Announcer 0:31
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 0:53
Hello, everybody. Welcome to my fourth podcast, I think this is sort of exciting to me, I'm seeing listeners from all over the world. And that's really fantastic. I love the fact that modern technology has allowed us to reach out and touch each other and come together as somewhat of a spiritual community. You know, I don't know what your practices are, if you're listening to me, and it doesn't matter, I'm hoping to talk about all things spiritual, spiritual life, spiritual development. You know, and I, my goal, as I've stated before, I will have episodes in the future where I bring on people from other practices to share their viewpoints. And I think there are things that we have, excuse me, we have more things in common than not. And no matter where you come from in the world, or what your belief system is, we are all, we all have that spark of divinity at our very core, we all are divine, we all have soul and spirits. And I assume if you're listening to this, you have a physical body, although I don't know, maybe we have some ghost listeners out there. And hello to you, if you if you are a ghost listening to this. And that's fine. I just consider I consider spirits, non physical people. So, or non human people in some cases of nature, spirits, whatever. So today, I'm going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is initiation. And I'm going to talk about what initiation means. Why is initiation important. I'm going to talk about sort of the difference between initiation ceremonies that you might undertake or processes that you go through consciously. And the way that spirit initiate you, is a little bit of a little bit of a difference there. And of course, as you may know, if you've listened to me before or read anything about me that I am a shamanic practitioner, meaning that I practice the ancient art of shamanism. And so my everything I say, is interpreted through that lens. And so that doesn't mean if you have a different viewpoint, it's wrong. I think, two truths can seem in opposition to each other. When in fact, if you dig deeper, they probably are not. If they are, if they are, in fact, true. They can seem contradictory at a very surface level, but not and it's important to remember too, that, you know, not only do I practice shamanism, but I live in a certain culture. I live in a region of the world. I live in the northeast of the United States, which is kind of its own thing. If you're not from the US, the Northeast, it has a storied history of things like religious persecution and you know, burning witches that well, not burning witches, we hung them, we didn't waste firewood, I guess, hanging people accused of witchcraft and all kinds of puritanical stuff imposed upon us. And while I consciously try to overcome that limitation, that cultural limitation that's still you know, hundreds of years later, still influences everything. You know, denying that there is an influence, there would not be speaking truth, and so I won't. And so everything that I'm going to talk about today is going to be through the filters that I have, as if you were going to talk about the same thing. You might talk about it in a completely different way. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that's wonderful. I think we can celebrate diverse viewpoints without accusing the other person of lying or making things up or any of those things were were incredibly divisive. world right now, particularly in the United States, we're going through some crazy political divisiveness, we are in the midst of a pandemic, where at this point, I think it's around 4000 people a day are dying. And, you know, I mourn for those, I mourn for those people, but I mourn for their families, I mourn for their loved ones, I mourn for the loss that our culture is going to experience, you can't lose that many people without losing really important aspects of, of culture. You know, these people, obviously, each and every one of them is as important as anyone else in the world. And, yeah, it's just, it's just a horrible thing. So
again, the times the culture, everything is going to be influences the way that I describe things. And I, I understand that and I understand other people might have different descriptions, I guess my whole point is, you know, if I say something that contradicts what you think, or what you know, or what you think, you know, or what you know, that you think, in any way, that's fine, take it. And this is what I try to do. If somebody presents a viewpoint, to me, that is contrary to my own. Take the two and hold them for a moment as if they had equal weight, and see where the commonalities are, and see what I can learn from them. And you may throw out all of my ideas. And that's fine, too. That's fine. Because the exercise of going through and saying, No, I believe this because x, y and z is very important. I do think it's important to question what you believe there's very little of that in this world. You know, and that, that creates its own set of problems. With that said, let's move on to something. Let's move on to the main topic, let's talk about initiation, what it is, and, you know, what, why it's important, spiritually, why initiation is important, spiritually. So, I can tell you that I have been through lots and lots of initiations in my life. And an initiation, if you go to the word, it is the beginning of something, it's the starting of something, right? That initializing, then we're initiating somebody or something, right, we're initiating, we're beginning something, what is it