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 0:50
Hello, everybody. It is just after sunrise as I record this for you on February 1 2021. It is just before a large winter storm is about to hit here. And it's interesting to me I I love storms. I'm one of those people who love storms and as a shamanic practitioner, we do a lot of work with, whether spirits, the spirits of nature, that sort of thing. And there's always this tremendous power that comes you can, if you're sensitive to it, you can feel it. You know, part of it is physical, there's the dropping of barometric pressure that happens and you know that that sort of thing. But there is this electric spiritual energy that that proceeds storms. That's pretty interesting thing. And I do know a lot of people who practice whether shamanism, which is not, by the way, trying to change the weather in any way, but it's working with the spirits of weather and the spirits of nature. And we don't try to at least the folks I know Don't try to impose their will, over the weather. Not that not that you necessarily could, whether it's got a will of its own, but it just doesn't make for happy surfing. So we're about to get this big winter storm here. And, you know, somewhere between seven and 14 inches of snow supposed to fall. You know, that fairly significant amount, it is currently zero degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 18, negative 18 degrees Celsius, or I am so it's pretty cold out and it makes me grateful that I live in a house and there's heat and electricity and food and I don't have to go out and hunt for food. But it also makes me appreciate my ancestors who made it. Living in these conditions without all of those creature comforts and things that I would require for my survival. These days, I don't think I could survive very long. You know, in this kind of environment without you know, without these things, and so, you know, cheers to my ancestors, I'm raising my cup of coffee and have a little slip, slip here. For me, there is no shame in using without coffee. Someday I'll find out if there if anywhere there exists a deity, or God of coffee. Maybe if you know of one, you can send me a message through my website or something I would like to make an offering. If there is a deity of coffee. today's podcast episode, I'm going to talk about ceremony and ritual. I want to sort of define what I mean by those that can be a lot of confusion caused between those two, and sometimes they're used interchangeably. But also I want to talk about why they're important on the spiritual level. And, you know, sort of what we're missing when we forego these things. As a shamanic practitioner, we have lots of ceremonies that we perform, when we do a healing for somebody. It's called the healing ceremony frequently. And you know, that also lots of rituals that we perform as part of that. So let's talk a little bit about what a ceremony is, what a ritual is, and what's the difference. And then, you know, then we can be on sort of square footing. And, you know, again, my definitions are my definitions, yours might vary slightly. I give you mine because then you understand what I'm talking about. You know, words are complicated things. And I know from looking at the where people are listening to this podcast from that you are all over the world, and I am grateful for you, I am grateful. And I love you for listening to this podcast. And you know, it, it, it warms my heart that I can have this technology, again, to speak to people who are as far away as India or Nepal, or Russia or Japan,
Netherlands, Iceland, I'm trying to think of all of the different places I've seen people listening from the UK, certainly. So words can be complicated, and English might not be your first language. And I respect I respect that I really respect if you're listening to this podcast in English and English is not your first language. That's, you know, that's an amazing thing in itself. So, I'm going to give you a definition of ritual, I'm gonna give you a definition of ceremony, I'm going to talk about how they play together. And you know, what, again, why they're important, and what we can think about when we're thinking about ritual and ceremony and that sort of thing. So ritual, I have a very simple definition of ritual. And ritual is merely symbolic action, right? symbolic action. So a ritual could be something you say something you do a collection of some collection of activity that has symbolic meaning, right? And there is, there's a component in some definitions of ritual that it is prescribed, that it is repeated action, something that is done over and over again. I, you know, I struggled with including that with my definition, because sometimes a ritual could be performed once. And so it isn't necessarily repeated, you know, I might do a one time ritual, does that still make it a ritual? Is it symbolic action. Some examples of symbolic action might be, you know, for people who practice the Catholic faith, right, they might cross themselves when they enter a church, right, a ritualistic action, making them a sign of the cross is a symbolic gesture, symbolic action. I might, as a shamanic practitioner, I perform a ritual