Notes on deconversion: so what about Heaven and Hell?
Text the babysitter that you'll be home later than you thought
Welcome back to my Notes on Deconversion series! Make sure you’ve read parts 1, 2, and 3.
I’m so glad we chose a place that’s open late. Like LATE late …
You: So, yeah, I was going to ask if after you got into the Neville Goddard stuff, couldn’t you still keep going to Mass? Still be a practicing Catholic? I mean, not that you needed to, but I know you loved it so much, and it meant so much to you! I have a lot of friends who still go to church even if they don’t believe everything the church teaches.
Me: Absolutely I could have kept going, and Kyle was initially in favor of continuing to go. The interesting thing is that Neville Goddard considered himself a teacher of the Word of God, and a lot of what he wrote about and spoke about was based in the Bible. I absolutely could have kept going and just inwardly applying what is said in the liturgy and in Scripture readings to my new perspective on it all1.
You: But ???
Me: But there is so much that is baked into traditional Christian theology that I just didn’t want my kids to learn and then un-learn at home. The idea of a literal Hell is at the top of that list - it gets a lotta mentions in Catholic theology. And our kiddo who came out in high school was particularly impacted by the thought of eternal torment2. We could see - actually literally see - the spiritual trauma happening right in front of us.
You: Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt but this keeps coming up. So you do not believe there is such a thing as Hell, right?
Me: Oh, I think there is Hell, and I believe Hell is simply the being asleep to God, or I guess you could say a lack of awareness of who God is and how God is - that God dwells within each of us. In that sense, I think Hell is right here, on this planet, for anyone whose awareness is being separate from God.
You: Trippy. Okay, I see how that doesn’t really jive with being an active Catholic or from really calling yourself Christian at all. And so was this the main reason you stopped going? And whose idea was it to stop practicing?
Me: No, hell was not the defining issue at all. There is so, so much but I guess you could say my main discomfort was that I knew what I believed and what Kyle believed was just so different from what the kids were hearing at church, and I just didn’t want them to grow up in that thick of spiritual confusion.
Ultimately, Kyle was willing to keep going but left it up to me. The kids weren’t really invested one way or the other. If it weren’t for the kids, I could have kept going, I think, but I just grew increasingly uncomfortable with it. And so Palm Sunday 2022 was the last time we went to Mass.
You: That was pretty close to when your Mom died, right?
Me: Yeah, and I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone who noticed might have chalked it up to grief. That actually wasn’t a factor at all, I was already pretty solid in my new view on God.
You: So what do you think happens after we die? Sorry if that’s too personal, but I have a few friends who have mentioned they would be okay with other ideas about the afterlife besides the Christian idea of Heaven, but they are holding on to hope that they’ll see their loved ones again in Heaven.
Me: Oh, I absolutely 1000% believe we’ll see our beloved dead again! For sure! This happens whether or not you are a Christian. So I don’t know if I told you this, but last summer I got really, really obsessed with death.
You: No, no I think I WOULD REMEMBER you telling me that!
Me: ::wheeze laughing:: I AM SO WEIRD. But yeah, I listened to hours and hours of people tell the stories of their near-death experiences, I read that really great book by that hospice nurse - the one that’s TikTok famous?
You: Oh, what’s her name? Nurse Hadley?
Me: YES! LOVE HER. That book is so good! I watched TikToks and YouTube videos from death doulas. I was all the way in on thinking about death and what happens next. My kids were freaked ALL THE WAY OUT. They do NOT like how I talk about death.
You: What on earth do you say to them??
Me: Just like whenever the topic of death comes up, I just say “everybody dies.” And they’ll be like “but not you, right?” Yes children, EVEN ME. They don’t like it, but by God, it will be a normal topic for them!
Anyway, I eventually came across the book Journey of Souls. It was written years ago, like early 90s I think? By a psychologist who did hypnotherapy with his patients, and he discovered he had a particular knack for past-life regressions.
You: Oh boy.
Me: I know, just stay with me! So over the course of years of working with patients, he wrote this book that explores the bigger question of why we are here, on this planet, what happens after we die, and do we come back, and do we see our loved ones again, all that stuff. It’s a fantastic read, but I think you have to be in the right mind space for it. As someone who thinks about this a LOT, I was definitely in the mind space!
You: And so what do you think? Do we see our loved ones again?
Me: YES! Just speaking from the accumulation of everything I have read and every person’s story I’ve listened to, I am fully convinced that for most of us, someone we loved in this lifetime comes to get us when we die. I am counting on that person being my Mom, but for others, it might be a grandparent, a dear friend, or even a child they lost. I believe that we will see people in our soul families again that are so dear to us when we pass over again.
You: Again? So believe in reincarnation now?
Me: Most certainly. I believe that our souls undergo journeys that are ever-evolving that allow us to constantly experience, learn, unlearn, conquer, and overcome anything that is hindering us from being like God, or whatever you like to call God, whether it’s Source or Intelligence or whatever. I like to say God because that’s what I am most comfortable with, and when I say God, I mean the Ultimate Love that we are all embodying. Again, we are all connected because we are all in God, and God is in all of us. Life in physical form - whether on this planet or somewhere else - allows us to experience waking up to who we are.
You: Somewhere else??
Me: I mean, yeah! Don’t you think there are other planets or other dimensions our souls have access to? Surely this earth, as beautiful as it is, isn’t all there is? Plus, I had this really …. weird but really important vision of this when I took a little trip with some psilocybin.
You: Psilocybin like … magic mushrooms?
Me: Yes! Wait, did I not tell you this story either?
I’m keeping us both up way past our bedtimes at this point! Thank you, as always, for being part of this conversation. It means the world to me.
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🫶 I think I’ll probably just do one more chapter in this series unless there are a ton of questions. If you do have questions at this point, drop them in a comment or reply to this email and we’ll see if I have an answer!
Genuinely wishing a happy Easter and blessed Passover and just general inward goodness to all who are celebrating this weekend,
Meg
The biggest change in perspective - and it is a HUGE ONE - is that there is no God external to us. No God “up there somewhere,” no statue to pray before, no icon to give reverence to. The Kingdom is within, God is within, we are all in God and God is all of us.
A public newsletter is not the place to go into details about this but one of our children suffered deeply from scrupulosity, a form of spiritual OCD. Trying to love and guide that child through those years was so excruciatingly painful that I don’t know if I could ever even find the words to describe it.
I hadn't heard of spiritual OCD before - I hope your child is on a path to healing from that.
"I believe Hell is simply the being asleep to God, or I guess you could say a lack of awareness of who God is and how God is - that God dwells within each of us. In that sense, I think Hell is right here, on this planet, for anyone whose awareness is being separate from God." -- I'm going to be sitting with that for a while.
Your cliffhangers are getting better and better! 😆 Man ECT is one of the worst ideas and so so scary for children. I know several people who developed religious/spiritual OCD bc of Hell/God's Wrath/Total Depravity teaching in their childhoods and it is debilitating. 😔 I have recently had some very surreal experience of visiting someone's church and siting through peppy songs, sermons, and testimonies that all sounded like "Hallelujah! Very Scary God hates us because we are vile!" It is the weirdest juxtaposition. That's the "good news"? It seems such a small, miniscule perspective of God. Even within Christianity there are way better options than ECT and atonement, but most Christians i know have no idea they exist bc the dominant one taught is "sinners in the hands of an angry God". Makes me so sad. I feel like Anne of Green Gables talking with Marilla, "Oh, Marilla! How much you miss!"