Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:49

Hello, everybody. I'm talking to you just after sunrise. It's a beautiful morning. It's a little overcast here. But I always try to greet the sun, the provider, the source of life on Earth, in one, you know, in on a physical level and a spiritual level. My topic for today, I'm going to talk about spirit, soul and ego and what those are and how they relate. And Gosh, I hope I have some good news for you today, not news. But I hope I have some good information for you that I'm going to do my best to inspire a little bit today. And the reason for that is, you know, the global situation is pretty crazy right now, we have, we're obviously in the middle of a global pandemic, that is affecting every human being on this planet. At this moment, whether you are sick have been sick know, people who've been sick, known people who have died, all these things, and I'm talking to you from the United States. I know I have listeners all over the world. And that's fantastic. And I and I greet you and thank you for listening and tuning in to me. Special greetings to my friends in India. But wherever you are, know that you are loved and appreciated. And I, you know, I do this for you. And I do this to reach out. And I do this to help hopefully bring us together and you know, maybe bring a little bit of light, where things may seem dark. And I'll talk a little bit about that as well. In my last podcast, I talked about the divine masculine, divine feminine, and what they look like and how they how they take place. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that today. But in the context of what we might call spiritual development. spiritual development is a big topic. Obviously, if you walk into any bookstore, there's a huge section of books on spiritual development, there are courses online, there's everything you can think of every type of practice meditation, shamanic journeying, you know, everything, everything you can think of out there. So I'm going to start today, and I'm going to give you my definitions of spirit, soul and ego. And I realized that my definitions may not match up with your definitions or other people's definitions. And that's fine. we sort of have to be okay with that. Right? Words are models. And I'm gonna talk a lot about models today. But models are not the things right, if I say the word dog, that is a word that represents the animal dog, but that is that word is not the dog. Right? We say the map is not the territory is a pointer. It's a reference to something. And, you know, the spiritual realm is primarily invisible. Not to everyone but it you know, for for most people as we go around in our daily lives, we experience sort of 3d reality where time flows in one direction only and effects have causes and, and all of those things. And so, the definitions of things can be sort of loose. And the other thing that happens is that everything we experience on a spiritual level

is filtered through our culture. It's filtered through our ego, we're going to talk about what that is today through our own personal experiences, all of those things. And so there's, there's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong. If your definitions of things differ from mine, it's, I'm going to give you mine so I can have. So you know, I can have a common language with you. So, when you're listening to me, you know what I'm talking about. So you're not, you know, hopefully less confused when I use these terms, because I may be using them in a way that you haven't experienced before. And of course, my, my definitions, my you know, they're not necessarily mine, they come from my shamanic practice, and were given to me by my teachers and that sort of thing. When I say my, I'm just saying the ones that I'm using, not things that I have made up, I don't want you to think that I've invented some new system of explaining reality, there's nothing new about what I'm talking about. I have a perspective, but even that is informed by my culture, my my teachings, my, you know, studies that I've done journeys that I've done as a shamanic practitioner, all of those things are, so I don't, I don't claim ownership to them when I say mine. And that's the difficulty with words, right? In English. When I say my this, it could describe ownership, or it could describe, you know, just something I've I've adopted. So let's talk a little bit about spirit and soul first, and then we'll talk about ego after that. And then a minute, spend a little time on what, you know how to sort of go a little deeper if you're interested, how to go a little deeper into this into this learning. And so my first, before I get into spirit, soul, and ego, I'm going to talk to you about what I mean, when I say the word spiritual, right? This is speaking spirit. This is a podcast when I talk about spiritual topics, and what is what do I mean when I use the word spiritual? To me, spiritual is anything that gives you a connection with something greater than yourself. something beyond your physical self, your ego, that sort of thing. And that's a very broad definition, right? Because for some people walking in nature, might give them a deeper connection. Would I describe that as spiritual? Absolutely. No, it wouldn't be a spiritual experience. Meditation when you go inside, and touch a part of yourself that is connected to the entire universe. Absolutely, spiritual. If you pray, if you're a religious person, and you pray, and that gives you a sense of connection to deity, absolutely, that is spiritual. That's a spiritual practice. When I hug my children, and I feel this unconditional love for them, and from them. Absolutely, that is a spiritual moment for me. lovemaking, sex can be a very spiritual experience. It doesn't have to be. But it certainly can be if it gives you again, this sense of greater connection. So that's my take on, you know what the word spiritual means. And I have this theory that the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And I'll give you a few examples. I have practice martial arts since I was about five or six years old. I'm in my late 40s right now. So it's a lot a lot of years. And in the beginning, you learn punches and kicks and you know, arm bars and all of those things. But the more you go into it, the more spiritual it becomes, the more connected you feel, the more in rhythm you feel, even with your opponent. Even you know, when you're practicing techniques that may seem, you know, violent, you know, hopefully, with practice, you become more peaceful and you become it seems like a contradiction, but it's true. You become more peaceful. You abhor violence you become softer, you become more connected with energy.

