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 0:55
Hello, everybody. It's been a little while, um, a couple of days, usually would be getting this podcast out. And I apologize for that, although I did do two episodes last week. So maybe that makes up for it a little bit, I'm sure you will find it in your heart to forgive me. This, I normally record these in the morning. And this today is no exception to that it is the morning. And I too, like my coffee, if anybody knows if there is a deity or spirit or something associated with coffee, anywhere in the world, I would love to know that get in touch with me. It's really curious. I suppose I could do my own research, right? I could google google it myself. But I would love to hear from people. If anybody knows, if there's a deity of coffee, I should probably put a statue on my altar or something. But anyway, I'm drinking my coffee, I'm drinking out of a mug that my children gave to me for Christmas, this year. And the mug has a picture of grumpy dwarf from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And you know, if you're unfamiliar, you know, with that particular Disney movie from Gosh, the 1930s. You know, grumpy dwarf is a guy who's always is always pouting, he's always unhappy about what's going on. And so there's a picture of grumpy on my mug. And in a circle around him, it says, This is my happy face. And that always kind of, like, cracks me up a little bit, you know, partially because of the juxtaposition of this frowning, unhappy character. And, you know, and the the phrase, this is, this is my happy face. Obviously, that's, that's kind of humorous. But it leads me into today's topic, actually, quite well. And, you know, that topic is, you know, that I've titled this the alchemy of suffering. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about alchemy and suffering. And I want to leave you today, you know, before this is done with some really, really practical tools you can take out with you to heal the world really, to heal yourself to heal the world. And hopefully, that will be hopefully it, put it into practice and find that incredibly useful. You do not have to be a guru to change the world You do not have to be you know, in a spiritually enlightened master you. You can change the world, no matter who you are, in fact, just by existing in a physical body, you're you know, you you do change the world, you make an impact on the world, and you have a choice about how you can show up in the world and how you can impact the world and all those things. And you can because at your core, and this is a this is a core truth. I've spoken across numbers of podcasts, at your core, is this divine spark, a piece of God if you will, right. Every living soul has this. Your it is it is who you are at your core. It is unchangeable, inseparable and viable. It's your connection to source. And so you have divinity within you. I am I have 100% faith in that statement. This is not you know, this is not something I made up to feel good or anything like that. I've worked with this principle a lot in my life and my training with my college clients, when I teach, I teach practices around the space, and I'm going to talk about one of them today, which is a particularly powerful practice that has borne out some pretty incredible experimental results when it's been put to the test. So I will talk about that. But the topic today is alchemy, and particularly the, what I'm calling the alchemy of suffering. You know, if you're not a history buff for, you know, ancient history buffs, certainly.
So, you know, the term alchemy, you might have different thoughts about that you might picture you know, a wizard looking person with a long beard and a lab with crucibles and, you know, glassware, doing experiments and trying to turn lead into gold. And certainly, that is a part of, of alchemy. We have, you know, the practice of chemistry, the science of chemistry today, you know, owes its roots to the early alchemists. In fact, the word alcohol with which is, you know, some of us, some of us enjoy, some of us enjoy more than we should some of us enjoy more than others. But it's also, you know, alcohol is also a tool for you know, sanitizing things, and that's the thing. It has the same route, as alchemy, and because the process of distillation, and it's interesting that we say the distillation of spirits rights we talk about in English anyway, another synonym for alcoholic beverages is spirits. And that's, you know, that's not a, you know, there's some meat there, there's some meat to be explored there. A little bit beyond the topic of this podcast, but I'm a little bit of a word nerd. And I like that stuff. And I love history, and particularly ancient history. But so the practice of alchemy, you know, came from a time where science and spirituality really were hand in hand, right? So, if we look at Isaac Newton Wright, who did so much of the work that we rely on today, okay, Isaac Newton, the English scientist, who, you know, will say, discovered the laws of gravity, planetary motion, invented calculus, in his spare time, he was actually home, avoiding the plague, which is an interesting parallel to what's going on today. with, you know, with a pandemic, he invented calculus, he, you know, we use in physics, his, his, you know, his principles are, are taught and use to this day in physics. But Newton dabbled in