that we're beginning. And the other, the other side of that coin is an initiation is also an ending, right? It's an ending of something. So to begin something new. So if you think about birth and death as the ultimate initiations in life, you know, death, we're ending physical life on Earth. You know, and transitioning to pure spirit and moving on in a way that moving on in a way that you would expect, given your cultural expectations. So that's a huge initiation, right, losing your body, it's very traumatic birth can be super traumatic, we go from the warm confines of the womb, where we have, we were we are fed via, via the umbilical cord, 24 hours a day, in your mother's heartbeat, all of those things, and we're, you know, thrust out into the cold world in a traumatic way where things are, we're not fed 24 hours a day where we don't always hear our mother's heartbeat, where we get hot and cold. And you know, there may be pain, there may be longings, and all of those things. It's so you know, birth can also be a traumatic process. And these are important things to recognize, you know, these transitions are not easy. And so this is, this is you're either initiated into this physical life, you're initiated out of this physical life, and that would be birth and death, right as initiation. So initiation can happen. You know, we've all experienced, you know, maybe you've been through you know, initiation for a sorority or fraternity or a, you know, some other fraternal organization or secret society or take religious group or something along those lines. And those can be, again, it's a transition. It's a little death you're putting part of your old life aside, and adopting a new life a new life as an insider as one who has earned their way into the you know, the the secrets and those initiations Some are more traumatic than others. There's always some sort of symbolic death and rebirth and initiation. And that's a pretty important concept. We think about the Christian concept of baptism, for example, that's an initiation, right? You're being initiated into Christianity, the old view is dying away, the new us being anointed. You know, I'm not an expert on Christianity, this is just my outsider's view. And in some Christian religions, you have to be fully submerged, you know, dumped sort of dramatically into a tank of water and emerge a new right emerge completely anew. And, you know, this is this is a tradition that goes back 1000s of years, this initiation by water by oil, that sort of thing. So what's going on? What's going on with initiation?
Well, there's two, sort of two ways that you can be initiated. One is, one is voluntary. And the other is involuntary initiation. So voluntary initiation is I'm going to go get baptized in this church, I'm going to join this fraternity and accept that I'm, I'm being initiated and go through whatever the trials are the, the, you know, whether it's vision questing or you know, whatever, whatever it is, you choose, you choose to do that. And then there are times where spirit chooses to initialize you. Initiate pardon me not initialize, initiate you. Um, and that happens. You will know, for sure, there is usually a crisis and again, there's birth and death, right. When I say crisis, it does not have to be life threatening, although sometimes it can be. So in the shamanic world, we have cultures all over the world who have, you know, shamanic initiates. And in some of those cultures, you have to go through some serious trauma before they will consider training you as a shaman, right? In some cultures, you have to be struck by lightning. My teachers teacher has been struck by lightning numerous times, actually. Not a path I recommend doing on purpose. But you know, nature, spirits chose that way to put her through crisis. It could be a mental health crisis, it could be a physical health crisis, it could be a near death experience. That's how the shamanic impulse awakens it, it awakens through crisis through a shake up, it is a real honest to goodness, sometimes dark night of the soul moments. I have described shamanic initiation as being like putting your life in one of those snow globes that you'd buy at a tourist place, and putting it inside a paint shaker and just letting it rip and shaking your entire life up. That has happened to me a couple of times in my life, I've gone through these huge crises where I didn't think I was going to make it. And, and I did and what pulled me out and pulled me together was my spiritual practice. And so what happens here is that if you are to be initiated, and you are not heeding the call, again, here's this hero's journey. You can read more about the hero's journey, maybe I'll talk about it one of the podcasts where there's an initial, initial call from spirit to to do something, to practice something to learn something to, you know, do whatever. And sometimes we ignore that. And we say, That's not for me, or I'm not going to do that or That's crazy. And the more you ignore it, the louder spirit turns up the volume and to get to the point where we have what I like to call, a slap across the face with a wet fish by spirit is a real awakening moment. And there's an important there's an important link there to that word awakening. right in. You know, the word Buddha means awakened one, right? It's someone who has awakened to the truth of reality. Right? So spirit is trying to awaken you to some truth, something you need to do. And it can be not a gentle path. Certainly mine was not others. I've known I've known lots of others. I've known people who've gone through near death experiences, obviously.
