Lesson one begins our journey by recognizing that whatever god you believed in never existed in the first place. The deity didn’t suddenly disappear when you stopped believing or left your religious identity. Nor did the deity exist when you were a believer.
This seems like a simple point to make, but far too often, people start their process of moving on from religion with the idea that they’re starting from scratch, or starting over, and that everything they thought prior needs to be cleansed or washed away. Which sounds remarkably like the original conversion story so many were sold. Such a framework was nonsense then, and it’s ridiculous now.
Because a deity never existed, the person making all the decisions, deciding what was right and wrong, who to relate to, and how to show up in the daily decisions of every day of a life, was you. Just you. The authority figure(s) you connected to have changed, but not the fact that you were deciding to say yes to them. The incentives that supported different decision-making have changed, but not the fact that it’s you who gives those incentives meaning.
Take back the power that never left you.
