Love and Perfect Relationships. And he's the person who coined the term spiritual bypassing. And so if people are feeling inspired and like wanting to keep going with this, he was a beautifully embodied spiritual teacher who it was like the connection is found in the descent. It's like it's in the bloody, raw, dirty, boring, mundane, the whole shebang, know, the whole during big picture of what it means to be human. That's where the spiritual connection is found. That's where eternity is found. And I adore his teachings. And so I just wanted to plug him since we're talking about spiritual bypassing. That's beautiful. are you saying that God is actually found in the midst of darkness, not on the Well, I'm sorry to cut this short, but let's just do this again. This has been lovely. So good. feel like it's helped me not bypass some things today. It's just like going through my, there's this it's just been great. And you two are lovely. And this has been amazing. Yeah, you both. in real time. Yeah. All right. We'll chat soon. Bye. Have some love.