That's super traumatic, and you have to the healing of that trauma when initiation is traumatic, the healing of that trauma is the thing that makes you stronger. And so in shamanism, What can happen during a journey which is a trance state that you go on and when you interact with spirits in alternate realities, what can happen is you can become dismembered meaning they can take you apart, cut you apart, eat, you swallow you digest you all kinds of things can happen, where they're pulling your spirit body apart. And what happens after that dismemberment. It's not as traumatic as it sounds, I promise, especially if you're prepared for it. But what can happen after that dismemberment is a remember moment, right where you are put back together. And when that happens, you are not the same. You You change, for the better. You're, you're helping spirits want you to change something about your astral body makeup, about your spiritual persona about your ego, they want to break that break your ego barriers down so you can experience more of your Divine Self. And again, in shamanism we call this process over many, many years becoming the hollow bone. Right, the hollow bone is a metaphor for becoming this Clear Channel for spirit to work through. You clean up your stuff, you work on your stuff, you work on your hate, and your rage and your anger and your shame, and all of these things that are stuck in you, all of your past traumas you clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, and you become more and more of a clear channel for spirit to work through you. But initiation is, you know can be really traumatic in in the shamanic world, now I have gone through, I went through a two year program of initiations as part of my shamanic training, where, you know, we went through purposeful ceremonies that involved certainly replications of dying and being reborn and that sort of thing. You know, producing miracles producing, you know, sort of merging with spirit and that sort of thing. And those are, those are definitely intense, intense experiences that shake one up, and make one more clear, make one more of a channel for spirit. It's but it happens in the reassembly, it happens in the healing, it's sort of like when you break a bone, and that bone can heal back you can actually become stronger, where it was broken, right? Same thing kind of happens with spirit. So your soul is your your astral body is sort of, you know, split into pieces, shaken up, mixed up, put back together, but put back together in a way that is healthier, that serves you more, that's clear, that gives you a deeper connection to spirit. So one of the things we have is that you can, you can go through an initiatory process, you can go through, you know, I can go join some spiritual organization. And as part of my membership, they can put me through an initiation ritual, right. And a ritual is just symbolic action. The effect of the initiation, it's, we always say that it's, it's spirit doing the initiation, right. So you can go through this ceremony, you can, you know, go through all of these machinations, these symbolic actions, there's this ritual, you can go through all of that, and not get anything from it, if you are not open to spirit, sort of rearranging your spirit molecules. And so it is spirit during the initiation, the ceremony is, you know, ritual like initiation ritual is just metaphoric way of communicating between you the initiators and some part of your soul, your astral body really loves metaphor a whole lot. And so, symbolic action is sort of a way of communicating that, hey, we're doing initiation now,
and your astral body can sort of say, okay, you know, that's perfect, I will take that on, I will go through whatever it is I need to go through, to accept that to pull that in, to reap the benefits of that, or your astral body can go, oh, that that's really interesting. You know, and say, you're not really ready for that yet. You're not. You're not going to get much from this. And that's okay. You know, we're all on it. We're all on the same page. path. So the important part is not to confuse the physical trappings of initiation ceremony or initiation ritual with actual spiritual initiation. That being said, there are people who are very powerful initiators. I'm thinking of, you know, going through people who do sort of these transmissions, like these gurus who do these transmissions and energy people, they, some people have the ability to sort of force on you a little bit more. Again, those can be really not so gentle. And so it's important to think about if that's, that's kind of, that's kind of right for you. But definitely, in the shamanic world, you are always when you are initiated, you are always initiated in by spirit, whether you happen to be going through a ritual, or you know, other human beings, except you went through some