before I do work, where I what's called opening the directions where I rattle to the, you know, north, east, south and west and, you know, upper world and the lower world into the indwelling Spirit. And that is, you know, symbolic action that I perform, each time I do work, or I work with a circle or that sort of thing. So that you can think about all kinds of all kinds of symbolic actions that you might take during the day, and they don't have to be necessarily profoundly religious or, or profoundly, you know, profoundly spiritual to be. To be rituals, they, you know, it's just the fact that I'm performing some symbolic action, right? And if you think about, think about sports, I'm not I'm not a really big sports person, but, you know, there are lots of rituals to open up sporting events, right? There might be a coin toss or, you know, in a coin toss has a real world purpose sometimes, right? It it, you know, it defines who gets to start a game or that sort of thing, or, you know, there's a singing of anthems or there is a presentation of players or you know, whatever, you know, so, the way that we open things like that tend to be symbolic, symbolic action is the thing about the stock stock market, the opening and closing of the stock market. Those are, those are little rituals, right? They are prescribed they are, you know, they might not be in what we would consider intensely spiritual because they're not specifically spiritual or religious events. But the reason that ritual is important is that it does make all ritual all action makes an impact on the spiritual plains ritual ritual is designed Or has the effect I should say, because it's not necessarily designed, but it has the effect of, of having sort of an amplified effect on spiritual planes because our, our astral bodies, our spiritual bodies or our soul bodies have
deal with a lot there, they're formless. And they understand they communicate a lot through metaphor, right, you can think about dreams that you have, where you get symbols and dreams, and they're very metaphoric. And, you know, sometimes you, you may have to go to somebody to help you interpret those dreams. That is your, you know, that those are things that are bubbling up from layers of you that are entirely symbolic. And so ritual is one way that we can have communication with those parts of ourselves and those parts of spirit that are, you know, that understand things that are more symbolic, a really important component of ritual. And it's a component of most spiritual, most spiritual action, the most spiritual life, a really important component is intent, which is what it which is aim and action, right? intent is aim and action, what are you intending to do in your intent, we say in shamanism we say intent drives the bus, right intent is the engine, and the steering wheel of the bus, it provides the fuel in it in its steers things, okay, so when I, you know, I can make a ritualistic action. But if there's no intent behind it, it is not going to reflect or carry as heavily into the spiritual planes, where, you know, where symbols are better understood. So if I, you know, I am not a practicing Catholic, and so if I can make the sign of the cross in the same way, you know, I can imitate people I've seen on TV or people who are Catholic that I know, if I just do that motion, it does not have the same effect on me, it does not have the effect because it doesn't have the same I don't necessarily understand the intention, because I haven't been to Catholic school or, or been through catechism training or any of those things. So I don't, I don't get it. First of all, I don't understand it. So I can't put the intent behind it, that somebody who has done those things can do so it does not have the same meaning it does not have the same effect. For me. Likewise, somebody could imitate what I do, when I if I opened directions, and I use a rattle normally to do that. Somebody could imitate those motions, but not have the same understanding or intent and it in it, I you know, it will not have the same effect. So intent is a key component is a key component of both ritual and ceremony. So let me talk about ceremony, ceremony a little bit and differentiate that from ritual, although they do go hand in hand. And I'm gonna use a sort of a dictionary definition of ceremony here, I was trying to capture the elements of ceremony, in my own words, finding it a little challenging. So I went to my old friend Wikipedia here. And I think their definition is actually pretty good. And I'll talk about the components of it. So, I will read it to you verbatim, but you can obviously look look at this yourself, but a ceremony is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose usually consisting of a number of artistic components performed on a special occasion. So let me take that piece by piece. So, it is ceremony is a start with a unified ritualistic event. So unified meaning that it is singular and ritualistic meaning that it contains ritual. Okay, so this is why defined ritual first. So we can think of ceremony as one you know, a ceremony as a thing that begins and ends and has components of ritual in it. Okay, that's the first kind of the first component.
