Episode 61

The One Who Deconstructed By Reading A Thousand Books

Larry shares his journey from a rigid Catholic upbringing to a broader, more personal exploration of spirituality. His story weaves through early experiences shaped by guilt and expectation, a high-pressure career in investment banking, and a life-altering moment following the events of September 11, 2001. This turning point led Larry to explore diverse spiritual traditions - both Eastern & Western, and to question the boundaries of religious dogma. The conversation delves into faith, symbolism, and the power of personal interpretation, inviting listeners to reflect on their own evolving spiritual paths.

Who Is Larry?

Larry Jordan spent 25 years in investment banking, assisting companies, governments, and non-profit agencies in issuing over $10 billion of municipal bonds for capital projects and cash flows.

In 2011, he quit his job and sold his house to spend his life in service. He drove veterans to the VA clinic, prepared 1,000 tax returns for low-income families, taught school in Africa, and volunteered for the American Red Cross.

Over the last 20 years, he traveled around the world, read over 1,000 books about spirituality, and had some powerful experiences in several spiritual traditions, including baking in a sweat lodge, chanting to Shiva, meditating in a zendo, and whirling with the dervishes.

His first book, "The Way: Meaningful Spirituality for a Modern World" won Silver a 2024 Nautilus Book Award.

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Transcript
Sam:

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today.

I recognize the deep connection that first nations people have to this land, their enduring culture, and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded, and it always was and always will be aboriginal land.

Sam:

Hey there, and welcome to beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control occult communities, and are deconstructing their faith.

I'm your host, Sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained.

Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place. This is beyond the Surface.

Sam:

Welcome, Larry. Thanks for joining me.

Larry:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Sam:

Before we get started, I'm wondering if you can just share with everybody where in the world you are at the moment.

Larry:

Sure. I'm in Arlington, Texas. The indigenous people here were the Caddo. We also had Comanche and several other plains tribes.

I'm in Dallas, Fort Worth area of Texas.

Sam:

Okay.

Larry:

And I. I didn't grow up here, but I've been here my entire adult life. Yeah.

Sam:

Okay. So I love to start these episodes with a very broad, vague question, which is, where does your story start?

Larry:

Yeah, sure. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

You know, it's a cold town, kind of, you know, blue collar, lots of trees, lots of hills, lots of water, lots of sports, lots of civic activities, lots of ethnicity is just a great place to grow up. And I was raised Catholic. I had a lot of guilt. You know, I had a lot of pressure to perform.

I was the oldest child and everybody thought I was, you know, supposed to kind of lead the way. It was a lot of responsibility for, you know, a 12 year old kid. And, you know, I.

I stayed in Catholicism for about 50 years and really I did do very well. I kind of got guilted into success. I was an investment banker. I was a very transactional guy.

I only got paid if I closed, so I figured out how to close. I wasn't any fun at a party, because I was always looking for the next deal. I didn't get to go to many.

Larry:

Parties because I was traveling all the time.

Larry:

I mean, I just worked like a slave.

Larry:

But, you know, I was providing for.

Larry:

My family, and I had some financial security, and, and, you know, I had.

Larry:

I was successful by whatever measure you want.

Larry:

And:

Larry:

My gosh, you know, what. What was that? What kind of religion does that?

Larry:

And I started to explore Islam not because I was spiritually interested, just because I was politically interested. And it took about five minutes to.

Larry:

Figure out, well, that wasn't Islam.

Larry:

That was not Muhammad. That's not in the Quran. That's a fundamentalist kind of thing. And every religion has fundamentalists. And I was really taken with Islam. I.

I discovered some of the mysticism of Islam, the people in Islam that went looking for a direct interaction with the ultimate reality. And I thought, well, why don't we.

Larry:

Have any Christian mystics?

Larry:

You know? And we do, but we don't hear about them. And we really do in the Catholic Church. It's not something Protestantism has ever been comfortable with.

And in Christianity, it's like, hey, you know, if you want to have a. If you want to be exposed to God, just come to church. You know, we'll do that for you. Yeah. And it's. It doesn't really work that way anyplace else.

So I thought, well, you know, that's.

Larry:

It's funny.

Larry:

I guess I don't even understand. I go to mass every week, as Catholic as you can be, and I really don't know that much about it. So I start to explore. And I'm.

When I say I start to explore, I, I, I don't just read the book. I read the whole bookshelf. And so, you know, I just get taken down all these trails of philosophy and theology and history and.

And science and psychology, and, you know, it's just all kind of.

Larry:

And every time there was a whole.

Larry:

You know, I was trying to sort of map the terrain, and anytime there was a gap, I thought, why don't.

Larry:

You just know something about that? You know?

Larry:

So. And a couple of things hit me right away. I'll make this really quick.

First of all, you know, I realized that, particularly in the United States, I think many people have a literal understanding of Christianity and they think the Bible is history. And if you point out to them, well, you know, if you look at other religions, a lot of this, what you think is history.

Is called mythology and other religions, and they take it, you know, as a symbol of something.

Larry:

And the symbols are very rich.

Larry:

I don't mean to, you know, be disrespectful of Christianity. I'm just saying I don't think it's literal, you know, So I started to have really concerns about talking snakes and.

Larry:

Global floods and virgin births and physical resurrections.

Larry:

And I realized that they were, like I say, powerful symbols that are. They're universal almost. And then I realized, you know, well.

Larry:

A lot of the fundamental.

Larry:

Very, very fundamental things in Christianity, like original sin and the Trinity and substitutionary atonement, they're theories.

Larry:

Now, that doesn't mean they're not true.

Larry:

They. They might be accurate representations of reality or not.

Larry:

And what I discovered, the long and.

Larry:

Short of it is not, oh, I.

Larry:

Discovered all these things are false.

Larry:

I just discovered all these things are.

Larry:

Much squishier than I thought that they were.

Larry:

At the end of the day, I was going to have to be convinced that there is a God, that God is personal, that God is three persons. And then I looked at what had happened to Christianity in terms of treatment.

