Introducing Britt Hartley and Her Book

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. I am thrilled to have by my side, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:11] Hi. Hello, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:12] Today we are so excited for the release, the launch of a new book that we think is going to transform not just post Mormonism or progressive Mormonism, but also just the secular humanism world and the atheism world and the agnostic world and sort of the world of the nones. And when I say nones, I'm spelling that N O N E S. All those people out there that are leaving religions in droves and are trying to figure out how to make their way through life with sort of a secular or a less religious or less dogmatic mindset.

John Dehlin [00:00:57] That's a large intro to basically say we're here to plan, plug a new book called no Nonsense Spirituality. All the tools, no faith required, by no other than Brittany L. Hartley. Today is the official book launch. We just want to tell you all right now. Pause, open up a new tab on your browser, switch in your phone to the Amazon app or wherever you buy your books. Buy this book right now. We want to make it a New York Times bestseller. We get no financial compensation for plugging it. We have just been reading it and we think it's a game changer. So please buy it right now.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] Let's send Britt Hartley to the top of all the Amazon lists. And without any further ado, Britt Hartley, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. How are you doing?

Britt Hartley [00:01:51] So happy to be here and really grateful for your support, John and Margi, and excited to talk to you about this book, which has just been the child of all of my deconstruction and reconstruction journey. And I'm really excited to share it with people because I think it would be the book that I would have needed during those hard times during my deconstruction and reconstruction that I talked about on my Mormon Stories episode. This would have been the book that would have helped me a lot. And that's why I'm pushing myself a little bit as an introvert to put this out here because I really believe it's going to help some people.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Excellent. Well, we agree. And so today we are here to answer your questions. So this book covers so many cool topics. I'll just read through some of the chapters. Secular Spirituality, Defining what Spirituality Means. Dealing with Order and Chaos, Rituals and Calendars, Awe and Contemplation. Awakening the Feminine, Meaning and Purpose. Secular Morality, the Intuition of the Occult, Mysticism and Wisdom Traditions. I'm going to throw in their woo and New Age stuff, Community and love, sacred story, human flourishing and the future of spirituality. So we want to take your questions. So please post them and we'll star them and we'll ask them as they see fit. And Margi, I'm looking forward to all your questions and contributions as well.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:27] Thanks.

Britt Hartley [00:03:28] Appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:03:29] So let's begin. Brooke Britt, take us back and talk to us about so I will refer Maven's moderating the chat, it looks like, and we're going to have we're going to make sure that Julia includes a link. But we did interview you on Mormon Stories a few months ago. So that's where if people want to see Brief Britt's full Mormon Post Mormon Journey story, we're going to make sure everyone goes back and watches that because so many people said it was one of the best interviews we've ever done. But just for like five minutes, can you give people a recap on your background and everything that you want to say that kind of led to you wanting to write this book?

Britt Hartley [00:04:13] Sure, yeah. And for my full story, I definitely recommend my Mormon Stories podcast to go back and watch that. This book does not really go into my story. I do a little bit at the beginning, but I didn't want it to be an autobiography. Sometimes. Sometimes there's deconstruction books that are really autobiographical and for this one I just really wanted to focus on the tools and less about kind of talking about my own story with it. So if you want more of my story, the Mormon Stories podcast is the the way to go for that and this book, only briefly in the first chapter do I kind of talk about who I am and my journey through religion and spirituality.

Britt Hartley [00:04:52] But if I'm new to you, my name is Britt Hartley. I'm an atheist spiritual director at no Nonsense Spirituality. I was raised Mormon. I had a Mormon faith crisis about 13 years ago now spent some time in Christianity and various other religions. I after religion, as many people do, I still found myself being a truth seeker. And so I was still really studying religion and spiritual and trying to make sense of things that led me to some pretty harsh truths about reality and some hard things like death and meaninglessness and isolation and fear of freedom and existential crisis and existential fears that I talk about in detail on the Mormon Stories podcast I did.

Britt Hartley [00:05:37] And this book is more about the tools that I found that helped me to get out of some of those hard places and rebuild something that was really sustainable that gave me everything that Mormonism used to give me, you know, as far as ritual and awe and contemplation and meaning and purpose and all the. And tools for dealing with life, all the things without having to believe things that are unbelievable or having to turn off my rational brain or having to have faith in things that I just don't have faith in. And so this book is really all about the tools for that approach. How can we get these tools without having to jump through hoops of faith and dogma and all the unhealthy things in religion to get out to.

Britt Hartley [00:06:23] To get the benefits? So that's a little bit about me. And I live here in Boise, which is Salt Lake's little sister up here. And I'm truly. I. I can't say that I was always loving life outside of religion. There were some hard times where I'm not. I know now that I'm not the only person that sometimes wish I hadn't learned something because it was so destabilizing. But I did find tools and things that helped along the way. And I can really now say that I'm thriving outside of religion and have a deeply rich and spiritual life even without having to believe things that are unbelievable. Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:02] Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Margi, really wanted to have you read something. Margi, do you want to? Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:07] I thought it would be great for. Just to begin with, for many people, I think, who are either amidst deconstructing belief, whether that's in religion, or for many of us, it just. It goes beyond religion as well, I think. Your special thanks. At the end of the book where you mention you write a message to your children. What I loved so much about it, it moved me to tears actually, was I found it to be tremendously. Well, I connected to it personally, but also like validating as to, let's just say the challenge and the beauty and all the things, you know, the hard of doing this work. And so I thought it would just be a beautiful way to start if you didn't mind. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:08:07] So at the end of the book, I have a special thanks. I mentioned a few people, some of them you may recognize. Heather Harris Bergevin. She's. She's a post Mormon who does a lot of editing work in the community and she was the editor of this book. I mentioned Bill, Bill Real, because of the two years we spent together podcasting, exploring these ideas. But the very last paragraph, my special thanks. I write this, and this is one where people who don't come from religion may not fully understand what I'm talking about here. And so I'm. I'm happy to read it to you because I think you'll guys will.

Britt Hartley [00:08:41] You guys will understand. It says to my children that they will never have to read in the religion of my origin that their skin was a curse from God for wickedness or that they are fundamentally broken. I took you out of that place all on my own, with every single person in my life telling me I was crazy. I. All because you deserved better. This journey I made was for you. I may not have been brave enough to do it on my own, but for you sweet children, I'd go to hell and back to make your world better. And I did.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:14] Thank you.

Britt Hartley [00:09:15] I haven't read that to my children yet. My children are 5, 6, 7, and 12. But I hope someday that I can tell them that they're a little bit too young to understand what that, what. Why that paragraph brings tears to my eyes and what that means. They have essentially grown up at this point without religion.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:36] That's.

Britt Hartley [00:09:36] So someday I'll read that paragraph to them and tell them about that, but they haven't heard that yet. And someday I'll tell them they're they're

Margi Dehlin [00:09:46] basically kind of living the life, you know, the emancipation basically, of the journey without knowing the journey itself. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:09:56] Mm. And I go into that on, on my podcast that we did together, that that was the. The straw that broke the camel's back for me. You know, I. I had already nuanced so much that I was essentially, as all very nuanced, progressive Mormons do, you're essentially running your own religion inside of Mormonism. And I was certainly doing that. And I can be very honest that that was what I was doing. But the straw that broke the camel's back was. Was adopting a child who has brown skin and knowing what she would. She would have to go through, not just as a girl, but as a child of color and knowing that I've got to find a better way. Absolutely, yeah.

Why Ex-Mormons Often Reject All Religion

John Dehlin [00:10:38] Britt, it's turning out that a large percentage of our audience has never been Mormon. And we're having people tuning in just who are curious about Mormons and high demand religions or other cults, but also ex members or questioning members of other high demand religions or cults. But a couple common questions we often get. And I'll ask two questions, and I'll try and remind you if you don't remember the second one, common reaction is why not just stick with Christianity? Like, it's so sad that when Mormons leave the church, over 50% just lose faith. In God and Jesus. Why not just, you know, don't throw out the baby at the bathwater. Why not just keep God and Jesus? I'm so sad that people abandon Jesus when they leave Mormonism. So part one of my question. Go ahead.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:28] I was going to say, and this is in the book, the stops along the way are in the book.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] So that's. Maybe I'll start with that question. Then I have a follow up. So how can you help our Christian listeners, our evangelical listeners, and our never Mormons just understand why just stepping back a little bit and then embracing Christianity isn't an option for many of the people you work with?

Britt Hartley [00:11:55] Yeah, it's something that Sam, Sam Harris said a little while ago. He said that nobody is more ardent in their atheism than ex Mormons. And there is some truth to that. And because we are a recent religion and because we are a record keeping religion, we actually have pretty good records of what happened here. Like, what is this story? Like we don't have thousands of years of legend between us and Joseph Smith. And so because of that, we, as I said on the podcast before I use this phrase often, Mormons see how the sausage gets made. They've peeked behind the curtain. We can see how a story, for example, about Brigham Young looking like Joseph Smith, we can see, we can actually track this story and see how secondhand witnesses turn the story into a legend and then it gets put into a manual.

Britt Hartley [00:12:48] We get to watch that happen. We get to see how a man becomes a prophet. We get to see how martyrdoms, quote, unquote, martyrdoms happen. We get to see how scripture is made and how the human brain is totally capable of, of all kinds of writing, even really extensive writing with a lot of patterns and, and this and that hypergraphy. And we really, and we get to see how hierarchies are formed and how dogma happens.

Britt Hartley [00:13:21] We just get to see this whole process through Mormon history. And so when we say, why don't you just like go into Christianity? And I know many people, including myself, who made that move, but you know too much about how this process happens that it's very hard for you to really get involved into Christianity because the stories that are the centerpiece of Christianity have less evidence for them than even Mormonism. There is more evidence that Joseph Smith was a person who had a mystical experience and had some maybe prophetic things. We have more evidence for that than we have for someone like Jesus Christ, where we don't have any eyewitnesses.

Britt Hartley [00:14:07] Jesus didn't Write a thing. You know, this is 60 to 80 years later through a game of telephone that we're getting some stories about Jesus. And so when you really look at how, you know, when you look at Mormon history and we see how religions are made and then you go back to Christianity and you're seeing the same game be played but with less evidence, it's really hard to fully get on that train, especially when you also have some religious trauma, maybe some religious authority issues, maybe some doubt as to whether God exists at all. You've been burned by religion.

Britt Hartley [00:14:44] And so it's just not something that compared to other religions, Mormons generally, generally do. And I think it's just because we're a recent record keeping people and that gives us a lot of information about religion that maybe other religions don't have where they can kind of swap more easily. And we've also been burned by religion. And so all of that kind of makes us hesitant to jumping head first into Christianity. Now I will say a lot of post Mormons and ex Mormons I know still love some parables about Jesus and sometimes even some time away from religion and Christianity, maybe even some time in Buddhism can help you come back and see Jesus the mystic in a totally new way, in a non kind of God, authoritarian kind of way, and come to appreciate Jesus and his parables.

Britt Hartley [00:15:36] Even still, as an atheist, there are parables of Jesus that I take with me on my journey, but not in the same way that I did when I was a Mormon or a Christian.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] Yeah. And I'll say if, if it's hard to find evidence for Jesus, it's even harder to find evidence for Adam and Abraham and Moses and many of the early Old Testament prophets. So. And I also say that we're not. We are. We have no stance on, and I know you don't either, Britt. We have no stance at Mormon stories on whether people keep Christianity or let go of it. And a book I want to recommend that I'm sure was a part of your library on your journey is Richard Rohr R O H R and falling upward. If you want to be sort of a metaphorical progressive Christian even without believing the literality. Was Richard Rohr an important part of your journey?

Britt Hartley [00:16:33] British I found him more later in my. I would have benefited from him earlier on. I had some other voices that do similar things. And so I, I definitely didn't dive headfirst into it because I was already kind of familiar with nuance and, and mysticism in his approach. I do like his voice and something that I've said before is the distance between the most spiritual atheist and the most deconstructed Christian is. Is a hair. And I want religion to get better for the people who are in religion. I want religion to get better for the people who need religion, whether psychologically or. We can talk about atheism, atheism as a privilege, and all the things.

Britt Hartley [00:17:17] I want Mormonism to get better for my addict brother who would struggle because opening up to chaos would be a threat to his sobriety. He may die in that process. Like, I want religion to get better for the people who are in it. I think there are tools there. I just want to be able to cut down on the harm and dogma. Right. That, you know, all the things that you talk about here on Mormon stories, and I want to show people that we don't have to play that game at all. You don't have to get. Do so much mental gymnastics to get a spiritual tool.