alchemy, he had an alchemical lab. And he, you know, there are, you know, we have writings, he wrote about it, he did practical experiments, practical, physical experiments, and he, you know, I am going to condense his viewpoint greatly, so, excuse me for that, but I don't, you know, would not have the time in any single podcast, to discuss his viewpoint thoroughly, but he viewed the universe as, like a giant machine. That was like a like clockwork, right, like the insides of a clock working. And he saw, you know, God or spirit as the driving mechanism behind that. And the practice of alchemy, the practice of studying physical material and trying to transmute it had a spiritual component in two ways. One, there was no real separation between between spirituality and science. You know, God, if you take the Christian perspective, the Judeo Christian perspective, God was present in everything and everything we did, and they were trying to discover, basically, the secrets of God the secrets of how the universe was created, and things were made in the print, you know, the principles behind material things, right, how did the material world come into existence and how was it maintained? And how do we have you know, from a single origin, right from from God, speaking of word, how did how did everything come into existence? And if we think about how the Big Bang happening, right, the entire universe being created from an infinitesimally small particle, and then all the And it's everything. You know, it took a little time to become everything we know, we had to have some stars show up and make some elements for us. But, you know,
it's really similar if you if you parse the language of what's being described, I honestly think I would like to return to a time where science and spirit is, is hand in hand and that it's not automatically assumed that one thing cancels the other thing out. We can have evolution, right. And we can also have spirit, we can have chemistry and we can have alchemy. Okay? So these alchemists who are physical, what we call practical alchemists. Were trying to work out the secrets of nature. And yes, they were trying, in many cases to transform lead into gold, because that would have been a really cool way to get rich back then, if he could do that. And then we're also trying to find this thing called the Philosopher's Stone, which was the magnum opus, the great work, the the thing that would him, you know, give you immortality. And so that was sort of the practical side. Now there is on a purely spiritual level. And I and I don't, because a lot of this is a little bit murky in history. Because, you know, there was a lot particularly in western world, there's a lot of repression of ideas and certainly spiritual ideas that were outside the bounds of, sort of, you know, what was considered acceptable at that time. We don't, we don't 100% know when there's this sort of, and how the sort of split between pure spiritual alchemy and practical alchemy happened. But alchemy started to become about transforming the person transmuting the person The, the, you know, the lead of suffering in normal life into the gold of enlightenment, for lack of a better term, right? becoming spiritually perfected purification is a big part of the alchemical process. And alchemy finds its way into many many different spheres of Western spirituality. Certainly Eastern spirituality has its own forms of alchemy. If you look at Taoism they have they have elements the same way that we have we use the Al count chemical elements in western spirituality so we have you know, Earth air fire and water you've probably heard that before. It's a little bit different in Taoism where they have you know, Earth would fire water and metal but it's the same idea you have these sort of principle principle elements and this shows up in everything, everything from hermeticism to ritual magic, to you know, the symbols of the Tarot deck, right the Tarot deck you have the cups which represent water and the ones which represent fire and the swords which represent air and the Pentacles are the disks which represent the element of Earth. You know, in the Tarot goes back hundreds of years and obviously alchemy is much much older than that these principle materials but that got filtered, you know, filtered through all of these different lenses. So the base practice of alchemy is about transmutation. It's about taking something maybe less desirable, and transforming it transmuting it into something more desirable, lead into gold. So when I talk about the alchemy of suffering, I talk about transmuting suffering. And I'm going to differentiate a little bit between the idea of pain and the idea of suffering. Because pain is, you know, pain is something that is kind of a given. If you have physical existence, we feel all sorts of, we feel all sorts of pains, sometimes you have physical pain, and you can do all sorts of things to numb your pain, right? If you have a toothache, you can take some medicine or go to the dentist if you have a headache. You can take you know, take some aspirin or whatever acetaminophen or however you pronounce it wherever you're from, I realized that different countries, different English speaking countries have different ways of pronouncing that. It's fine. So We have ways of numbing our pain, right? Because sometimes we, we associate pain with suffering, suffering is about something deeper than that. It's about an emotional,