Larry:

Of minorities, treatment of women, treatment of.

Larry:

Lgbtq, and I just thought, you know.

Larry:

This thing has gone way, way off the rails.

Larry:

So I really held everything up to the light. There really were no sacred cows. There was nothing that I wasn't willing to explore.

Larry:

And I really thought when I started.

Larry:

Hey, there's 2 billion believers.

Larry:

It's been around for 2,000 years. There's a book, for crying out loud, you know, what could go wrong?

Larry:

And it turns out a lot. Quite a lot can go wrong, you know, so, yeah, so I had a.

Larry:

Period that was kind of dark. I was angry.

Larry:

A lot of people go through anger, you know, when they're going through deconstruction, and it's. You're angry at things like, well, my.

Larry:

Gosh, I was told this was a fact.

Larry:

You know, nobody.

Larry:

Nobody said it was an opinion.

Larry:

Nobody said it was a theory. You know, nobody told me that there's.

Larry:

A bunch of Christians that believe something totally different.

Larry:

You know, that's another thing. I've started talking about Christianities because there are many different interpretations of Christianity, and.

Larry:

And then you get angry that people.

Larry:

Question you, and they say, oh, well, no, no, you're. You know, you just want to sin. You just falling off the wagon. You're just looking for attention. You were never a believer after all.

Larry:

You know, no, none of that is true. It's not true of me.

Larry:

It's not true. Of most of the people I know are deconstructing. Most of the people deconstruct take it much more seriously than many of the people that don't.

And I was like that.

Larry:

And then you also get angry.

Larry:

I got angry at people who marginalized me because I thought differently than they did. And so I'm very tolerant at this point of. Of other people's opinions.

Larry:

I've been marginalized.

Larry:

I'm not going to marginalize anybody else. And.

Larry:

And so that's probably a good place to stop if you have questions about.

Larry:

Sort of the first half. And I would say the book.

Larry:

I wrote a book called the Way.

Larry:

That'S it behind me, Meaningful Spirituality for a Modern World. And the first half is that deconstruction. It's taking it apart like I just described.

And, you know, I wish that I could have just got right to the second half and said, well, you know, I. I just start out the book. Well, I. I used to believe all things Christians believe. I don't believe that anymore. Here's here.

Here's what I've discovered. But, you know, you can't write a.

Larry:

Book like that in this culture because.

Larry:

People say, well, I thought this was about God and where's Jesus? And is this biblical?

Larry:

So the first half of the book is really just to kind of shake.

Larry:

People loose a little bit and say, hey, all these things, you know, you don't really know, and all these things.

Larry:

You believe very strongly. You don't really have such good reasons for believing them.

Larry:

And I'm not telling you what to.

Larry:

Believe or what not to believe.

Larry:

And there's people that read the book.

Larry:

And say, I'm a better Christian after.

Larry:

I read the book. And I'm glad about that.

Larry:

But there's other people read the book.

Larry:

And say, wow, those are some good questions. I had those questions. I'm glad you took the time to.

Larry:

Do the digging that I didn't have.

Larry:

The time to do or the interest to do.

Larry:

And.

Larry:

And I even had some people say, man, I don't know how to say this, but this is a Jewish man and a real good friend. And I said, go ahead and say it. He said, I just didn't realize that Christians believe so many unbelievable things. Yeah, no, believe it. You know.

Yeah. So anyway, I had to write the first half of the book in order to get to the second half of the book.

Larry:

And in the second half of the.

Larry:

Book, it's not prescriptive. It doesn't say, this is what you're supposed to believe. It just Says, hey, look, I read a thousand books.

I baked in a sweat lodge, I chanted the Shiva. I world with the dervishes, I meditate in a zendo. You're not going to do all those, you're probably not going to do all those things.

You don't have to. But if you want to know what.

Larry:

You learn after you do all those.

Larry:

Things, you know, it's in the book.

Larry:

And the book is really just reporting.

Larry:

I don't have any credential. You know, I'm not a scholar, I'm not a pastor. I'm not somebody that spent my life in the practice of religion.

You know, I was a one hour a week Christian for 50 years. So I was concerned that the book.

Larry:

May not be taken seriously, but it.

Larry:

Really has been, and I've been really gratified by that. But, but it is just, just one guy's reporting on what you find when you, like, dig to the roots on some of this stuff.

Sam:

Yeah.

Sam:

I mean, in terms of the Catholic faith that you were raised with, how embedded was that faith in like, your sense of self and your psyche?

Larry:

That's a great question.

Larry:

I would tell you, and I think.

Larry:

A lot of other Catholics would tell.

Larry:

You that being Catholic is a little bit like being Italian. That, you know, if I'd say, I'm not Catholic anymore, how can you not be?

You know, like a cultural, it was very deep and, and there was a superiority to it. That's really alarming now that, you know. Well, a Catholic might say, well, we.

Larry:

Were the original religion.

Larry:

You know, the, the Protestants, Everybody, all the 45,000 other denominations made stuff up. Well, guess what, you made stuff up too, you know, and, and that's, that's.

Larry:

Kind of what I learned on the.

Larry:

Journey, that, hey, the, the nobody is original, nobody is authentic, nobody.

Larry:

What?

Larry:

The one exercise in the book that gets people's attention. I say take out a piece of paper, write down everything you know about God.

But if you know it because you read it in a book, that's really not the knowledge I'm talking about. Because then we'd have to talk about the book.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

And if you know it because someone.

Larry:

Told you, that's not what I'm talking about either. Because then we'd have to talk about who told you and how they knew.

Larry:

And really don't even tell me you.

Larry:

Had an experience, because guess what? I'm gonna, and I, I, I do this with people and I do it with the utmost respect.

Larry:

Somebody says, I had a profound experience.

Larry:

God spoke to me and I say, well, that is profound. And, I mean, I'm glad for you, and I respect your experience.

I'm just asking because I'm a reporter, do you know that God spoke to you or could you have been talking to yourself? Yeah, and I say that with utmost respect. And half the people say, oh, yeah, there's no question. I was talking to myself.

