Losing my religion—everybody’s doing it.
When I ask people in recovery about their spiritual beliefs, many say they’re atheist, agnostic, or “spiritual but not religious.” Many go on to explain that they’ve rejected the religion of their youth and aren’t going back.
I get it. It makes total sense.
I grew up Catholic and have plenty of reasons not to go back.
Also, it’s also easy to:
Reject the religion of your youth because there’s so much corruption, abuse of power, bloody history, sexual impropriety, and colonization of Indigenous peoples—along with the extermination of their cultures.
Point to the imbalanced, patriarchal nature of both the mythology and man-made church structures.
Ask: “How can a religion or God that has caused so much trauma be the One to help take care of my own trauma and help me in recovery?”
Admit that believing in—much less talking about God—makes us sound so woo that (at least in certain circles), we’ll lose credibility.
Throw away the God of your youth because everyone else is doing it.
But when we do this, what else gets tossed overboard? Could some of these things be important—especially for recovery?
You need what you’ve lost.
“So Randy, I’ve rejected the religion of my youth and am glad I’ve tossed it. What’s wrong with that?” a client might ask.
Here are three possibilities—things I’ve seen others lose in tossing the religion of their youth.
1. Structure
First, structure is lost. Religion has a lot of structure, which shows up as rules, requirements, and all kinds of things to do and not do. When you reject everything, you’re left with nothing. You’re starting from scratch.
So yes, you’ve wiped the slate clean and you’re totally free, but the problem could be that there’s too much freedom. There’s no structure.
For example:
Who’s your God?
What’s your origin myth?
What are your goals?
Who do you meet with to join in Community and share your stories?
What are your clear rules? (Ones akin to Judaism’s Ten Commandments)
What are your clear starting points? (Ones akin to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths)
What are your clear rituals of connection? (Ones akin to Christianity’s Seven Sacraments)
Religion answers these questions with time-tested, well-defined structures, rules, guideposts, guides, community gatherings, sacred places, calendars with holidays, stories with meaning, etc.—all of which provide clear direction and proven results when you participate.
Meanwhile, people who are “spiritual but not religious” and searching for these answers have the option to dabble. I’ve seen this a lot: the ol’ “sampling at the spiritual buffet.” The problem is that when you take a few steps on all of the paths, you kind of just go in a circle. Your results stay shallow, superficial, and safe. You’re missing depth, which is how others—those who stick to one path—infuse meaning, purpose, direction, and inspiration into their lives.
Sticking to one path also provides real-life guides when you need help on the physical plane. These others have traversed the same ground before you. They know the difficulties you face, ways to deal with them, and how to provide a hand up and over your obstacle.
Good stuff, right? And important stuff for people at any stage of recovery—all the more so at the beginning, when we’re searching for the path that will be right for us.
2. The Full Range of Human Experience
The second possibility is that you could be cutting off one-fourth of the human experience. Our life is made up of mental, spiritual, emotional and physical aspects. By leaving out the spiritual, you’re not accessing or utilizing the gifts from one-fourth of your total potential! This is the potential to be free, happy, and successful in recovery—as well as in life.
Wouldn’t we want to take advantage of all of the available tools, techniques, and talents when tackling a situation like addiction?
Chances are, there’s some spiritual approach, technique, or story that points to, reveals, or makes sense of a universal truth that could help with whatever blockage you’re facing.
I find that it’s a matter of finding the language that fits your belief system. We shouldn’t be forced to adopt a specific religion or to use the “correct” label for God.
Spirituality needs to be practical. When it is, it can deliver medicine in the form of experience—and that changes everything.
3. Help
Another thing that may be lost when you toss the religion of your youth is help.
Spiritually speaking, now that you’ve declined the help of the spirits from that religion:
Who are your helping and compassionate spirits?
From whom are you going to receive spiritual help and support?
What will this look like?
How will do you do it?
How many times has spirit, God, your ancestors, helping spirits, etc., been knocking on the door of your awareness, trying to get your attention and attempting to offer compassionate assistance to provide you with the exact answer to your plea for help…
…only to be met by your response of: “No thanks, you don’t exist. That’s just woo. I threw away belief in you along with the religion of my youth”?
It’s a much different experience to feel like you’ve got access to:
Structure
The full range of human experience
Help and support
…instead of feeling like you’ve lost them.
Getting Them Back
Shamanism, Christ, and Recovery
When I was five years old, I spent a Christmas Eve lying in front of and staring at the wooden, hand-painted, generations-old figurines that made up the manger scene under the family tree.
There was something familiar about it. I knew this person. In my heart, soul, and bones, I knew His message.