Britt Hartley [00:17:52] I do think, even though the difference between a deconstructed Christian and a spiritual atheist may be not that different as far as their actual approach to spirituality, maybe their lives are the same. I do find that spiritual atheism is a more direct path to some of these spiritual tools for me, personally, because you don't have to do mental gymnastics and do a lot of translating. Everybody who's been a nuanced Mormon knows the translation game that you play when you go to church and you're translating what they say into something that you can believe. Right. And I don't think we have to work so hard for that. And so I. I prefer a more direct approach to these things where you don't have to do so much mental gymnastics.

John Dehlin [00:18:36] Love it. Okay, so if it's all right, let's begin by just the word spirituality. And I'll just say, for me, the. The word spirituality was very triggering because I associated it with spirits, with ghosts, with metaphysical things, with. With angels, and with a divine presence. And again, I'm not necessarily opposed to any of that.

Losing Spiritual Confidence After Leaving Faith

John Dehlin [00:19:01] I just all of a sudden became. I lost all my confidence that I could really rely on my ability to accurately discern anything spiritual. Because God never really answered my prayers, angels never came to visit me. And so the term allergic, as soon as I lost my Mormon faith became. Sorry. The term spirituality, as soon as I lost my faith became allergic to me. I didn't like the term. And so I think it's really co. That you're using the term, and I think you're trying to say, let's reclaim it, let's start by defining what it means. And I'm just going to read.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] Mr. LVCO actually posted this question to the YouTube community. What does spirituality mean? I haven't heard a concrete answer so far. They all include faith. So Britt, what do you mean by spirituality?

Britt Hartley [00:19:57] Yeah, and this is a term that I do want to reclaim. But, but I will just say that language in this space is very hard. It's very tricky because we don't have words for things that have been under the umbrella of spirituality and religion in the secular space. We just don't have the words, even something like transcendence, like we, we just don't have secular words for some of these things that have a religious past and a religious history. And it's something that we can't entirely get away from. So much of our language now even just saying goodbye is short for, you know, God be with you.

Britt Hartley [00:20:29] You can't entirely escape the effect that religion has had on our language and our calendars and all the things. So language is hard. And if people are triggered by that word, I totally honor it. And, and you are welcome to substitute that for another word, but it is something that I want to, to reclaim. So spirituality I think at its core is really about connection. It's connection to your deepest self and its connection to outside of self. Now for some people, for most people in history, that outside of self peace has been some form of God or some form of spirit, soul, otherworldly, metaphysical, whatever.

Britt Hartley [00:21:13] And I just don't think we have to do that piece to be connected outside of self. So for me, I meet the God word in a way like an analogy that works for me for meeting this kind of God word or spirituality word is to think about a bee and a beehive.

Britt Hartley [00:21:32] I have bees on my property. It's one of the few like nature oriented things that I do. And one bee, you know, lives for 40 days, contributes like I think it's a quarter teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. When you look at one bee, or if you were to put one bee on an island, it seems meaningless, like why even work so hard to do this? But when you talk about the bees relationship to the hive, the hive is so much bigger than the bee, produces so much honey. It's doing and it's doing, it's affecting the ecosystem for miles and miles that it supports life on earth because the hive is so important to the earth.

Britt Hartley [00:22:12] And, and so for me, this concept of connection outside of myself is similar to a bee. You know, a bee to a beehive, because there's the hive, because there's connection. Now we can talk about morality, we can talk about meaning and purpose, we can talk about community and we can dance to each other, like with each other, like the bees do.

Britt Hartley [00:22:33] And so that's an important part of spirituality because we've been superstitious creatures that don't know why volcanoes erupt and why eclipses happen. We've always kind of called that gods and spirits and other things. But I don't think we have to go there to get that connection to self and outside of self. And to me, that, that's really what spirituality is about. And that is my approach to it.

Britt Hartley [00:22:58] The language in this space is often dual terms. So it would be like secular spirituality, rational mysticism. Like there's these kind of word sandwiches. Because you're trying to say, no, no, no, we're, we're really valuing science. This is really science driven stuff.

Britt Hartley [00:23:15] But there's something, there are tools here under the umbrella of religion and spirituality that we don't quite have a name for in the secular world that are helpful for people. Rituals, community, awe, contemplation, these things are tools. They're helpful for people. They help your life be more worth experiencing and more worth living. I want to get all those tools without having to play games with gods. And what is God? And what is God thinking? And how do I get on the right side of God? I just don't want to. I, I'm, I burned out of that game. I don't want to play that game anymore. But I want the tools. And so that would be my approach to spirituality and how I define that word. Yeah, absolutely.

Four Core Questions Life After Religion Raises

Margi Dehlin [00:23:57] I'm noticing with many of the questions that are coming in that they're kind of falling into. You have a chapter with. Or is it order and chaos, structure, order and chaos, where you identify four fears. Do you remember that in the book? And I'm noticing questions are coming in under let. Fear of death or fear of meaninglessness. Or do you want to kind of speak to those fears maybe before we dive in? Because the questions are kind of coming, following those.

Britt Hartley [00:24:35] Yeah. And this is really what happens. And sometimes it can surprise you and sneak up on you because you're, you're. No, you're a Mormon. You're deconstructing polygamy, let's say, or you're deconstructing prophetic leadership. And so you think you're, you know, you're deconstructing this thing over here. You're listening to Mormon stories, you're listening to rfm and then once these kind of.

Britt Hartley [00:24:57] It's like a dam that's breaking and you don't realize how much those beliefs were protecting you from existential fears. And so sometimes it can be a surprise that people are like, you know, I want to, you know, I'm. I want to be deconstructing Mormonism. I can't go back. I'm enjoying my cup of coffee. But now I have to face the fact that my dad died and I actually haven't warned that. And I don't even know what to think about that. And so it can sneak up on you and what religions do. And we know a lot of this from terror management theory studies where we are learning how much our brain is trying to avoid thinking about or facing death, and all the subconscious ways that we do that.

Britt Hartley [00:25:39] Losing a faith can open you up to these existential fears that the religion and the thought ending cliches were keeping at bay. So this would be fear of death is usually the main one. Fear of meaninglessness, because your brain is looking for a grand story to have everything make sense. And there isn't one fear of isolation, that I really am alone and God isn't watching everything that I do, giving me a thumbs up every time I do something good.

Britt Hartley [00:26:07] And then fear of freedom that like, holy shit, I have to order my own life. And. And there's no guru that can tell me the steps to how to live a good life. And I may screw up my life. And those will just. For some people, leaving religion just really hit hard because you have no way to deal with any of those things because you've had religions thought ending cliches to just shut that down. We've all been to a Mormon funeral where we say the same story, we sing the same songs, we say the same things, we all just kind of take this collective drug together and then we go home and we say, we'll see them soon.

Britt Hartley [00:26:47] They're in heaven with Jesus. And when you lose that now, you actually as an adult have to face that you're gonna die for the first time. It's like, it's like waking up and you're 40 years old and you're a newborn baby in the universe again, and you have no tools for this. And all the tools that are out there, as John said, you're allergic to because you've been so burned by religion and spirituality and then you really get stuck. And so I do have a pretty. I, I think I mentioned it in two places. I Mentioned it in the Order and Chaos chapter where I talk about tools for, you know, spiritual.

Britt Hartley [00:27:21] Spiritual tools differ based on whether you're needing to deconstruct because you're too ordered or, or reconstruct because there's too much chaos. But I also talk about it in kind of the meaninglessness chapter, where you're facing these fears head on and how to get closer to it so that you can sit with these things, mourn these things, allow them, you know, allow that to pass through your body. But then on the other side, you get the benefits. There are huge benefits to facing your death, to getting really laser focused about your meaning and purpose and in life, about taking risks into authenticity and relationships because, you know, you, you realize that you're gonna die and that life is short and it's limited.

Britt Hartley [00:28:06] So there are tons of benefits for facing these monsters. It just is. It was really hard for me, and I know it's hard for others when you're facing these things for the first time as an adult because you've had this religion kind of security blanket that has been keeping all these fears at bay. So I do, in at least two, I think two chapters really will help you with all of that.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:30] Yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] Let me, let me sort of play I don't know, devil's advocate a little bit here. What if somebody said to you, that's weak sauce, Britt, like, my God is an all powerful God. He's like a Thanos or an Odin God. He's the creator of the universe. He can heal sicknesses, he can stop the Missouri with his hand. He'll intervene. But also he loves me unconditionally and, you know, he can do whatever he wants. I can pray for miracles. You're basically just saying, you know, you'll add a little more structure and, you know, rearrange your thoughts a little bit so you feel a little bit more secure. But that's weak sauce compared to my God that can heal cancer, move mountains, protect nations, and even help a basketball team win. What would you say in response to someone who says your alternative to an all powerful, all loving God is weak sauce?

Britt Hartley [00:29:32] Yeah, so I kind of have had 3, 3 general responses to that. When I, when I get that, I probably get that daily on social media. Right. And that's fine. You know, like the thing about the religious brain is when you really understand it, when, when a religious brain is coming at you with something like that, it's, it's not offensive to me because I just so deeply understand it. I know why you have to Think that way. I know why your brain is working so hard to think that way. I remember doing that sometimes, like, it just comes from a place of. Of compassion. When I'm in a good headspace, you know, sometimes I get snarky.

Britt Hartley [00:30:10] I'm not. I'm not perfect, right. But there tends to be three approaches to this. 1. If they're really focusing on the Bible, then I kind of can challenge, especially if I'm sitting with a person and able to do this, really challenge, that they think the Bible is this solid thing, that this God has always been God, this God has always been like this love and justice and all the things that they're talking about has always been defined like this. And show them that, you know, in. In kind of Dan McClellan style, that the Bible is not what they think it is. And I can show you.

Britt Hartley [00:30:45] I can show you the complexity. I can show you how this was, that Yahweh is a Canaanite God and a pantheon of gods, and he's a storm God. And that becomes important in agriculture. And then we destroy the other gods. And I can tell them essentially the history of the God they believe in and that it's just one story and that the Bible is an incredibly complex next document. You have to pick and choose. If you have some kind of narrative that you're pulling out of it, by definition, you have to pick and choose and overlay that onto the Bible because there is no inherent message of the Bible.

Britt Hartley [00:31:19] And then, you know, sometimes I can get an in that way that this thing that is solid is not as solid as you think it is. And maybe that can open us up to some dialogue to be able to say what's maybe really going on or some other options of what may be going on.

Britt Hartley [00:31:35] Another one is by saying that I'm trying to get the spiritual tools and the things that I love about Jesus, the things that are great about Jesus, without the dogma and the trauma and the problem of evil. Because even the most ardent Christian will admit to you that the church does harm, that the church does harm to people. And so sometimes if I'm trying to meet on a more common ground, if I'm in a good headspace, I'll say, you know what. What I love about the Good Samaritan story is that the church walked by the Levite, the priesthood walked by the pre. You know, the church walked by.

Britt Hartley [00:32:10] But that Jesus tended to someone who was hurt. And what I do now is I attend to people who have been hurt by religion. They've really been hurt by religion. And even the most ardent Christian will admit that that happens. And I say I still want them to have meaning and morality and purpose and spirituality, but they've really been hurt.

Britt Hartley [00:32:30] And I'm trying to help them find tools to be able to do that in light of their trauma and their pain. And sometimes that can help soften a little bit that, hey, I'm not here just to, like, tell religious people that they're stupid. I'm. This is how I'm following the Good Samaritan story, and this is how I'm finding spirituality and all the things that you love about Jesus and religion. But I'm doing it in a way that causes less harm. And I can say that that secular spirituality, you know, causes the trauma of it, as far as the data we have on it. We can say that it causes less harm as far as authority and dogma and things that happen in cults and things like that.

Britt Hartley [00:33:13] So that can sometimes be a way that I'll be able to meet someone and find some common ground so that we can open up a dialogue.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] Yeah. And if I could just add, just as in kind of dialogue, if I'm being totally honest, when I was devout Mormon, I would pray for answers. I would pray to talk to God. He never came. I would pray for angels, never saw Him. I would pray for a witness. And the only thing I ever got were positive emotions that were in distinct. If they were the spirit, the Holy Ghost, they were indistinguishable for my emotions. And that always left me frustrated. I never saw an actual healing. And that couldn't have been explained by just someone getting better or a bad diagnosis. And I never saw, like, a limb regenerated, you know, anything that.

John Dehlin [00:34:03] That could just not be explained away by anything other than a bad diagnosis or just time. And. And. And so, yeah, if. If you think that God's there protecting you. Oh, also, my sister died of cancer. No priesthood blessing saved her. My parents got divorced. Like, it just seemed like Mormons have the same divorce rate, the same death rate, the same mortality rate as anybody else. And so I'm just thinking, where is the power really coming into play if the power's really there, other than placebo?