And the other half of the people say, oh, darn, that's a good question. I. I don't really know how to answer that. I mean, so. So.

Larry:

So the exercise of sitting in front of a blank piece of paper trying to figure out what you absolutely know.

Larry:

About God is a humbling one and a troubling one to people who thought that they knew a lot.

Sam:

Yeah.

Sam:

I'm curious. Prior to:

Larry:

You know, I just bought. I bought the whole story. I thought that God was a person. I thought that Jesus. I. I thought that Jesus was. Because I had done a little reading.

Larry:

I thought that Jesus was something less.

Larry:

Than, you know, the absolute beyond space and time God. But. But I. I certainly thought he was very special.

And if somebody says, well, virgin births and physical resurrections, I might have said, well, it's God. God can do anything, you know, and that's. I.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who, Who's a medical doctor, and he's still a fundamental Christian, and he was in my wedding, and I've known him forever, and he was visiting me in Colorado, and he said, tell me about your book. And I started to tell him, and he said. He said, I. I'm. I think that the earth is 6,000.

Larry:

Years old and the dinosaurs died in.

Larry:

The great flood, and everybody but Noah and his family perished. And I said, wow, really? And this is sort of how I approach it. I said, well, we're. Now, we're in a mountain valley. We're at 8,000ft above sea level.

Did the water get to 8,000ft? And where did all that water come from? And where did it all go? And did all of the kangaroos doggy paddle from.

Larry:

From Australia to the Middle east, take.

Larry:

A boat ride, and then doggy paddle back, and why don't we find human.

Larry:

Bones and dinosaur bones in the same place? But then here's the important thing, and.

Larry:

This is getting back to. I don't. I don't blister anybody about their beliefs. I said, you know what? I said, I wasn't here 6,000 years ago. I wasn't here 13 billion years ago.

You might be right. And he's, well, thanks. Thanks. And then I leaned in, and I know him very well, and I said, it's your turn. He said, what do you mean?

I said, well, just tell me. I might be right. You weren't here 6,000 years ago either. And he says, I just can't do it.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

And I said, well, I know you couldn't, and I'm not angry or upset or anything, but if you're me and you know me like you do, you know, I think it's pretty arrogant that you're not able to give me the same grace that I gave you.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

And he said, yeah, I know. I'm. I feel badly about that, but it has to be that way. So we. We went up on the mountain, and it was a magical place.

And you could touch the rock wall, and it would go up 3,000ft, and it would go down 3,000ft, and you'd look across the valley 50 miles to the north, 50 miles to the west, 50 miles to the south, and blue sky, you know, not a cloud. And. And he had an experience where he.

Larry:

Just thought, man, this is just stupid.

Larry:

This is just so wonderful here.

Larry:

And I'm just seeing one little glimpse.

Larry:

Of this massive universe. So we came back down. We're. We're smoking cigars and looking at the mountain.

Larry:

He said, you know that conversation we.

Larry:

Had the other day? Yeah. He goes, you might be right now. Yeah, it was a beautiful. It was a beautiful moment because nobody. Nobody had to crow about it.

Nobody had to grovel about it. Just said, you know, you're over here.

Larry:

And I'm over here.

Larry:

And. Yeah, you might be right. It was a. And so that's.

Larry:

That's my goal.

Larry:

And, you know, in the United States today, that'll get you a long way in a lot of the political discussions, because, you know, there's.

Larry:

There's a lot of division.

Larry:

There's a lot of people that believe a lot of unbelievable things. And. And so the ability to. To ask questions and look for a middle ground and ultimately say you might be right is. Has been really helpful. It's been.

It's avoided a lot of discomfort, you know, politically and spiritually.

Sam:

Yeah, I think it's. I find, you know, we love when a fundamentalist embraces some nuance. Right. Like, it. Nuance is. Is where we can actually learn and grow and.

And create something new in itself.

I'm curious what it was like for you as you did start deconstructing and started I sort of use the term pulling on a thread in that, like, once you start, you can try and chop it off and go back to Nor, or you can just keep pulling and pulling and pulling and everything starts to unravel.

But I'm curious what that was like for you and whether there was any fear and anxiety and exploring and potentially even dismantling everything that you had known to be true up until that point.

Larry:

Of course, yeah, it was very distressing. And it's. It's a little bit like, you know.

Larry:

When my daughter, who's an adult now, but, you know, when she was very young, she figured out that maybe there.

Larry:

Wasn'T a Santa Claus.

Larry:

So she asked, is there a Santa Claus? And said, no, there's not a Santa Claus. She went away, and five minutes later she came back and said, how about the Easter Bunny?

Larry:

No, there's no Easter Bunny.

Larry:

The Tooth Fairy. You know, it just kept going on and on.

And all these things that we had told her and that she believed, she all of a sudden discovered, if this isn't true, that's not true.

Larry:

That's probably not true either. And it was exactly like that.

Larry:

You know, it's just like, ah, you know, and. And I really did.

Larry:

I really was adrift.

Larry:

Now, I had a friend who helped me at that point, and he said, you know, you. You really need to look at the Eastern spirituality.

Larry:

There's just a whole other way to.

Larry:

Look at these questions. And at the time, it seemed very foreign to me. I didn't really understand what. What a spirituality would look like without a personal God.

I wasn't sure if there was. I took a lot of comfort in the fact that. That I thought Jesus was a historical figure, and I wasn't sure if there were other historical figures.

And anyway, it was. It was. It was not something that I was anxious to do, but I was very close to this guy. He was very smart. He said, really, you need to look at this.

And I've been pretty blessed in my life. I haven't had a lot of misfortune, but I did.

Larry:

I did hit kind of a rough.

Larry:

Spot when I was reading a book about Buddhism, and it was talking about suffering, and it just sort of turned the key for me.

And, you know, when I was a Christian and when people said, well, you know, God has a plan, maybe you should pray more, I'm sure there's a reason for this. God's ways are not our ways. Jesus is with you. Jesus suffered even more than you did.