initiatory process, and they put some title on it and that sort of thing. One of the things we love to do as human beings is we love to rank things, put things into hierarchies, and, you know, categories and that sort of thing. It's how we understand the world, we understand the world, that, you know, big is more important, that higher is better, you know, that, that sort of thing. And so we will frequently have, you know, think about, I think about Reiki for example, the the energy healing form of Reiki and we have, you know, Reiki one, and Reiki two and Reiki three, and Reiki masters and all these things, I don't know enough about Reiki to speak about it intentionally or intelligently, rather. But you know, we have those are those levels. And so I trained in martial arts my entire life, I'm nearing 50, I've been training since I was about six. So it's a really long time. And obviously, in many systems, we have ranks, we have colored belts, we have, you know, white belt through black belt, and all of the various belts in between. and, you know, what are those mean, we like, you know, a certain level of skill or certain amount of time or certain, this or certain that, and every school is different and, and that sort of thing. So, rankings can be a reflection of work done, or, you know, that sort of thing. But I don't think they hold a lot of weight in the spiritual world, in my experience. And that's not to say they aren't valuable, I'm not putting down any system that has a series of initiations, because sometimes you have to do certain initial work before you can do other work. This is where it becomes this is where it becomes incredibly useful, right. So and again, I'm not an expert in Reiki, but I believe you have to have done the work of Reiki one, before you can do the work of Reiki, right? Before you become a Reiki practitioner or a master Reiki person, like you have to have done the initial work, there's some stuff you've got to set up. And that's true in martial arts as well, I have to learn certain forms certain techniques, before I can move to the next level, and they can expect certain things if of me, and that's very much on a human level of learning. You know, that's very much you know, our ego going through steps and all and all of that sort of thing. And then that level, it's pretty important, but there aren't levels or rankings or anything like that, that I can see. I'm very much in spirit. And we we do have that we do have representations of that in many different systems in you know, when I think of like esoteric Christianity, we have orders of angels and archangels and ranks and all of that stuff.
I honestly think those are very human meanings that we have put on to spiritual phenomena that we have imposed, sort of a very human ranking on things. So the important aspect of this in regards to initiation is initiation does not afford rank per se, as like I'm a better human than you because I've been through 16 initiations and you've only been through 13 or I am more spiritual or more connected to spirit or any of those things. Because every single person on this planet is completely different as completely different makeup and uninitiated person could be a Buddha. I don't know. You know, I, you know, so it, it's, it's this weird thing, this ranking thing for me because I can see its importance on one level. But on the level of pure of pure spirit, there's just instead of higher and lower, and that's the thing I like to think of just my own work as going deeper and deeper, going deeper into my own spirit. And, you know, I did, I did do a two year program of initiations, but in shamanism, there's no rank, there's no we don't have. You're now a master shaman, you're now a junior shaman, you're now a shaman in training, you know that some cultures do have that some, you know, you would be in training for a while before you could put that plank out in my system. I don't refer to myself as a shaman. Nor do any anybody that I know, we consider ourselves shamanic practitioners, somebody who is practicing the art of shamanism. And, you know, the whole reason for that is not to seem hottie not to put my put, put a title, I'm describing what I do, and not who I am. And, you know, one of the dangers of personal spiritual development is hubris. It's developing what we some people would call a big ego, right? I am this I am powerful, you know, bow down to me that sort of thing. That is a real danger of spiritual development. You can be you can have some very impressive markers of spiritual development, including what some might consider supernatural abilities. And you can still be a scumbag, you can still be a jerk, you can still be a criminal or somebody who takes advantage of, quote unquote, followers. And so and that comes a lot from hubris, you see that, in a lot of with a lot of spiritual teachers, and, you know, in the