John Dehlin [00:34:37] And the only thing I'll just say, and I don't know how much your book talks about this, because I haven't read the whole thing yet. I will, but I was really moved by Noah Rachetta's idea of groundlessness from his Secular Buddhism podcast, that one of the things people miss most when they leave organized religion or Mormonism is the idea of certainty. And what Noah likes to say in his Secular Buddhism podcast is you thought you had a solid ground or certainty, but the truth is you were always falling. There was never a point where you weren't falling. And the trick is to get comfortable with groundlessness and that you're always falling and that that's really possible. What do you, what do you think about that?

Britt Hartley [00:35:24] Yeah, I have two things that came up. Yeah, I have two things that came up for me on that. For your, the first part of that comment. It is a problem for Christianity and we have a term for this now, non compliant unbelief or non compliant non belief, something like that. And it's this idea that Christianity is having to answer for.

Britt Hartley [00:35:44] What about the people who really did seek God their whole life and, and nothing really happened and they weren't sinning and they weren't doubting and they weren't wanting to sin. Right? Because there are some people who, you know, you can say, oh, they're just evil and they just want to do this and, and whatever, but there are people. And Alex o' Connor is a pretty famous atheist who talks about this. He's like me where he's, he's studied religion extensively and he was really searching for God, went to theology school, lived with Christians like really wanted to see what am I missing here? And it's something that Christian like, if you go on YouTube, we're having more Christian debates about what is actually happening with non compliant unbelief.

Britt Hartley [00:36:30] And the best answer that I've heard Christians kind of respond to that is, is, is this concept of, well, God withholds belief from you because you do more good in the world as a moral atheist than you would as a Christian. And so God is hiding from you. And so you'll get that kind of answer. And then that just gets really messy.

Britt Hartley [00:36:54] And so it is something that Christianity is having to wrestle with more and more that there are people. It's not easy enough to say that everybody who, that all you have to do is pray and search for God because we know enough people's stories to say that that's not true. There are people who really did search, who really did want to know, who really did try. And so Christianity is wrestling with that on top of all of their problem of evil and other theological things that they have to deal with.

Britt Hartley [00:37:24] As far as the, the last part of that, when you talked about certainty and that we had the illusion of certainty. And then it gets lost and there's maybe times that people will wish for that illusion of certainty to come back because it's so scary.

Britt Hartley [00:37:39] Something that really helps me to be compassionate with people who really cling to their faith is we have studies that show that the people who tend towards fundamentalism have a higher psychological need for closure and order and structure, that there are anxieties there that the religion is really keeping at bay, that allows that person to function. And so if someone is telling me I'm going to hell, this is a daily thing for me on TikTok, or just really holding on to their faith in a way that. That makes me, you know, frustrated or.

Britt Hartley [00:38:15] Or this is someone that I love, or this is someone causing harm. A compassionate place that I can go is by saying, your brain know you. You may not know this, but subconsciously your brain knows that if you were to lose this, it would really be hard for you to the point that you may not survive it psychologically. And I want religion to get better for you.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:37] Right?

Britt Hartley [00:38:38] I can. I can meet that with some compassion that maybe I had some privilege in. In atheism, in nihilism, in having enough safety and security and lack of trauma that I was able to go as far down the rabbit hole as I've gone down, that some other people may not have survived without suicide ideation or numbing behaviors or addiction. And so that certainty is a real thing. And I think we can be compassionate towards it, that. That the more you kind of scale towards fundamentalism, the more you actually psychologically need that. And so I think that can allow us a little bit more compassion in some of these spaces.

Britt Hartley [00:39:21] And. And when we get there, we can find tools like Nora Rochetta's tools and other tools to be able to sit with uncertainty, to realize that it was just an illusion and essentially make peace with our lack of control, make peace with death, make peace with meaninglessness, make peace with randomness. And that actually becomes the eye of the storm that I have made peace with. How insane this world is and, like, how absurd it is and how little I know. And that can become essentially your new safety is that you've made peace with the unsafety of it all.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:01] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:03] Love it.

Britt Hartley [00:40:03] Beautiful.

Practical Spiritual Tools and Meditation

John Dehlin [00:40:05] So a practical question. One of our. One of our YouTube community members asked his handles. Cosmic Hiker312. Margi's going to read that. It's a question for you, Britt.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:17] Hi, Britt. What are some ways that you suggest a person can find strength during a difficult moment that is as easily accessible as a silent prayer without being A silent prayer.

Britt Hartley [00:40:31] Yeah, that's a good one.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] So a replacement to prayer.

Britt Hartley [00:40:36] Yeah, and I've, I've replaced some things because prayer does a lot of things. But prayers mark your values. Prayer gather people, prayers set intentions, really the best thing that prayer does. And manifestation works in the same way, even though I'm not particularly a manifestor by, you know, in that way.

Britt Hartley [00:40:59] But it essentially primes our brain to where we're wanting to go. So if I pray for a person to get better, for example, I'm essentially priming my brain to think of this person. And then I'll be at the grocery store and my subconscious will be like, hey, why don't you grab them some flowers or some dinner to drop off? And I'll think, oh, it's revelation. God's telling me how to help this person. We can do the same thing with, with manifestation. And so what we can do outside of religion is as we're studying the brain and how it works, we can start to get the brain to work for us rather than against us.

Britt Hartley [00:41:34] But we can do that with thought work, and we don't need to do that with calling upon gods and universes, especially when you're skeptical and that doesn't feel authentic to you. And so it depends on, you know, it depends on what you're needing it for. But mantras are still a great way to prime the brain to what you want to think.

Britt Hartley [00:41:53] So something that I do, for example, with clients is, is a tough part in your deconstruction, is when you're ready to reconstruct, but you still have all your old Mormon thought patterns. And that's when you actually have to go in and start tinkering in your own brain that I have this thought that I'm going to pray or whatever it is, or I have this pattern, I don't believe it anymore, but I don't have a new way of thinking yet. I don't have a new pattern. And that's when we start actually choosing to think thoughts on purpose. My favorite a resource on that, if that is interesting to you, is a podcast called unfuck your brain by Carl Lowenthal.

Britt Hartley [00:42:31] She's a non woo brain expert, Harvard grad brain expert that helps you with, with the brain side of things. And really what we can do is prime the brain towards what you're wanting and actually get your brain working for you rather than against you. So when you're talking about loss, for example, in religion, there's this, there's this affirmation that you can Say to yourself that this person's in a better place. Or if. If it's a hard time, God is aware of it. God g didn't give me more than I could handle. And I. I can. I can do this if I just have faith right there.

Britt Hartley [00:43:07] There's something there. But we can actually pull out the tool and. And just say that thing. So if something hard is happening, rather than say, God is watching over this, and God will find a way to. I can say I can find ways to make good out of this hard situation. I can do that. I can find ways to do that. I can find a silver lining in this situation.

Britt Hartley [00:43:30] I bet that this situation will help me be more compassionate towards others. This is hard, but I bet I will look back and there's some lessons that I can learn from this. So whatever the tool was, you can still grab that tool and say those things to yourself and do thought work to have those thoughts come more naturally rather than having to say prayers. So I think if we're doing, like, pure practicality, I think thought work is the best answer to that question. And unfuck your brain is my favorite kind of podcast and resource for how to do that. And we can really pull out whatever that prayer was doing and.

Britt Hartley [00:44:11] And actually choose those thoughts on purpose and get our brains working for us rather than against us so that we're not stuck in those places.

John Dehlin [00:44:20] Did you just say fuck twice on Mormon Stories podcast? I'm just making. What the. I'm kidding.

Britt Hartley [00:44:28] I still don't. I still don't swear very often. It's still, like. It's still a. You know, I don't know. It's still a thing. I still have a Mormon brain when it comes to. When it comes to swearing. But when I'm quoting, like, another thing, then I don't. Then I don't have that. Like, that I still get sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:44:47] I'm totally kidding. Really quickly, I'll read a couple comments. Jacob writes, I've actually started praying to myself just using the same language I used to use to pray to Heavenly Father. And then he says, I say, dear Heavenly Me. That's fun.

Britt Hartley [00:45:04] If all of this has all been happening inside our own minds, if prayer has been the way that we're communicating with our highest self or our subconscious, and it's actually helping that conversation within our own brain. And if God has always been just a projection of our own subconscious desires and subconscious fears, if all of that's been happening in our brain, then our brain is God. Like, our brain is our brain. Is smart enough to ask and answer its own questions and not even know that it's itself doing that. So I don't have any problem with that. Maybe the brain is God.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] I'll share another one. Maven writes, I like what Summer Rain said in a recent interview about connecting with a pure, authentic form of yourself. And I'll even up that. Maven, thanks for sharing that. I like what Jesus said. Jesus said the kingdom of God is within. Why did Jesus say that? Why didn't he say the kingdom of God is in Kolob, or the kingdom of God is up in the stars? He said it's within. So wasn't Jesus himself, if you like Jesus or respect him, pointing us to do that inner work, that inner self development?

Britt Hartley [00:46:15] And here's another thing, Maven, that I want to follow up on. I totally am a fan of going to imaginative places for the benefit of this conversation between our conscious and subconscious mind. The differences in. I'm doing it without turning my rationality off. Like I do. I'm doing it and I know why I'm doing it. So, for example, there are people like Jared Anderson, who's a humanist chaplain in Salt Lake City, a post Mormon, and he created his own gods. Like, created a pantheon of gods with images and values that are important to him. And he actually prays to them and has experiences in that conversation because the symbols help them him to do that.

Britt Hartley [00:46:56] The difference is he knows that it's a game. He knows that this is just a tool because he made up these gods. For me personally, I've been in Sufi meditations. I have a. A Sufi teacher. It's the mystical branch of Islam. It's my connection to the mystic traditions where you will imagine a hero and you'll do this really long guided meditation and you imagine your hero and you're really deep into this meditation space before you go into it. And then you actually sit and talk to this hero about your problem and want to get some advice, and you actually set up a guided meditation where.

Britt Hartley [00:47:38] Where you can do this, and I have done this before, where I've actually gotten some insight and adjusted a decision and made a decision. The difference is I know that it's an imaginative exercise that helps me to tap into my inner wisdom. Wisdom. I don't actually have to believe that I talk to that person in heaven. Yeah, I don't. I don't have to go that far. The tool still works. Now, I couldn't do that. Like, as John said, I couldn't do that. Maybe right after I left Mormonism. And I needed to be angry and I needed to have an allergy and I needed some separation.

Britt Hartley [00:48:08] But I was. As I was coming back to these tools, I was able to pull out, oh, I can use this tool. I'm going to talk to my grandma, or I'm going to talk to this hero in my imaginative space. And it's a tool and I can do that. And I don't have to turn off my rational mind to do that, because it's a tool that works.

Britt Hartley [00:48:26] This is something that supports a conversation between my conscious and subconscious mind. So I. I'm a fan. You can do all of these things, but we just don't have to. You don't have to believe to jump. You know, faith doesn't have to be the hoop that you jump through to be able to do that. You can do that without having any faith at all. I have no idea in these experiences if I'm actually talking to that person, if they still exist or if it's happening in my own mind. But the tool still works. And I. And so I don't have to believe.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] Love it. Yeah. All right. Well, your book definitely, you know, one of the biggest. Some say the biggest issue with losing your. Your religion or your faith is fearing death. So one of our YouTube community viewers wrote this question that Margi's going to read about death.

Confronting Fear of Death and Mortality

Margi Dehlin [00:49:16] How do I get okay with the idea of death? Since early childhood, the idea of not existing one day has made me feel abject terror. I want to accept my mortality, but it seems impossible.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] Fix that. Fix that.

Britt Hartley [00:49:31] Okay, in two minutes, I'm going to fix your fear of death.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:35] I'm here. I'm here today to fix your fear real quick.

Britt Hartley [00:49:39] I have two things to say. One is that it's hard, right? The reason that she's having a hard time with this over a long period of time is because it's hard. There's a real. There's a reason why evolutionarily we created tricks to be able to function without thinking about death. Because the people, the ancestors who just sat around all day and thought about, I'm gonna die, and this is stupid. They didn't procreate, right? They didn't, like, play social hierarchy games in order to procreate and have 10 children. They were having an existential crisis and they probably didn't continue their line. We are not the ancestors of those people.

Britt Hartley [00:50:17] We are the ancestors of people who created stories and superstitions and tended to one another in communities and had stories that made it okay. That's where we come from. So the first thing I have to say is it's hard. And it's not just hard like, oh, my marathon was hard, or like, going through a divorce was hard, like there's. There's hard things in the world.

Britt Hartley [00:50:37] It's hard in the sense that no human in our past has been able to handle all of these existential fears without a community and without a story. We've never had to do that before. We have at least tens of thousands of years saying that humans didn't. Didn't do that. We didn't go through these fears without a story and a community.

