October 3, 2021

9. Getting free from religion

Before I start, I want to say this: I write about my own journey and I have NO intention to condemn or ridicule anything or anybody!

 

I was raised in the Christian faith.
In my youth that started to mean more and more to me, in a perfectionist way.
In practice, that mainly meant reading the Bible over and over, from beginning to end.
I started to memorize texts, sometimes pages, and learned a lot of Psalms
They stuck in my memory, I could still remember them years later

I became acquainted with several Protestant and Evangelical churches.
As I continued to spend years in a church, I became well acquainted with their various teachings and practices.
Why did I do this?
Why did I keep going to a different church after a few years?
That had to do with my deep desire for authenticity.
I wanted to find the truth, and I wanted to see it work in practice.
And you will not just find that, you have to search for it.
And bad enough, as real as it seemed here and there, at the bottom I could only discover that it wasn't really real anywhere.

The questions that came up from within, from my soul, from my heart, were not answered by any church in such a way that I could actually do something with them.
Questions about contradictions I found in the Bible were bypassed.
Regarding my desire to feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally, I was given many practical tips (usually explained in biblical words)
I followed that
People prayed for me and with me.
Unfortunately I didn't get any results, it didn't make me any better.

I could write much more on this subject, but that is not my aim.
What concerns me is that I had completely and deeply surrendered myself to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, to the Father, out of a deep heart's desire to be as He intended me to be.
I was sincere, longing, seeking...
I found all sorts of things, but didn't get anywhere with it.
And I searched further.
I was so caught up in the Christian belief, the Bible, that I never came up with the idea of looking inside myself...

I married my soulmate, some years ago.
He had the same longing: to know the heart of God, to know the truth and nothing but the truth
He was used to asking God thousands of questions
He heard answers in his head, in his heart, even in his belly
Mostly not like real voices, but like unspoken words and feelings
It took him years to search, to learn to listen, but...
He learned to listen to his innervoice
He learned to trust his feelings
The feelings of wrong answers were different from the feelings of answers of truth

During the many car journeys we've made over the past few years, he was driving and asking questions, looking for answers, feeling if answers were right, he just kept going.
I remember a very special moment.
It was about my soulmate's search for answers about the different voices in him, where did they came from
His innervoice teached him something about our soul.
In our soul there would be four "wells", "sources".
The "basic source" was provisionally called Papa, the other three sources were given human names for the time being.
I write "for the time being", because our innervoice does not always tell us "THE truth", but what we need or can handle at that moment.
That was "our truth" for that moment
I remember that special moment, my soulmate parked our car beside the road and started crying and screaming, a very intens crying, as if his life depended on it (and in fact it was)

 

He told me the "sources" pretended he didn't need them anymore and they went away
He felt them going slowly...
That was the moment he had started crying and screaming: "Don't leave me! You were always there to help me! Don't leave me now!"
After a while they came back.
It may seem mean, but they had a purpose with this:
In this terrible moment he experienced that they were part of his soul, of himself.
They belonged to him, they had always helped him and would continue to do so.

Sitting next to my soulmate, I witnessed this deep process up close.
From that moment on, we knew that this was all that everything revolved around in our lives: our own souls.
Our soul is who we are.
And in a short time we learned to see that every religion (even though some churches emphasize that it is a relationship with God and not a set of rules) is a matrix that traps us in lies and apparent truths.
I call them apparent truths, because they may sound good, but they are general, and do not flow from what lives in our souls.
The best example for me is about love.
If a religion claims that we must love everyone, then there is a set of rules behind it: THIS WAY you must love.
If you follow those rules, you will further imprison, and therefore injure, yourself and those people you love in that way…
However, what comes out of our soul will always bring light and healing.
If it really comes from our soul!
But... there are also other voices within us, which I wrote about before: voices of the wounded "angels" of our soul.
As long as they are wounded, they will speak in a wounded way, about ourselves, about situations and about other people.
The more they heal, the more they will speak the truth of our soul.
And those restored words, coming straight from our soul, will help ourself in the situations we find ourself in.
And sometimes they will reveal things about other people.
When your innervoice tells you to say it to those individuals, those words will surely bring light and healing.
But sometimes the words about other people will only be for yourself, as background information, to understand people.
Listen, listen, listen... to your innervoice.
Learn to feel whether it is really your (healed) innervoice, or whether a wounded "angel" is speaking...
It's such an important healing and learning process!
I struggled with it, didn't have the confidence that I would ever hear and feel like my soulmate was able to.
But it has been healing and is still healing!
It has been growing and it is still growing!
It's so often surprising to get things in mind, only to find that they really make sense.

What's next for my Christian faith?
What next with all that I had indulged in for so many years?
Actually, there was a kind of instant break with faith from the moment my soulmate was crying in our car.

In the following few years, Bible texts, songs, thoughts sometimes surfaced.
Memories that were no more than memories.
Sometimes also emotional wounds, from beliefs that I had been attached to for so long.
All I have done with it, is listen to my inner voice, and go the way of innerhealing.
And without a doubt I can say that I am grateful that I am no longer in the matrix of a religion.

Being free, becoming more and more healed, discovering my real self, learning to understand and feel my innervoice better and better... it's the most beautiful thing that happened to me!

To the index: Personal Healing Blog

To the next chapter: 10. Food food food...