Happy Sunday! When I was in my late twenties, I went through my first “faith crisis,'“ and it was only then that I realized that even though people were good at expressing the words to convey homogeneity of beliefs, it was pretty rare for two people’s beliefs to overlap exactly, even if they’d both been raised within the same faith tradition. I had a lot of assumptions about David’s beliefs matching up with mine, and every time I saw hints that this wasn’t the case, it brought up a lot of fear. It’s such a journey to get to the point to allow people to be where they are at, and to see that with love instead of fear. This week David shares some insights about his evolving belief and his own growth in learning to better connect and love others and to see their beliefs as meaningful and lovely, even if he doesn’t share them.

Thanks for reading!

-MIndy

Agonizing Agnosticism

I chose disbelief because of my childhood. I chose disbelief because it inured me to the constant cognitive dissonance of growing up around mentally ill parents who leveraged religion to try and cope with their terror. Mostly what it did is blind them to the harmfulness of their worldview and mask mental illness. Several of my siblings have been diagnosed with OCD or BPD, and, especially with OCD, the religious stricture and obsession with purity above what everyone else considered pure (e.g., no coffee, tea, masturbation, sex, alcohol, etc.) made it impossible to spot their struggles growing up because scrupulosity was actually a feature, not a bug in that environment.

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no you.

I wore Mormonism like a beard–ostensibly everything I wasn't doing was because of my religion when in reality everything I wasn't doing was because I was absolutely terrified of losing control. After my father's nervous breakdown–he sunk into a psychotic depression after being asked to lead our congregation as Bishop, the Mormon term for Reverend–I didn't want to try drugs, alcohol, or sex because every one of them required surrendering some facet of control, and my seeming house of cards wasn't going to sustain any uncertainty. I served a mission as an atheist, and yet I'm certain my parents felt that I'd given that up, if they even remembered it, because I was so very good at relating my experience through the lens of Mormonism. And it's important in religions like Mormonism to say exactly the right things. It's a community built primarily on memes. Mormons have never been able to shake the stigma of polygamy, and that's because for decades they were secretly practicing. It's a community very keyed in on presentation.

All of this is to say that I chose atheism because I spent my every waking hour trying to relate to a worldview that I felt wrapped up in but that did not resonate. When I got married, Mindy was very religious, and even though we met on a research trip to Brazil, shared a bunk together, and fooled around (no sex) every night, it soon became very apparent that the free and easy spirit I met in the Amazon was not her regular way of being. So, I retrenched in my efforts to pass. So many topics we couldn't discuss without hurt feelings, anger, and feeling betrayed. It was hell, my atheism. I was trying to be close to people I loved most by trying to relate to them, but in a culture where relating requires saying things that really begin to wear on the soul.

I was careful with my word choices. I would try and reveal parts of myself to Mindy, but it would trigger something like an immune response. In Mormonism, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is given quite a lot of play. It's essentially a doctrine of conscience meets inner voice equals direct message from God via his messenger the Holy Ghost, a divine presence that only Mormons have access to. Everyone else is getting along with something called The Light of Christ, an all-encompassing loving conscience, but it's a second-rate spiritual guide, for some reason. If you want the goods, you've got to get baptized Mormon and then follow all the rules, and if you do that, you get direct counsel with divinity. That it sounds like your critical parent and scrupulosity is just an unfortunate coincidence.

This path I chose to walk. It was all in my head. I don't just mean figuratively; I mean that to walk this path, I shut down listening to anything but the voice in my head. My heart ached? Squash it. Think it down. Relate. My life depends on it. Or at least being in a relationship with the people that I love most and the person who most captivated me required that I walk this tightrope, or else we wouldn't be together.

It was awful.

But then I started to be happy.

I found peace inside myself. I found a new normal that feels calm AND alert.

And I lost my taste for walking the tightrope, and Mindy and I have come very close over these years to calling it quits. My worst fear has felt so close at hand these last few years: if I show up as myself, I will be rejected.

We've stuck it out, Mindy and I. We've done approximately 200 hours of therapy together and individually this past 18 months. I don't want to relate to Mindy's beliefs; I want to learn to love all of Mindy and find connection to the beliefs that really work for her.