Britt Hartley [00:51:05] And so when you're talking about leaving Mormonism, you may be. And I talked about this with. With Nuanceo on a podcast I did with her. You may be the first person in a hundred thousand years, maybe more, who has had to deal with the fact that you're going to die without a community and without story and ritual around and. And all the things that religion do. And so when people say it's hard, yeah, it's hard, like, it's. It's existentially hard. Oh, she's listening. Hey, new one.

Britt Hartley [00:51:39] I had a great conversation with her. You'll have to check that out too, if you're. If you're liking this. It's existentially hard in a way that humans have never had to deal with, with so little to tools, because when you leave Mormonism, you leave your community and you leave your rituals around death and you leave your story. And we haven't had to do that as humans for. For maybe as long as we've been human. The second thing I want to say is, just like you would do with therapy, and you are afraid of a spider, the answer is getting closer. So if you're terrified of spiders, and you've always been terrified of spiders, if I was your therapist, I would put a picture of a spider in the room, and we'd sit with your anxiety and we'd name it, and we'd get closer to it, and we'd watch it pass, and we'd do breathing exercises, and we talk through it, and we'd essentially get your nervous system to be able to sit with a picture of a spider in the room.

Britt Hartley [00:52:35] And then the next month, we would have a spider in the corner in a box, and we would sit with that. Right. Exposure therapy as Christina cruises. And we can essentially do the same thing with death. That doesn't mean that we, like, goes from I'm terrified of a spider to holding A spider. Because that may, like, put you over the edge and we don't want to do that, but we can inch closer towards it. What is it about death that's scary?

Britt Hartley [00:53:03] What is it about death that changes that? That changes me? How does that anxiety feel in my body? How can I watch a movie that brings up these feelings and sit with it and cry and allow that mourning to fully happen? You're going to have to mourn your own death. That's going to have to happen. Right.

Britt Hartley [00:53:21] How can I create rituals and a funeral for the fact that I'm going to die? How can I. The people that have gone on, how can I keep them alive? And it's essentially, how can we get closer to this concept of death until our nervous system can get to the point that we are calm enough to allow the good changes to happen? We know from terror management theory studies that the people who do go through that process mourn the fact that they're going to die. Really sit with it without turning away and sit with it long enough to have that feeling pass and to have your nervous system go down a notch to be able to handle it.

Britt Hartley [00:53:59] We know that there are benefits. They take more risks into authenticity. They put more effort into their relationships that are more meaningful. They have a more. They put more into what they want to do in life so that they don't have that regret that I'm on my deathbed and I never really got to live, which is a top regret that people have on their deathbed. So there are good things about it. There are things that can change you, but we have to get a little bit closer in however safe that is for you in however we have to tiptoe into that. Yeah. So those are my thoughts on that.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:36] And I was just going to bring up. I feel like in your book you mention a way that you kind of do this, and this may not be for everyone, but I love practical ways that you're, you know, you give people to kind of practice. Because I do view this type of thing as a practice.

Britt Hartley [00:54:53] We love closure.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:54] We love. We come from a community of like, you know, let's be healed already. I'm healed. Great, let's move on. And I think for many of these things, we. We will walk with likely death as we live. Right. It's not a matter of just like tying it up in a bow and. Great, I dealt with that. And didn't you bring up it that you do a bit of a. A meditation and is it in Latin? I'm trying to remember the words that you use. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:55:22] So I'll start my day when, you know, when I don't have to just run out the door right away with kids, but I'll start my day by saying momento Mori. It's actually one of my. So my necklace is here. This is something I actually encourage you to do. So, you know, religions have symbols around them all the time of. Of values. And I started to add that into my home. Like, what would my values and my symbols and my stories be? And I started to kind of add that around me. The same way that someone would create an altar in religion, this she shed is very much an altar to the things that are important to me.

Britt Hartley [00:55:57] So this necklace here is a bee. And it reminds me of this connection piece that I talked about. And then this one here is a little skull, and it says momento Mori. And momento mori is just remember that you will die. And at first, that was hard. At first, having to face that I was going to die. Having to face the hard part of death for me was I'm such a story person. I'm such a history person. I was a history teacher before I got into this work. And being a part of this story and not knowing how it ends like that. I still mourn that.

Britt Hartley [00:56:29] That still hurts. Like, that's hot. That hurts me. That's hard. But as I got closer and for. There are some sex sects. I wish there was a different word for that because it always sounds like sex. C E S E C T S of Buddhism, where you will think about death five times a day. There are apps that you can get that will remind you that you're gonna die five times a day. There are kinds of Buddhism where you sit next to a decomposing corpse, which we never do in the West. We never get that close to dead bodies. We never want to face that.

Britt Hartley [00:57:01] But they'll sit there until they actually face this. But when you get to the other side of it, I have skulls all around me. I think there's a pillow back here that has a skull on it. And. And I wear one. And sometimes I say it in the morning because knowing that I'm gonna die, it laser focuses me on how I want to spend today. Laser focuses me on the people and projects that I care about doing. And it's almost like I'm starting my day on my deathbed, and I get to wake up and jump into this moment where I'm 38 years old, children, and I have projects and I have books that I want to read.

Britt Hartley [00:57:39] And there's going to be a new Game of Thrones series, and it's going to be great. And starting my day on my deathbed and jumping into today has been one of the greatest ways to truly live a life that is based on how do I want to experience the beauty of today?

Britt Hartley [00:57:58] So at first, getting close to death was hard, and I cried. And I was mad at the universe for giving me a brain that could ask questions that didn't have answers. I was mad for, like, two years. I'm just going to be mad at the universe. Like, I was stuck there for a while. It's fine. But as I continued to get closer, I got to the other side of it where I'm really glad that I died. I'm preemptively. Or that I start my day on my deathbed because I can really look back and say I didn't regret at all how I spent that week. That's exactly how I wanted to spend that week of my time. And that is a beautiful blessing.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:36] I so appreciate that.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] Yeah, I'll just add to me, too there. Like, I don't. I think it'd be hard for Mormons to deny that so much of Mormon theology or doctrinal or theological explanations we get is, don't worry about that. Just obey, follow the commandments, do what you're told, and you'll be happy in the next life. So it's like, well, what if I'm gay? It's like, yeah, life is to suffer and do what you can, but God will fix you in the afterlife. And you're like, well, what if it's not making me happy? What if I'm depressed? Well, pray harder and fast. Harder. And be more obedient to. And if you're still miserable, don't worry, because that's what the resurrection's about.

Finding Meaning and Purpose Without Religion

John Dehlin [00:59:20] And people are. On the one hand, there's so much of that going on in religion that this life, it's going to be hard. You're going to be miserable, but the rewards are later. And when people argue that religion's got the solid stuff and religion's got the good stuff and secularism is weak, I love this idea that actually that the idea of constantly chanting, I'm going to die, the idea that that's a good thing is ridiculous. It's horrific. Unless it spurs you to make the most of every single moment you have. In other words, I'm not putting off improving my relationship with my wife because this is the only life we get.

John Dehlin [00:59:59] I'm not putting off Being a good parent or connecting with my kid or serving in the church mindlessly and serving a gazillion missions and missing out on the life of my children and my grandchildren. I get to do that now because that's maybe the only chance I get to spend time with my kids and grandkids.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] It really does focus and enrich the time that we have remaining to no longer have this cop out that the good stuff is when we die. Because I don't care who you are, I don't care how certain you are in your beliefs. You don't know for sure whether you get that extra life. But those who are focused on the present with the reminder of a looming death, but, you know, if they do the right work, they're going to be the ones that make the most of their life, I think.

Britt Hartley [01:00:49] Yeah. And that is exactly why, like, that, that whole thing that you just did is exactly why when, when people push back on me and say, that's great that you've left religion, but, like, why can't you leave people alone? Like, these beliefs are helping them. Just leave them alone alone. Which I'm sure you get that pushback too, John.

Britt Hartley [01:01:05] And this is why I don't leave it alone is because there's. To me, like, I understand that they're sad for me because they think I'm going to hell, but I'm sad. I'm sad for them that especially someone like, you know, someone who's gay and just trying to push through, like, I'm just trying to survive for the next life, that means that this miracle of existence, this lottery that you get to exist and you're not a flower, like, you're a human. Like, you can experience, you know, a full breadth of human experience, and you're going to waste that on the next life. To me, that's. That's the saddest thing in the universe.

Britt Hartley [01:01:43] That's the saddest thing I've ever heard of that you're going to do that. And so I am grateful that the Mormons who left Mormonism had something to say about it, because I now don't spend a lot of time doing mental gymnastics trying to think about if I'm going to be with my family forever, which is so much pressure, right? On a. On a Mormon woman. I really. Because someone didn't shut up about Mormonism, and I got to deconstruct this. I got the benefit of actually choosing, well, how do I want to live the only life that I know for sure I have? And that's Why I don't leave people and their beliefs alone is because I'm glad that people didn't do that for me.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:26] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:02:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:28] Love it. Okay, we've got another question. There's at least one chapter on meaning and purpose in the book. Margi's going to go ahead and read it.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:36] How do you define nihilism from your perspective?

John Dehlin [01:02:39] Yeah. So let's talk about nihilism. Let's talk about absurdism. Let's talk about meaning and purpose. And I loved what you wrote about Tolstoy. Like, I love Tolstoy. I love Tolstoy when I was a believer. But I don't know if you want to share a little bit about what you wrote about Tolstoy and maybe even some of the things he shared was really powerful.

Britt Hartley [01:03:01] Yeah. So Tolstoy. I have mixed feelings about Tolstoy because he really helped me with. With some aspects of defining nihilism. But like many men who are great writers and great anything, it came at a cost to the women around him. And the journals of his wife are quite soul crushing about how, you know, he was more happy with his ideas of love and his ideas of things than actually spending time with her and their children. And that was actually heartbreaking for me.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:33] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:03:34] So I want to. You know, whenever I talk about Tolstoy now, I always want to give a shout out to Sophia because she. She supported him so that he could do that work. But it came at a cost for her. And so I want to. You know, I always want to do that when I talk about some of these men who write these amazing things. But essential nihilism is just an ism that says that there is no inherent meaning in the universe. It can be positive or negative.

Britt Hartley [01:04:01] For some people, like David Bachavoy and Alan Mount, it tends to be just a more positive thing. David Bachavoy, pretty easily, I think, went into optimistic nihilism, which is, I get to create my own meaning, and that's great. And so he didn't resonate as much with my Mormon stories as other people who experience it more of a negative thing. And it can be either side. Some people, really.

Britt Hartley [01:04:25] Nihilism, the fact that they're gonna die and there's no meaning, is such a great thing. Like, I can just enjoy life. That's great. I just. As a personality. Like, it took me some time and some tools to get there, but that was not my first response. So it can be positive or negative, kind of just depending on who you are as a person.

Britt Hartley [01:04:45] And it's just this this idea that there's no inherent meaning of the universe, eventually this earth is gonna blow up and the universe doesn't particularly care. And for some people that can be a good thing or, or for some people, that can be really hard. For me as a truth seeker who comes from a Mormon truth seeking brain, that was very difficult. It was very difficult to lose the idea that there is truth. That was a hard death for me.

Britt Hartley [01:05:11] So it wasn't something intuitive to me. I had to learn how to become an optimistic nihilist. If you were for Tolstoy, there was about four years and this happened to him when he was about 50. So he was already successful. He already had a wife and a family. He had already sold some books, but really just became existentially depressed. That is this it kind of thing. And for about four years he didn't have any rope in his house because he was afraid that, you know, he was going to kill himself.

Britt Hartley [01:05:42] And it was very difficult for him. He has some beautiful analogies in the book and one of them, I wrote down a story about a dragon and mice that, that was really. You'd have to read it. I don't think that I could do it from memory, but he really gave a lot of writing and language to this idea of nihilism.

Britt Hartley [01:06:00] And what he essentially did was create Tolstoy, Tolstoyanism, which is. He really started to focus on experience and love and compassion. He started gardening. He started to shift from this kind of ego space of I'm a great writer and I'm going to sell these books to I'm going to die. And actually, is there anything more to this? And he started to become more service oriented. He started to really.

Britt Hartley [01:06:26] He became a vegetarian because he wanted to get closer to nature and understand suffering better. And he essentially, according to, created his own ism. And so what I say in the book is I'm not here to convert you to Tolstoyanism.

Britt Hartley [01:06:39] I'm here to help you, give you the tools to create your own ism, so that you are living a life based on your values and the projects and people and values that, that you care about that allow you to experience life in a way that you're glad that you're experiencing it, even if the universe doesn't care. I want you to be able to have tools to build that life. And so when Tolstoy did it, you know, he, he wrote about it.

