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.

feel free to contact me through my website if there are topics you'd like to like me to cover. I am at MaineShaman.com that's m a i n e s h a m a n.com. And with that, I will leave you and I hope you enjoy your week and I hope to talk to you soon. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And

John Moore 0:52

Welcome. And if this is your first time listening, I guess a double extra special welcome to you. I'm really excited that, you know, I've been doing this podcast for a short period of time. And to see, listenership picking up kind of all over the world. And that's really exciting to me, I'm recording this from my space in the state of Maine in the United States. But I see I have listeners from I've had listeners from lots of listeners in India, and as far away as you know, Russia, and Japan and the UK, and Iceland, and all over. And, you know, that's one of the exciting things about technology. You know, we talk about technology, sometimes as a separator as a way that we avoid interacting or avoid connecting with other people. But it's a tool and we can use it to connect or we can use it to disconnect. And I think it's beautiful that this is, for me, at least there's a way that I can connect with people that I wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to connect with. And I just want to let you know that if you are listening to this, I do appreciate you, I do love you. And I, you know, I mean that from the bottom of my heart, I you know, just appreciate the fact that you're listening to things that are important to share with the world. And today, I'm excited to talk about a topic that is, you know, I've been teaching for a little while. And it's part of a larger body of work that I have taught live, it's part of a book that I'm working on at the moment. The topic for today is spiritual hygiene. And I'm going to talk a lot about what that means. And then I'm also going to give you hopefully, some very practical tips on spiritual hygiene. And so, obviously, I should probably start and talk about what I mean by spiritual hygiene. So when you think about hygiene, in general, we think about the body mostly right? We think about, you know, brushing our teeth, and washing ourselves and that sort of thing. And it's things that we do, to generally keep us healthy. Right. But there's all kinds of hygiene, right? There's, you know, there's Mental Hygiene, there's, you know, physical hygiene, there's sexual hygiene there's, and their spiritual hygiene. And it's a term that I use to talk about the things that we do to take care of ourselves spiritually, so that we can stay healthy, we can pursue the, you know, our path in this world. And with fewer interruptions with fewer sort of crises. Sometimes crisis is important. But that's a different topic for a different day. It did talk about initiations previously, and talked about how crisis frequently as a call to initiate or as part of an initiation. But I'm not necessarily talking about that. And so one of the models I use to talk about spiritual hygiene. And again, like models are not, they're not the thing that they're modeling, right? If I show you a toy car, that is not a car, it is a representation of a car, and it does not have all the parts of a car, it doesn't work the way a car does, and doesn't provide the same features, but it represents that in the words that we use or models, right, if I say the word dog, that is not a dog, it is a representation of the animal dog that that we can use to communicate, and so I'm going to use a model And like all models, it is imperfect, it deletes a whole lot of material because we could, you know, talk for years probably about this model and not get to every single detail. And it isn't an It is, in fact imperfect, but it will allow me to communicate some ideas to you, and hopefully a way that makes them clear.