When I see somebody who isn't for example, in a Amazing basketball player. And they're what we call in the zone, right? Where they're just in rhythm and flow with what's going on, that seems like a very, I'm not a great basketball player. But that seems like a very spiritual experience for me. Recently, I was watching a cooking show, and Chef on the show was talking about how for him, cooking was all about finding this moment. And the second, he described that I'm like, Oh, he's having a deeply spiritual experience with cooking food with preparing food. He's got this emotional connection to what he's doing this spiritual connection. So the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And when I talk about, you know, in a moment, when I talk about soul and spirit, I'm talking about how going deeper into yourself is probably about the, you know, the most spiritual thing you could do. So let's talk about those. Okay, so again, these are my definitions. And again, when I say my, I mean, adopted from my teachers, and that sort of thing. And I recognize that some people use these words interchangeably. So some people use spirit and soul to describe the same thing. And some people use spirit and soul with sort of opposite definitions of the way I used them. But I just want to give you these definitions so that again, we can have a common language so you, I'm not confusing you by what I'm talking about. So when I say spirit and soul, so in the shamanic world, one of the main practices that we do is called soul retrieval. And this is in response to some sort of trauma that somebody has experienced or an injury to a limb or shock to the system. And you know, this jives actually really well with modern psychological models of trauma, there's a splitting off, there's part of your soul breaks away. So your soul is this sort of body of spiritual energy that you carry around with you. And it is affected by your life experiences, it reincarnates with you, when you go from life to life, and it's, you know, can can sort of take on wounds and injuries and carry those, carry those along. So a lot of the work we do in shamanism is healing those parts, right finding, you know, recollecting and reuniting and integrating those parts. And this jives really well with sort of union part psychology, you know, family, internal family systems, therapy, those sort of modern psychological models, right, of this fractionating of the self, the soul. Okay, and, you know, we, you, we all have a soul and is closely in close contact with our body. So what happens, you have a physical body, you have lots of different bodies, right, you have a physical body, you have a soul body, a spirit body. When your soul body, completely leaves. That's when that's when you die, right? That's when your physical body dies. Your soul body does not die, and neither does your spirit. But your soul body can carry sort of baggage wounds, that sort of thing. It's affected by your life experiences. You know, it gains experience and it can be wounded, it can be healed. It can be developed, this is most this is what we're talking about. When we talk about spiritual development. We're talking about developing the soul or astral body, that non physical part of you. And so when I talk about spirit, what I'm talking about in so in, in Sanskrit, there's the word Atman, which is this like internal dwelling, undying slice of divinity. This is your this is your Divine Self. The part of you that is absolutely undying, indefinable, does not get wounded does not is not affected by life experiences. It is just this divine light that is at the center of you.

