Notes
Listen to this episode on Youtube
In 2020, I left religion. In this episode, I talk about the anger but empowerment I felt after learning the truth; my self-esteem going up and down until a low point of wanting to die; how my view of people changed, and happily ending my marriage.
Chapters:
- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:25 Intro music
- 0:55 1: I felt empowered
- 3:03 2: Started studying history and the forbidden
- 4:37 3: Sought to heal my psyche
- 5:14 4: Questions were answered
- 7:15 5: I started seeing people differently
- 7:58 6: Realization and anger
- 12:49 7: I let go of my marriage
- 13:24 8: Misery and I wishing I was never born
- 15:36 God never protected me
- 16:31 How I’m doing now
- 17:10 Outro and music
Transcript
What’s up, good people?
This is your host, Neil Real, and this is the Apostate Apple broadcast.
Today I’m talking about what happened to me as soon as I let go of religion.
So there was a mental shift and then things in my life changed.
So I’m going to talk about that day, that week, and then the months following, and that’s coming up next.
But before we do that, thank you.
Here’s what happened.
The first day, I felt empowered now that things were in my hands instead of Gods, I was no longer waiting on God and being tossed into and fro by circumstances.
So that was the first thing.
The next thing that happened to me was my self worth and value began to grow.
At the time I was homeless, I was actually living in the car and living in hotels.
So I stopped accepting the unconscious belief that I had to suffer.
And that’s one of the reasons why I was in that condition.
And I was married at the time, so my wife and I were living in cars, in my car rather, and then sometimes we’re in the hotel and I believe that I had to suffer.
I had made decisions that led me to be in that position.
And we believe that this is the will of God for us.
And I had accepted that.
And that’s what religion did to me.
It made me think that I had to accept suffering and it was God’s will for me to be in that condition.
So immediately I stopped thinking like that.
My mind just changed.
I said, no, I don’t need to suffer anymore.
Unconsciously I said this stuff.
And then immediately I got a secured contract with a company made about ten k in about three months or so.
And that got me off the street, me and my wife, off the street.
And this happened, like I would say, within two weeks of changing my mind.
Actually, the first week, I would say within two weeks we had a place.
I felt like I had a blank canvas.
I was freedom out to think for myself, to find myself, to see about who is Neil, what is Neil about, and be whoever I wanted to be instead of what the Bible says.
I no longer had to make everything about Jesus or make Him the center of my life.
And it wasn’t a burden to me.
I thought that this is what I had to do.
He’s the center, give all glory to God and all this stuff.
Now I take the glory.
If I do something, I give glory to me, I don’t give it to God.
The next thing I do, naturally was start investigating and studying everything that was once a taboo or forbidden.
So I watched tons of documentaries on church history, trying to figure out where did they come over Jesus at, and at one point did they say, the Bible is no longer allegorical, but now it’s going to be literal.
And I started to get all this information.
I was definitely interested in everything sexual because of them holding me back from sex.
Also discovered that within sexual tantrum sex, rather, this could heal a person.
So I seen now why they would hide that from us and not want us to engage in it.
It’s so powerful.
It’s beyond just pleasure and making children.
It does so much.
And so I learned so much about sex that it was just amazing.
I studied witchcraft.
I remember going to YouTube and just watching a bunch of videos about witches talk about witchcraft and what they’re doing and why they do it.
And I watched a documentary about witches and discovered that they were decent people.
The Bible demonized witches and they were decent people.
They were not doing anything wrong.
I’ve studied magic, magic with a K after the C, anything occult knowledge, all that stuff.
I was looking into it and I didn’t have any fear of something happening to me because I understood that this was part of life, this is spirituality, and I was free to look at it.
I sought to heal my mental and spiritual trauma caused by religion.
That’s one of the things I discovered.
This did something deeply damaging to me.
And so I began to see how I could heal myself.
I spoke with three therapists and I went to a reki healer now, both of which I didn’t get much help from.
And I have my reasons for why that happened, but I will try again.
But I’ve got most of my healing done through YouTube channels and blog posts and just learning things and changing my mind.
And so that’s how I’m healing.
I had questions about my experiences with so called God and they were all answered almost immediately.
So I started to think, well, why did something happen when I prayed back at this time?
And what was that voice I heard when I did pray?
I got answers for all of that stuff and I realized most of that stuff was just my own mind.