Britt Hartley [01:07:04] People even follow that path because they find it helpful. But there are many ways to. And many tools to be able to find that for you so that your life is worth experiencing. And that's the shift that helps you out of nihilism. If you are trying to think of what can I do today that's meaningful in a hundred thousand years, you're gonna have suicide ideation. Because there's not an answer for that. Like, there's not a great answer for that. But what can I do today that is meaningful in the experience of it? And that's a totally different way of living and a way of being that the mystics point to.

Britt Hartley [01:07:39] It's not doing, it's being that that points to a different kind of life that helped him eventually come out of nihilism. So he was no longer suicidal. And, and for me too.

John Dehlin [01:07:50] Yeah, yeah. And I'll just say again, like, yeah, it, it seems super nice as a, as a Mormon, for example, to be told our heavenly Father's plan, the plan of salvation, to be told what your purpose is, what you're supposed to do. Of course, it always involves 10% of your income to the church and dedicating your life to the church until you die, including multiple missions as a senior person and all the callings and all the service.

John Dehlin [01:08:17] It seems like that's amazing to have that level of specific meaning and purpose until. And it seems terrifying to think, oh, I just create my own meaning and purpose, that you can't do that. Right. And that's just, that's almost like a conditioned mindset. Because like, why is it way better, like nobody wants someone to pick their job for them, their occupation. Nobody wants someone else to pick their artistic pursuits or even freaking what dinner they eat or what movie they watch. Don't we want to choose for ourselves? Isn't that like core human nature? So why is it that a huge trading up to get rid of meaning and purpose that's not just assigned to you, not just completely impersonal, but conveniently is all about enriching and giving your time, sucking dry all your resources to feed this trillion dollar corporation.

John Dehlin [01:09:16] How is it not trading up to throw all that away and say, wow, blank canvas. I get to create whatever meaning and purpose I want in my life. Really? Why isn't that trading up? If we could just sort of lift off the conditioned mindset.

Fear of Freedom and Rebuilding After Mormonism

Margi Dehlin [01:09:31] I think what's interesting is, you know, fear of freedom, right. Britt comes up for me, as you know, those four fears. Ironically, fear of freedom is one of those how what it feels like when we are, we feel responsible for our own life.

Britt Hartley [01:09:48] Would you say that, Brett?

Margi Dehlin [01:09:49] The.

Britt Hartley [01:09:49] The truth is, and And. And Enneagram eights may not be this way. I think you're an enneagram8, John. So maybe you have some different core values. But for most people, when you talk about why don't we want this, it's that we really don't.

Britt Hartley [01:10:04] So if I were to, for example, for most humans, and we have studies on this, if I were to send you to the store and I'm going to say, pick one salad dressing, you're going to eat it for the rest of your life. Every time you have a salad, you're going to have this dressing. There are 300 salad dressings you have to choose from. That is really overwhelming. But if I say I've narrowed it down to five that I really love, and I know you really well, I've been out to dinner with you many times. I really think you're either going to like this one or this one.

Britt Hartley [01:10:32] Now, actually, in reality, now, we may think, oh, I want unlimited freedom. But when we actually look at human nature, we want that second scenario. I want you to narrow it down to five and give me some suggestions. Even within the five, if I have to pick the salad dressing for the rest of my Life and there's 300, I actually don't want that much freedom. Actually, that's paralyzing. And so we are funny little creatures. We want freedom, but not too much, because too much freedom is paralyzing. It's analysis paralysis is what we call it. Yeah. And so, you know, while we want some freedom, like, I want to be able to choose what I want for dinner or something like that, we don't.

Britt Hartley [01:11:10] We don't actually want too much much as human nature. And so this is why we so often will sell away our freedom. For someone who says, actually, I know that this salad dressing, you're gonna freaking love it. Right? And we will sell our freedom. All of our choices are 300 options. And listen to the guy who just said, you know what? I've made this decision for you. And it's like, oh, thank God somebody made the decision for me, because that was way too overwhelming.

Britt Hartley [01:11:35] And we do this with religion. And so what we have to do is essentially walk into the 300,000 or 300 salad dressings and have tools for how to make decisions. Have tools for what actually do I want? And sometimes that can be hard for Mormons because we have suppressed our inner voice and our inner child and our preferences, even in order to fit a box. And so that's where especially Mormons get stuck, is because if the answer to nihilism is really knowing yourself and authentically building an intentional life. If you don't know who you are because you were essentially always cramming yourself into a box, then there's going to be a gap there where you're going to have to just try some salad dressings because you don't even know what you like.

Britt Hartley [01:12:23] And then you'll have to kind of go through a period of essentially dating yourself. What are your core values? And then we can start from there.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:30] That's right, Yep.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Okay, well, that is a great segue to our next topic. So, you know, as Mormons particularly, and probably in all high demand religions, people are conditioned, you know, to, to feel like, well, if I leave Mormonism, then I'll cheat on my spouse. If I leave Mormonism, why wouldn't I kill people? Why wouldn't I just steal things? And, and why wouldn't I become a sex worker or get addicted to drugs and alcohol? Like there's this terror that's been conditioned in our minds that without someone telling us what's moral and what's good, and without that enforcement of like a bishop punishing us or taking the sacrament away or even disciplining us or specifically that reward in heaven or the punishment of hell, we would, we would all be debaucherous, immoral creatures.

John Dehlin [01:13:24] And so, and I think there are instances, as I think I saw in a recent Instagram or maybe TikTok you posted, where ex Mormons can blow up their lives with experimenting with, let's just say drugs or alcohol or other types of sexual experimentation. So that's a long setup for a question that anarchism wrote in our YouTube community. He writes, the Aztecs were spiritual. They would cut the hearts out of living children during their spiritual rituals. North American natives practiced the morning star spiritual ritual. They would tie a girl to a tree and all the men would shoot, shoot her with arrows until death. Spiritual doesn't always mean good. So tell us how you, why, why aren't you killing people and becoming a sex worker? Britt?

Britt Hartley [01:14:14] Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a great question. So I have, I have, I have two comments for that. So one is it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So if you, if you set up your morality, like let's say you have a classroom of students and you set up the morality of that classroom like this is, this is why we're doing good in this classroom. Because there's a camera and that camera is watching you all the time. And when that camera sees you doing good, you get Five stars in your next class, your next life, whatever you want to do. And you're going to be really punished.

Britt Hartley [01:14:52] And that teacher in that camera is watching you while they the time. And if you build the moral kind of system of, of consequences like we would do in any school with that system, and you do it from the time that they're in preschool to the time that they're adults, then when you actually tell them no one is behind the camera, there may be an actual like, oh, no one's behind the camera. Like, I'm just gonna like, whatever my impulse is, I'm just going to do whatever my impulse impulses. And sometimes that does happen. And in Mormonism, when you add that to deconstructing, because people will start then to deconstruct things like marriage or all kinds of things, you know, you keep deconstructing and you have sexual repression because you never got to be a teenager, you never got to be a 20 year old.

Britt Hartley [01:15:41] And you are kind of untethered because you haven't done the rebuilding yet. Yeah, there are sometimes like, let's be honest, in the more in the post Mormon community, we can get a little bit kid in the candy store. Like that does happen as a thing. Like, let's, let's be honest about ourselves.

Britt Hartley [01:15:58] But I don't think that that's the way that it has to be. And we have some good solid studies to show that if you actually build your morality on compassion and empathy and reason, especially those three together, then you actually don't have that instance of, oh, the camera. No one is behind the camera. So I get to do whatever you want. Whatever I want. And so we know, based on studies of, for example, atheist children and Christian children, that Christian children are far more judgmental. And when they do something wrong, they're always trying to just like get away with it and you know, try to do it where, you know, there's sneaky ways to try to, you know, do whatever you want to do selfishly.

Britt Hartley [01:16:41] And when someone is building their life on, I'm going to be a good person purely because of the Golden Rule, I know what it's like to suffer. And you seem to appear to be a conscious being, so I don't want you to suffer then. And we build our moral system from that because the golden rule far predates any of our religions that contain the Golden Rule. If we start there, we can actually build a moral system that doesn't really require it to be centered on this idea of the video camera is always watching. And so we can build morality, especially with conversation and reason and our natural tendencies towards compassion and empathy.

Britt Hartley [01:17:19] And it actually tends to be a far better system than trying to create the illusion of objective morality, of trying to say we know that these things are always true and these things are always right, and the gods always thinking this, that that game is an illusion. And anyone who tries to tell me that the Bible, you know, has that, like objective morality actually hasn't studied the Bible.

Britt Hartley [01:17:42] So if we can get away from the illusion of morality and creating morality to be the Santa Claus thing and actually do it based on reason and empathy and compassion, we can not only have a moral system and live moral lives. Because I, I, we, the science of well being tells us that I'm going to be happier if I'm a good and nice person and I live according to my values and I can look myself in the mirror and I don't have to hide from myself or numb myself because I know that I'm not living according to my values. And I'm happier when the people around me are happy to be around me because I'm nice and I'm kind and I don't want them to suffer.

Britt Hartley [01:18:22] And that actually improves not only my experience of being a human, but also the people around me that I care about and also probably the world. And so I don't, I don't really need Santa Claus watching me in order to want that, because I know what it's like to suffer. And we can just start from the golden rule and build from there. The second part of your question is scapegoating. And this one was mind blowing for me when I dug into the history of scapegoating, because we like to think that Christianity came up with this brilliant idea that, that we're going to put our sins onto one thing and, and then it's magical and everything's okay.

Scapegoating, Sacrifice, and Religious Thought

Britt Hartley [01:18:57] But we have been doing scapegoating for a long time, like tens of thousands of years before Jesus. And we even show that other primates also will do some scapegoating tendencies. So, for example, bonobos, if they fight and somebody bites a little bit too hard, they will steal a baby from not even their baby. Like somebody's baby, somebody's baby primate in the tribe. And they will give that baby to the person that they hurt, and then the person that they hurt takes it back to the mother bonobo. And it's a little ritual that they do in order to calm down guilt and shame that I went a little too far.

Britt Hartley [01:19:35] And so we find these Rituals even done in other primates. And it seems to be. Historically, we've been putting virgins and volcanoes and children sacrifice for a long time. It seems to be that we developed a ritual that when we're feeling guilt and shame as a community, we process that by putting it on something and sacrificing it to the gods, putting it out into the desert. We've been doing this for a long time. And then we also will do rituals to drink the blood of that God or. Or, you know, the God will give us some power. And so when you see Christianity from our historical perspective of scapegoating, we can see that this.

Britt Hartley [01:20:14] This is a. This is a religion of blood sacrifice. And we can probably outgrow this. And we have Brene Brown now. We have some better tools for processing guilt and shame. We don't have to keep, like, killing things in order to process our guilt and shame. There's actually better ways to do this, and we've been doing this for a long time, and we should probably outgrow this. So I agree with this person that just because it's spiritual doesn't mean that it's good. I want to pull out the spirituality and pull out good tools for processing guilt and shame. I think we can get over this idea of making some kind of scapegoat sacrifice and throwing virgins and volcanoes and.

Britt Hartley [01:20:54] And what I say on TikTok all the time is, is if your God can't forgive me without requiring additional violence, and I can forgive someone without requiring additional violence, I can do something good that your God can't. And so I think all of that we need to outgrow, but we can still save. I. I still think that there's a baby in the bathwater. There's still things in spirituality that are helpful, but we can stop doing the human sacrifices.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:23] As it turns out.

John Dehlin [01:21:25] I'll never forget, I was riding down the freeway with my son, and there was one of those billboards that's like, got Jesus or, you know, 1-800-Bible. And he's like, we should call it. So we called it, and we were just talking to the person.

Britt Hartley [01:21:38] Of course you did.

John Dehlin [01:21:40] Of course you did. Well, my son wanted me to, so he called it. And we weren't antagonistic, but we were just talking back and forth a little bit. And literally the guy on the phone said, if I didn't believe in God, I would kill people. And I was just like, what? Like, he's like, what keeps you from cheating on your spouse? And I'm like, dude, I Don't want to hurt my family. I don't want to hurt my wife. Like, really, you're going to murder and cheat if you don't believe in God? And he seemed very, very certain that exactly what he would do. And that was scary to me.

Britt Hartley [01:22:19] It's a little psychotic, but it's the natural consequence of building a morality behind there's a camera that's watching you. If you build all of your thoughts around being a good person about the camera and not about the actual people that you're harming or for God's sakes, like your wife's feelings, then you've missed something that was really foundational for building a moral system.

John Dehlin [01:22:42] Yeah, yeah. And I'll just add that, that, number one, for believers to think that they've got moral high ground over non believers, it is arrogant and it's judgmental, and I think it denies reality in at least many important ways. If you're a believer and you're concerned about swinging or adultery, my understanding is there's just as much Mormon swinging and Mormon adultery as you can find in secular or ex Mormon communities. The divorce rates, as I understand it, in or out of Mormonism are pretty much indistinguishable as my understanding. Utah is one of the fraud capitals of the United States. That, that my friends who have never been Mormon, who are like working in New York or with the FBI or the CIA would just say, yeah, you look at the index of the fraud capital, Utah per capita is number one.

