Announcer 0:28

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 0:47

Hello, everybody.

I hope you are well, I hope you're keeping safe and well, and I welcome you. I love each and every one of you. I realize that may sound weird. And I saw this from a meme somewhere on Facebook or something but the meme said something along the lines of you know, if other people can hate one another without knowing each other, then I certainly can love people I have never met or love you without without fully knowing you. And why not? Right? Love wins love is better than hate. We're weird relationship with the word love in English, because it's very broad and generic. We use it for a lot of things. And I know in other languages, there are multiple words that we would use the word love for an English. So I can love a cheeseburger, and I can love my children and I can love my girlfriend and I can love my country. And they're all different things. Right? Hopefully, I don't love my children the same way I love a cheeseburger or a vanilla milkshake, right. And so there are different kinds of love. And we so we add modifiers family love familial love, same thing. romantic love. So weird one romantic love. Not that I'm not a romantic, but yeah, it's just we have some weird concepts about it. But I'm already you know, I'm already going off on a tangent, because that's not talking about love today, but I do love you. And I hope that comes through. And that is the reason why I, I do these, um, you know, and I have I, well, you know, part of it is ego, for sure I have things I want to say and get out into the world. And this is one way that I can do that. So I recognize that I have an ego, we all do. No matter how far along in my spiritual path I get, I am not going to be you know, bold enough to say, I don't have an ego anymore. That would be braggy and not true. And, you know, I might be deluding myself and go down or go down a really bad pathway. So today, and this, you know, so this podcast, this will be Episode 28. I don't usually talk about the episode numbers too much. But this will be my 20th podcast, thank you, if you are a long term subscriber or a first time listener, it doesn't matter much. But um, so in the previous episode, Episode 27, I talked about setting up altars, setting up personal altars and why that was important. How you could do it, what might go on your altar, what not to go on your altar. So if you haven't listened to that one, you don't have to listen to it before this one. None of my podcasts work that way, you can jump in anywhere you like, listen to any topic you're interested in. But during that podcast, I mentioned that altars are a great place to make and leave offerings. So, and i and i also promised that I was going to do a podcast about offerings. And so that's what this is trying to keep up you know, keep my promises. So I'm gonna, you know, I'll talk about offerings, and I'm also going to talk about the idea of exchange of spiritual exchange. And I'm going to talk about the evil, bad and nasty mean topic of money. And, you know, how that works and what place it plays in today's today's spirituality. I hear Lots of weird. Well, you know, weird as a judgment call, but it's my judgment that they're weird ideas. Because they don't weird from my perspective because they don't make much sense at all. So we'll talk about exchange and why exchange is actually an important thing. So,