And there's some really amazing meditational practices that happen. There's one taught by the shamanic teacher Sandra ingerman, called transfiguration. Which is an absolutely beautiful, beautiful practice and, and simple and extremely deep and profound spiritual experiences do not have to be complex, or take years of training. Some of them can be extremely simple and experienced by anyone. Why because we all have this indwelling Spirit, this this part of ourselves. And this, I hope is a little bit of light, if you're experiencing some of the tumult of the world right now, in any sort of way that is painful to know that there's a part of you that is completely unaffected, that is just perfect love and perfect peace at your center, if you want to visualize this, you can visualize this as just an intense light, somewhere in the center of your body, usually in your, in your chest area, just that shines in all different directions at all times, and can never be dimmed can never be injured or affected. And this is your connection to divinity. So let's talk about let's talk about your bodies, let's talk about your different, different bodies. And so, again, all of this comes from a cultural context, right. So in you know, if you go back and you look at ancient Egyptian religion, they described all of these soul parts, and they had these, you know, huge system of religion around funerary rites, and this part of the soul did this and this part of the soul that this, you know, went off, and there's, you know, that that whole funerary ritual thing was about their, their model of, you know, the afterlife, and the parts of the soul and that sort of thing, right. And, again, this, this is filtered through their culture. In Norse belief, there's, again, soul, there's all different parts of the soul, right? There's, you know, there's a part of the soul that gives you luck, for example. And it's located, it's like a backpack in your back. And, you know, that's recognized in many different cultures. So the way I like to look at it, a metaphor that works really well for me, is that human beings are like an onion, a multi layered onion, we have so many layers that you can peel back, one after another after another after another, right, we have a physical body. But when you get beyond, you know, when you you know, that's a super oversimplification of even our physical presence, right, because we have, you know, a circulatory system and a skeletal system and a neurological system. And then we have all kinds of biochemistry going on. And we have all of the processes that go on we have, you know, respiration and cellular energy production, and all of that stuff, right? The stuff that goes on just to give us this body that we have in this physical world, and your, your other bodies, your soul body, your energy, body, all of these things are equally complex. So you could study these for many lifetimes and never get to the end of them, which is why we create these super oversimplifications. We say we have a body, we have a mind we have you know, we have a spirit we have a soul. Those are super oversimplifications. But it's necessary so that we can have a conversation about it so that we can talk about it. Again, I can talk about I can use the word dog, but I, you know, which represents it's a pointer to the animal dog, but I can't, you know, I could spend the rest of my life describing every thing that makes up a dog from you know, behavior to history to how their, you know, their body, you know, it could go into Veterinary Science, all of those things. So, just just an oversimplification, we have all of these bodies, and I view them as these overlapping layers and the

they really blend into each other. Right? So for example, we all we know about, we know that humans have an energy body, okay, this is how a lot of energy healing works, how a lot of you know, acupuncture or Reiki or any of those things, work on the level of the human energy system. The human energy body is close to overlaps with, interacts with the physical body very close very, very closely. And they overlap in such a way that it's almost impossible to really pull them apart and differentiate them. Right. So some of the meridians, some of the acupuncture meridians closely follow, you know, the nervous system and some, some do not. And so trying to separate those out is a little bit, you know, it's necessary if you're studying, studying something like acupuncture to think of them as separate things, but they're really not. Okay, and the same is true. The same is true for the soul body, right, you have the soul body, which is a little bit removed from the energy body. It's a little bit further inside that onion. Right, but they overlap, they interact and and they and they affect they can affect the physical body. So a lot of shamanic healing works on the level of the soul body. So we've talked about soul retrieval, there's other, there are other, many other practices that shamans do all over the world, that affect the soul body. And that can provide a template for physical healing a template for mental healing, a template for, you know, healing, you know, some of that comes through the energy body, some of it does not. You know, again, we could study this for forever and get to the bottom of it. And that's, to me, that's a really cool thing to think about how amazing we are as human incarnations, how lucky we are to have incarnated in the physical body. And I realize some religious systems say that that's a terrible thing to have to incarnate because we have to experience pain and loss and suffering and all of those things. And I get that. And we we do like having a body is not, it's not a walk in the park, right? It's not, it's not all pleasure, it is certainly the ability to experience pleasure and pain and all of those things. And those dualities exist in the human body, but we're lucky because we do get to interact on this plane, we do get to do things that develop our soul body that develop our astral body that develop our mind develop our these things. So that's my takeaway. And I promised I was going to talk about ego and I will talk about ego a little bit. And ego is one of those things. At least in the US, it's a little bit of a dirty word. In that when you describe somebody as having a big ego, for example, that is not a compliment, right? We say that little check out that guy's ego, um, you know, meaning that they have an inflated sense of self that they think very highly of themselves and perhaps should not should you know, that this is a judgment about somebody not showing humility. And humility isn't humility, humility, humility is a wonderful trait to have. So what are we talking about when we talk about ego? So ego ism is a mental construct. So it it takes place, sort of, it's not its own body. And my my take it is simply your sense of who you are, your sense of I, and all of the sort of complex things that that comes with, right? So when I think of myself, you know, my, my name is john, something my parents gave me when I was born.