So the model I'm going to use to talk about spiritual hygiene and why it's important and how you know, and how neglecting it can can create situations that you don't want as I'm going to talk about the model of bodies that a human being is like an onion, that has many layers, consisting of bodies or shells or things that we occupy and use. And again, this is imperfect because it's using a physical representation of things that are sometimes non physical. Okay, so we know we have a physical body, right? And if you've ever done martial arts, like Tai Chi or you've practiced going or you've gone to an acupuncturist, or you've done Reiki or any of those things, you know, you have an energy body, right the this, these things work on the level of your energy body and I will, I will call that the etheric body. Okay. And again, I may be using this term differently than other people use it. But I'm just defining my terms so that when I talk about stuff, you'll understand what I mean. But if you use the terms differently, that's totally fine. There is no authority on how to use these terms correctly or incorrectly. Okay, I'm just telling you how I'm using them. So when I refer to the etheric body, I'm talking about the energy body, it's very close, shaped very similarly to the human body, sometimes it's perceived as aura we've got energy channels that run through that we've got chakras that are there we've got all kinds of stuff and people who are clairvoyant sometimes can see the energy body people who are medical intuitives can sense it or you know, diagnose there. And there's a lot of overlap with the physical body meaning the physical body affects the etheric body, the body affects the physical body. So one example, right is acupuncture you get acupuncture which stimulates a Meridian, which may or may not lie along a neural pathway. But you know, some healing takes place. You know, what you're doing is you're, you know, affecting the etheric body in a way that sort of spills over into the physical body, right spills over in a good way, and create some healing. And, you know, I'm not an expert in Reiki, but I think Reiki is, is sort of the same, you're, you're putting some energy into healing the etheric body, which is kind of a template for the for the physical body. Okay. And so those are a couple of bodies and in so again, like with the physical body, you think about how complex just the physical body is, right? We have organs and bones and muscles and skin and different types of cells and chemical processes and 100 I think there are 100 trillion neural pathways estimated to be in the brain, I can't imagine anybody actually counting all of those, but it's an estimated 100 trillion neural pathways in the brain that is a pretty complex system, and set of systems and overlapping systems, right? And where, where do things like the endocrine system and the nervous system overlap and interact? And it's the same thing with the you know, your spiritual bodies, right your authentic body is in is just if not more complex than your physical body, and it is almost impossible to determine where that ends and something else begins. But for our purposes, we're going to talk about the etheric body quite a bit today. You have another what I will refer to as a body called an astral body and this in shamanism, which is the system of spirituality that I practice. This is what we would call your soul body. Right? So you have this soul it's

you know it one way to perceive it as relatively formless but this is the part when you dream part of this breaks off and trout can travel. astral projection is sort of the same thing. shamanic journey is the same thing. You can perceive form the astral body is very metaphoric. This is why dream material is so rich and the astral body overlaps with the etheric and the astral body can when the when trauma takes place. And I mean, it could be physical trauma like you know, a car accident or it can be emotional or mental trauma like something that is shocking or extremely scary. Parts of parts of your astral body can sort of split off and hide for safety sake. And when those pieces fail to return, we in in shamanism that's called soul loss. And so loss is sort of the chief symptom of trauma when viewed through the shamanic lens and a lot of work that I do with clients that other shamanic practitioners all over the world do is called soul retrieval, where we, with the help of our helping spirits reignite those lost essences, those those parts of the soul body or astral body, okay, and then a very deep level, you have what in shamanism we call your spirit, and your spirit is your, the, the piece of divinity, that you are attached to the creator of the universe, that everything in the universe is attached together, we are part of this unity, we, this part of you cannot die, it cannot be ripped away, it cannot be damaged, it's unaffected by your life experiences. This is your spark of divinity, and if you are alive, or even if you're not alive, but if you're listening to this, you have that spark of divinity. And this can be a hard thing to grasp through the, you know, with human mind, but every beam, no matter how small, large or in, or how we feel about it from the saint to the serial killer, has this spark of divinity inside of them, it's just that we have this other stuff, we have this other stuff we have, you know, we have our soul body which can experience loss and carries our experiences with us. And you know that, you know, things that go on there can be reflected in our psychology and our in our physiology. And most shamanic healing happens at that level, those two work that shamans do happen at the level of the soul body. And then you have this authentic body, which is energy body, and then you have this physical body, right. And so all of these things affect each other in lots of complicated ways. And again, this model is an oversimplification, because there are, you know, there are models out there with seven different parties, and there are models out there with tons of different, you know, ways of describing non physical reality, there are mental bodies and causal bodies and emotional bodies and pain bodies, and but that's a big rabbit hole for another day. We're just gonna focus on these three bodies, and staying healthy, and, you know, trying to experience yourself as a clear channel for spirit, all of those things that we aim for with our spiritual life. And so spiritual hygiene really is about taking care of our bodies. And that being said, you need do nothing to care for your spirit body, right? This is the part of you that can be that is unaffected. This is your slice of your own personal drop of divinity shining out through every layer of your being. So there's at least one body we don't have to care about, right? We don't know that we don't care about it, but we don't have to worry about it. We don't have to take care of it. And that's kind of a relief, right? So we don't have to, we have to spend a lot of time talking about that. There's a beautiful practice called transfiguration, which is taught by the well known shamanic teacher, Sandra ingerman.