Western world, we see that with people like Jim Jones and the Jonestown community, way back when and you know, they committed mass suicide, and you see that with, you know, the branch davidians in Texas and with a charismatic leader, and I don't know, I, you know, I don't know what his he obviously had, you know, an advanced ability to captivate and lead or people would not have moved in with him and allowed him to get away with some of the things he did. And unfortunately, those those people, you know, ended things tragically with huge losses of life here. On a smaller level, we have a lot of spiritual leaders who sexually financially emotionally physically abused you know, abuse people, and so they're, you know, some of these people might be extremely charismatic, they might have developed incredible prowess or clairvoyant abilities, or, or what have you. But they haven't done the cleanup. They haven't done the part where they work on themselves, where they don't have this overinflated ego. This, this hubris and spirit has a way of slapping hubris down as well. As soon as you become, you know, as an expression, I don't know if it's common anywhere else in the world that would say too big, too big for your britches, meaning you've outgrown your pants. You've gotten so big that I guess your your pants, you know, rip when you put them on, kind of a funny expression, but it is what it is. But yeah, that hubris that that big ego, that sort of thing, that's a real spiritual danger. It's not just a danger to you, it's a danger to others who might get sucked in to your, to your orbits.
And, you know, it's important to recognize that we all have an ego that we all have, our ego is our concept of who we are as a separate being. And it really is, I'm talking to you solo on this podcast, right? And part of that is, you know, part of that is my ego. Part of that is, hey, I've, I've got this stuff, I want to get out into the world. And I recognize that and recognizing it, I think is a first step to sort of taming it a little bit doing doing, you know, Recognizing when it's doing you a disservice. And humility, developing a real sense of humility, where you don't put others above you, ever, you, you walk on the same path has everyone, people you disagree with people we have real differences with we we put them down below us. This is really unfortunate. And this is one of the great, greatest problems in the world where we treat those of us with religious or philosophical or political or racial, or sexual differences from us as less than deserving less than we deserve. Less human than we are less deserving of human compassion and kindness than we are. And this is something we all need to work on. And I am not excluding I am not excluding myself, I got to be honest, in this political climate in the United States right now, where everything is, you know, where there are threats of violence and just craziness going on. It is very easy for me to quote unquote, other those people, those people, right, that expression itself is separating. And I, I recognize there can be some premature, this is where the difficulty lies, there can be some premature calls for unity, let's come together, let's treat each other. With respect. I think that's a fantastic idea. The problem is that there are still people who are actively promoting violence and insurrection and race, racist ideology, and that sort of thing. And so the knife is still in our backs a little bit. And we have to take that take that out. But what we have to recognize is that there is a reason that people are acting this way, there's a reason why people have allowed themselves to be misled. There are reason, that's why people are moved in mobs to violence. And, you know, one of those reasons is that we develop a culture where people have very weak egos where they need to tie self esteem to group identity. I'll give you an example of that. Right? We have rival sports teams all over the world that play and whoever wins or loses, sometimes that can result in a riot over a sports game. Right, violence can erupt. You know, cities can be Sunfire, after championships or games, or, you know, whatever. I've seen that firsthand, I was living. I was living in Boston, when the Red Sox won the World Series after 80 something years, and people were out in the streets, flipping over cars, and setting fires and climbing on things and just utter craziness. And it's because in my opinion, that we have tied our individual identity to a group identity we have supplanted part of who we think we are with something external, that gives us a sense of belonging, of greatness of that sort of thing. Right, identifying with a sports team, identifying with a religion identifying with a political ideology. And when I mean identifying, I mean, identifying not just, you know, I, I like the Red Sox, but I am a Red Sox fan.
