When Old Religious Tactics No Longer Work

One of the most common questions we get from our clients is, "How do I make my religious programming just go away?" I know it's there. I hate it. I want it to stop so I can finally feel whole. Have you felt the same way, too?

The reality is that you are so steeped in your programming, that it's difficult to notice that the way you are reacting towards it is actually from your programming. 

First off, let's talk about what we mean when we use the term religious programming. It's simply the idea that religion has given you a framework for how to engage within the world, that has been habituated by your brain, over and again. You were conditioned (maybe since birth!) to think, feel, behave and react to stimuli in a very specific way. So when you leave a system like that, you are still taking that framework with you. And if you aren’t aware of how programming works, you will just continue to react from a different side of the very same coin you're trying to run away from. 

So how normal of you that you would want the programming to just stop, You were trained, after all, to constantly monitor yourself for any sign of sin, in order to repent and make yourself right in the eyes of God. Whenever you "messed up" (and that's according to what your religion taught you was sin), you'd feel shame because it meant you were:

• Missing the mark
• Not measuring up to your "potential"
• Out of alignment with the will of God

The only thing that could cure this condition was a savior. We can guess that you are most likely still relating to yourself from the same place of I'm broken and I need to be fixed, as you try to now rid yourself of your programming. You're still on a search for a cure or savior to rescue you and make you whole again. The words are just different; you've just traded terms like "sinner" for "toxic and unhealthy". Same coin. Different side. 

We want you to really hear what we are about to say: The sign of wholeness is not the absence of your programming. In fact, any sign of discomfort doesn't mean you're broken. It means is that you're human. What matters is what you do with it.

That is why at Happy Whole Way, we are not interested in asking, "How do I make this stop?!"  In fact, the question itself wreaks of the deep belief that something is wrong with you that you need to fix (hello, programming!). Instead, we want to learn how to ask, "What will I do with this now?" Because your role isn't to CURE yourself of being human, it's to CARE for whatever is presenting itself.