None of that helped, you know, and the Whole idea of, of suffering in Buddhism is a, it's a pretty fundamental concept and it's basically, look, you know, you're everyone, everyone experiences pain. You experience suffering because of attachment and because you have expectations and, and, and assumptions and things aren't going your way.

And you know, guess what, cupcake? Things are not always going to go your way. And you know, there was a practicality to it that, that really, that really continues to help me.

So, so I looked at, there were three things that kind of got me unstuck. One was the mystics.

And I really became convinced that in all traditions and, and not just religious traditions, in all traditions, people had experiences that were really profound and, and that.

Larry:

They had the same kind of experience.

Larry:

And it was not the experience you'd expect if you were raised like I was. There was no person, there was no three persons. You didn't get transported to heaven. You didn't see any separation between God and man.

You know, I tell people jokingly, when I was a Catholic, I thought I'd go to heaven. The popes are all on one side, the saints are on the other side. Here's grandma, you know, I don't believe that anymore.

And the point is that people that have experiences of ultimate reality, they call them mystical experiences, peak experiences, transcendent experience.

How I'm in front of a waterfall, a work of art, I'm taking a hallucinate drug, I just had a seizure, a stroke, I'm in the middle of a near death experience. Somehow something dramatic happened to me and in my terms, not original to me.

The filters drop and it's like looking at things through a different set of eyes where you see a reality that's.

Larry:

Always there, that you're just not aware.

Larry:

Of and you don't know everything's on a granular basis. All of a sudden this is all.

Larry:

Just a field of energy.

Larry:

And energy goes right through you and me and everything around us and everything is just fine. It always was, it always will be.

Larry:

Because you're connected to that energy.

Larry:

You are the energy. And there's a sense of timelessness, there's a sense of serenity. And it's just striking how many times.

Larry:

You'Ll see this across all traditions.

Larry:

And I'm talking to my wife who.

Larry:

Was with me on the journey.

Larry:

She's much more intuitive than I am, she's much quicker than I am. She doesn't have to read all the books and do all the homework I do.

And I'm telling her, you know, these experiences are just magical and A tear comes down her cheek and she says.

Larry:

I've had that experience.

Larry:

I never told anyone.

Larry:

Never told you didn't think it was spiritual because again, it wasn't what I.

Larry:

Was taught to expect in church. But it was very profound transformative experience.

Larry:

That'S never left me.

Larry:

There's two, there's two things I recommend to people. One is a TED Talk by a neuroscientist named Dr. Jill Bolt Taylor.

And she has a 20 minute TED talk called My Stroke of Insight where she has a stroke and she recovers.

Larry:

And she narrates what happened. And she basically had a peak experience.

Larry:

She doesn't say anything about God or religion or spirituality. She just says, man, you know, I saw something that's always there that I never realized was there. Now once I've seen it, I can't unsee it.

And the other is a classic that.

Larry:

Was written 40 or 50 years ago.

Larry:

Called the Dow Tao of Physics. It's written by a physicist who said, you know, there are striking parallels between Eastern mysticism and the new physics, quantum physics.

Now, in the east, you don't have separation. In Buddhism, they talk about void, which is emptiness. And, and then they talk about form, and they say, emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

That's the Heart Sutra.

Larry:

In Hinduism, they talk about Brahman.

Larry:

There's one thing, fullness. Now, how is emptiness the same as fullness?

Larry:

There's no separation.

Larry:

You call it whatever you want.

Larry:

Everything's sacred or nothing's sacred.

Larry:

God is. If you want to use the word God, and I don't use it anymore, God is a part of us, not apart from us. And in Taoism, there's a similar concept.

Larry:

There's the dao, which is that oneness.

Larry:

And then there's the 10,000 things.

Larry:

It's emptiness and form all over again.

Larry:

And, and so this idea that original.

Larry:

Sin, you can't be separated from ultimate reality. You're, you are ultimate reality. It doesn't mean you created the universe.

Larry:

Or, you know, it just means that everything's the same thing. It's. If it's, if it's a thing, it's not a thing.

Larry:

If it's a thing, it's one thing. If it's a person, it's not a person. It's one person.

Larry:

It's oneness. And there are people who, who have said to me, actually, I can't believe.

Larry:

You spent 20 years and that's all.

Larry:

You came up with.

Larry:

I say, listen, it's all that I need.

Larry:

And, you know, I think back to when when Trump was elected a few years ago. And I don't. I don't like to get political, but.

Larry:

I can't help getting political.

Larry:

I'm writing a book about oneness, and.

Larry:

Here comes a guy, and he's going.

Larry:

To ban Muslims, build walls, marginalize LGBTQ people, separate families, take away people's healthcare. Look, if. If you have the kind of spirituality that I have, if you really believe.

Larry:

In oneness, lack of separation, you don't.

Larry:

Do any of those things. You wouldn't do it yourself, your family, your friend. You wouldn't do it to anybody. And it helps me to live a better life. It is a much.

If I just keep in mind, hey. That we're living one life. I mean, you're in a different place. You answer to a different name. You occupy, you know, a different time.

But we're part of one life.

Larry:

We're fundamentally not so different.

Larry:

There's not.

Larry:

There's an idea in Buddhism about no self.

Larry:

Who are you? There's an.

Larry:

In the east, there's a practice self inquiry.

Larry:

Who are you, while I'm a retired guy? Well, you weren't always that.

Larry:

Well, I'm a grandfather.

Larry:

Well, you weren't always that.

Larry:

I'm a writer. Well, you certainly weren't always that.

Larry:

You only did that once. Okay. Well, you know, and you strip away.

Larry:

The layers, and what am I.

Larry:

How.

Larry:

How is there an essential Larry Jordan.

Larry:

That'S different than an essential Sam Sellers? I just don't. I don't see it anymore, you know, and. And so I. I. Right now, I don't. You know, I tell people I think self is a construct.

Myself is a function of my chemistry.

Larry:

My conditioning, my experience.

Larry:

I think soul is a fiction. I don't think there's any part of me that. That runs the show.