an emotional resistance to the pain, for lack of a better term. It's about holding on holding the pain in place by resisting it, it's about you know, to, to speak a little bit, maybe in an adult manner. So So we say, um, you know, there are people in this world who practice sadomasochism, for example, as a sexual practice, who embrace pain as a source of pleasure. Right. And I don't know, but you know, I've spoken to I've spoken to people who kind of live in that world. And it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing that they can take pleasure from physical pain, some people take pleasure from humiliation, I would say that there is this sort of way we bring pain into our lives and hold it in place. Because there is a part of us, there's a part of us, actually, that enjoys the suffering because we're either we're used to it, or there's some trauma in our life, or we're trying to replay trauma or wounds so that we can heal it. But it's there, it's there, so that we can heal those parts of ourselves. Right? on a physical level, if I have a toothache, right, I feel pain, I could have done that I could, you know, I could take some drugs, I could drink a lot, I could do all kinds of stuff and not, you know, be less aware of the pain or be not aware of the pain. But I'm not addressing the toothache, I'm not addressing the issue, what I really need to do is go to the dentist and have my tooth taken care of. Right instead of just numbing the pain. And so often in this world, that's what we do. You know, we stare at our phones all day we drink we do drugs, we Gosh, we escape into spirituality have talked about spiritual bypassing before, right, which is the use of spirituality to not address pain points to not address wounds, to not do your healing. And I will repeat this till I'm blue in the face. And I'm sorry if this is something that I've said over and over again, and I will continue to do so I can say don't actually apologize for it. Because it's intentional. I do not care if you think you're enlightened, if you are a guru of some kind, if you can levitate, if you can walk through walls or turn invisible. You always need to be working on yourself, you need to do yourself work. There's an important reason for that. It's because you are, you know, you are a conscious projection into the world. Right, your existence on this plane of reality is being projected through, you know, layers of your spirit and layers of your consciousness. And we heal the world when we heal ourselves. Let me repeat that. I'll actually reverse it. I'll say when we heal ourselves, we heal the world. And that's absolutely true. And there's some, there's some great research out there. I was reading. I'm very interested in trying to be a good parent, you know, I have children, and I do I am, I will never say that I am perfect. ever in my life. I am far from perfect parent. But I do my best. And I do my best to be conscious about parenting and make good choices about the things that I do and say and how I show up in the world and my children. And there is fantastic research showing that parents who do their work, whether that's going to therapy or doing your own shadow work or what have you. It is incredibly healthy for your children. right because you just the way you show up in the world affects everything. It's so impactful upon your children.
But I would extend that out and say it's not just your children. It's the people you interact with daily. We're a little like, you know, imagine that. We're just walking around. Around the pandemic is actually sort of a good metaphor for this, right? We're walking around infecting everybody with our energy. And the thing is, we can do it, we don't have to be in close physical contact to do that. So I hope, for example, that when you listen to this podcast that my energy comes through, and that it is loving, and nurturing and informative, I hope, I hope I work on that, right. And so if I can sort of infect you with that positive energy that makes the, I think makes the world a better place for everybody. And there are a few practices I'm going to talk about, like specific meditational practices that you can do and learn more about, I don't have time to actually teach them all in this podcast, but I'm going to tell you about them. And certainly, you can find out more. I do want to there, there is an interesting book, I want to recommend, you know, having, I'm gonna recommend a couple of books today. A very rare, I read a whole lot, but I very rarely recommend books, because I think it's it can be very personal. I mean, I would recommend a book sort of one on one if you know, for a client or a student came to me and they were, you know, struggling with something and I knew a book that had some really good information for them, I would not hesitate. But sort of blanket recommendations. Because I know everybody listening to this, I have listeners from I think the last time I checked 21 different countries. Gosh, I'm grateful for that. That makes me so happy that I get to talk to people from all over the world through this forum. And so, you know, you're all living in different cultures, and your men and your women and maybe transgender or non binary, and you all have different lives and different cultures and different languages, although I'm assuming you at least speak English as a second