That's a part of, but something that I you know, I happen to like, if somebody says, john, I'm gonna turn around, right? Because I identify with it. That's my name. That's one part of my ego, but I'm also a dad, that's a concept that I have about myself. So it's about your self concept. It's about who and how you I identify, okay. So, we can develop problems with our ego, right, we can develop problems. One problem is we can develop hubris, right? We can develop this inflated sense of self. And that certainly can happen with some types of spiritual development. And so the astral body, the soul body, is has this sort of hubris effect on the ego because it does affect the mental body. Certainly, it affects our consciousness. And I certainly have known people who consider themselves ascended or above others or beyond. You know, beyond flaw and that that sort of thing in that is a real trap. That is a super serious is a terrible trap to fall into. In spiritual development. If you ever think that your work is done, you are probably wrong, you're most likely wrong. Unless you are the Buddha or, or are actually, you know, some sort of enlightened master The problem is that people think they are, and they aren't. And they might have developed amazing spiritual abilities, you know, we think about, um, you know, I think about a Buddhist teacher that I studied with decades ago, who was considered by some of his students enlightened and had all kinds of special abilities and things like that. And, you know, he, he wound up taking his own life later, which is both tragic, but also an indicator that he hadn't done the work that was necessary to clean up, you know, cleanup is the shadow parts, which I, I talked about in my first podcast on darkness and light being two sides of the same coin. You know, the Shadow Work is super important. And if you don't do it, it will, it will come, it will come back and bite you, you have to do that, you're gonna come back again and again and again, and have to work on the same thing over and over again. So that can, that can definitely happen. And that's a problem that can happen with ego. Where, and this is where I hope there's a little bit of light pouring in here as to what I'm talking about not just warnings. What can happen though, is you do the work. So he goes about identification, right? It's about identifying who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Right? You can ask that you can use that as a mantra, who or what am I could be a mantra that you repeat. And the the, you know, the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi. You know, that was his mantra, that's what he taught his students to repeat over and over again, to get at the, to get at the core of the self, this feeling of being unified with divinity with being unified with a source and that's where you can go with, I think, almost any spiritual practice that helps you turn inside. And in my last podcast, I talked about the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And so, um, you know, and again, there's no one is better than the other, there's no, they are, they're co they're co equal, as long as they are treated as such, as long as they aren't misinterpreted or, or, you know, as long as there's not power over, right? There's power with, okay. So, divine masculine spiritual practices are the things that we do, outwardly, such as making offerings, praying to a deity, you know, setting up an altar, you know, all of those things are these sort of outward expressions of spirituality, divinity. And they are, they are absolutely valid, and they are in a prayer, chanting, anything that that comes from within to without