Right and the ceremony might contain a number of rituals. So I think about, you know, an obvious one is a wedding ceremony. Okay. And you know, different cultures have different ceremonies, but, you know, sort of traditional Western Christian wedding ceremonies, even if you don't come from that culture, I'm sure you've seen them in movies or TV, you know, there are different rituals. So there is an exchanging of rings. That's one ritual, right? There is an exchanging of vows. That is another ritual, but it's a unified event, the wedding is a unified event. I will skip the part about artistic components. They don't I mean, that that's sort of subjective, right? I mean, there might there certainly could be. There certainly could be, you know, again, the wedding ceremony, there might be music, there might be poetry spoken, or verses read from Scripture, that sort of thing. And it's performed on a special occasion, right? So this is another thing about ceremony is that ceremony marks a special occasion. And what is special mean? Well, specialist, very subjective, right, special means that it stands out from the ordinary, in some way. So a wedding is a special occasion because it marks the beginning of a marriage. You know, and initiation if you were initiated into some form of spirituality marks a special occasion, you know, a passage a rite of passage sort of thing. And, you know, we have all kinds of all over the world, we have different rites of passage. You know, in Jewish culture, we have the bar mitzvah and the Bat Mitzvah. You know, certainly in lots of indigenous cultures, there are rites of passage coming of age ceremonies that involve lots of lots and lots of ritual, and they take place over prolonged periods of time, or it might be marked by a special event. birthdays, right we have birthday celebrations, celebration could be, could be include ceremony, like if you have a, you know, blowing out of candles on a cake, right? That is symbolic action, that's ritual, marking a special occasion it's unified. Hopefully, your birthday party has a beginning and an end. You know, maybe you have an ongoing birthday party, and that would be fun. But, you know, so it's a unified event that contains ritual action. So ceremonies, again, have this connotation of the word special meaning not ordinary, not necessarily everyday, although there are ceremonies that are performed every day, but not maybe not continuously, maybe not something that is done continuously over and over again, but there's there's a, you know, ceremonies, Mark, Mark time and space of 3d reality. You know, we're sort of saying, you know, this is a special place, this is a special time. And we're going to mark that with some kind of ritual. And, of course, I'm sure you have experienced lots and lots of different ceremonies, you know, weddings, funerals, birthdays, religious ceremonies, observances of holidays, you know, spiritual holidays. So, you know, we have you know, Christmas, we have Hanukkah, we have Diwali, we have Kwanzaa we have all of those things, and there are ceremonies that can go with some of those things. And definitely rituals that that are, you know, contained within those contained within those ceremonies. Frequently, you know, one of the things that one of the healings that I get called on to perform pretty frequently
is called a soul retrieval. And we refer to that as a soul retrieval ceremony. As opposed to a ritual, right? That's, and soul retrieval is a pretty big deal. It exists in all shamanic cultures, it's a way of healing helping people heal trauma, by bringing parts sort of scared or lost or damaged parts of the soul back to be reunited and so it can help a person feel more whole. And this is, um, this follows very closely. Like if you look at the the language, the shamanic language that's used around soul retrieval, and you look at some of the modern research, psychological research. That's done. You know, in physiological research that it has taken place around trauma, I believe that they're really talking about the same phenomenon using absolutely different vocabulary, right? We talked about this trauma causing this fracturing of the psyche, these, you know, if you are a union, you know, psychoanalytic bent, you would talk about the subpersonalities splitting off where a shaman would talk about soul loss. And, you know, again, there, it's different terminology, but they're really talking about the same phenomenon. And, you know, understandably, there is a, you know, there's a medical model, which doesn't sort of recognize the spiritual aspect of soul loss. And that's unfortunate. I have been extremely fortunate in working with doctors and therapists who practice shamanism. And, you know, learning from them and talking with them. And, you know, having clients who have therapists who embrace the, you know, embrace the fact that their clients are seeing shamanic practitioners, I do think that, you know, there's a, there's a lot there, there's, you know, our ancestors experienced trauma, and, you know, the, the ways that they developed, healing for that are valid, and we should listen to those because, you know, they survived, again, going back to my ancestors who survived in conditions that I'm living in now. But with, you know, with, with a house around me with, you know, central heating, and electricity, and Internet, and all of those things, my, my ancestors didn't have all of those things, and they survived. And so those skills are not to be set aside as inferior to modern