Larry:

You know, Tom Waits says we're all monkeys with money and guns.

Larry:

It sounds funny, but it's. It's pretty. It's pretty accurate when you think about it.

Larry:

How are you different than your dog?

Larry:

Well, you know, I decided to get.

Larry:

Up in the morning.

Larry:

Well, apparently, he did, too, you know. Yeah, well, you know. Well, there's things that he like.

Larry:

There's things that you like and don't like.

Larry:

Well, he just didn't. You see, a better way is food. Well, you know, you get angry with yourself, and other people will look at the dog. You know, it's just.

It's just hard to say that there's really this bright line between human beings.

Larry:

Made in the image of God and.

Larry:

Everything and everyone else and. And Then, you know, one thing that.

Larry:

Was really interesting to me was free will.

Larry:

You know, the people that look at free will say, well, you really don't have as much free will as you think you have, and you can't be absolute about it.

Larry:

And you also can't just let go.

Larry:

Of the reigns and live your life as if you have no will or agency. But, you know, again, your chemistry, your conditioning, your experience accounts for a lot.

Larry:

99% of the things going on in.

Larry:

Your head are subconscious when they look at. When did you decide to get a cup of coffee? Well, there was a little flicker in your subconscious before you made a decision.

Then you got a cup of coffee. Then you, according to the brain scientist.

Larry:

Decided to get a cup of coffee.

Larry:

10 seconds after you got a cup of coffee. So maybe what you think is your. Is your pilot is really your engineer.

Larry:

He's not driving a train.

Larry:

He's just calling out the stations as he go. As you go by. So I just have a very different perspective on things. But, you know, and here's something I tell people. I.

I have awe, you know, I have gratitude, I have reverence. I have a sense of responsibility. I'm just terribly grateful to be here now. And it's not personalized with me. Am I grateful to a supreme being?

Larry:

No, I'm just grateful.

Larry:

I'm just grateful.

Larry:

And. And the way I explain it sometimes.

Larry:

Is I sort of think as alt. I use the term ultimate reality because it's neutral. And it.

Larry:

It is really what I'm looking for.

Larry:

I'm just interested in ultimate reality. I care about objective evidence and subjective experience.

Larry:

And I don't care about speculative theology.

Larry:

So I'm interested in ultimate reality. And so the concept of ultimate reality to me is more like the architecture of the universe than the architect of the universe.

It's the connective tissue. And when I'm plugged in, you know, when I'm. Well, I'll give you a good example and then I'll take another short break for you.

But I have a pretty eclectic spirituality now. I have a book club at Unity, which is a new thought movement. I speak at the Unitarian Universalist.

I spend two months a year in a town where they have ashrams and Buddhist temples. And so I can. In one week I can go to.

Larry:

Catholic mass and pray the Our Father.

Larry:

And then the next, the next day I can go to the ashram and chant to the Divine Mother. Now, I don't say a creed anywhere I go because my spiritual practice is practice. It's not about belief.

But if someone says, well, this is our practice.

Larry:

The way we conceive of ultimate reality.

Larry:

We, we pray the. Our Father, I'll do it.

Larry:

The way we conceive of ultimate reality.

Larry:

We, we chant to the divine mother, I'll do it.

Larry:

Now what does that involve?

Larry:

I, I go to this beautiful setting on the side of a mountain. You know, not a cloud in the sky, the wind is blowing, the sun.

Larry:

Is shining, trees everywhere.

Larry:

And we sit in front of a fire.

Larry:

Now, I've been there sometimes when it's.

Larry:

Snowing, so you have the, this, the sensuous, you know, the fire is, is right, right at you. And you're also getting pelted by snowflakes. I mean, it's.

All of a sudden I'm thinking I'm just immersed in, in the sight and the sound and the smell and the touch. You know, we, we recess and we go inside and, and we have a meal together.

Larry:

And then they sing and dance.

Larry:

Now I say they, because I'm not, I'm not a dancer, but I'm sitting.

Larry:

On the floor, there are women in saris dancing around me, and I'm feeling the wind from the saris.

Larry:

And the whole tone of the ceremony is gratitude. You know, thank you for the sun.

Larry:

Thank you for the wind, thank you for the mountain, thank you for the.

Larry:

Trees, thank you for the food, thank you for the people.

Larry:

So when I talk about the architecture.

Larry:

Of the universe and plugging into the.

Larry:

Architecture of the universe, I'm talking about.

Larry:

And a real life experience that anybody can have where you experience the sight and smell and touch and sound of, of ultimate reality.

Larry:

And, and you experience awe and gratitude and reverence.

Larry:

And so, so I'm not a cynical person.

Larry:

I'm not a nihilistic person. The way the book came about, my.

Larry:

Adult kids sat me down and said, what happened to you? And I was like, what do you, what do you mean? They said, well, you used to be this investment banker.

Larry:

You know, you were conservative, you were transactional, you were driven. Now look at you.

Larry:

You're.

Larry:

You're joyful, you cry more, you laugh.

Larry:

More, you have more friends, deeper friendships. Whatever you're doing, more people should do. So well, I stopped going to church. You know, that's really what.

And to me, yeah, you know, I, I just totally. And, and when you talked about, wasn't.

Larry:

It a terrible place when your beliefs were gone? Yes, it was.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

But can you get out of it?

Larry:

Yes, you can.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

You know, and, and people say, well, what, what beliefs do you embrace now? I don't believe anything, you know, do I?

Larry:

What. What do. Why do I have to believe something? What do I have to believe?

Larry:

I. If. If you ask a Zen master, and this is. I. I have a Zen practice.

Larry:

I know some Zen masters.

Larry:

I've not had this conversation, but this is how it would go. Is there a God? And this is very much Buddha's line, I don't know. Nobody knows. You know, you don't really need to know.

Okay, well, what's the meaning of life?

Larry:

Well, do you realize that you're connected.

Larry:

To everyone and everything? And then you say, well, where do I go when I die? I don't know.

Larry:

Are you here now?

Larry:

You know, and the point is that. That all those questions that I no.