You know, she's got lots of online courses that teach this in books and that sort of thing. And this is really about getting in touch with that, that piece of yourself and allowing it to shine unhindered. And I think it is an absolutely beautiful practice. I think it's incredibly healing practice. It heals the environment. It's, it's, you know, it's it really is magic. And they've done a lot of research with it. They're continuing to do research with it, on using it to heal the environment, using it to heal people who, you know, cardiac patients, that sort of thing. So if that's, if that's the thing you're interested in, I would, you know, Google Sandra angermann transfiguration, see what's available, it's, you do not have to be trained in shamanism to practice transfiguration, it's kind of its own thing. And it doesn't take, it's not awfully complicated to learn, and it is a beautifully transforming practice. And I should say, you know, talking about spiritual hygiene, you know, if you do you know, if transfiguration is part of what I would teach if I were teaching a class in spiritual hygiene, because it has this effect of clearing away a lot of the muck, clearing away pollution that happens in your energy field and that sort of thing. So why is, you know, why is spiritual hygiene important? Why would we want to pay attention to that? Why would we want to spend time on that? Why do we want to work on that? And the answer is, for a lot of the same reasons why physical hygiene is important, right? It's important to stay healthy. Because we know that spiritual afflictions, things that, you know, whether we call them infections, or wounds, or what have you, that happen on a non physical level, can filter through into your physical world very easily. And this is why energy healing and shamanic healing and, you know, spiritual healing of all sorts work. Because these, you know, these things might, you know, some physical symptoms have roots in non physical, not all of them, not all of them, but some of them do, and, and they have non physical roots. And so, what happens to me, if I do not pay attention to my you know, if I do not pay attention to my physical hygiene, my spiritual hygiene rather, is that I can start to feel really rundown, I can become depressed or anxious, I can have symptoms crop up of old things. And so, I know, like, those are indicators to me that I haven't been haven't been doing my work. And this is not to say that you should ignore the physical causes of disease or discomfort you should not, and I tell my clients who I do healing work with, you know, we want to, we do work, we do healing work, we want to fire on all cylinders, if you've got a six cylinder car, you want all six cylinders to be firing, or your car's not going to be operating efficiently. So if you have a broken arm, you go to the doctor and have that set and have a cast put on so it can heal. And then maybe you see a Reiki practitioner to give you some extra healing energy to help ensure that the, you know, damage done to the etheric field or, you know, anything that's might be preventing you from healing quickly is sort of taken care of as well, right? So we're firing on all cylinders, we're working on healing at different layers, so do not ignore physical causes of issues. And that includes, you know, that includes mental health issues, right? If you are struggling with if you're struggling with mental health issues, you know, see a therapist, see a psychiatrist, see a psychologist.