ways, necessarily, right. I mean, we have some improvement, we have lots of improvements, but we also sometimes lose some things. And that's really important when we talk about ceremony and ritual. You know, we lived most of human existence, practicing shamanism, you know, we see evidence of shamanic practices and cave paintings that are 50,000 years old. And, you know, ritualistic sites that are 1000s of years old, and, and all of these things. In many ways, we've lost a lot of that in the modern world. And it's a little bit unfortunate, because I think it puts us out of touch with this current of ancestral energy that we can tap into for healing and wisdom and knowledge and really knowledge about how to survive in the crazy conditions, we find ourselves in the world today. So going back to soul retrieval, and you know, we call this a ceremony, you know, there are several ritualistic actions that are performed. But it is a special event. You know, we consider it almost like another birthday, bringing these essences back that were lost, imagine, you know, a member of your family being lost for a really prolonged period of time, and then finding them then, you know, rescuing them again, and bringing them back into the fold. And what was what would be the first thing he says that Welcome home, I've missed you. Welcome home. Right. And it's very much like that with soul retrieval ceremony, because it's a real welcoming home of these, these parts of your own, you know, your own internal family, your essences, these pieces that might have been in hiding due to some trauma,
or, you know, or some other some, there are a few other causes of soul loss, but trauma is the big one, and it can happen sort of in an instant. And, you know, we get fractured and parts of us feel dissociated. And I do want to say, you know, if you we've, you know, we've all experienced some level of trauma, we've all gotten a fright or we've all you know, you know, almost been in a car accident or something along those lines or had to have surgery or, or any of, you know, anything that can be sort of traumatic for us. And I think almost every person on this planet could benefit from soul retrieval sent ceremony. I've, I've never met anybody who couldn't. I mean, that includes people who've been practicing shamanism for a really long time. Um, you know, your work is never really done. And so you know, it It's, it's a fantastic it's a beautiful life affirming empowering, work, it's, it's kind of the thing that I live for I do, you know, I love teaching, you know, it comprises the majority of what I do these days. But I do love working with people, and I do love. You know, I do love doing soul retrieval ceremony. So getting back to ceremony and ancestors and sort of what we've lost, you know, I've had lots of conversations with people of, you know, different walks of life, people who are a therapist, people who are semantic practitioners, people who, you know, are in non allied fields, just, you know, just people in life. And there's this sense, particularly in the Western world, of, you know, there's something, there's something missing, right? There's this feeling that there's something we're missing out on. And some of that comes from the depersonalized nature of technology. In one way, technology can connect all of us, right, it allows me to record this podcast and speak to people all over the world, and I love that it's fantastic. You know, zoom allows us during the pandemic, to communicate with one another over video, and, you know, social media? Well, you know, social media is, is a tool and so it can be used for good and used for harm. And, you know, I won't make any big judgments about it. But I will say that, you know, when used well, social media allows us to, to connect with people and, and so those are, those are really good things. And so I think a part of that is you know, we're, we're definitely feeling it now, during this pandemic, and a lot of us are socially isolated anyway. And so even more so during the pandemic, like we're feeling this, you know, this loss of connection, perhaps. And there's a lot missing, particularly in Western culture, we don't have you know, when I grew up, there was no, there's no rite of passage that I went through, there's no, okay, you know, I not have the Jewish faith and I didn't have a bar mitzvah, I didn't have a coming of age ceremony, I did not have any of those things that make an impression on sort of the astral body, the spiritual self. Now I have gone through lots and lots of initiations. with, you know, during my spiritual time, I have, you know, gone through. I've gone through Buddhist initiation, I've gone through, you know, initiation with certain what we consider, I guess, secret society initiations I've gone through, I went through a two year initiation process in shamanism, and, and so, those things are rites of passage, right? Those things are there are ceremonies involved with those things. And I, you know, I absolutely love them, I absolutely eat that up it changes who I am. Because the intent is there. You know, again, you can go through a ceremony with no intent, same way you can go through a ritual with no intent and just act it out and it does not make absolutely will not make the same impression. And 10 is 100% important. So I do believe that I'm particularly right now the world could use more ceremony. You know, if you if you regularly participate, participate in ceremony and that brings you a sense of connectedness then you are Consider yourself lucky.