And I’ll talk about it in another broadcast.
But people like Dr.
Ray Hagins, Kevin Wesley, who was both of these guys, were both former pastors and they woke up and they went live in public about it.
Another guy I started to listen to was Reginald Martin.
Then there’s another person I followed.
He had a podcast.
His name is Dr.
Darryl Ray and he talks about the sexual side of things and how religion f**** that up and how to fix that.
So he had a podcast.
It’s called secular sexuality.
And I think the first few seasons were very impactful for me.
And then finally atheist Republic.
This is a group of people that are obviously atheists.
They post information about religion and what it’s doing to the world and they have stories and they they advocate to help people get out of jail and because of their non religious beliefs.
Or maybe they’re homosexuals, maybe the LGB, you know, they’re doing a good work and I support it.
And I’ve gained knowledge from their testimonies that they’ve shared and things like that.
I started to attempt to answer life’s major questions for myself.
So why do we suffer and the root of misery and suffering?
What is the purpose of life?
Beforehand, the Bible gave me all these answers, but now I was free to think for myself and find answers on my own.
And this led me to write a book that I’m currently in the process of completing.
Eventually I’ll be sharing my book with people and you can check out my ideas about these things.
Another thing that changed for me was my view of people.
I stopped seeing every non Christian as being a person that was potentially going to go to h***.
Instead, I just seen them as normal human beings.
I was programmed everybody that’s not a Christian is in danger of the h*** fire.
And I would look at people like, man, I hope they get saved or they’re outside of me.
And no, these are people that I can connect with now.
These are people I can talk to and fellowship with.
They’re just human like you are.
They’re not outside of you.
They’re not sinners, they’re not people in danger, they’re just human beings.
I was open so I could see people differently now.
Another thing of course came over me was anger.
I realized that there was a crime committed against my spirit and this has done to me since I was a child, this indoctrination.
I realized that my life up until that point was full of unnecessary suffering.
I was homeless, living in misery, I was in a loveless marriage, I was lonely, I wasn’t living in h***.
The prior relationships in church, all of this stuff was connected to religion and it just did a number and I’m like, d***, I didn’t needed to go through all of this.
This is unnecessary.
And religion had a part to play in a lot of that.
I also realized and had to accept that my life wasn’t the joyful life God promised me despite all of my faithfulness.
The Bible talks about suffering.
I’m going to share all the scripture that it says that you need to accept suffering, but that there’s an inner joy that comes from that because you’re on the right track with God and you should be happy.
And for the most part, I would ignore my internal suffering and just say, well, I’m following the Lord even though there’s no love in my life, I’m empty inside, I’m alone.
So now I could see like, man, I just been living in a f****** h***.
And what God promised me through my faithfulness because I was a Bible teacher at the time and following his word and doing what he thought I was supposed to do.
It was all bullshit.
So I had to accept that.
And I was angry about that.
Like, d***, I chose to do this, and then this is what I get in return.
I was praying to no one the whole f****** time, and I was never given an option to choose this religion.
It was put on me.
I was indoctrinated from a young age, and so I was very angry about that.
Programmed, never able to seek proof.
If you was to question anything, it was like, well, you’re weak.
The faith are strong, and they don’t question anything.
They just do what they’re told.
They just follow God.
And those are the ones that God loves, not the one that questions everything.
And so that’s who I was, a person that never questioned the validity of Christ’s existence, the Bible’s origin and stuff like that.
But now I was free to say, okay, this is some bullshit, and just angry a little bit, and it’s no really anybody to blame.
I don’t even blame my parents because they got deceived, and whoever taught them got deceived.
And you really got to go back to the institution.
And even in modern day pastor, while he may know that what he teaching, this is false.
Somebody fed him the same s***, and you got to go all the way back.
And that’s what my book talks about, like, the root of the inception and the creation of religion.
Like, why did they create this?
And the answer is simply to hold you back from spirituality, to keep you from growing.
That’s why it does so much damage.
It’s designed to do that.
That’s the whole point of it.
But why would they do that?
Why would somebody do that to us?
And so my book talks about that.
I was angry because I was taught to suspend critical thinking, and that affected other areas of my life, and I was disappointed.
I was angry and disappointed that the wicked would not be punished.
So I was told all through the Bible, god’s going to get the wicked.