You could and and this is happening more and more frequently, particularly with my clients, you know, they will, there'll be sort of a cooperation that's happening, you know, I will ask, you know, if somebody is coming to me who has an ongoing mental health issue, I want to make sure that they're seeing at least seeing a therapist, if they're taking medications that they don't stop doing that without talking to their doctor. And sometimes, you know, therapists and psychiatrists and psychologists are becoming more and more open to things like working with a shaman or working in other spiritual ways, sort of help solve those problems. So, again, we'll you know, a little bit of a disclaimer to like, you know, see your doctor. Don't, don't say, Well, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna meditate this problem way. I mean, it'd be fantastic. If that happened. But you know, why not? Why not throw everything at? at a situation? If you're experiencing some sort of problem, why don't you see your doctor and meditate, and maybe you'll heal faster. I know I, you know, I have a teacher who had some surgery done and had a bunch of healers working with her after the surgery was done. And her doctor is like, I've never seen this type of surgery heal so fast before, you know, surprise, surprise. So she had the benefit of having surgery, but she also had the benefit of having a group of fantastic healers working with her at the same time. So I like that approach. It's, it's an approach, I would recommend pretty much for everyone. So we've talked about the bodies, we've talked about the different bodies, and we can talk about some of the ways that we can be affected as we move through the world. From a spiritual hygiene perspective, one of the things we see one of the things we see demonically, when I do what's called a diagnostic journey for somebody who just I'm looking at, you know, what's going on, for them on a spiritual level, you know, you can see sort of little things floating around in their energy field. And this is just energy we collect, right? on a pretty regular basis, like we move through the world. And, you know, there's all kinds of, you know, if you can perceive it at all, there's all kinds of like, we're constantly moving through different energy fields, some of that gets stuck. This is not the same thing as being possessed. These aren't intelligences, it's just like, it's just like, you stepped in something, and you haven't wiped it off your shoe. Like you're collecting stuff as you go along. And so this is sort of one of the, you know, when you would go, if you go see a shaman, sort of the cure for that, for lack of a better term is called extraction ceremony where they would remove, they would remove that energy from your energy field, that stuff that didn't belong to you. And I can remember doing an extraction for someone. Someone who was actually a Native American elder, which was so is my very, you know, it was my honor to work with her. And, um, you know, she's an elder. And so I did this extraction ceremony, and she was a were of the time what was going on? And when we were finished, she said to me, she is, that was a lot of crap. I was like, Uh huh. Uh huh. So stuff that I've been collecting for a while. And so this can happen. And, you know, we can avoid some of it, maybe we can avoid all of it, but we can avoid some of it. And so, some of the ways we avoid that are by, you know, taking care of ourselves taking care of where we spend time, and sort of shielding ourselves against places and situations that have energy that that doesn't make us feel very good. So for me, you know, large shopping centers are an example of that large crowds. I don't like large crowds, does this mean I have a phobic reaction to walking into a large shopping center at Christmas time? Well, not exactly. I mean, I don't, I don't enjoy it. It's something something I have teenage daughters walking into a mall is something I have to do every once in a while, right? Although, obviously,

you know, I get to avoid some of that during the during pandemic times. But, you know, it's something I've done, and will probably continue to do, you know, just to interact with the world. But what they do is I take caution to consciously shield myself from the energy there. And it's just that there's so many people there, and not all of them are happy, not all of them have you know, there's a lot going on, right when you're interacting with crowd in general. And so, one of the ways that, you know, really, really simple ways to shield yourself is through intention. So have the intention. I'm shielding now, I'm shielding now. And if you want to, you know, visualize a bubble of blue, blue energy, like a blue egg around you, that can be really helpful. Right? And again, like the blue energy, that's it's metaphoric. It's just a symbol being sent to your, you know, your spirit body saying, Okay, now it's time to now it's time to shield up and blue is a very protective color. Right blue is used in a lot of protective symbols. In many different cultures, blue is very protective culture. So, color. So this is something that you can something that you can use, imagine this blue bubble and have the intention to shield up. That's, you know, and you can do this on a regular basis, anytime you feel pay attention, pay attention to how you're feeling when you walk into a new space, or even a familiar space, right? Certain people's houses. You know, even if they greet you, as a friend, you don't know what's going on in that house, if there's a lot of angry energy or a lot of sad energy or, and if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably somewhat sensitive, you're probably at least somewhat empathic. I think everyone is an empath at a certain level, but many, many people have blocked that out. Because it can be painful, right? It can be painful to be sensitive, particularly if you're not sort of differentiating, these are my feelings. These are somebody else's feelings that I'm picking up on. The other thing I'll mention about spiritual hygiene, is that anything you do that promotes physical health also promotes spiritual health. So things like eating right exercise, you know, things we know that we should be doing. also build up your energy fields, and particularly things, things that we're gonna talk about consumption a little bit. So consumption, anything that you put into your body, mind or spirit you're consuming, right? So if I consume junk food all day, I will eventually get sick from doing that, because my body's having a hard time processing that the vibration of junk food is such that it does negatively affect the etheric field. And ultimately, that will make me sick. So part of spiritual hygiene is self care, taking care of yourself. This includes things that are stressing you out, stress reduction is an important part of self care. So what are you consuming that's causing you stress? Are you working in a job that is stressful? How do you how do you reduce or mitigate that? I would say consuming the news obsessive Li I know people who, you know, have developed high blood pressure and heart issues who sort of were religiously watching the news, particularly during, you know, political elections and that sort of thing in the political climate. And a lot of places in the world, I mean, particularly in the United States has become so divisive and so angry. And so you know, just just so crazy, that, you know, sometimes taking going on a fast from the news is a really good idea. If you find yourself getting really caught up social media is the same way. If you find yourself getting caught up if you find yourself fighting with people online or taking things in that are causing these huge emotional reactions, so pay attention to the things that you consume. One of the things I need to talk about that is particularly important is mind altering substances. And I'm not going to be puritanical or judgmental about that if