Later, when attending Catholic school from third through twelfth grade, reading and learning about the New Testament felt like filling in details of a story I already knew.
That remains true to this day. And while I currently practice Core Shamanism, I have no internal conflict reconciling Christ with these earth-based, “pagan” tenets. I did have problems speaking about my ease of integration to others—especially to those Christians who judge my approach, as it appears from the outside like I have definitely rejected the religion of my youth.
There’s truth to my rejection, as I do not attend modern mass or Church gatherings. In such settings, I have a hard time separating out the wheat from the chaff—taking what I need and leaving the rest.
I still get triggered—a lot. So, it’s better for me to toss that.
At the same time, I deeply love the spirit of the sacraments, the sacred times of the year and various holy places of this faith, and speaking to open-minded and open-hearted clergy—ones who recognize the resonance of similarity between our beliefs, as opposed to adhering to the doctrines of separation.
The point is that, in early recovery, I understood and felt my connection with spirit and knew unequivocally that this was what would get and keep me clean and sober.
Let’s face it: not many medical professionals would suggest following a path of shamanism and personal Catholicism (plus, throw in Traditional Chinese Medicine!) as a way to get and stay clean and sober.
But that was absolutely the right recipe for me. And, from there, I still had to…
Adhere to structures:
This meant leaving the personal training I was receiving from Wang Yu and entering the learning models of university, which required passing state and national board exams and obtaining licensure that allowed me to practice and legally treat others with Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Choose a training in shamanism that provided clear methods, practices, and results—ones that I could immediately and seamlessly apply to my recovery.
Embrace the full range of expression:
My problem wasn’t with acknowledging and utilizing the spiritual—rather, I put too much emphasis on that aspect. I needed to recognize how I was ignoring and/or underutilizing the mental and emotional aspects.
My challenge was (and still is!) integrating how the spiritual healing of this work translates into practical, everyday methods and how to explain this into plain English to others.
Listen for Help:
I had to learn how to receive help from spirit in new and powerful ways, many of which I could not have previously imagined.1
I had to learn how to receive help from teachers in physical, ordinary reality—ones who have my best interests in mind.
This last point is important because, when we reject the religion of our youth, it usually has nothing to do with the heart and spirit of that faith. It’s usually about the people who represented it to us.
If this is true for you, it offers an entry for exploring why you rejected the religion of your youth and what else might have been lost. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to get some of those things back.
Your turn.
I’d love to hear how all this landed and where you are when it comes to these questions.
Have you rejected the religion of your youth?
What else went along with it?
Is there anything that you’d like to regain?
Please share any and all insights and comments that speak to your experience (no unsolicited advice, please). We are all learning, evolving, and depending upon each other.
With Blessings,
Randal
You can listen to additional commentary, where I travel a bit further down a few interesting paths, from the material of this post on The Sober Shaman Podcast Episode #16 here:
Or watch it on YouTube here:
P.S. Check this out: Losing My Religion by R.E.M. - The Story Behind the Song.
This is an awesome interview with the band. I particularly loved listening to lead singer Michael Stipe speak about recording the song in one take, almost naked, after kicking everyone out except for the recording engineer—who was aggravating Michael with his boredom.
While he may not be considered Catholic (probably more accurate to call him the first Franciscan ;), I have felt called to work with St. Francis of Assisi. He is my threshold to Christianity. I have no internal conflict when employing his help during shamanic rituals and holistic healings.
I didn’t really have a “religion of my youth” to reject. But I rejected other things related to my family and upbringing. And only several years into sobriety was I able to soften enough to grieve what I lost through that rejection and let some of it back in - slowly, carefully, protecting myself as best I could and can.
I didn't have a religion of my youth, but certainly Christianity was the community religion. I recall around age 7 a teacher told me something related to Christianity (perhaps a moral lesson) and I said, "But I'm not Christian." She replied that "We all are." Although there was some Christian teaching at the school and some threads of Christianity in my family, that didn't sit right with me. I didn't identify as Christian and didn't see my parents as Christian either. As a teen my mom told me I could believe whatever I wanted and I deeply appreciate the freedom that gave me to explore. I do grieve the loss of ritual, celebration of milestones, etc but my grief is more for the pre-Christian knowledge and rituals of my ancestors. I see those as being rooted in observation of nature and that is now a large part of my practice. Ultimately I have chosen a blend of shamanic journey work, land-based nature observation, Yoga, and meditation. There is much more I could say about the structure and practices these offers, but I could just as easily express the challenge that comes from weaving these together within myself and within a culture that is not cohesive spiritually.