John Dehlin [01:23:35] If you're a believer and you're concerned about porn use, my understanding is Utah leads the country in porn use per capita, there's prescription drug abuse, Utah is top in the nation. And true crime, like just Jody Hildebrandt, Ruby Frankie, Tim Ballard, like, you know, we could just go on and on and on about all the true crime where some Mormon dentist killed his wife. You know, it's just we don't have moral superiority in the church as believing Mormons. And I just think it's self delusion to think we've got a monopoly on morality as believing orthodox Mormons.

Britt Hartley [01:24:11] And we can expect that to happen when we set up a system where we're disconnected from ourselves and we're disconnected from other people. Right. Because if, if, if we're fully going, you know, Elder Oaks, and we're going to say, you know, what matters is the law and, and what matters is the principle. And so he's, you know, acting in ways towards the LGBTQ community that even his grandkids are like, like Grandpa, you have to stop. Like, you cannot say that. And it's because if you're so disconnected from that root of, of connection to self and connection to others, then morality just tends to go awry.

Britt Hartley [01:24:49] And so this is a big debate going on. If you notice, if you've watched YouTube debates between Christians and atheists, as I, as I tend to do, 20 years ago it was about is this church true? And now it's about is church good? Like, is Christianity good? We saw this with like Ben Shapiro and, and some of these characters, they'll talk about is religion good? And one of their arguments has always been, you know, without, without God, without objective morality, then everybody's creating their own reality, they're creating their own morality. But really what we're seeing is that it's actually worse to have it that way.

Britt Hartley [01:25:27] Because if you believe that God is on your side, there's nothing to stop you. There's nothing to stop you from, from being Lori Valo, from being whatever, from strapping a bomb to your chest. If you believe that God is on your side in your moral system and you are not open to debate and reason and compassion and empathy, it's actually far worse than, you know, having to admit that morality is subjective. So it's, it's a shift that's happening in, in a lot of these debates between Christians and atheists where they're trying to hold on to this kind of sense of morality because there's this fear that without God we don't have morality.

Britt Hartley [01:26:07] And it's actually, when we add God, it actually makes it worse because now I have nothing to say to you to stop you from doing what you're doing. Whereas if we're in a society and we're in a conversation and I'm listening to your story and I have compassion and empathy and rationality and science of well being, there's at least something that we can do to be able to lead people towards a moral life. If you believe God is on your side and doing evil, there's nothing that we can do to stop you.

John Dehlin [01:26:37] And thank you, that's so well said. And I didn't even mention all the instances of child sexual abuse and Mormonism and the Boy Scouts. I mean, the Mormon Church volunteered to pay $250 million, I think, towards the Boy Scouts of America pedophilia scandal.

John Dehlin [01:26:53] Why 250 million voluntarily? It's because like 80,000, you know, former Mormons or current Mormons have put in claims of child abuse with Mormon Scout masters and Mormon Boy Scout troops. So yeah, I love it that we're, I love it that we're talking about this really quickly. I just put a link. We are talking today about no nonsense spirituality.

John Dehlin [01:27:20] Buy all the, all the tools, no faith required by Britt Hartley. We want you all to please right now, open up a new tab. Pause this episode, go to Amazon, Buy this book. Buy it for friends. Buy five copies, buy 10. We get no compensation for this.

John Dehlin [01:27:38] We just want Britt to be successful, not only because we love Britt, but also because we think this book is going to help a lot of people. So please buy this book now. We just put it in the comments.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:50] Also, we can show you how much we've underlined.

John Dehlin [01:27:55] Absolutely. Please subscribe while you're on the YouTube channel. Please like this. Please share it wherever you can. That helps with the algorithms. Thank you so, so much for that. There's people are asking about an audiobook. Britt, I'm certain that you're going to be working on that. Is that correct?

Britt Hartley [01:28:14] I, I originally like a month ago, I wasn't really plan on it, planning on it. I am old school in the sense that I like holding a physical book and I will die on that hill even though I have a Kindle collecting dust somewhere. And I, I just, I pre, I prefer it and I'm just old school in that way. But I've had enough response for, for an audiobook and I especially want it to be accessible for people who for whatever reason adhd, like can't, you know, can't sit down and read a book. And I definitely always want my material to be accessible. So I think over the summer it's going to be a project that I take on, but it's not going to be available yet.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:56] Okay. So. But you can get it in paperback right now and in Kindle.

Britt Hartley [01:29:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:01] So please, please, everybody support Britt. Let's make this a New York Times number one bestseller.

Britt Hartley [01:29:08] Let's not get delusional.

John Dehlin [01:29:12] Oh no, I think it's worthy of that. Absolutely.

Britt Hartley [01:29:15] Let's not do. Yeah, let's. I don't do the Lulu. Let's, let's say, let's stay reasonable here, you guys.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] Well, that's a great segue. We want to talk about Dulu now. So Marty wanted to ask you a question about your chapter on intuition and the occult.

Navigating New Age Trends and Spiritual Discernment

Margi Dehlin [01:29:30] Yes. So one thing I notice, for anyone who's kind of on social media or even a reader. Right. A lot of within self help, there is kind of, what would I say, a thought, a school of thought, a movement a little bit around Intuition being something that now is, I wouldn't say like a new God, but is a fixed. A fixed way of kind of navigating the world. Do you want to talk a little bit, Give some thoughts that you have on why that can be problematic, Using intuition as like a major way that you're making decisions and moving through the world?

Britt Hartley [01:30:14] Yeah, and this is one where I get a lot of pushback on tick tock, especially because there's. There's this sense on tick tock that you can critique religion, but as soon as you go after the crystals, because tick tock skews young and it skews female, I get far more pushback for doing the same rational argument that I would say for religion and using it for something kind of in the woo New age space. Far more pushback on that side of things than religion. Because, you know, critiques about Christianity have been around for a long time and everybody's just saying the same things back at each other.

Britt Hartley [01:30:51] But when you start to pull on someone's kind of tool and belief and then you get the same identity response that you get from religious people. And so I try to be even across the board, which means if I'm using this argument in Mormonism and the same argument applies to something over here in Wu land, then I want to be consistent. And so something that is different in this book compared to other books like Sam Harris's Waking up app or Waking Up Book is that there are other books on secular spirituality, but they don't touch the woo space at all. They just kind of toss it out entirely.

Britt Hartley [01:31:31] And what I want to do is use the same approach that I've been doing with religion, the same approach of what's the tool? Let me get the tool without the belief and also do it in this new age space that is far more popular with Gen Z, for example.

Britt Hartley [01:31:46] And so what we're seeing is there is a direct line between Christianity to which there's a Christianity to which pipeline, and it is just a straight line. The problem is if we are doing that without fully deconstructing, we essentially start replacing behaviors rather than actually facing the fears and doing the work that we were talking about before.

Britt Hartley [01:32:13] So if you were really into prosperity gospel, into Christianity, then manifestation is just a new way for your brain to do prosperity gospel, but now under a different umbrella that you know, that isn't related to your Christian faith that you've deconstructed. But it's not just that. It's like there's so many behaviors that religion is Doing to calm down anxiety, to help you feel in control. And a lot of this occult world is really saying, well, yeah, if you believe in that the planets are doing this or that, then you can have control. And we can do your readings and we can do your tarot, we can do all these things and then you'll be in control.

Britt Hartley [01:32:52] And you essentially are doing the same thing that in the woo space that you were doing in religion. You just found a new way to not have to face your fears, to not have to sit with. Things are chaos and I don't have control.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:08] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:33:09] And so I want to, I want to be consistent across the board. And I want to say there are tools in this space. There are tools for sitting down and pulling a tarot card and there's some kind of symbolic picture that invites a. That invites an introspective question. And there's. We know that with symbolism, sometimes our subconscious can respond to symbolism far better than with language.

Britt Hartley [01:33:35] And so I want to be able to say, if these tools are helpful for you and working for you, you. Can we pull out the tool of tarot, of astrology, of whatever, witchery, whatever your thing is, can we pull out the tool without having having to believe in things that we don't know? We do not have scientific evidence that shows that where you were born and what time you were born is the defining characteristic of your person, personality. We have done very major studies because if this was true, it'd be something that we would want to know.

John Dehlin [01:34:13] You're talking about astrology.

Britt Hartley [01:34:15] Yeah, astrology, specifically for that. But someone like Carl Jung benefited with a client by looking at astrology. Just by looking at, you know, it helped him to see new perspectives, to see how human nature is. What about this aspect? And he used it sometimes as a tool. And so how can we do the same thing with the woo space that we do with religion, which is what is actually the tool? What's actually at root level the tool? And how can we get it without going from Mormonism magic and saying that that's crazy. And then we jump straight in to witch magic and don't see anything like anything wrong with that.

Britt Hartley [01:34:56] You know, we don't have to turn off our rational brain. We don't have to just jump from one magic to another kind of magic and keep doing that our whole life. We can actually face these fears, actually find what the tool is doing and use it as a tool so that we stay safe, so that we get all the benefits without the harm, because that's what we want we want the benefits of these things. And whatever in this space is a tool that's working for you. I'm not against it, but can we actually talk about the shadow side of this world, which is, yes, hierarchy and trauma and all these things and religion cause problems.

Britt Hartley [01:35:33] But if you go too far the other way, where you have no check on your own ego and your own intuition, and you can just get lost into your own world without any check of, hey, maybe there's like a subconscious fear that's driving that, or maybe there's some shadow work to do here, then you can essentially get lost in your own intuition. And we all know a friend who got a little bit too lost in the crystals and essentially kind of lives in their own reality of that world. And I don't think that we have to do that and go that far and believe in pseudoscience or believe in science that we haven't proven yet.

Britt Hartley [01:36:10] I'm open to many things being real. Whatever's going on in reality. I'm not saying I know what's going on in reality, but we can keep our skepticism and still get the tools of this space too, and be consistent.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:23] That's right. Beautiful.

John Dehlin [01:36:24] Yeah. And I've just noticed that in addition to the things you mentioned, Reiki is something ex Mormons sometimes flock to. You mentioned crystals, sort of extreme use of essential oils to cure things that they just can't cure. Sometimes it's veganism or vegetarianism as a religion, diet as a religion. There's sort of the secret stuff, and then sort of, you know, more in the conservative, sort of drifting away from orthodox Mormonism. There's QAnon, there's conspiracy theories, and even Mormon fundamentalism, the type that, you know, prepperism and, you know, weird, sometimes deadly spirituality. Like, like you mentioned Lori Valo and Chad. Those are all. It's a huge percentage of ex Mormons go those routes. And it's really surprising. It's like, aren't you just trading one set of profits for others? Aren't you just trading one set of superstitions for others? But.

Britt Hartley [01:37:24] But it is like the most natural thing for an ex Mormon brain to do is if it can get out of religion but still be doing the same thing, that's going to be kind of the easiest path. And so there's been like, tick tock witches who have gone on tick tock and said, y' all Christians need to finish deconstructing before you bring all of your BS into this world over here, because you are making this some kind of Gatekeep, you know, gatekeeping religion about what's the actual proper way to do a spell and all this stuff. And so we have to actually finish the deconstruction before they do that.

Britt Hartley [01:37:58] So whenever someone this happens a lot with NDEs, okay. The first thing that a Mormon or a Christian will do after they lose religion is jump into near death experiences because it's a way for your brain what is the easiest way for me to not have to think about death? And I'm going to read this near death experience book and this is going to be kind of my new thing that I believe. And I don't know what happens after we die, but the advice I always give is to face your fears first.

Britt Hartley [01:38:30] Finish the deconstruction process, make peace with not knowing, and then let's go in the NDE world and see if there's anything there. Then it's playful, then it's curiosity. You don't need it to be true. But too often we jump into these things.

Britt Hartley [01:38:47] We jump into these things because we need them to be true, because we haven't finished deconstructing yet and we haven't faced those fears yet. If you want a great book on this, there's a book book called Strange 7 New Religions for a Godless America. And it's talking about how, yes, we're leaving organized religion, but we haven't deconstructed the religious brain or face the, the, you know, the fears that cause religions. And so essentially fandoms are now a religion and wellness can be a religion. I've seen Christians that will do detoxing in ways that would was very similar to repentance because you want to be good and stay clean and it just goes straight into wellness or, or the, you know, occult world or, you know, there's all these, there's all these new religions in America that are functioning in the brain like a religion.