That person that harms you, Neil, god’s going to get them.
Those racists that mistreated you, those church folk that abused you and exploited you, those people that undermined you, Neil, they’re going to stand before God and be judged.
There’s going to be a place where everybody has to stand before God.
Their whole life is going to be kind of ran back, and they’re going to be shown what they did wrong in front of everybody, and there’s going to be this judgment, and none of that s*** is going to happen.
Basically, what people do to you, if they can get away with it, they will get away with it.
It’s up to you to get justice.
So I was angry, like, d***.
But I got over that.
I wasted time in the marriage to the wrong person because of religious beliefs.
Religion had me in a marriage at least for two more years than I would wanted to be in there.
You want to be out of something, but you can’t because you’re bound to it because a religion is telling you to.
Stay in this place where you’re suffering, stay in this place where you’re being neglected when you’re unhappy, and you just got to deal with that for the rest of your life.
I believe I had to be with this woman for the rest of my life or stay single if I was to divorce her and just the extra time being with her because of religion.
I was angry, like, d***, I didn’t have to be in this this whole time.
But it was a relief to now know that I didn’t have to be with her.
So the next thing I did was I let go of my marriage after I shared with my wife that I was no longer a Christian.
She agreed.
She let it go when I let it go.
And then I said, you know what?
This marriage, it ain’t a good fit.
It’s not working for us.
And she agreed and we got divorced.
There was no drama.
It was an easy divorce.
I would say it was still difficult because I had to go through the paperwork and all of that stuff, but there was no lawyer involved and there was no children involved, so that was good.
So I felt free.
I felt free from my wife, I felt free from my religion.
But it seemed like I had a lot of work to clean up my mind in particular.
And frankly, part of me didn’t want to do it.
I was pushing 40, and I looked at myself, I was gaining weight.
I had a little bit of little pudge on my stomach, gray hairs, balding.
I just felt like a mess.
And then I looked at my mental state and just what happened to me through religion.
So I was in a deep depression, and I was also very lonely, obviously, because I had divorced my wife.
So I’m by myself and I was still struggling with shame that was put on me from the past.
So I’m getting these flashbacks of just things happening to me, and then I’m angry about that.
And it’s the guild of not standing up for myself for those things.
And things that happened to me in religion that now I can see was just traumatic and everything is coming to the light.
Everything that was repressed, suppressed by my religious programming, now I could see.
And it was like, f***.
And then I just felt like a mess.
I felt like a wretched person, just like the Bible used to say.
And so I had to get over that, said, I can’t think like this.
I got stuff to do it, I got stuff I got to clean up, and I just got to get over that.
But in combination with that, I was living in a s***** hotel that added to my misery with noise, smells coming through different places, death, somebody stole something from my car, toxic people around me, people who have no respect for themselves or the environment or other people.
So I’m dealing with all this stuff and I’m just I’m happy that at least I’m not living in the car.
So that’s the one up.
I still got shelter now, but I’m in this s***** hotel.
And I started to think, will I ever be able to get back to what’s healthy?
Was I ever healthy?
Will I ever recover and be who I’m supposed to be?
And I started to play with the idea of suicide and I often wished I was never born.
So I had a fear of being on my own instead of under the used to be protection of the almighty God.
And I started to think, will I be homeless again and will I find love or somebody that actually likes me or loves me?
Then I realized that my homelessness and the fact that I was married to the woman I was married to was all because of religion.
And I was never really protected by God.
He’s the one in some cases or the beliefs of the religion that led me to make these decisions that caused me so much pain.
And so I let go of that.
I don’t walk around any fear like, oh my God, I don’t have God to protect me anymore.
I know that I’m in control of my life and that I’m sufficient at the wheel of my own life.
So I resolved that with myself that I would be okay.
Currently I’m doing fine.
I’m just healing.
I’m growing my money and I’m pursuing my dreams.
That’s what I’m doing, laying a foundation for greatness.
Some days I feel up, some days I feel down.
And I try to focus on just changing my mindset to positivity and practicing some of the things I’ve been learning about healing my mind.
And one of those things is this podcast.
This podcast has been therapy for me.
So that’s all I got for you today.
That’s what happened to me within the first weeks and I would say months of leaving religion.
Thanks for listening.
Like share, subscribe email me at [email protected] I appreciate you for listening and have a good day.