You know, that sort of thing. It's this identity with these things that's problematic, and can move people to do just craziness. Where if you're, you know, one of the focuses of spiritual development should be dis identification, right? Where you go through this process, and you figure out what you are not you cut away what you are not until you get to what you actually are, who you actually are. And I'm reminded and I bring him up a lot because I love his work of the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi, who his, you know, his basic practice, his basic teaching was just continually ask Who am I Who am I? Who am I? Right? Who am I? and allow the answer to surface? Am I a Red Sox fan? Is that who I am? At my core? Does my undying soul does my undying spirit, my divine spark really care about sports games or political ideology or religious ideology or national identity or any of those things? In my experience, no. And so, part of spiritual development is turning inside, which means dis identifying from the external trappings. Even, you know, I am a 40 year old 48 year old man, I'm a dad, I'm, you know, an American citizen, I'm this I'm that. Am I, at my core? Do any of those things matter? No, I mean, my ego still clings to those things, my ego will still identify as I am a dad, I am a shamanic practitioner, I am, you know, an American citizen living in living in the state of Maine. And so, but I recognize that's my ego doing that identification, I recognize that it's, it's my ego, kind of telling me who I am. And the work, the work that I do, is to sort of break through some of that, that does not mean I stop acting as a loving father. I love my children more than anything in this planet. But recognizing that I have this undying you know, soul, this undying spirit, at the very core of my being that can shine through my ego, if I allow it to makes me a better dad. Does it make me a better citizen? Probably? Does it make me a better Red Sox fan? I don't know. I don't know the answer that I will let you know, when I figured that out. Probably, probably probably, I'll be less angry. If a sports team I like loses, I will be less likely to riot in the streets. If a sports team I watch. I'm not really into sports, but I would just think from a spiritual perspective. That whole spectacle is kind of amusing. Kind of like, what's that all about? Like? What's that, sort of? What's that nonsense of writing. And it's fine to like, what you like, it's fine, to have ego identification with these things. But it should not get in the way of figuring out who you really are going right into the core of your being and allowing your divine light to shine because that's our jobs. That's why we're here on this planet. And that sort of thing. And along the way, you know realizing some truths about yourself and so far be it for me since I'm you know, if you're listening to this, I might be I might be your teacher, but if i'm, i'm not i'm going to give you an assignment anyway. Start to recognize, here's an assignment for you start to recognize how you identify yourself anything, where you use the phrase in English, I don't know how it would translate in other languages, but in English, we would say I am right, I am hungry, I am cold, I am an American citizen, I am a dad, I am male I am and recognize that anything that you can identify in that way are most things, the vast majority of things where you can say I am this, that or the other thing
are not actually who you are. Right. So maybe we change our language a little bit if you're speaking English and say I feel cold, I feel hunger, you know, I being the experiencer I being the witness of what is happening. And that is definitely that is definitely one way to identify. So my assignment for you is to just to pay attention until you hear me again pay attention to the things that you identify as you that you identify as or you identify with. I am this I am my job. I am my religion. I am my spiritual practice. I am my hobbies and how do you start to enjoy Again, so here's the rub, right? You don't have to discontinue your relationship with any of those things. I do not have to stop acting as a dad to say that my core identity, when I say I am a dad, like I'm identifying with a role, and I am not a role, I am an undying spirit. Okay. But I do not have to my body mind and spirit does not have to stop acting like a dad, I do not have to stop liking a sports team or stop going to church or temple or what have you. It's just a matter of shaking up your identity, a little bit of who your ego thinks you are, and giving it a little bit of a dose of truth about who you are at a deeper level. So that is my assignment for you pay attention, especially when you use those phrases I am or whatever, whatever the phrase is in your particular language. And on that respect, I'm going to wrap up it's been great talking to you, I love to see listeners I pay attention to where listeners are coming from. I know you're from all over the world. I just I love that I can't I can't tell you how much that that makes me happy. So that's, that's fantastic. If you have if you would like to contact me or find out more about what I do. You can get in touch with me at my website, which is MaineShaman.com and I would love to hear from you about what topics would be interesting to you or what guests you would like me to reach out to in the future. And with that, I will bid you adieu.
Announcer 42:28
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