language. You know, because you're listening to me, and I'm only communicating in English at this point. You don't want me to try to speak any, anything else? probably easier to understand me in English. Um, I have a smattering of I have a smattering of French and I grew up in an area where there were, you know, some French speaking people, but it's full of slang and my accents really weird, I'm told, so I'll stick to English for now. But I'm gonna, you know, recommend a couple of books today. And the first one, you know, primarily because I was talking about the way we hold on to pain sometimes and derive pleasure from it. And sort of along the lines of people who engage in BDSM, in their sex life, there is a book called existential kink by a woman named Carolyn Elliot, that I like a whole lot. I've listened to it on audio, and I've read the book. And she does couch things in sexual terms. If you're uncomfortable with that, you know, maybe maybe that isn't the book for you. But what she's really talking about is this stuff, this stuff, how we sometimes attract painful experiences into our lives, either to relive some trauma, or, you know, there is some part of us that's taking pleasure from, from bringing these, you know, these painful experiences into our lives. And sort of what to do with that. I mean, there's practical advice. I don't think the observation alone. I mean, it's, it's definitely interesting, but without, you know, Okay, I understand that, what do I do with it now? That's, you know, that's of limited use. So she has lots of practical exercises, and I am in a, I'm in a study program with her. At the moment, I'm in a year long study program with her and it's absolutely fascinating, absolutely fantastic. program, I recommend her as a teacher. And I do recommend her book. And again, it's called existential kink. You can find it wherever books are sold, I'm sure I'm sure you can find it. Amazon or, you know, bookstores near you or order it through a local bookseller is a great way to to get a hold of books and support local business. So that's one book that I'll recommend and I'll talk about the other one in a few moments.
Boom, I want to I do want to talk about transforming suffering and there are there are few ways to do this. And, um, you know, one is transforming our personal suffering, right? transforming, you know, transforming how we show up in the worlds by by transforming our personal stuff. And really, when you get underneath it all, we're all connected. That's the principle there, everything is connected to everything. And so if you think of yourself as like an a node in a giant, three dimensional net connected to every other node, and every other node is a person or a being of some sort, that has the capability to suffer. When you change yourself, you It sends ripples along this net in every direction. And so I'm, you know, working on working on transforming suffering, helps to transform the suffering of those close to you and those distant from you because it sends ripples out, you can't do anything without having, you know, sort of the butterfly effect of it spreading throughout the world. So, um, you know, if you're familiar at all with, with Buddhism, you know, the Buddha talked about the Four Noble Truths, right? And the Four Noble Truths are all about suffering, that there is that there is suffering, that there's a reason for the suffering, that there's a way out of the suffering. And really, you know, the teaching, not to simplify all forms of Buddhism and just sort of a single idea. But just the idea about suffering is that there are, there are sort of two main causes of suffering. And those, those causes our attachment and aversion. Right, we want to cling to those things we attach to those things that bring us pleasure. And we avert or push away those things that we perceive as being us pain, bringing us pain. And the thing that causes us suffering from attachment and aversion is that nothing lasts forever. So anything quote unquote good that we attached to that we have to do, you know, derive pleasure from is not going to last forever, right? relationships change and and you know, sunsets and a good meal ends are good health might end as we grow older. We, we all die, the everybody who has ever existed, has or will die someday. So there's impermanence, right? And so anything you attach to anything you say, you know, these conditions are necessary for me, to not suffer is a recipe for suffering, because those conditions will not always exist. You know, besides your indwelling, unborn divine spark, there is nothing that's permanent, everything changes. So that's one lesson. The other lesson is that we avert the things that caused us pain, thinking that if I hold them off, I will not suffer. So, right, I numb myself with alcohol, so I don't have to face my emotional turmoil. Or I, you know, push away thoughts that are painful to me, I push away grief, for example, a relationship ends or a loved one dies. And I stuffed the grief down in that, honestly, is just a recipe for prolonging suffering, if not increasing it, multiplying it. And so there's this state of equanimity that the Buddha attained where you know, we say no attachments, no versions, right must be attached to nothing. virtually nothing. That's hard. Boy, it's hard. If it weren't hard, we wouldn't all be enlightened we would all be Buddha would not be the Buddha right.
