From Leaving the LDS Church for 20 Years to Going Back: Kamron Coleman on Mysticism, Suffering, and Finding God Again

Kamron Coleman is my uncle. He is also an artist eight thousand hours into a scroll that is three hundred feet long and only half finished. We have never actually hung out before this conversation, which tells you everything you need to know about why this episode needed to happen.

✨Listen to the full episode or read for the breakdown.

There Is No Uncle Kamron

Before we got into the artwork or the theology, Kamron told me something that cracked my heart open. When his brother told his teenage son that Uncle Kamron was coming to visit, the boy said there is no Uncle Kamron. Kamron had been out of the church for twenty years, had distanced himself culturally and geographically, and the separation had become so complete that a fifteen year old in the family did not know he existed.

For me, I grew up thinking he just did not like us. He grew up feeling the same way about us.

Kamron talked about something that I think gets overlooked when someone leaves the church. When you have twenty years of shared community, family prayers, scouts, tithing, scripture reading, all of it woven into who you are, leaving is not as simple as walking out a door. You do not get to take that communal spirit with you. The people you leave do not get to keep the version of you they loved either.

Why don't you just leave? Because you cannot disentangle a religion from your whole self.

What Brought Him Back

Kamron spent twenty years outside the church, exploring Sufi Islam, mysticism, and a way of practicing religion that was informed inwardly rather than handed down from the outside. He came back not because he had resolved his theological questions but because he was commanded to.

He was going through a divorce after nineteen years of marriage and the Lord came to him three separate times. The first time was a rebuke. The second told him not to drink in his ex-wife's presence, and when he obeyed, he saw her clearly for the first time.

He had never seen her without alcohol in his system. Possibly ever.

The third time, he heard the words "I am turning you over to the church." He called the stake president that same day. When he showed up to his new ward, everyone called him Brother Kamron. Not Brother Coleman. Kamron.

He had forgotten that people called each other brother and sister. He loved it so much.

"Why don't you just leave? Because you cannot disentangle a religion from your whole self. It is woven into everything you are."

The Apotheosis Scroll

"Your purpose is not just to be saved. Your purpose is to be planted, to multiply, and eventually to become bread that nourishes your disciples."

Kamron has been working on a scroll that is currently three hundred feet long and only half finished. It began with a small crude line drawing in an article about Heavenly Mother. When he looked at it, a slow electrical current moved from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

He spent six months researching that one image. He listened to a full Yale course on the Old Testament three times. He painted the scene at full size and discovered in the process that the spirit was supplying details that turned out to be accurate. What he eventually realized was that the image depicted a Sumerian heavenly council that mapped directly onto the constellations, and that those same constellations showed up in the gospel of John, in the book of Revelation, in mystery schools across ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and Persia.

The ordinances of the gospel in Hebrew are called mazarot. That word means constellations.

Joseph Smith's restoration, in Kamron's view, was not a restoration of Protestant Christianity. It was a restoration of a universal religion that all ancient temples were practicing, all pointing to the same celestial ordinances, all telling the same star story in different languages.

The Bread of Life

Kamron described the plan of salvation as the cycle of grain. Seeds are saved, planted, and then ground down in a mill until they no longer resemble anything they once were. All of that flour gets thrown into one bag, baked in fire, and becomes a loaf of bread with a golden crown.

Your purpose is not just to be saved. Your purpose is to be planted, multiplied, and eventually eaten by your disciples.

The mill is suffering. You cannot become the bread of life without being ground down to powder. The burning in scripture is not the destruction of wicked people. It is the baking of the bread. And the golden crown is not a reward placed on your head. It is the crust that forms when you have been fully transformed and made ready to nourish others.

Every ancient mystery school, every temple, every religion was teaching this same cycle. Joseph Smith restored it. We just lost the language to understand it.

"We are not here to earn God's approval. We are here to recognize that we are already divine. That recognition changes everything."

You Are Already Divine

Kamron's most important contribution to this conversation was not the astronomy or the scroll. It was something simpler.

We are not here to earn God's approval. We are here to recognize that we are already divine.

The gospel of Thomas, which guides the thematic framework of the scroll, says the kingdom of God is not in the sky or in the sea. It is inside you and outside you. When you recognize this, you will realize you are the children of the living Father.

That recognition changes everything. It means the purpose of a church, if it is doing its job, is to help its people recognize a divinity they already carry. Not to hand it to them. Not to grant it as a reward.

It has always already been there.

Claim your divinity💕

Brynne

Find Kamron: apotheosisscroll.com

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Hi, I’m Brynne. I share my journey of becoming through stories and reflection - guided by a higher power as I explore identity, faith, and everyday life, inviting you to grow alongside me.

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