you know, we have people who serve in positions of, I don't know, religious or spiritual authority, or we have spiritual teachers or gurus or clergy or what have you. And we have spiritual professionals, right clergy as a type of spiritual professional, but we also have spiritual healers and spiritual teachers will talk about, we'll talk about that as well. And why? Why do they ask for money? And is it okay? Is it okay to charge for spiritual services? Spoiler alert, my, my opinion is, yes, it is. And I and I do. And they'll tell you, and I'll tell you why. And I'll explain it. Because that's a topic that some people not a lot, but some people have a challenge with, I've been challenged over that myself, I think I have some good answers or have answers that satisfy me and seem to satisfy some other people. Some people when they have an opinion on something, never changed that, and cannot be convinced with logic or good reasoning, we see that, gosh, we see that in almost every place today. So we will talk about that. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about offerings, and I'm gonna talk about it from several different angles, but specifically offerings to spirit. Now I know that I have participated in Christian church services. And, you know, there is something called an offering plate that usually gets passed around in the church, I realized nowadays, sometimes people donate in other ways to their church. You know, I don't know, maybe they use Apple Pay these days, I haven't been in a church in a really long time. But when I was a boy, the the collection plate was the way that the, you know, one of the major ways that churches received the money that they needed to operate, so they had to pay the minister or, you know, the clergy, they had to pay the expenses for the building all of those things. And so the church members would be asked to donate. And they would do that out of the goodness of their hearts. And the fact that they wanted to support their church, you know, when people donated and other ways to just, you know, gave large donations to churches or what have you. Um, and I also know that in the history of the Christian church, there were places where the church was the tax collector. So, you know, they went around and actually forcibly collected taxes from people, and that's how they stayed afloat. There were churches that were engaged in commerce, right, there were church organizations that brewed beer and raised crops, there were churches that owned land during the feudal many, many that owned the land during feudal period, and had tenant farmers working the land, and, you know, they took the goods that the tenant farmers grew, and, and worked out that way. So yeah, they're, you know, offerings, maybe, I don't know, maybe a newer, maybe a newer invention of, of these things, but these are, you know, religious institutions, and I'm not arguing good or bad, um, you know, had to be funded in some way. And we could argue all day and all night about how much funding they need and whether they should be taxed or tax free or what have you, whatever. But I think we could agree anyway, that if a any organization wants to have a building, that they maintain somewhere these days, that that is normally going to be done, you know, require financial means it's going to require money to maintain just to maintain a building, let alone all of the other things you know, printing programs and buying Bibles and what have you, you know, churches are can be very large organizations, and they can be very large organization that's for churches. So I'm not particularly talking about that type of offering today, although, you know, certainly people,

when they make offerings, maybe offering up to God, they're their, you know, their money. And that is, you know, that is, in my opinion, a legitimate thing. You know, even though the, the money is going to the church, they have a psycho spiritual effect, from the intention behind the offering. Now, intention is going to be really important, and I'm going to talk about that a lot today. So, they are making an offering. Another word that goes along with offering is sacrifice, right. And, you know, we have, you know, sacrifice in the, you know, the old school was sacrificing animals or people or, you know, what have you. But, you know, we use it as a giving up of something, is it giving up something of value to you, you know, I might sacrifice my time to do this podcast, my time is extremely valuable. I'm, you know, I am a very busy person, with clients and family and writing and everything else that I do, I'm sacrificing my time giving it over, is giving something I value over, for me, too, is spiritual, for a spiritual purpose to spirit. And so there's that aspect as well, right, there's the aspect of that I am giving up something that is of some importance to me, you know. And I and I hold an intention that this is to promote, you know, promote the spirits that I support the God that I support the religion that I support, what have you, okay, so that there's a couple, you know, there's, there's the, you know, we're going to talk about offerings and making offerings there, you know, there, there are two components of it, there's the intention, there's Third, the third component, which is the, you know, the actual physical thing that you're making offer to, there's the, there's the intent, what's my intention behind the offering in shamanism, which is the path, you know, the, the spiritual path that I follow. intention is just about everything. When I, when I work, you know, when I'm doing a healing, or I'm leaving a class or whatever, if I do not have a good solid intention, when I work, things are not going to go really well. They're not going to go smoothly, they're not going to work out or become clear. So intention is everything. Um, gosh, there's another topic for a podcast. And I've actually, I've actually done work in with martial arts as well, I taught martial arts for a couple of decades anyway. And I train people how to use intent in martial art, which is, you know, intention is another word for intention, I train people how to use intention to focus their power. And, and, you know, I can, I could physically demonstrate the effect of intention with people hard to do that over a an audio podcasts only. But I can assure you, there are ways of demonstrating that physically, where, you know, I can take students through different exercises, and you know, one where they have no intention where they have intention and amplifies the effect of whatever they're doing. So intention is key. And then there is the concept of sacrifice, some giving something up giving something over, that has, you know, some value to me, and it doesn't always have to be like, it probably shouldn't be, you know, if you are