Larry:

Longer had answers to, I realized they're not the most important questions in my life.

Larry:

You know, whether there's a God or.

Larry:

Whether I have some divine purpose that.

Larry:

I'm supposed to discern or whether I'm.

Larry:

Going to go somewhere after I die is not. It never affected the way I live my life. It still doesn't.

Larry:

But the sense of connection is tangible, and it does affect my way of life.

Sam:

Yeah.

Sam:

You've mentioned your wife and your kids a few times, and I am wondering, because, you know, I've talked to a lot of people who have done the whole deconstruction thing, and I'm wondering what it was like and the impact that it had on your relationships with family and friends and community. Because for a lot of people, that comes with an equal amount of loss as it does freedom. What was that like for you?

Larry:

Yeah, great question. And a very. That is a common experience.

Larry:

Thankfully, my wife and I were on the same journey.

Larry:

She was, like, I say, ahead of me. We talk to each other a lot, and we converge in our thinking.

Larry:

There still are things where she and.

Larry:

I are in slightly different places, but. But not on.

Larry:

Not on the big stuff.

Larry:

My kids actually helped me, and when they were young adults and.

Larry:

And I was still kind of a.

Larry:

Very authoritative father and very Catholic and very conservative. They challenged me because I was. I was okay at the time with where the Catholic Church was and lgbtq. And my kids said, what. What are you doing? What?

What. What are you thinking? And, you know, I could not explain myself.

Larry:

I just realized I kept stumbling around.

Larry:

I said, well, you know, I. I think gay people are flamboyant. Did you say?

Sam:

I mean, to be fair, we are.

Larry:

Well, but, you know, their point was, do you know any straight people that are flamboyant? Is that like a Hang up with you. Flamboyancy?

Larry:

No, not.

Larry:

Not normally. Yeah. And I said, well, you know, they're. I don't know, they're. They're not always, you know, monogamous, you know.

Do you know people that are straight that are not always monogamous? Well, yeah, a lot of.

Larry:

Is that particularly a problem for you?

Larry:

I go, no. Well, what.

Larry:

What is your gay problem anyway?

Larry:

And, you know, the more that I.

Larry:

Said, the more stupid that it sounded.

Larry:

And the more, you know, when you're.

Larry:

On the losing end of an argument.

Larry:

And you realize it and you just. You just wish you could take back.

Sam:

Everything, the mental gymnastics that you find that you have to start to play to be able to keep your argument.

Larry:

Yeah.

Larry:

And I just realized, you know, this.

Larry:

Is really a losing battle. I. I am in the.

Larry:

I'm just in the wrong.

Larry:

And I accepted what the church told me, like many other things, without questioning it, and I should have. So they were.

Larry:

They were really helpful to me in that process. And I give them credit because, like.

Larry:

I say at the time, they challenged me. And I wasn't really looking for a.

Larry:

Challenge, and I wasn't really happy about it.

Larry:

And I ended up looking pretty stupid once we got into that conversation.

Larry:

But I'm, you know, I'm glad that we got there. Now. My parents are an interesting story.

Larry:

My parents are still Catholic, still conservative.

Larry:

And there was a lot of friction.

Larry:

For a long time about my beliefs. And to the point my dad said.

Larry:

I don't want to talk about politics.

Larry:

I don't want to talk about religion. And I sort of said, well, you.

Larry:

Know, that's very superficial.

Larry:

I mean, that's what my friends and.

Larry:

My family talk about.

Larry:

I mean, what are we going to do? Talk about the weather or talk about our health? I mean, I don't get that. But that's what you want to do. That's what we'll do. So I'm writing a book.

And he says one day, hey, how's your book coming?

Larry:

I said, it's done.

Larry:

He said, what, are you going to.

Larry:

Show it to me?

Larry:

I said, no, no, I didn't think you. I'm not hiding anything, but I didn't think you were interested in it. You're not going to like it. And he goes, well, send it to me.

Larry:

I'm curious.

Larry:

I'd like to read it. So I sent it to him. And somehow the conversations that you have on the spur of the moment where maybe you.

Larry:

Maybe you don't word things the way.

Larry:

You want, maybe the other person doesn't.

Larry:

Maybe all of a sudden it gets.

Larry:

Angry when you have a book and.

Larry:

And the guy can read the book.

Larry:

And he can say, I'm gonna just put this down and think about it. Or, you know, he mentioned this a few pages ago. I didn't really get what he was. Okay, now I see what he's saying.

And so my dad read the book very closely and, and very constructively and there are a few places. So I don't agree with you on this. You know, I don't. But, but you know, there are other places, so.

Larry:

Well, I think you'd make your point better if you did this or, you.

Larry:

Know, caught a few typos. And so, and then at the end of it, he said, now that, you.

Larry:

Know, now that I really understand your thinking, I have a lot more respect.

Larry:

For you and, and I feel a lot closer to you now that I've read the book. So I thought that was a win. And, but unfortunately it's, you know, if.

Larry:

I say, yeah, the way to feel.

Larry:

Things with your family is to read a thousand books and bake in a sweat lodge and write a book, you know, that's, that's a hard way.

Larry:

It's a hard won battle. But, but there is hope.

Larry:

And, and I would say this, that my inquiry was so serious that, that.

Larry:

It'S difficult to dismiss me.

Larry:

You know, if somebody says, well, I just don't think you really understand.

Larry:

What Jesus was saying in the Gospel of Mark.

Larry:

I, I actually do understand that. And, and so people don't get very far when they try to evangelize me.

And another thing that's frustrating is somebody says, well, you know, have you ever read Charles Spurgeon? I said, I've read a little bit.

Larry:

Well, you should read this.

Larry:

I said, you know, I will read that. Now I say, have you ever read the Dowdy Ching or the Bhagavad Gita?

Larry:

No.

Larry:

I said, well, you should read that. So the next time we meet, he says, did you read Charles Spurgeon? I said, yeah, I did. Did you read the Bhagavad Gita? No, I didn't.