If you are if you participate in ceremony and do so out of obligation or you know, just it's a thing to do. You might be missing out a little bit. Right, you might be missing out on some of the benefits that come from participating in ceremony or even observing ceremony I have observed some very cool ceremony one one that sticks out to me was watching. Watching Tibetan Buddhist monks finishing making a sand Mandala and you know, they there's a ceremony like it, I don't know if you know but you know they make these very intricate mondelez out of sand and they spend lots and lots of time on it. You know, whole group of monks will make this very intricate, you know, pattern out of colored sand Very beautiful. And then somebody will come in. And you know, I'm not using the proper terms, but with, you know, something that looks like a broom, I don't know what the term for it is. But you know, and sweep it away, and one fell swoop. And there's, you know, there's chanting, and there's, you know, there's all kinds of things that go along with that. And, you know, there's tons of ritualistic action and the, you know, the, the single sweep destruction of this piece of work that they've been working on for days, you know, again, it's symbolic action, it's meant to represent and drive home the idea of non permanence of impermanence, right, nothing is permanent, nothing stays, and so observing that was dramatic for me. And, you know, it was, it was definitely meaningful, I got a chance to talk to the monks afterwards, they gave me a little bit of the sand from the mandola, it was really beautiful, is a really beautiful ceremony. And just as an observer, who didn't necessarily understand all of the intricacies of the ceremony, there still was an impact, because I went with the intent to take it, take it all in, and, you know, to understand more about it, and to observe it with, with reverence, because it is, you know, it is sacred, and, you know, it is sacred to that culture, and, and that religion, and to sort of take that in, and so you can, you can just as an observer of ceremony have the certainly be impacted, right, we're definitely impacted by symbols. That's why advertising works. You know, it's why it's why art works, right? When you look at a piece of art, and it has an impact on you, at a very deep level. You know, it's kind of the same thing. So I would, you know, I would make a, I would make a sort of request, or I would urge you to, when you when the opportunity arises to participate mindfully, in ceremony, go with intent, even if the intent is I'm just going to be open to what's going on here, I'm going to take it in and be open to it. And that is sometimes enough of an intent to have a very profound impact on you. So let's talk a little bit about I do, you know, I do from time to time design ceremony for specific events, or specific things that are going on. So I want to talk about a few elements that might help you if you I don't know, if you want to, you know, if you want to develop your own ceremony for something, or, or to help you appreciate what's going on. What's going on in the ceremony, there are a few elements. And again, you know, if to speak in very general terms, because as soon as you say something like, all ceremonies involve creating sacred space. I'm sure you can think of ceremonies where that was not called out, right, where that was not a huge important part of the ceremony. Or, you know, something along those lines. Right. But
you know, you'll find that the, you know, ceremonies do happen in a specific time and space, right. And there's something special about both of those things, even if the ceremony is the throwing out of the first pitch at a baseball game, you know, opening ceremony baseball game. You know, the baseball diamond, you know, is yes, it's sports. Yes, it's entertainment. But there is this. There's this pattern there. There's this thing that exists in the psyche of people who've enjoyed baseball for you know, 150 years, or however long baseball has been around. And so, there is an impact there is there is a space. So one of the one of the items about ceremony is that it frequently happens in a special place or a sacred space. That doesn't mean All ceremony has to happen in a purpose built temple or church. It just means that there is a space that's marked out frequently, that is this area is somehow special. right in, you know, we refer to the inner part of the temple in Jerusalem as the Sanctum Sanctorum. Right, the Holy of Holies. The, the, the inner part, we're only the the elite is the separation from the sacred and the profane, or the divine in the mundane, right, this is the space. And that in sacred space makes an impression makes a serious impression. On the spirit on the unconscious mind on the symbolic, on the symbolic part of the astral entering sacred space. Definitely, if you are sensitive or clairvoyant or empathic. You, you definitely feel it. Right? And how do we mark out sacred space? Well, I mean, you can do all kinds of things physically to mark out sacred space, right, you can set up a temple or build a church. I remember walking into the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, which is I don't know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old, and it's about 300 feet tall, and you walk in and the it's like a giant cave, it's very dark. And you know, there is this immense sense of, of leaving the regular world behind entering a special place. So it's anything that sort of sets a space apart. Now in a lot of a lot of workings, a lot of sort of magical workings in shamanic workings and that sort of thing. They do what's called casting a circle. So it's sort of like, making a circle around which