A return to love
Going down the rabbit holes and choosing to create and be the loving world I wish to experience
Sitting at the dinner table, I turn to my father and made an announcement, one I had been contemplating how to express for the last few weeks:
“I no longer believe in organized religion.” He looked at me a bit amused. “Okay, honey.”
I was 14, maybe 15. We often sparred over ideas and concepts at Sunday dinner, but this time, he listened intently as I launched into my why.
Summer 2021 with my copy of Nag Hammadi
Freshman year history at my Catholic school covered world history and this was the first time I had learned, or at least fully understood, the havoc wreaked by the church in the name of God, from the Inquisition to Conquistadors.
The pattern was quickly clear to me - violence was perpetrated in pursuit of wealth and power in the name of God, yet it was not God’s doing.
The actions of these people - men, let’s face it - were not of God, despite using the name of the divine in all they did, their faith was a false one, a manipulation and channeling of power to control, conquer, and kill.
Once I saw it, I could not unsee it, and even though I knew that what had been done in the name of the divine was separate from it, I placed aside my relationship with God for the next decade.
Hi and welcome! If you’re new here, I’m Kelly, I write about how to be the love we wish to see in the world through shifting our mindset and cultivating a cosmic perspective. For more on me & Ancient Future Heart, you can start here and learn more about my paid vs. free offerings. This week, April 11th at 1pm EST I’m hosting a workshop called Cosmic Faith on how to zoom out and see life with love even in current chaos. It’s free when you join live & will be $111 to purchase afterwards - or available as part of your AFH Substack paid subscription.
This is not an uncommon story, to be led away from spirituality out of a rejection of the pain caused by organized religions, the way they abuse power and commit crimes.
Often we become so repelled by the church - any church not just Christianity - that we never return to any of the teachings or doctrine. This was me.
I didn’t crack open a Bible again until 2021, at age 34, two decades later. I had been on a personal spiritual journey for years by then, and I’d read many texts, even ones such as the Nag Hammadi which contains lost early Christian texts. But never the Bible.
What had brought me back was this knowing, this voice inside my head, in the chaos of the pandemic that said “God is love” alongside a desire to understand the deepest whys of reality in the chaos of our current reality.
It was my father who saw what was happening in the pandemic from the very start - he was cool headed all the way through, even when the rest of the world plunged into fear and chaos. I started putting the puzzle pieces together soon after, as the statistics and hysteria didn’t add up.
A year later, we’re in the vaccine roll out, and what is playing out in the world is something I (naively) assumed I’d never see in my lifetime.
People being fired from work, estranged from their families, bank accounts frozen, not allowed in and out of countries, restaurants, businesses, all because they had decided not to take a vaccine with no long term safety data that was not proven effective (despite all claims). Doctors, journalists, scientists who spoke out with another view point were silenced - all in pursuit of wealth and control, that old story again.
I went into my local coffee shop, a plaque on each table read: “unvaccinated guests not allowed to sit inside.”
The hatred and division, the lack of compassion and basic critical thinking, I saw pour out of friends, family, and leaders, shocked me to my core. It still does, to be honest.
Name a rabbit hole, I went down it, trying to figure out what the f*ck was going on here on earth.
How could millions of people just go along with treating others in this way? Where was the compassion they so claimed to have, where was my body my choice in all of this, where was freedom of action and speech?
I examined it from a political, a historical, a spiritual perspective. I entertained wild theories, watched way too many youtube videos, and ultimately ended up cracking open that old book - the Bible.
I wanted to get to the root of it all.
I am all for exploring information and ideas, whether it’s from doctors and scientists, or spiritual teachers and healers, or conspiracy theorists riding the edge of brilliance and madness. Ultimately, though, we all have to return to ourselves and allow our inner knowing to guide us. That is what I did.
I knew in my heart one thing: that life was benevolent.
I couldn’t explain it, as is true all intuitive knowings, but my heart led me there and the wild love I felt for my children confirmed it.
This is what had brought me back to the Bible, to read Jesus’ message, and what I realized is that his message was more radically loving that I had ever been taught - and therefore more disregarded by most of his followers than I realized. Radically loving, radically forgiving, radically questioning of authority.
For months I sat with the possibility that I had to follow Christian doctrine entirely. I wondered, in a world with so much suffering and evil, does God need to punish? Are certain people chosen and only the good and faithful in heaven? I went deep, I read Revelation page by page (painful) and listened to many youtube videos of pastors, as I contemplated all of it.
Ultimately, I came full circle, and I made a choice.
I decided that for me, God is Love, and God is the Divine essence, life force, that runs through and lives in all things, in every cell and molecule. The creator and the creation are one in the same, and that all of this was birthed from a pure benevolence.
I chose this not only for myself, but for my children. I could not align with an ideology or belief system that divided, judged, and called in the apocalypse. In the same way, I couldn’t align with theories, even if true, about the depth and breadth to which powers that be on earth wish to control humanity.
I wanted, a want, and I choose a different story, a loving story, for my self, my children, and for humanity, and I commit to creating it through my own beliefs, actions, and my soul-led work.
As life does, once I made my decision, to choose to focus my energy, attention, and awareness on a loving story for life, humanity, and ultimately myself, shifts happened.
Texts, from science to spirituality, found me that concurred with my own conclusions in the most magical ways.
I took more responsibility for my life, my happiness, and made changes.
It took me another year and a half to fully speak my truth.
It’s only now that I’m launching my creative project of writing and speaking here and on my podcast into a full-fledged business.
I believe that when we hold a cosmic mindset, zooming out, seeing life from a higher perspective, we become more comfortable in the unknown that’s inevitable part of life, and life becomes imbued with more wonder, awe, and meaning.
I believe that what we believe about the world, about life, about the divine, and therefore about death too, shapes the way we experience life.
I believe that when we choose to believe that life is loving and loves us, that our potential for prosperity and abundance - in all realms - expands immensely.
I believe that if we each hold the highest vision of our life, and of the potential for humanity and earth, from a place of love, we are a powerful force for positive change together.
I believe that we are each here to embody and live as our full selves in all of our brilliant complexities, and that expressing ourselves through creativity and soul-led entrepreneurship is a way we can create this new earth actively while living our potential.
This week, I’m teaching my first Masterclass, Cosmic Faith.
In it, we’ll go high, seeing it all - the cosmology, the science, the spiritual beliefs, even the geopolitics - from a birds eye view. Then deep into your beliefs, the ones you don’t even realize you’re holding about life and God, into your intuitive knowings, and why you are ultimately the one holding the power to choose and create.
If you register and join live, on Thursday April 11 at 1pm EST, it’s free! You’ll get a 24 hr recording that expires. After that, the Masterclass will be available for $111 a la carte and it will be included as a gift for all paid Substack subscribers ($22 a month).
I’d love for you to join. I’m so grateful for all of you. This is a movement we’re choosing and building together. This is just the beginning.
This message resonates so clearly with me. I struggle deeply with the conditional love of religion. To me we are all connected all critical threads, of the world we weave together. If we are all part of this divine creation how can any of it be unworthy or unnecessary. His makes no mistakes. Further more how can part of it be sacrificed. Who decided these arbitrary rules which don’t resonate with me at all? Motherhood for me was the most challenging but most healing transformation. If I could love these humans so deeply then I was also worthy and receiving that love too. I choose to live in a world where divine love binds us together. Keep amplifying that truth. Xoxo