you enjoy Margarita or you use cannabis for medical reasons, or what have you, or if you have experimented with hallucinogens, I'm not going to judge you for that. I'm just going to tell you about my experiences with people who have used some of those things, unwisely, I will tell you that alcoholism, addiction of any sort is a serious physical and mental health problem. And if you are struggling with addiction of any kind, I would emphasize getting getting qualified help in that department. These are not addiction is not weakness, addiction is a disease and that the consequences of addiction are that they that you do become weakened, you become it becomes harder and harder to resist but also the physical and mental effects of addiction can weaken all of your systems and that includes your energy systems. So addiction is one area where you know you really should be seeking professional help if it is even, you know, cigarettes are, you know, I know people who absolutely absolutely struggled and still struggle to this day with quitting nicotine. That sort of thing. And I and I understand, you know, when I tell people I practice shamanism, they always think of That use plant medicine, you know, I Alaska or pod or psilocybin or, you know, whatever in flight, a garlic, and I understand the ritual uses of those tools. But I also think there is a lot of unwise use of those tools going on today. You know, there has become an industry, an industry has grown up around Alaska and in particularly people are traveling to, you know, Peru and places like that and consuming without qualified sort of oversight without going through the steps that one has to go through to use those plant medicines. And there are people dying, there are people you don't hear these stories, but I know of I know of shamanic healers, who are working with multiple multiple people who have been hospitalized after I Alaska experiences. And I can tell you one story from my, from my personal perspective, I, you know, was hosting us hosting a meeting one time, it was sort of an informational meeting about shamanism. There was a, you know, somebody with me, who was also a practitioner, woman, and, you know, was open to the public and all, you know, people could come in and ask us questions and that sort of thing. And this sort of young couple came in, I thought they were a couple that turns up, turns out, they were brother and sister, but when this young man walked in, I looked to my, you know, the person who is with me, also giving this presentation, and we locked eyes, and we're like, oh, my gosh, what is going on? What I can tell you that I perceived, and this, you know, this other practitioner perceived when she looked at this person, it looked to me, like if you've ever watched a cartoon, and anime, you know, an animation for child where somebody gets bumped over the head, like with a sledgehammer, and little birds fly around their head, and their eyes kind of go all wide. And, you know, that sort of thing. It looked just like that, I could tell you that there were things whizzing around this person's aura, his eyes, his pupils were sort of permanently dilated. And he was just completely dissociated when he came in. And so, you know, had a conversation with him. And it turns out, he had been experimenting, not, not even that day, he was not actively using hallucinogens, that day he was using, you know, he had done Iosco journeys, and psilocybin and, and all of these things, you know, and I told him, I said, you know, when I journey I don't use chemicals I use, you know, rhythm or drumming or dance or something like that, because I feel like I have more control. And his