the work takes place that is safe from spirits etc. You know, it's sort of banishing saying, Okay. And if you spirits who are hanging out in the space, it's time to leave, because I only want the spirits in the space that are invited. And, and that's, you know, depending upon your belief system, you know, that's the thing, like we, we only want the energies in the space that we're working in to be there, we don't want to be distracted, we don't want you know, our work to be tainted by different energies. And if you if you aren't a believer, if you aren't animistic in nature, and believe in in nature, spirits, and that sort of thing, and other types of spirits are just hanging out, you can think of it as setting apart those parts of your psychology that might interfere with, with the work that you're about to do the symbolic work that you're about to do. And so there's always a creation of sacred space in these ways. So if you were to create a ceremony for some purpose, and again, it should have a purpose, you don't do ceremony just for the sake of doing ceremony, but the purpose can be you know, I'm going to celebrate the winter solstice, or the new moon or the full moon or a birthday or a birth or a death or, you know, whatever they're, you know, setting apart space helps you communicate on all levels of the human being. And this is what symbolic action really is about, right we have a physical body, we have a mind or mental body emotional body, we have an authentic double, which is our energetic body, we have this astral body, which is our soul body, and that communicates really well metaphorically. And you know, then we have this indwelling
Spirit. This the sort of the Ottoman in Sanskrit, right, this this over soul, this connection to divinity, and symbolic action, ritual and ceremony allows us to align all of those parts of ourselves, right? I do something physical, that impacts my etheric body, my astral body, my mental body, your your spirit body, your connection to divinity isn't necessarily impacted by that. But you can, you can align with it, you can align your other parts with that, with that part of you. Okay, and this can have effects that carry on for a period of time, you know, soul retrieval ceremonies, for example, and I keep going back to that because I, you know, because I'm a shamanic practitioner have tend to have a profound and lasting impact on people. You know, I had a client one time, who, you know, after after soul retrieval told me that he felt joy for the first time And as long as he could remember, I mean, that's, you know, I'm almost in tears talking about that that's profound. That's a profound change that happened as a result of that ceremony. I can't imagine going through life for as long as I can remember, and not having moments of joy. But to just feel that spontaneously all of a sudden, you know, and he was overwhelmed. And I understand that I understand being overwhelmed by that. So, getting these things in alignment, getting your, your physical, your, your physical self in alignment with the other parts of yourself. And that's really what ritual and ceremony is about. So sacred space. Also, we'll talk about time, right? Because ritual and ceremony happen in three dimensional reality we have they happen in time and space, we're doing something with our physical bodies that move through time and space, even though other parts of us don't experience time and space in the same way. It is important, right? So ceremony, rituals and ceremonies have a beginning have a definite beginning and end. Right. So in the, you know, Western Christian wedding ceremony. They begin when the, you know, when the bridal party does the procession, right, they mark they sort of March in, or they, they walk into some music. There's a bunch of ritual that happens in between. and then they normally end when the bride and groom walk out of the, you know, walk out of the place where the ceremony is being held. Okay? So there's a definite beginning, and an end, there's not this sense of, of this is something that's going on forever and ever and doesn't end. And that's important, right? Because you're telling yourself, you're telling all parts of yourself, okay, now I am doing this symbolic work. Now I am doing this ceremony, now I'm doing this ritual, it's, you know, don't get confused with other things I may have done before or other things that I have done after, right, so there's a separation. So when I, when I was trained in martial arts, my whole life and when I, you know, was training in a dojo, you know, when we walk in the door, we bow into the mat, we bow, you know, and that is a little ritual, right? This bowing, you know, it's a small ritual, but it's a little bit of saying, Okay, I'm putting the world behind me, and I'm showing respect, you know, to my classmates, and my teacher and to the school and to the ancestors who came before to give this art these arts to us. And we bow there's a, you know, a seat of the spirits in the front, which is a, you know, sort of a Shinto shrine, a small Shinto shrine of sorts, and you bow to that to show respect. So this is getting, again, it's getting into alignment, no matter what happened, if I was coming from work, or, you know, when I was living in Boston, I would take the subway, you know, a lot of stuff was going on, and, you know, my mind might not be aligned with my body, and my spirit might be doing something else. And, you know, who knows, right? And so this is about coming into alignment. Now, it is time to do this, this work. And so you can think about when you perform, you know, any sort of spiritual or symbolic action, meditation could be a ritual, right? If, if there's a symbolic component to your meditation.
