Unlearning: Spirituality for the Real World

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Every once in a while, a conversation hits you so deeply that you feel different afterward — softer, more awake, more honest with yourself.

My latest guest on The Quantum Shift podcast, Bill Nugent, is that kind of person. Bill is the author of the forthcoming memoir Unlearning Myself, a raw and courageous exploration of shedding fear-based identity and remembering who we truly are beneath the noise, the conditioning, and the survival strategies we mistake for self.

Bill doesn't teach transformation from a safe, academic distance.

He lived it — in the most visceral, heartbreaking, and ultimately liberating ways.

And in our conversation, he opened doors most people keep sealed shut.

This is one you’re going to feel.

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The Path of Unlearning

Bill talks about unlearning as a return — not an improvement project, not a new identity to build, but a remembering of what’s always been true before the world told us who to be.

He spent over three decades immersed in Jungian psychology, miracle-minded thinking, and profound spiritual traditions. He trained directly with Marianne Williamson. He authored the Unlearning Framework. He built a multimillion-dollar business… and then watched it collapse almost overnight.

That collapse — the moment he tumbled from “What car should I buy this week?” to “Do we have enough money for groceries?” — cracked open everything.

It stripped away every identity he had built to survive:
The good boy.
The achiever.
The provider.
The one who holds it all together.

Bill describes the collapse not as punishment, but as a portal.

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“Everything that wasn’t true had to fall away so what was true could show itself.”

The Trauma That Builds the Mask

For most of us, the world teaches us that safety lies in fitting in, minimizing ourselves, and doing whatever earns love and approval.

For Bill, that conditioning came violently.

He shares — calmly, without drama, without blame — a childhood story that may be one of the most harrowing I’ve ever heard from a guest. As a boy, he stood in his garage while his father held a gun to his face and said:

❝

“I wish you were dead.”

Let that sit for a second.

It wasn’t the only time.
It wasn’t the last time.

He learned to become quiet.
He learned to be small.
He learned that safety required self-erasure.

And yet — he broke the cycle.

He didn’t pass that pain on.
He didn’t stay in the shape trauma forced him into.
He didn’t become what his father’s fear tried to mold him into.

He unlearned it.

Falling Apart to Fall Into Himself

As he moved into adulthood, the trauma turned into anger, rebellion, and eventually addiction. It led to a series of DUIs, a serious accident that nearly killed someone, and jail time.

In jail, he didn’t posture or fight. He survived by helping other inmates write letters home. It’s here that people began calling him “Scribe.”

Even then — before the spiritual language, before the formal study, before the frameworks — Bill was already practicing the giving nature he now teaches.

After jail, he found himself in a court-mandated Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. That room — which he initially walked into simply to “not go back to jail” — marked the beginning of his spiritual life.

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“I didn’t know it then, but AA was the first place I ever met a higher power that didn’t want to punish me.”

This cracked open everything.

A Course in Miracles entered his life. The concepts of fear and love. The idea that peace isn’t found by becoming better, but by seeing through what was never true.

Walking Home Without Moving

One of the most powerful ideas Bill shared is this:

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“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.”
— A Course in Miracles

Bill explains that our suffering doesn’t come from the world — but from the meaning we attach to everything.

The relationship that ends.
The business that collapses.
The friend who leaves.
The partner who disappoints.
The fear that whispers we’re unlovable, unsafe, or alone.

Those meanings — not the events — are what hurt.

Unlearning is not making the pain disappear.
It’s walking through the emotion instead of distracting, numbing, or outrunning it.

❝

“The only way out is through.”
— Bill Nugent

And when we stop avoiding what we feel, when we stop making identity out of fear, something extraordinary happens:

We meet the part of ourselves that was never broken.

A Dark Night That Became a Dawn

Bill shares an experience that took place after leaving the woman he would later marry — Allison. He left her three times, not because she did anything wrong, but because unconditional love felt foreign and unsafe after a childhood where love came laced with violence.

Then came the collapse.

A two-week spiritual breakdown — or breakthrough — where every identity he’d built disintegrated. Something ancient, deep, and true emerged.

❝

“I was shown everything I’d been holding onto… and everything that was never real.”

When he returned to Allison, she said:

❝

“I don’t know what happened to you… but you’re not the same man.”

And she was right.

He wasn’t.

Love or a Call for Love

Bill teaches that every single thing in life is either:

Love, or
A call for love

That’s it.

There’s no third category.

The person who cuts you off in traffic.
The friend who lashes out.
The partner who shuts down.
Your own fear, anger, jealousy, or shame.

It’s all either love — or a call for it.

When we can see life that way, everything softens.
We stop defending.
We stop attacking.
We stop needing the world to be different to feel okay.

We return to what we’ve always been.

Bill’s Work & Where to Find Him

Bill’s mission is simple: serve.
Give.
Share.
Guide.

You can find him here:

🔹 Website: UnlearningMyself.com
🔹 Free eBook: Available on his site
🔹 Substack: The Unlearning
🔹 Medium: @billnugent
🔹 Email: [email protected]
🔹 Upcoming Book: Unlearning Myself: A Journey Back to Inner Peace and Wisdom