his metaphor, which I think is appropriate, he said, Yes, he goes, when you use these chemicals, you've bought the ticket, and you're going for the ride, and there's no getting off. Once you're on it, you can't get off. So what I think he had done is he had, you know, blown some walls of his energy body wide open, he'd blown the doors wide open, stuff was just sticking to him, there was, you know, I never worked with him. As a healer, I've never done a healing session with him. But I think to get him back to a state where he, I think he'd also experienced a lot of soul loss. He'd been, you know, during the sort of uncontrolled drug induced journeys. You know, experimentation is, you know, sort of uncontrolled experimentation. And this is not to take anything away from the therapeutic uses of plant medicine, I'm particularly interested in the ways that science is backing up the uses of these, you know, indigenous medicines that we've known about for 1000s of years, but this person is not, you know, this person and many people I have seen are not using them the way that they have been used for 1000s of years, the way that in the context in the culture that they have been used, they have been taken out of those and used in unscientific ways and caused unknown side effects. It's like some random chemical, you're sticking in your body sometimes. And in the case of this person, many, many different types of chemicals, putting them into his body. And Gosh, there can be huge negative effects from that. So this is definitely something I would be careful of from a height from a spiritual hygiene perspective. This person had very poor spiritual hygiene. He was dissociated probably all of the time. Afterwards, which it's tough, it's very tough to go through life being dissociated very ungrounded. State, I do not know if he had physical effects from all of this, but other than the constantly dilated pupils, which has to be a problem and sunlight. But I'm guessing they will manifest at some point, if they have not already, he's gonna have some physical effect from this, he already has profound mental effects from this. And, you know, the other part of this is, you know, here's somebody very interested in spirituality. And my guess is that meditation would be very hard for this person, because he's going to have all sorts of like, intrusive thoughts and energies, like, distracting energies to deal with, you know, that sort of thing. So again, about, you know, it's about consumption, it's about not, not not consuming things, or being very aware of the things that you're consuming and how they're having an effect on you, and not just throwing stuff into your, into your energy system. That's a, you know, a particularly important part. Another, another thing that I will talk about, from a spiritual hygiene perspective. And this becomes, you know, I'll give you my own story about this. But something I called DSP, which is daily spiritual practice, you may have a daily spiritual practice, and that is fantastic. And I would say, keep up with that, definitely do if it's working for you. definitely keep doing that. If you meditate every day, if you pray every day, if you light a candle at an altar, if you do that, you know, whatever it is, that gives you that connection to that which is greater than ourselves that which is infinite. Do that and do that every day. And that's hard. And I will tell you that this is an area where I sometimes fall down, sometimes I get busy with physical 3d world life stuff, and I don't do my daily spiritual practice every day. And what happens is, I notice it. I notice if a few days have gone by, and I'm starting to feel slow, sluggish down, having intrusive thoughts, all of those things. So I like to think about daily spiritual practice as the same as brushing my teeth. Okay. Although,