equally valid is the turning inside, right? Remember, I said, the more you go inside something, the more spiritual it becomes. And that includes yourself, the deeper you go into yourself, and you reach that point where you identify this is where the ego comes into place, right? The ego is a tool that, when used correctly, allows you to identify more and more with that divine part of yourself. And that is the Divine Feminine part of spiritual development. And hey, you don't have to choose just one avenue, you can do both things. You can make offerings, and you can meditate and turn inside. You can pray to a deity and you can take up shamanic journeying and, you know, get more insight by by turning into the inner realms. You can do both at the same time, and it's a very, very powerful combination. This divine masculine and divine feminine practices, the outward practices, the inward practices. And if you separate them out too much, if you focus on one area, a little too much, they can become out of balance. Right? I mean, you know, we all know I've lots of friends who grew up in a religion and may even Don't go to church every week and don't actually really believe or practice, they just, it's a thing that they do. It's this, it's this, you know, well, you know, I went to church every week as a child, and I still go to church, but I don't really practice and we don't really believe, you know, which to me, is it unfortunate and a missed opportunity, right, either to dive deeper into that religion or to find one that you do believe in and can practice both externally and internally, right, there's not much spiritual development going on there. Unfortunately, this is not a judgement, you're free to do whatever, whatever you want, I just see it as a missed opportunity, it makes me a little a little bit makes me a little bit sad, although, you know, I'm sure there's a benefit from that I'm sure. People who do that are able to make some kind of connection, at least on a social level. And, you know, ritual is important ritual is any sort of symbolic action that we take, right. And ritual is important. Even on a psychological level, we actually, in the Western world, I think are missing a lot of ritual that exists in other places. We stripped that out of our daily lives a little, a little too much, in my opinion. So you know, a lot of people are starting to bring that bring that back, a lot of people are starting to explore more here. But we became, you know, we went through the Industrial Revolution, and we spend a lot of time working and focused really on day to day physical survival stuff. And it's an interesting note, I realized this is a complete tangent, but it's an interesting note that studies show that, you know, in previous times pre Industrial Revolution, you know, even during hunter gatherer times, people had more free time, right, they didn't, they weren't hunting and gathering all day, you know, eight hours a day, every day, they had more free time to do things like develop art and music and, and religion and culture and, you know, build giant stone monuments, places and things like that. They had the cycles to do that we don't in this modern world, because we spend a third of our time sleeping a third of our time working, and the other third of the time, usually, you know, some, hopefully, some of that, you know, resting, relaxing, going inside doing development, but it's a very limited window for that sort of activity. Right. And we have all of the other things we have to do, we have to go shopping and feed the kids and you know, just day to day life stuff, clean the house. And so it becomes a little bit out of balance. So when you can, when you do have the opportunity, it's important. It's an important part of spiritual hygiene, it's as important to me as brushing your teeth, which is very important to spend some time daily in spiritual refresh, reflection, spiritual practice, any of those things. So with that, I'm going to bring this podcast to a close. You know, we talked a little bit about what I mean by spirit, soul and ego.

I hope, I hope that you learn something, I hope that you, I can, you know, maybe give you a little push to spend a little more time turning inside, finding that divine part of yourself. I don't care who you are, I don't care what your life experience is, is a real beautiful thing to me that everyone every single individual on this planet. And that includes people who no longer have bodies and may still be around have that divine spark they have that they have that divine aspect, that divine nature that they are absolutely connected to the unity that is the universe. And and it's, it's absolutely beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful thing. If you can get any sort of experience of that it will it will change you it will change it for the better. So if you would like more information about me or what I do, or this podcast or if you're listening to this somehow and don't have access to previous episodes, you can go to my website, which is named shaman comm that's MaineShaman.com. And I mean like the state because that's where I live. In March, I am co-teaching a an introduction to shamanic journeying class online. You can find more information about that on my website. And I'm co teaching that with three other really amazing shamanic teachers. And we're doing this because we are in the middle of a global pandemic, and I am not teaching in person at this, you know, at this time and so this is a good opportunity, if you have ever wanted to learn about shamanic journeying to do that, and will take place over a weekend at the end of March. And again, there's, there's more information on my website, you can check that out. If you have, you can contact me through there. If you have questions or suggestions for podcast topics. Gosh, I would love that I would love to make this more about what you want to hear about. And or guests. I'm, I am fully intending on having having guests so it's not just you listening to the sound of my voice and me listening to the sound of my voice in the future. I want to thank you so much for listening. It's it's very important to me right now to be reaching out to other people in in any way that I can. And I do love you and I don't care who you are. And that may sound a little weird. But you know if people can there's a saying that if if people can hate people they have never even met that I can choose to love people I have never met and and just know that that that you are loved no matter who you are, no matter where you are. And I'm I am going to be a part of that I'm going to be a part of the ones who are who are loving in this in this crazy world and bring hopefully some healing and sanity to the to the world as it's being shaken up. With that I will leave you have a blessed day.

Announcer 37:33

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john, go to Maineshaman.com that's MaineShaman.com.