Britt Hartley [01:39:37] And so what we want to do is, is if you've been hurt by Mormonism before you jump into another religion, let's dec. Let's finish deconstructing and then when we go to explore all of these things about reality, it's playful. Playful for now. Like for me now, if I look at nd ease, I'm agnostic as to whether or not this thing is true or real. I'm not being driven by a bias that I want this thing to be true. And then it just becomes more playful, like what the hell is going on with reality? Let's play instead of like, I need this to be True. Or I'm gonna have a panic attack and have an existential breakdown. See, that's not like, we gotta get away from that.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:14] I would even say identity politics, whether it's, oh, absolutely, liberal Democrats or ultra conservative Republicans, that can be its own form of religion.

Britt Hartley [01:40:24] Yeah. And it's one. As ex Mormons, we have to really be aware of that. And it's something that Nietzsche predicted in the, in the 1800s and said that, hey, God is dead. He has this quote that God is dead, but we're going to find him in caves for thousands of years. And it's essentially this idea. And he predicted that, that if we lose God, we're going to create political gods. And in the 20th century, we did. Like, I, I won't say that Stalin, you know, isn't. Is an atheist. You know, that that is what a secular society looks like because he ran it like a religion.

Britt Hartley [01:40:57] It's essentially just a religion. But I can say that the hole that's left by the death of God is often filled first by a political religion. If you are a deconstructing Mormon and you don't know that there's a cult side to leftist politics that you've probably moved into as your political values change with your deconstruction, if you're not even aware of the cult of the left and how it can act as a religion and how it's problematic, then I think that you've done some replacing and you might need to look into that because it's something that I especially see in the ex Mormon world. And we've seen Facebook groups in the ex Mormon world that essentially become a place that is so like, you have to be perfect in your language on the left and then it kind of self destructs.

John Dehlin [01:41:51] Yeah. And there are. Yeah. Just really savage community enforcement of norms that to me, I'd much rather hang around orthodox Mormons than some really passionate ex Mormons who are kind of ultra left. So we'll leave that there.

Britt Hartley [01:42:11] Yeah, we'll leave that there. We'll get into trouble. But I've been in some of those situations too.

Talking to Children About Death and Spirituality

John Dehlin [01:42:17] Marg has a question on behalf of one of our community members about parenting.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:23] So the question is, how do you approach difficult subjects such as death with your children or loved ones without lying to them or being inauthentic to your own beliefs?

Britt Hartley [01:42:36] Okay. So for, for children, we essentially have a choice. We can either make our kids strong or make them sheltered. And that tends to be our options when it comes to things like death. And for for example, my, my oldest child, who is 12 now, he. I remember when he was 6 or 7 and really kind of realized that I, as his mom was going to die someday and he's going to have to live without me. And he cried in my chest. I have a memory of this. He just cried in my chest. And in that moment there's this temptation. I want to say that I'll always be with you.

Britt Hartley [01:43:17] That I know that, that I know that everything's going to be okay. That I'll always be watching over you. You. Because I want, I want that in that moment, right? I'm, I'm a mother. And, and there's some evidence that part of religion has been our bedtime stories for our children.

Britt Hartley [01:43:32] But I couldn't, I didn't want to lie in that moment. And lying is, is not lying. Being honest is one of my core values. And, and so I didn't want to lie. And so we, we talked about other things, about how if, if older generations didn't die, there would be no room on earth for there to be new life. He wouldn't exist if his ancestors hadn't died so that he could ex, he could have his turn. And so we talk about tools, we talk about how death is a part of life. We go out in the winter time and see that things die and that there's new life in the spring.

Britt Hartley [01:44:06] And when our dog died, he was a part of that and, and we didn't shield that from him. Like he held her and said goodbye and said thank you for being a good dog. And did he cry? Yeah, he cried a lot.

Britt Hartley [01:44:18] But I'm giving him tools to face that as a child, that death is a part of life, that you have space to experience your turn on earth because we have this cycle of life and death. And someday my turn will be over and sometime your turn will be over. But right now it's our turn. And isn't that great, right? And, and so we can, as, as age appropriate as we can actually build into our system that death is a part of life. And now I have to say, even though, like, it's way too early to tell if, if you know, my young children are going to be competent, stable adults, I can say that, that he doesn't fear death now as a, as a 12 year old, like he really has internalized that I'm gonna die and I really want to be an architect and I really want to rescue dogs and this is what I want to do with my life.

Britt Hartley [01:45:11] And he doesn't seem to be super bothered by it because it's, it's accepted as an intrinsic part of life, as Jacob says that, that this is an intrinsic part of life, this circle of life and death. And there's, there's beauty in it and there's sadness in it. And we can be big enough to hold both of those things and there's beauty that we have this moment together and it's sacred just because we know that it doesn't last forever.

Britt Hartley [01:45:37] And so I think that we can do it that way. Now. The one thing I do have to say, one thing, the one thing I didn't do in this book is I didn't do a lot of how to do secular secular spirituality for children. And I did that for two reasons. I did that because that's, that's not the majority of my audience. The majority of my audience is not Mormon and so may not have five kids while they're dealing with this.

Britt Hartley [01:46:03] And especially with something like nihilism. I have a lot of Gen Z who's, you know, dealing with this and maybe don't have children or have chosen not to have children. So I just didn't think it really fit my audience. And I think John Ogden is really, he really created what I would have created for children and he's already doing that. And so when it comes to how do I do secular spirituality for children, I'm happy to give the mic over to John Ogden because I think he created something really great with Uplift Kids. And if you are wanting to get into that, I have a coupon code, no nonsense with Uplift Kids to get a coupon code to get a discount for Uplift Kids.

Britt Hartley [01:46:42] John and I are similar in a lot of the ways that we approach religion and spirituality and mysticism and doing it without dogma and doing it in healthy, science driven ways. But I think he's created something for children that I don't need to recreate the wheel and replace. And so I recommend him for, for tools for that.

John Dehlin [01:47:02] Agreed. And we've had John Ogden on Mormon Stories as part of our Thrive Stories series. We'll have Maven or Julia provide a link to that interview because it's a great resource. Check it out. It's fantastic. We need to find better ways to support it. I'll also say many of us who are terrified about talking to our kids about death come from a conditioned place where we cannot remember a time where we didn't believe in heaven and a heavenly father. But we have to remember that a belief in God and afterlife and of like punishment for sins and all that stuff that's. Kids have to be taught that they are born with those teachings. So while we can't conceive of ever living without those structures in our mind, our kids won't have those structures unless

Britt Hartley [01:47:55] we put them there.

John Dehlin [01:47:56] Right?

Britt Hartley [01:47:56] Yeah. My son's always had the structure that death is a part of life. And he certainly, like, he's had to adjust to that as a 12 year old differently and I think more healthily than me as a 12 year old in. In fact, I just saw a movie last night with my kids. It's on Netflix. It's called Orion in the Dark. And it talks like, it talks about nihilism and existentialism and the void and darkness and all of these things. And this is a kid's cartoon movie. And what happens is there's a personification of dark and the kid is very afraid. And then he faces his fears.

Britt Hartley [01:48:30] He gets, gets closer to it. And at the end of the movie he. It's this starry night and he values that. If it wasn't for darkness, I couldn't see the stars at night and I couldn't see this beautiful scene. And he's made peace with darkness and hard things being the backdrop that make the great things so bright. And this is literally a kids movie and my kids are watching it as if it's just a kids movie and if it's nothing. And I'm like, oh my God, like I'm so behind as a Mormon that like, this is the meaning of life in this kids movie. I didn't figure it out until I was 40, but.

Britt Hartley [01:49:04] But my kids can watch this on Netflix. Like, wow. And so sometimes we underestimate what our kids are capable of because we didn't have those tools. But they can be strong in the face of these things when we give them opportunities.

John Dehlin [01:49:18] Yeah. And post Mormons don't have by any stretch a monopoly on coping with moving into a secular life. I love your reference to the movie Everything Everywhere all at Once and the googly eyes, you know, in the end, the ending, because that wasn't that movie. And Alan Mount helped me realize this more formally. He just got a license plate for his Tesla that says absurd. But wasn't Everything Everywhere all at Once all about nihilism and absurdism and learning to cope with death and the pains of life?

Britt Hartley [01:49:53] Absolutely. It was all that that movie was about. And that was something that surprised me. When I was coming out of Mormonism, I did feel. Feel like the only one who had gone as far down the rabbit hole as I did, because it seemed like even ex Mormons didn't go, like, weren't deconstructing free will or something like that, you know, and so I felt like I was the only one. And then I step out of Mormonism for half a second and realize, like, oh, the death of God is far bigger than Mormonism. We've been dealing with this for a while now, certainly since the Enlightenment.

Britt Hartley [01:50:25] And nihilism is. You know, when I started talking about it, I was. I was shocked at how many people, including how many young people were there. They just got there in a different way. Like, obviously mine is specific to this Mormon deconstruction journey, but there are many paths there. And, you know, to have a movie as big as everything, everywhere, all at once, and the center of that movie is the shift from nihilism into absurdism is something really interesting. Interesting is something really interesting. And so when I started as a spiritual director, most of what I did was Mormon deconstruction. And now the majority of my work is. Is in nihilism and is much bigger than Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:51:05] That's so cool. Yeah, we love that we have. We have at least one misunderstanding that I thought would be fun to address. Stacey Adams writes, how can Brits say leftist is the problem when we literally have a cult leader on the right, one who people will give their lives for? I'm confused. And then Maven responded, Stacey Adams, that's not what she said, though. But, Britt, how would you respond to Stacey Adams question?

Politics, Hierarchy, and Post-Mormon Values

Britt Hartley [01:51:38] Yeah, so, you know, we can talk about Trump and hierarchies and authority on the right. Certainly when we look at political values, authority, loyalty, purity, we see these core values on the right, and we. There's all kinds of problems with those core values and a shadow side to all of those core values.

Britt Hartley [01:51:58] But something that's sometimes harder to see is the problems of the opposite side. There are times that the left will control narratives. Or you can be kicked out of ex Mormonism or kicked out of the left because you are not speaking according to the narrative. I think Matt Harrison was the one who wrote how she got kicked out of ex Mormonism, which is this idea that there's this narrative we have as ex Mormons, and if you. If you go off the narrative, you'll get kicked out of Reddit groups, you'll get kicked out of Facebook groups, and. And, you know, sometimes that can happen on the other side.

Britt Hartley [01:52:33] And so even though the left isn't as hierarchical, if you don't see the political values of the left. And there's good things. Political values on the left include compassion and justice, and we need both of those core values. But if you don't see the shadow side to those values, then you're missing a part of the story. There are times when we need the political values of the left, and there are times that we need the political values of the right.

Britt Hartley [01:53:00] And we, you know, your personality and your values, you're going to line up somewhere on that spectrum, and that's fine. But if you can't even see the shadow side of your own side, then I would say that there's a reason to look into it. And this is why I force myself. I will follow specific voices, voices outside of my echo chamber, to make sure I'm not getting sucked in to a reality of one narrative and one message that has its own shadow side that it's, that it's unaware of. And so you almost have to, in the political sphere, force yourself to follow people that are outside of your political leanings in order to get different,

Margi Dehlin [01:53:40] different

Britt Hartley [01:53:40] aspects of reality for someone to call out some of the shadow side of the left, left. Now, I am saying that people will always say, oh, you're just a, you know, white Republican, whatever. I am saying that as someone who has always leaned left politically, Since I was 15 years old, I've leaned left politically. But if you can't even verbalize or notice the shadow side of the left, I would say that you're a little bit too sucked into the, the, the, the core values of that side and the good things without seeing its shadow. Everything has a shadow.

John Dehlin [01:54:12] Yeah. And I may be, I, I may be mistaken here. And if I am, I would welcome people to correct me. I've been, I, I think no one's going to confuse me for, like, a Trump fan, but I'll just pick one thing. Like, if you want to say Trump's all evil, I will just say this. Think about past presidential administrations and how much they got into war, how much they used the military, how many deaths came about because of executive orders to use drones or to engage in war. I personally think that war is one of the most evil things ever in the history of humankind.

John Dehlin [01:54:56] And I think an objective analysis of Trump's four years might show that in terms of war and death and violence, Trump might have pretty decent scores around that, that one thing. Now, I could be wrong there. Please let me know if I'm wrong. But I'm just trying to say, like you said, Brett, we need to be Able to look at our own sides.

Britt Hartley [01:55:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:23] Not just.

Britt Hartley [01:55:23] If you, if you think that the other half of America are all stupid, like, you'll get that from both sides, both the left and the right. If you think that 50% of America or whatever, you know, whatever that percentage is, are all stupid and evil, then you've probably missed something because they're humans just like you. So what are their values and what are the core values that they're bringing to the conversation? And what are the shadow side of that core values? And the left will have that too.

John Dehlin [01:55:51] Yeah. So we super, super loved the ending of your book. And Margi wants to kind of ask you a question and maybe have you read a little bit from the end of your book? As we wrap up and don't go away, viewers and listeners, we have a couple final thoughts before you end.