I said, well, what the are we going to talk about? Because I'm not really interested in having a conversation. That's the circles around your belief system. I mean, you. I need parity here.

Larry:

I need to get to the same.

Larry:

Place I got with my friend. You might be right.

Larry:

You might be right.

Larry:

Now we can talk. If this is a conversation about how you're right and I'm wrong, there's nothing to Talk about. There's just nothing to talk about. And I've had.

I've had people tell me, well, one thing that we haven't talked about is that I did draw some inspiration from the person of Jesus. There's a story about the rich young man, and somebody says, what do I do to attain salvation? Well, follow the law.

You know, it sounds kind of Jewish. Yeah, I do that. Well, be a good person. You know, it sounds kind of Catholic. I do that. I do that.

Larry:

Okay.

Larry:

Jesus says, sell your stuff and follow me. And that story haunted me, and I realized it was speaking to me, that. That my. That I was at, you know, in my 50s.

My parents were still alive, my wife and I were still married, Our kids were launched, we were having grandchildren.

Larry:

Everybody's healthy, we have some financial security.

Larry:

What am I doing doing bond deals?

Larry:

Now, my wife had a slightly less problem because she.

Larry:

She works as a nurse, and she's bringing new babies into the world, and I'm bringing new bond deals into the world. So, you know, it's just like, yeah, maybe there's something more here. And, you know, I would think, well.

Larry:

I don't know if I have enough.

Larry:

To quit at 52 or whatever. And. And there was this voice said, hey.

Larry:

You'Ve been all over the world.

Larry:

I mean, the Average person makes $2.

Larry:

A day, $5 a day.

Larry:

How. How much is enough for you?

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

And so we.

Larry:

We did quit our jobs and sell.

Larry:

Our house and, you know, spend our life in service.

Larry:

And that means, you know, we've taught.

Larry:

School in Africa, and we help poor folks with their income tax, and we.

Larry:

Drive veterans to the va and we.

Larry:

Teach literacy classes, and we go on homeless counts. And I mean, you know, we took the rich young man pretty seriously. And that's another thing that, you know, I don't really.

If somebody says, well, are you a Christian? I say, well, first of all, I. I don't even know what that means. If you're asking me if I. If I follow Jesus. Yeah.

Jesus said, quit your job and sell your stuff and follow me. And I did that. Are you a Christian? You know, and look, I'm not. I'm not trying to suggest everybody's supposed.

Larry:

To quit their job, but I'm trying.

Larry:

To suggest that, you know, there's more.

Larry:

Than one way to follow Jesus.

Larry:

And if you think my way was easy way, why don't you try it?

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

And, you know, so.

Larry:

So there are people who meet me.

Larry:

That say things like, you're a better Christian than any Christian I know now, I take it as a compliment because.

Larry:

It was meant that way, but it's.

Larry:

A backhanded compliment because they really should.

Larry:

Have said, you're good, you're one of.

Larry:

The best people that I know. Because there's not a one to one equivalence between being a good Christian and.

Larry:

Being a good person.

Larry:

And, and the way that it came.

Larry:

At me kind of implied that there was.

Larry:

Yeah. You know, there's 8 billion people in the world and there's 2 billion of them are Christian.

Larry:

And a whole bunch of those people.

Larry:

Christian or non Christian, are good people.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

So.

But that's just a long winded way of saying that the way I try to live my life and the way I ask my questions and the way I conduct myself, people are supposed to think there's something there that, that I.

Larry:

Should at least take seriously.

Larry:

This is not somebody I can dismiss or should dismiss.

Larry:

And he's respectful to me.

Larry:

He's certainly not dismissing me.

Sam:

If you had to pick one of the most like, potently powerful parts of your deconstruction, what comes to mind first?

Larry:

It's hard for me to say because.

Larry:

My process was sort of a slow roll.

Larry:

I think there was a time when I just sort of realized, well, there's just not much standing, you know, and that was a difficult realization. And I, you know, the only way through is forward.

And so if somebody is at the point where I was, where, where there's nothing standing, well, you, you've got to rebuild from here. And it doesn't have to be a new religion or a new belief system or a new purpose. You just have to sort of realize, where am I in my terms?

You know, where are you connected to the universe? You know, And I know people say, well, I'm a musician, that's what brings me joy.

Then you're supposed to make music, you know, And I have a friend who's.

Larry:

Whose father in law passed.

Larry:

And he had been a veteran, he had been a business owner, he had raised a family. But his obituary was the best obituary I've ever read. It said, didn't mention any of those things.

Said he played with children, he sang songs, he grew flowers, he walked dogs.

Larry:

You know, he loved life. That's, that's what it's all about.

Larry:

And, and so part of the one thing that's transformative that we haven't taught.

Larry:

We'Ve talked a little bit about the.

Larry:

Concept of no self, but, but, you know, just this idea of individuality and, you know, personal gain and personal responsibility and personal salvation. The approach I Have now, it's like, no, it's not personal anything. You know, it's universal. It's. It's the connection to. To everyone and everything.

And that's what it's all about. And so if I'm winning and someone else is losing, then I'm not winning.

Sam:

You know, one of my favorite questions to ask people, because so often we think that the church owns certain words and certain concepts, and spoiler, they don't. So I love to ask people this question to sort of reclaim language that might have been used against them in the past, which is present day.

What brings you joy and peace?

Larry:

Again, really simple things. You know, I have three young grandsons.

Larry:

Two of them live very close to me.

Larry:

One of them lives a few hours away. They're at the stage where, you know, they think their papa's pretty cool.

And so there's nothing that brings me more joy than just tickling and wrestling and telling. Telling jokes and stories and just spending time. You know, we'll go have lunch, bring. Bring a hamburger up to my.

To my grandson and have lunch with him at school. And that's, that's really, you know, what. It's. What it's about.

Sam:

Yeah, I love that.

Sam:

I love to finish these episodes with some encouragement for listeners and particularly for people who are at the beginning of their journey, who have just pulled on that thread, who have just read a book, read an article, watched a podcast, listened to a podcast or something like that, and they're at the very beginning of their deconstruction. What would you say to them?