But this is a major lesson. I think that I am on this earth to learn in this body. This body does experience pain his body has experienced this mind body has experienced suffering. Experience attachments and aversions. I'm not above that. You know, obviously, it'd be hard for me to talk about it if I was above that, and I'd be the Buddha, right. So I wouldn't necessarily have a podcast, I don't know. But the Buddha have a podcast. What do you think he did? He did preach, but maybe he would have a podcast if that technology existed back then. I'm not the Buddha not enlightened, I'm not beyond suffering. I'm not beyond attachments and aversions. Do you know I work on it, though, I work on those things. It's part of myself work. It is a tree that has borne much fruit in my life. So you know, we can work on equanimity. And so the second book I would recommend to you today, the second and final book I will recommend to you today is a book that is super practical and deals directly, indirectly with attachments and aversions, and releasing emotional energy and that sort of thing. And that book is called the Sedona Method SC, d, o, Na, after the city in Arizona, in the United States. The author is Hale dwoskin, dw OSK, i n. And then this books been out for a long time. I first read it, gosh, a long time ago, because I didn't, I didn't have kids when I read it. And I remember that because the book so was so profound to me that I was like, I need to go meet the guy who wrote this book. And I flew out to Sedona and did a class to the class in the Sedona Method out there, and then did another class with the author in New York City. And I've done all kinds of online classes. And, again, like this is, there are in the book that has a series of practices, each one a little deeper, each one a little more profound. And the method was created by a man named Lester Levinson, who passed I think, in the 80s, maybe 80s, early 90s, he passed and, and pass the torch on to hell dwoskin, who, you know, runs the organization and, and teaches and wrote this book and has, there's a there's a movie as well called, I believe it's called letting go, which is sort of a video teaching of these teachings, and I highly recommend it as a practice. The nice thing about it, one of the nice things about it is it is it is spiritual without being spiritual. Like the practice is all about using emotions as a tool for release. You do not have to adopt a belief system or give up your belief system or study with a guru or not study with a guru or anything I have. When I've gone to, you know, the couple trainings I've done, I've sat in, in the training with people who were all walks of life, I remember meeting a rabbi in there, for example, and people who were hypnotherapist and people who are really into yoga and people who were not considering themselves spiritual at all. So to me, it's a brilliant practice, it's really about the human condition, and it's one form of the alchemy of suffering, it's about trance, muting, these feelings going deep into deep into feelings and releasing them, which when you do that, they just become energy, all emotion is a is an energy of specific frequencies and all of that stuff. So, this is, so between existential kink and the Sedona Method. These are really some tools for, for personal transformation. And then, so I'll move from sort of personal transformation to a, you know, some types of spiritual alchemy that I believe are
how I describe it more global ways that you can act that are sort of outward facing, so Sedona Method and ek are very inward facing practices. And that's fine. And in that respect, and the fact that they're inward facing, we might say that they're reflections of the divine feminine, right, the Divine Feminine This is sort of or not, I mean, you could look at it from, I guess you could look at it from the perspective that it's also and you know, it's a divine masculine effect, because you're, you're working on the individual. So there's a bit of a balance there. But it is inward, their inward practices. I do want to talk about a couple of outward, elk spiritual alchemical alchemical, was a hard word to get out. I apologize, spiritual alchemical practices that are a little bit outward facing. And this isn't to say that you will get no benefit from them. Because that is not true. Because as you affect the world, you affect yourself, you are inseparable. You are not, you know, you, I hate to say this, but even though your ego says you are, you're really not a separate being. You're an aspect, you're an aspect of the Divine. You're an avatar of the Divine. I know that word avatar has very specific meaning in some religious practices. And so I apologize if I'm using it in a way that's incorrect for your belief system, but I'm just saying that you are a representation of divinity that's inseparable and connected to everything else. You're an aspect. And so there's, you know, there's a couple practice I'll I will talk about. The first one is a Tibetan practice. Oh, and I think I might well, I'll end with another Tibetan practice that is very individual as well, but I'll talk about these practices first. So the first Tibetan practice is called Tong Len. And this is a practice that the, the, the current Dalai Lama has said is the highest form of Tantra, right. And I'm not particularly an expert in Tantra, and in the West, when you say Tantra, most people think about sex, but that is a one tiny part of all there is of Tantra. And