I will say that I'm a little bit better about brushing my teeth, I do brush my teeth twice a day, religiously. Very important, right? It's important to brush your teeth every day. And they say twice a day, right? So I do brush my teeth twice a day. If I forget to brush my teeth, if I go, you know, if I go an hour in the morning without brushing my teeth, I'll notice you know, my mouth doesn't taste so good. My my teeth feel fuzzy, right? Those are symptoms. If I go a couple days without doing my important daily spiritual practice. Believe me, I noticed it, I notice the symptoms of that. So pay attention to that. Pay attention to on pleasant feelings, intrusive thoughts, you know, old habits happening physical, old physical symptoms popping up again. And again, you know, if you've got physical stuff going on, don't forego proper medical attention, please. You know, but pay attention to your spiritual practices as well. So, just to sort of recap, and this is I'm just touching the surface of spiritual hygiene here. Obviously, this is a short podcast, this would be you know, maybe spend a day on this in a two day seminar. And, you know, work work on you know, it's at least a full chapter in a book that I'm working on. Probably more than that, probably more than a full chapter. You know, the things that are important for spiritual hygiene are to you know, pay attention to the environments that you're in. have the intention to shield when you're there so you're not collecting intrusions. Pay attention to the things that make you feel better physically. You know, any of the physical health hygiene things. You know, staying healthy, affects your affects you on a spiritual level as well. Particularly Of particular importance, anything that you consume, and by consume I mean, Eat Drink. Smoke, breathe, take in through your senses. So if you're listening to violent music, for example, it might create a certain energy in your field or if you're listening to, you know, something that you know something that uplifts you pay attention to how you feel when you're listening to things that you listen to pay, pay attention to, if you're reading, you know, certain websites, or you're on social media a lot, how does it make you feel it's a good indicator, it's a good tell some of the things you know, and I'll add one more thing. Not all spiritual practices are safe. Most are but not all are. So there's a lot of stuff and what we call the middle world, which is the spiritual template of this world. There are a lot of spirits not necessarily malevolent. Although there are malevolent spirits, there are entities that you can think of like if you're out in nature, and you would encounter a wild bear, a wild bear is not evil. Wild bear is just a wild bear. And it might be dangerous, because it has a certain set of behaviors that pose pose a risk. So kind of the same thing right there kind of the same, same situation on the spiritual template in which we live, which our physical bodies move through on a daily basis, which we call shamanism. We call that the middle world. And there are tons of spirits in the middle world, and some of them don't want anything to do with humans. And some of them are curious about humans. And it's as different, it's even more varied than the people that you encounter. Right. Some of them are highly intelligent, some of them have, what we might consider lower levels of intelligence, or being more instinctual, all kinds of things. You know, if you learn how to journey to the middle world, like you'll, you'll encounter all all kinds of things. And so there are, there are spiritual practices that can leave you very open. And I don't want to put down anybody's in particular spiritual practice, I'm not judging, that sort of thing. But if you're doing any sort of

experimentation with things that might be considered, like sorcery, where you're opening portals to things or calling in things, or, you know, that sort of thing. Just pay attention to what happens afterwards, pay attention to how you feel afterwards, you know, if you start getting physical symptoms, or that sort of thing you can, you can be opening yourself up, you can be inviting things in that you might not want to be there. That's not to say that, that there aren't safe types of sorcery and magic and, and, you know, witchcraft is very, the way that most people practice is very, very safe. But just pay attention. Just pay attention. Some of the things you might need help with, obviously, if you're having if you're having mental or physical symptoms that are distressing, or show up as disease in any kind of way. Clearly, seek professional help for that. If you are some of the things that you might need help with, you know, clearing extraction, or doing extractions, clearing intrusions, you know, that can, you know, any sort of anybody trained in shamanism should be able to help you out with that. And, you know, if you just feel gunked up and run down, and, you know, you know, even if you're having immune system problems, again, still seek medical help, but you know, something that you could talk to a shamanic practitioner or somebody who does some other type of healing, that that does extraction work. So there are, you know, things like curses and possession and things that we see on TV that are very dramatic and still still, you know, exists. You might think of them as fictional, they they still happen. They're not as dramatic as they are on TV. But to take care of these issues. Generally, you'd want to seek the help of somebody who is trained in this type of thing. And my preference, obviously, is to seek shamanic help. I don't know enough about other types of other types of practices. In shamanism, you know, we don't do exorcism, we do something called Deep possession. There's a school of thought out there called compassionate deep possession, where we look at the possessing beings as suffering beings because they are, or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. And we treat them like clients and help them move on. And to me there is it's a very ethical way of approaching that issue. Right? Obviously, it's an issue that needs to be resolved. But we can do it in an ethical, loving and compassionate way. So, you know, there's some issues, there are some issues like that, that you can't necessarily take, take care of just with hygiene if you are under spiritual attack from someone. And there is, you know, there's lots and lots of cases of this, there are people out there doing all kinds of practices, I won't. I won't limit it to any one system I know of, there are cultures where shamans are attacking each other all the time. There are attacking practices in all kinds of magical systems in I think in Voodoo, although I don't want to malign Voodoo, it is a legitimate spiritual system. If you feel like you're being attacked by somebody that's time to seek some, maybe some professional spiritual help, unless you have the tools to deal with that yourself. So those are some things to think about with spiritual hygiene. I hope this has been extremely helpful. I hope that you will

there will be more to come.

Announcer 47:27

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