Reading from the Book and Closing Reflections

Margi Dehlin [01:56:08] Yes. Would you mind reading? How do you think about reading a little bit? So I thought a great way to end. Yeah. What we've done here is it's on page 222 and maybe from I'll meet you at the field paragraph to the end.

Britt Hartley [01:56:29] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:30] Okay. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:56:32] And Margi, what, what is it that you like or what is the theme that you want to share about this just so people can know what to look for or what you valued about it?

Margi Dehlin [01:56:40] Oh, I just feel like, I feel like it speaks for itself. We could have her share it. And then part of it too was just personally when I read it and I haven't finished the whole book, but I skip to the end just for the sake of today. But part of what I loved about it was you have a way of writing. We've heard a lot of kind of ideas, concepts, practices today. But your book has a way of, of being, in my, my experience, something that feels personal. You have a way of kind of getting on the page to make the reader not feel alone. And this is an example of that. This was just. You leave people with this, that sense of you, a connection to you, actually, and your caring. So I liked that about it.

Britt Hartley [01:57:35] I, I really appreciate that. There's a deeper kind of journey with, with that.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:40] My.

Britt Hartley [01:57:41] The first book that I wrote that I self published on Mormon philosophy that I, that I don't promote or talk about anymore because that was a previous life and a previous journey. But the way that I wrote it was in academic language where every other word was footnoted with some white man who said it first. And that was the way that I learned how to write in history. And I'm in religion And I'm in philosophy and these are all very male dominated spaces. And this is how you write. And so part of my own journey with this book is that spirituality and ideas and even great, you know, even profound ideas don't have to be written in this peacocking academic language for other academics.

Britt Hartley [01:58:27] That there's something beautiful, especially as a woman and, and my whole journey with embodied spirituality that. Can I write this book as if you're sitting across the coffee table from me? Can I talk about these, these, these ideas and these isms and these philosophies in a way that, that really meets people that a 16 year old in existential crisis could, could benefit from? Because I'm not doing the peacocking game that, that I learned how to do. And so I'm glad, I'm, I'm glad that you responded in that way because I, it was part of my own journey to be able to write it in very conversational language because that's part of my own feminine, embodied spirituality that, that we don't have to do pomp and circumstance in order to, to have meaning.

Britt Hartley [01:59:12] All right, here I go. I'll meet you at the field with all the others who are brave enough to wake up. The ones with wounds too deep to be solved by any theology promising riches in the next world. The ones who were told they thought too deeply and too much. The ones who saw the absurd game, the ones who chose love even with no promise of eternal reward. You're not alone. There are many people, some alive, some dead with their words and actions still circulating in the web, who found a field big enough to hold it all. The field is wide enough to hold the profound suffering and beauty of human nature, the grief and the awe.

Britt Hartley [01:59:51] There are many in the field too, more than you know, who are searching for a hand to hold to people who have felt what you feel, who suffer, who see, who perhaps feel like they have seen too much, who have tools and wisdom and who can walk with you and make the load a little lighter. Those who have learned, like all mystics have to dance through life from Rumi Quote out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. There is a field. I'll meet you there. Where the soul lies down in that grass. The world is too full to talk about ideas, language, and even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

Britt Hartley [02:00:27] The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the Door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. End quote. Thank you for taking this walk with me and hearing my story. I hope you found something helpful on these pages. I wrote about the beautiful and terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in as humans, as honestly and simply as I could, as if you were sitting next to me. Now a little time and space separates us, but I extend out to you a warm embrace.

Britt Hartley [02:01:01] Being a human is hard. And just picking up a book like this means, I think, that you are a rare, beautiful, wise and brave creature to deny the empty calories of superstition for a more honest existence. I hope you reach out to me and tell you and tell me your story. I'll meet you at the field. And whatever you do, don't go back to sleep.

John Dehlin [02:01:23] Don't go back to sleep. I love it. What would you say?

Margi Dehlin [02:01:29] Nothing. I just. I feel like this book is an embrace, you know? So thank you for it, Britt.

Britt Hartley [02:01:36] We celebrate you. Thank you so much. You guys have been great supporters and I loved our time together when we podcasted for Mormon stories. And I'm so grateful for your support for this book. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:01:49] So the book is no nonsense spirituality, all the tools, no faith required by Brittany L. Hartley. Please purchase it now on Amazon. We get no compensation for plugging it. We're doing this because we are very confident it will help you in so much, in so many ways. This is the book we, we've all been needing, so please get it. I think this book is going to transcend post Mormonism. It's going to eclipse post Mormonism. So please support Britt. Please buy this book for you, buy copies for everybody else. Let's make it the best selling book. I do want to say that Nuance Ho, our dear friend Nuance Ho, is going to be Hosting Britt in 24 minutes over on her channel.

Britt Hartley [02:02:37] So no rest for the weary.

John Dehlin [02:02:41] So check out Nuance Ho's channel interview with Britt. We love Nuanceo. And Britt, you have an amazing TikTok channel. Aren't you like live streaming on TikTok all day today?

Britt Hartley [02:02:51] Yeah, I'm gonna be in between kind of podcasts that I'm doing. You know, this week I'll try to hop on lives more often to. To answer questions. I usually don't do that very often. I usually just kind of produce content, but. But this week I'll try to be more available to answer questions and, and talk with people.

John Dehlin [02:03:10] But subscribe. What's.

Britt Hartley [02:03:12] I'm assuming no Nonsense. Spirituality everywhere.

John Dehlin [02:03:15] Instagram, Tick tock. Do you have Facebook yet or not really?

Britt Hartley [02:03:20] My Facebook is, you know, Brittany Hartley. I don't do very much there anymore.

John Dehlin [02:03:24] Do you have a YouTube channel will you be doing?

Britt Hartley [02:03:27] I am moving over. So this is my project post book. I'm going to be moving over to YouTube. Part of my own kind of journey and figuring out what I want to do in this space and what makes a meaningful life for me is I really love teaching. Teaching. I was a teacher before I did this. I was a history teacher and teaching is really something that I love to do. And so I, I'm gonna be working with people who, you know, can help me with, with the tech behind that because that's where I, I struggle. But I'm going to be moving over to, to YouTube to hopefully be doing some teaching, which is what I love to do.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:01] How exciting.

John Dehlin [02:04:02] Yeah. Plus Congress just passed that law that's going to kill.

Britt Hartley [02:04:05] Yeah, yeah. I might as well. All my eggs are kind of in the basket of Tick Tock right now, so I should probably do that sooner. I'll come over to YouTube. I gotta learn how to do it.

John Dehlin [02:04:18] We'll promise, we'll promise to collab with you to help grow your channel.

Britt Hartley [02:04:22] Yeah, I love it. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:04:23] If you want, if you want. Okay. And then, Britt, can you just mention again what your coaching is, who it's for, how that works?

Britt's Coaching Work and How to Connect

Britt Hartley [02:04:33] Yeah, So I do some coaching and you can find that on my website. My website books six weeks in advance and I'm coming up onto summer, so there might not be a ton of slots now, but once I figure out my summer schedule with children, I'll be able to open some slots and, you know, it's, it's an hour where we sit together and talk about wherever you're stuck in this and, and try to work that out. So it's different than therapy. I'm not a therapist, so if you have sexual issues and relationship issues, I'm very good to stay in my lane. But after my master's degree in theology, I did a two year program in spiritual direction.

Britt Hartley [02:05:10] And I have, you know, my own coaches that I see in, in mysticism or my own spiritual directors. And I've been in this space for long enough that I've, I've gathered some tools to be able to, hopefully, wherever you're stuck, be able to, to help and send resources so that you can continue on. And it gives me a lot of meaning and purpose and to be the person that I needed when I got stuck there for someone else. And so I really enjoy that I'm not able to do that full time, like a, like a therapist because I do have four children. Three of them are adopted, two of them have special needs.

Britt Hartley [02:05:46] So my, my time is limited. But as much as I can, I try to open up coaching sessions and you can see that on my website. Beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:05:56] Yeah, excellent. Brilliant. We're so grateful for you, Britt. We love your work and we're eager to support it. Britt, really quickly, if somebody just wants to donate to you, just give you money like Venmo or PayPal and just say you're amazing, here's some money. Is there a way for them to do that?

Britt Hartley [02:06:18] That would be great. There is not a lot of money in atheists spirituality. Being an atheist spiritual director, considering it's a title that I essentially made up for myself and a career path that I'm essentially making up as I go.

Britt Hartley [02:06:33] So if this was worth, you know, if this was worth a therapy appointment for you for whatever reason, on my Instagram or on my TikTok, you know, I have a, a link tree where you're able to just donate to the cause if you'd like to do that. It's much appreciated for financial disclosure, since you really try to be good. I know, John. With financial disclosure, my only financial goals is if I could make enough money to go to Harry Potter World with my children, that would be, that would be my goal. That would make my inner child as an elder millennial, that would make my inner child very happy.

Britt Hartley [02:07:10] So if you'd like to help support Britt, be able to do a family trip and go to Harry Potter World for financial disclosure, that's what I'd be. And you know, after paying bills, that would be what I'd be saving my money for. So I'm going to be honest about that. That's where your money would be going and to be able to support me to, to do this, continue to do this work and not have to go get a day job.

John Dehlin [02:07:33] And is that Venmo or PayPal or something else? It'd be Venmo, no nonsense spirituality at Venmo.

Britt Hartley [02:07:40] I think it's NN spirituality or it's Richter Hartley. You'll have to go to the link to be sure.

John Dehlin [02:07:47] Yeah, we want. Let's all, seriously, everyone, right now, let's get Britt at least five, ten grand so she could take her entire family to Harry Potter land. Let's all commit to that.

Britt Hartley [02:07:59] Miguel, Miguel says, I was just looking through movies on Netflix and Britt said Harry Potter when I was looking at the Chamber of Secrets. So that means then if we're playing manifesting stuff, that means that the universe wants me to go to Harry Potter Potter world. I need your support to get there. Just kidding, Just kidding. We don't do that. I don't do that. But I still appreciate the support.

John Dehlin [02:08:23] All right, Britt, good luck. Good luck with this amazing book. Don't be a stranger. Hope you'll join us again soon and we hope you'll come back telling us it's been a bestseller.

Britt Hartley [02:08:34] Thank you so much for your support, John. I love both of you. I love the work that you're doing. And I'm going to hop over with Nuanceo and if you're listening, you can hop over with me to. To her channel.

John Dehlin [02:08:44] Yeah. And. And somebody just said, I'm gonna jump. I'm gonna get on TikTok. Britt's TikTok is amazing. Like, it's amazing and it's. I think it's bigger than Mormon stories on TikTok. It is loved. So that content is absolutely worth consuming.

Britt Hartley [02:09:00] Yeah. Just so you know, I do only like long form content. I don't know how to. You've heard me tell my four hour story and, and you hear me talk. I'm a history teacher by nature. This. And so this idea that I'm going to do 10 second TikToks, I will never do 10 second TikToks. I don't know how to do it. I can't do it. But I do five minute long TikToks. Things that I hope I are helpful for you, but that's authentic to me. That's how I roll. My tiktoks are a little bit longer than most people's, but I hope that they're informative and helpful. Helpful.

John Dehlin [02:09:34] Well, by. By Mormon story standards, five minutes is a nanosecond.

Britt Hartley [02:09:38] Yeah, that's true.

John Dehlin [02:09:41] All right, Brett, good luck. Take care.

Britt Hartley [02:09:43] All right, thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Farewell and Support for Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [02:09:44] Bye now and thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. Margi, it's so lovely to have you as my sidekick.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:51] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:09:52] Or partner, I should say.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:54] Thanks for all you did to make this episode possible. If you value this type of content, we would really love it if you would consider supporting us. At MormonStories.org you can become a monthly donor. Just click on the donate button at the top of MormonStories.org and 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, whatever you can afford.

John Dehlin [02:10:16] Your donations are tax deductible. We're transparent in our finances and all your donations go to supporting me. Margi Maven, Brooklyn Julia Gerardo, our board of directors, our ability to interact with our board of directors, all our equipment, our Internet, our lighting, etc. We need your support. We lose donors every month. We lose 10 to 20 recurring donors. They fall on financial hard times, they lose interest, they move on. They want to support other things. So if you all don't step up to support us, then we have to start cutting services. So please become a monthly donor if you can. Thanks to everyone who donates. We couldn't do without you again.

John Dehlin [02:10:55] Buy Britt's book. Be good to each other, be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Right?

Margi Dehlin [02:11:04] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:11:05] Take care everybody.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:06] Thank you everyone.

John Dehlin [02:11:06] Buy this book. Buy no nonsense spirituality. Take care everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.