so to me, from my viewpoint, as sort of an outsider to, you know, tantric systems have always studied tantric Buddhism for a while. You know, again, Tantra is about spiritual alchemy, it's about transforming transmuting. You know, different forms of energy, like the the sexual practices of Tantra are about transforming the energy of desire into the energy of enlightenment. So Tong, Len, t o n g le n. And there are different ways of practicing Tong Len, and I will let you Google that you can find you can find lots of instructions out there and sort of different ways to practice and funny, you know, interest you find a way that that works for you. But tongue lends a meditative practice. And in the meditation, you do, along with certain types of breathing, you visualize taking in the suffering of the world. And sometimes you'll focus on the specific aspect, right. So I might focus on I want to take in the grief of people who have lost a loved one to COVID right to the Coronavirus. And I will read that in I will imagine taking that from the world and bringing that in. And then I will use the energy of my heart center to transform that into healing light. And when I exhale, I will visualize exhaling the healing light, and it is a it's a profound practice. It's an absolutely profound practice. It heals the world and it heals the energy in the process. you heal yourself. Because when you're taking in certain types of suffering from the entire world, you are part of the entire world. That includes you. And so tonglen is become part of my personal practice. It's something that I'm going to try to spend some time with daily, because I have found it to be profound and beautiful.
Another practice that comes from comes from Buddhism is Oh, and before I get into that, I do want to say I recognize that breathe In suffering, imagine breathing in suffering might seem a little shocking for some people who have certain New Age belief systems where, you know, what you focus on is what you attract into your life? And, and, and so why would I focus on suffering? Why would I breathe it in, you know, that sort of thing. And I and I understand that concern, I can tell you that you're not breathing in the suffering and dwelling in it, you're breathing in the suffering to transmute it. And the consensus is, for people who have been practicing, you know, practicing this art for who knows centuries is that it is not it is far from harmful. It's actually a really beautiful healing practice. And so that's not something I would be particularly concerned about, if you were doing some sort of practice where you breathed in suffering, and that was it. Yeah, you don't really want to take that on. That's not sort of a great thing to take on. So the next, the next piece also comes is a is a form of Buddhist meditation. And again, this isn't one that exists in different forms. And so I will leave it to you if this this interests you. But this is a form of meditation called meta me TTA, which is also called loving kindness, compassion, meditation. And during this meditation, there are basically recitations that you do. So you imagine, you know, you imagine somebody that you love, and then you do certain recitations may they be free from suffering, may they be free from physical pain, maybe it's just like a little blessing that you're doing. And you go through, you know, different relationships, people that you have relationships with, and you, you know, picture them and you do these recitations and then includes people that you've had difficulty with people who might not have shown up in loving, supportive ways in your life. And when you take somebody who has hurt you, and you know, maybe even not so nice to you, and you wish for them to be free from suffering, there is this beautiful alchemy that happens inside you. You know, this starts to allow forgiveness to creep in. And forgiveness is forgiveness is a sticky topic, I'm going to do an entire podcast on forgiveness very soon. Sometimes we focus on forgiveness to the detriment of somebody who has been victimized by somebody else, or who is suffering. And all you need to forgive, you need to forgive you need to forgive. That's not a good way to approach forgiveness. And again, I'll do an entire podcast on that. But you can, you can begin madtech can be a way for you to begin to experience some forgiveness, some letting go. And, and in this way, forgiveness is not about letting somebody off the hook for you know, causing you harm or causing you pain or hurting you. Forgiveness is a way for you to release some of the suffering that you are holding. And and that is a beautiful thing. That is a transformative thing. And I love metta and I've led led meta meditations before. And it's such a sweet practice. So encourage you if the sounds if this sounds like a nice thing, give it a try. And again, it's it's it's a Buddhist practice, but you don't have to be you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice methods. It's you know, it's pretty much nondenominational that's not it's not a prayer, per se of their, I guess their little prayers, the recitations and you're not praying to a deity. So if you are, you know, a devout Muslim, I don't I don't think there would be anything there that would prevent you from doing that or devout Christian or what have you. I don't think there's anything in there that would counteract your religious beliefs or your practices or prohibitions against practicing something else.