Larry:

Well, I would really be encouraging, and I would warn someone that there is.

Larry:

A little bit of turmoil if, if.

Larry:

You'Re, if you're holding on to things and, but, but, you know, there is a way through it. And, and when you get to the other end, for me, I'm in a better place than I was. I have much more joy in my life. I have.

Larry:

I just care.

Larry:

I. I just feel like I care about the right things and I don't care about the wrong things. And, And I don't beat myself up.

You know, somebody says, well, do you regret doing those Bond deals and making that money? I don't regret. Do you regret spending time in the Catholic Church? You know, if I had to over again, I wouldn't do it.

Larry:

But do I regret it?

Larry:

That's a hard thing to say. I mean, you know, so I, I wouldn't.

Larry:

I wouldn't beat yourself up.

Larry:

And, you know, I think. I think we all live in, in.

Larry:

In a little Bit of a silo.

Larry:

You know, we. We know that we. We're in the same neighborhood. We go to the same schools, the same churches, the same stores.

Everybody thinks like us and acts like us and talks like us and. And religion is a silo of its own, you know, and a lot of people think that their version of Christianity is.

Larry:

That's just the way all Christians are.

Larry:

It's not that that Christianity is just like all religions are.

Larry:

It's not.

Larry:

Um. So, you know, the.

Larry:

The real key to this is just to keep an open mind and an.

Larry:

Open heart and to just say, I'm.

Larry:

I'm going to follow truth wherever it leads.

Larry:

Now, if that's not your thing, then. Then if you go looking for truth, it's going to upset you. So, so it's not universal advice, but if I would say that's.

Larry:

That.

Larry:

That sort of a.

Larry:

Is a sift right there.

Larry:

You say to somebody, are you looking for comfort or are you looking for clarity? And, you know, a lot of the things that we believe are comfortable. You know, there's a God that loves me. He set up laws.

If bad people get punished, good people get rewarded.

Larry:

I'm going to live forever after I die. Those are all very comforting beliefs, and.

Larry:

Some of them might be true, but maybe not. And, you know, what I say to people is, well, think about a world where there is no God, where there are no rules, where there is no justice.

How terrible would that world be to live in?

Larry:

And if they say it would be terrible, I say, well, how different would.

Larry:

It be than this world be the.

Larry:

Same as this world.

Larry:

There's no, there's nothing about this world that says, oh, God, God's in control.

Larry:

Everything's fair, the rules are clear.

Larry:

I know where I'm going. No, no. So Christianity did a big disservice to us all, I think, by giving us the false sense of security that they had all the answers.

Larry:

And, and, you know, one thing I.

Larry:

Said the other day that I wish I would have said sooner is I went to church for 50 years.

Larry:

There is no mystery in church.

Larry:

But, you know, somebody read my book, said, well, now that I've read your book, I realized there's really not like some kind of answer man to go to, to get answers to all these. All these really important questions. No, there's not.

Larry:

There's not.

Larry:

You know, and so you have to.

Larry:

Live with a little bit of ambiguity.

Larry:

And uncertainty and insecurity and, and. And at the end of the day, say, well, I guess I've always lived with this.

Larry:

I just didn't know it.

Larry:

You know, that's the point. That's the point.

Sam:

Yeah.

Sam:

And to mention your book, like I said, I read it prior to this interview and I will pop it in the show notes for people to be able to access it because it is deeply insightful and informative and interesting without, you know, I've read some books that have a tone of beratement and disrespect and I don't love that. And, and so this, you know, your book does not have that.

So I recommend it to people to be able to even just ask the questions about things that their current answer is, I don't know.

And to be able to, like you said, sit with it, feel how you feel about the words that are on the page and ask questions about those words just as much as any other words that you read on a page. And so thank you for putting the book into the world. It's wonderful and I will.

Larry:

Oh, thank you.

Larry:

I'm so glad you read it.

Sam:

Yeah, I will be sure to pop that in the show notes for people to be able to access it as easily.

Larry:

It's pretty, it's pretty user friendly. You know, it's got short paragraphs and short chapters.

There's a reading suggested reading with, you know, annotated bibliography and, and also study questions. And it's really intended for somebody to say, oh, now there's something, you know, I'd like to know a little more about.

Larry:

It's.

Larry:

It's a very broad overview and like you say, it's not prescriptive and it's certainly not angry there. I spent so much time on the. I spent a lot of time on the content of the book.

Larry:

I probably spent just as much time.

Larry:

On the tone of the book because I really didn't want an angry book. Yeah, I didn't. There's a fine line between this guy knows what he's talking about and this guy sounds like a know it all.

And how do you project authority and.

Larry:

Humility at the same time?

Larry:

And it's a very, it's.

Larry:

It's really difficult to do.

Larry:

And I, I feel, I feel pretty good about the book. I feel very good about the book.

Sam:

Yeah.

Larry:

Wonderful.

Sam:

Well, thank you for joining me. I've loved this conversation.

I love when talking about, you know, things that simultaneously make no sense and complete sense at the same time, they're my favorite topics of conversation. So it has been a pleasure to chat with you. So thank you for joining me.

Larry:

Oh, thank you.

Larry:

It's been delightful I really, really enjoyed visiting with you.

Larry:

Yeah.

Sam:

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.

If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you.

Remember, no matter where you are on your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep moving forward. Take care.

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About the Podcast

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Beyond The Surface
Stories of Religious Trauma, Faith Deconstruction & Cults

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About your host

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Samantha Sellers

Sam is a registered therapist in Australia; she specialises in Religious Trauma, Deconstruction and the Queer Community. She works locally in Goulburn, NSW and online worldwide (except US & Canada)

She values the privilege that she gets to sit with people, hear their story and share in the highs and lows of the thing we call life. Sam loves nothing more than being a part of someone feeling seen and heard.

Sam is a proudly queer woman and married to the wonderful Chrissy and together they have a sweet Cavoodle named Naya who is a frequent guest in the therapy space.