In this process of the past few years, I found out a couple of things that destroyed my old calculus:

• Loving Mindy, really being in love with her, was exactly what it felt like being in love with others. Turns out being in the flow of love is something I'm experiencing, and if I feel that love blocked or diminished because of a fight we had, for example, it was a block to love that I needed to remove.

• I’m finding that to be in love I have to remove the blocks to love that show up in me. And I’m not willing to do that for everyone I know, let alone everyone on the planet, but there is an ever-growing number of people that I love fully. This feeling of being in love or in the flow of love seems increasingly to be singular; either I’m capable of feeling it or I’ve got stuff in the way of feeling it.

• Attending to and responding to those that I love is about liking things about them or about us. For instance:

  • I like sharing my life with Mindy and creating a life together

  • I like going on trips with her and visiting museums

  • Etc.

• I have some things that I like doing with everyone that I love, like a long chat, staying up to watch the sunrise after a night of laughing and crying

• I have some things I only like doing with one person – no, I won't tell you cause that’s private (hehe)

Yes, in addition to Mindy, I love all our children with this boundless desire to remove all blocks to loving them. And there's a short list of my most cherished friends. If I were a more evolved creature, all of humanity would be on that list, or at least all of my family of origin, but that's just not true. Not because I want it this way per se, but rather I still feel guarded and protective, and I don't feel a strong desire to change that. I trust that the list will grow as I grow and expand. And the list grows every year, so that's got me feeling extra happy.

So, I started this year in this new energy, and for the first time since I was a young child, I made a New Year's resolution.

I vowed to learn to truly relate to the beliefs of those that I love unconditionally.

Firstly and lastly, this was a resolution to love Mindy better, to like her in ways that she likes herself. But I knew that if I were to be successful in finding deeper connection with Mindy, it was going to require practicing with everyone that I love.

It has been a beautiful practice.

The result is I find myself listening to my body. What's alive in my heart? What's got me smiling? Where do I go inside myself when I think of each of them?

This is a much more embodied existence I'm experiencing. Before, I was trying to relate to something that I knew I didn't believe. Now I feel myself desiring to know these people I love as they know themselves, and it is juicy and lovely and captivating.

They each have beliefs, as do I, that help them to know their own mind, to know their own heart, and to be capable of loving others well, and those beliefs are all different. They have different words, different practices, different ways of showing up. And the differences matter and they don't.

Agnostic.

A non-knowing is what I feel to believe. The least clinging form of knowing. This non-clinging shows up when I show up. And when I hide from myself I can’t seem to gain access to it—instead the more I fear the more I know for certain and the more I want to disbelieve. Non-knowing, free of judgment, gives so much room for me to connect with those that I love, and I thrill at relating to how they see life and existence.

Knowing, a cerebral and intellectual thing, only got me so far and the only thing that felt safe was to really be sure that I knew that there wasn’t anything to believe in. This new path that I’m on involves a kind of knowing I don’t know and trusting what I feel, which I’m going to call Gnosis, an embodied knowing. Gnosis has brought me happiness, and it has brought with it a dispensing with the knowing that was atheism (along with its fraught feelings of relating) and replaced it with something that feels rich and lovely, freeing and connecting.

—david/gonzo

NEAT!

Stuff we think is neat enough to share! (David⚡️ & Mindy✨)

• AI finally redeeming itself with HEROES (bedazzled).⚡️

• New set by Ben Böhmer. I haven’t even given it a full listen—I kinda hope to just dance to it the next time I see him.⚡️

SOMETHING TO TRY

This week, I encourage you to explore one belief or assumption that you’ve held unquestioned. It doesn't have to be deeply religious or spiritual—it could be something about yourself, a relationship dynamic, or a cultural norm. Spend a few moments reflecting on where this belief came from and how it serves you. Then, try to imagine a perspective where this belief is not absolute. What changes when you shift your viewpoint? This exercise is not about changing your beliefs but about understanding the flexibility and layers within them, which is a step towards embracing a more agnostic approach to life.

Bonus points if you can weave IFS into your self-examination.

PARTING

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That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.