And I think that's true for anything I'm recommending here today. So, so have added metta as another beautiful practice. So the other another practice that I want to talk about is sort of, it's taught by a pretty well known shamanic teacher named Sandra ingerman. And even though she's a mnemonic teacher, she will tell you that this practice is not. It's not shamanism, per se. You know, even though that's her, that's her. That's her thing. And it was taught to me by my shamanic teacher. And it's a, it's something I practice, it's something that I have taught my students and, you know, my, my, you know, people that work with me as clients. And that is a practice called transfiguration. And, again, I'm not going to teach it over this podcast, because it would take too long, and I'm just sort of wanting to introduce you to some alchemical practices that you can do. transfiguration is an absolutely beautiful practice that involves really getting in touch with and identifying that divine spark that I talked about so much. And allowing that divine light that comes from you to just shine unhindered. And Sandra angermann, has done some amazing experiments with transfiguration, where they have taken, you know, polluted water from a stream. And, you know, placed it in a circle, where they were all doing this transfiguration, practice. And then something water off to the lab, and the contaminants disappear out of the water. So it's become a practice that a lot of people are using to heal the earth to heal people around them. The thing with transfiguration that's a little bit different than something like metta, or some of the other practices that are about sort of transmitting. transfiguration is not about transmitting, you don't send you don't you just project your light out into the world. And it goes where it goes. But it does happen to have an interesting effect. That is, I think, still undergoing scientific study. My guess it's going to be very challenging for science to explain how it works. But do we really care? Do we really care, but it's nice. And again, this is where these areas of science and spirit can kind of go hand in hand. Hey, we have this practice, we know it has this effect. We don't know exactly why it has this effect, but we can prove the effect. So keep practicing right? placebo effect is a good one, right? Where you can even tell people they're being given a placebo and it has an effect on them. And we don't know exactly why that is. We don't know if it's believe for the energy or what is going on there. But placebos work. So it's kind of an interesting thing. So these are some of the practices I've gone through, you know, Sedona Method existential kink I've gone through you know, tongue Len and meta and transfiguration. So there's five alchemical practices that I encourage you to look into. Try out, adopt, you know, adopt the ones that are useful to you. adopt the ones and how do you know what's useful to you, you'll you'll know because your personal suffering will decrease and you'll see you'll experience change and people around you, your relationships will change your you know, that that sort of thing. This is where you can be a little bit of a scientist, right? Where you can experiment and, you know, form a hypothesis if I do this practice. I'm going to feel happier. Do you do you feel happier, you feel more at peace? Peace is sort of a very, there's stuff beyond peace, but peace is sort of a very high level, state to be in pieces. speak a lot of peace, but peace, peace
is really, you know, where we're at with a Philosopher's Stone. When you get to peace, you have that state of equanimity where you're no attachments, no versions. That is really spiritual. Peace, what we're talking about. We have, we think of peace so much as the absence of war or you know, that sort of thing. And that is true that is a definition of peace. But when we say peace be with you, or I wish you peace or peace, love and happiness. What does that really mean? Well, it means this state of equanimity, the state of being unbothered, right? There's a Japanese daddy fudo Mew, which he's unmovable mind. Right? unmovable, mind unmovable heart. That doesn't mean you don't emote. It doesn't mean you don't feel love. It doesn't mean you don't. You're not you can't be moved to tears by a beautiful sunset. It just means you have this peaceful sense that is abiding and doesn't doesn't go away based on the circumstances that you're experiencing in physical life. So with that, I see a crow has just flown in front of my window as I talk about peace crows happen a lot when I'm doing this podcasts and I'm looking out the window. And looking at nature, they're they're signifiers that, usually what I'm talking about has some significance to it, at least to me. So with that discussion of peace, I will personally wish you peace. And I will talk to you next time. I hope that you will contact me with any questions through my website. Its Maine Shaman, MaineShaman.com.
Announcer 52:29
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