And if you think about sitting down on your, on your mat, you're setting out sacred space, there's a beginning to you know, there's a beginning you sit on your cushion, there's an ending you open your eyes, you get up you ring a bell, or whatever you do, to set yourself in time and space for performing ritual or ceremony. As I mentioned before, intent is really is really the key to almost any kind of spiritual work that you do. intent creates the change intent creates the impact of any work that you do. Okay? If I you know, if I, I don't know if I perform again, if I perform a ceremony that or if I perform a ritual that I don't have a connection to, and I don't know what it's for, and I don't have direct intention behind it. It's Not going to have the impact that I wanted to. So again, if I make the sign of the cross that, you know, from the Catholic religion, it does not necessarily have the same impact or meaning for me. If I chant in Sanskrit, say, for example, like there's an impact from the sound of the words, but if I don't understand the words that I'm chanting, or if I don't have, and there's no intention behind them. They're just sounds. And yes, there are sacred sounds, and they have, they have a definite impact, but there's not going to be as much of an impact if there's no intent there. Okay. So think about sacred space, a beginning and an end, and intent. And that will, that will take your, you know, anything that you do that's sort of ritualistic or ceremonial, it will, it will take you further in that, again, includes just observing ceremony, attending ceremony that is being performed by somebody else. You know, examples of that, obviously, are like religious ceremonies that are led by LED, led by religious leaders rights, you know, where you're not the one who's conducting space, but if you have the intent going in, of being open, or being impacted, or making a greater connection, or whatever the intent is, when you when you attend, like hold on to that, hold on to that through the ceremony, and it will have a bigger impact. Because again, it gets your parts in alignment, I like to talk about the expression. I don't know if this exists in other languages besides English, but we talked about firing on all cylinders, which we're talking about a car, right, if we're talking about a car that has cylinders in the engine, right, that's where the combustion happens that causes that causes the engine to run, and, you know, makes the car go. And so if you have six cylinders, and there's a problem, and only three of them are firing, you obviously only have half as much power in your car. As, as you should, if things were aligned, if things were working properly, if all six cylinders were firing. So it's the same thing with human beings, if we get all of our parts in alignment, using intense using ritual using ceremony, it's like you're firing on all six cylinders, it's like your impact your spiritual development, the things you know, your healing, any of these things will have a much greater effect. So, when I, when I work with clients, clients come to me for some kind of healing, you know, I always tell them, you know, shamanism works on the level of the soul body, right, which is one layer of, of the human being. And so, you know, and that can provide some profound healing. But really, you need to be in absolute alignment, you know, mind, body, spirit, soul, all of those layers need to be in alignment for the maximum effect to take place. So there may be some physical action that has to take place. You know, if somebody has, you know, think about somebody who has,
you know, horrible allergies from food that they're eating, you know, shamanic healing might help, it might give them some more energy to regulate their immune system or whatever. But you also have to stop eating the foods that you're having allergic reactions to. Okay, I have seen absolutely have I seen healing that could be defined as miraculous I've seen, you know, people heal from surgery faster after shamanic work, I've seen you know, lots of trauma, healing, you know, holding certain things at bay and that sort of thing. But you always do that work in conjunction with, you know, with other with other healing work that you're doing with the physical level with the mental level with, with all of those things. I don't say you know, shun modern allopathic medicine, for you know, spiritual healing only are firing on all cylinders. So is the same thing with ceremony and ritual. We want to fire on all cylinders. We want to get into alignment. intent is a good way to do that. Setting up physical symbols of sacred space, whether that's Lighting a candle somewhere or having an altar at home, I you know, I do have many altars in my house as many shamanic practitioners do but I'm having an altar, something I highly recommend, you know, it's, it's a place that you can go to that is marked, marked out sacred space, even if it's tiny, even if it's a shelf, or a windowsill or a small table or something like that. It's an area that's marked out as sacred. Right? And has, it's a place to come into alignment with spirits on on the physical plane. And it's one of the things one of the tenants of of shamanism is that we walk in, we walk in multiple worlds simultaneously, we do not forego the physical world for the spiritual that's called spiritual bypassing, I will probably do a whole podcast on spiritual bypassing because it is honestly, it's a big problem in the spiritual development community that I that I see, today. It's the you know, everything is fine, because I'm an Ascended Master feeling, you know, ignoring the house being on fire, right? When the solution is leave the burning building. Yes, you can still, you know, maintain your calm and not be not be affected by by your house burning down as much. But if your house is on fire, you know, there's a simple physical solution to that, and that is walk out of your house, and save your life because you have a physical body. And, you know, it's not necessarily to be ignored. So, this is, this has become one of my longer podcasts. And I realize there's a lot of tangents here. But I did want to talk about ceremony and ritual is very important to me. You know, we do a lot of ceremony, I do a lot of ritual.
And, you know, hopefully this has been interesting to you, I would love to hear if you, if you do want to go to my website, it's maineshaman.com. I would love to hear if you have topics you'd like me to cover, or guests you'd like me to talk to, I will promise that I'm going to figure out the technology for interviewing
guests very soon. Obviously, I have to do that remotely during the pandemic for for safety sake. But you know, I will, we'll be working on that shortly. So it's not, you know, hopefully bring in some, some very interesting guests very soon. But please feel free to contact me that way. And I look forward to speaking to you more in the future. And I love to see the listeners, you know, from all over the planet, really, you know, really coming in and listening and that makes me very happy. And so I wish you a wonderful day. I wish you more love not less. And with that. I will leave you.
Announcer 53:48
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