if you are, donate if you are sacrificing so much that you can't live your life in in a in a good manner. So, you know, let's say, I you know, I donate so much money to some spiritual foundation or something that I can't pay my electricity bill this month, and I have no electricity, and I have no lights, and you know, my kids can't do their homework, or, you know any of those things, that's probably not a good idea, that's probably not a good level of sacrifice. So there are levels of sacrifice that go into making an offering. So, let me talk, I'll talk a little bit about the the spiritual component of making offerings and sort of what happens. And again, this is from my perspective, because there are probably as many ways of making offerings as there are people who make offerings, right, there's probably, you know, hundreds of 1000s millions of different ways to make offerings, so I'm trying to break it down for you component wise. And, you know, and, and there are different traditions as well. And clearly, if you are working within a tradition, if you are a, you know, a northern European, pagan heathen, then you would make certain types of offerings and certain types of days and certain types of ways. And if you were, you know, Wiccan, you would do it a different way, and that sort of thing. So, you know, I want to, I want to break it down into sort of simple concepts, and you can apply it, apply it, and I hope you do, I try to be somewhat practical with these podcasts. So you can take something that I have, that you've learned from here and do something with it, that is useful to you. And so I'm not prescribing anything, I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do, but just give me some things to think about that you can try out. And if they work for you, they work for you. And if not, you can discard them and go, you know, that guy didn't know what he was talking about. And that's fine, too. So, I want to, you know, I want to talk about sort of the spiritual aspect of making offerings. And so from that perspective, I will talk about the ways that I make offerings. And again, they may differ from the way you do it, or anybody else, or everybody else does it. But I have to have a reference point, I have to have a place to start. So I can talk about this stuff. And I am not an expert in the way you do things I am, you know, somewhat of an expert in the way I do things, because I've been doing what I do, the way I do it, for as long as I've done it. So how's that? So let's say that I am going to, I make all kinds of offerings, and, and I offer different things, depending upon the work that I'm doing. So for example, when I am teaching a class, I will have an altarpiece with

a bowl of flowers in it. And we will, you know, over the course of, you know, the class, the altarpiece becomes the you know, a focus of attention, and the center, and all of these things. And so the idea is that the you know, these flowers, this bowl of flowers becomes imbued with the spiritual energy that is flowing in the room. And I believe, I believe that is to, I believe that that is true. Like, I believe that the things that we place in the altar become imbued with spiritual energy and with the good vibrations and the good thoughts and feelings that that come up, when we're training. And so then when I'm, when I am done with the class, when the class is over, you know, if it's a two day class, we'll say, you know, after two days, you know, I don't take those flowers and dump them in the garbage. I take them out into nature, somewhere depends on where I'm teaching, and offer them to the spirits that are there. Now, if if that is in, you know, if there is, if the place where I'm teaching is close to a spot where I might make an offering, I will do it there. And thank the spirits of place. So in my experience, there are always spirits of place around and having a good relationship with them is a really good idea. You're you, you are sharing space with them. They they live there as much as you do. And you can imagine if, you know hey, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna borrow your house for a couple of days. It might make things smooth and you might be happier if I brought you a gift. You know, that would be good etiquette, right? I think in most cultures, if if I come stay with you, I might, I might bring you gifts. So, you know, offer that up to the, to the, to the spirits of place. And so these, you know, these flowers, their physical objects, and so, I think, you know, most of the time, when I am making offerings, it is not always most of the time it is something physical. Very frequently it is either flowers, it could be incense, it could be sustenance, food, food, water, honey wine, typical things that I'm I might offer, because of the work that I do, and because of the, you know, I tried to be sensitive to the spirits that I'm making offering to, and, you know, we know, from tradition that certain things are more, more traditional offerings. And I know, from interacting the spirit, which is what shamans do. And I do, you know, in my role as a shamanic practitioner, you know, there are things like I have a relationship with spirits, and they tell me what they want, you know, I'll ask them, what should I leave for you. The other thing that I will frequently do is, and so that, you know, that's, that's about leaving offerings a place in nature, particularly to the spirits of place, I will often do that as well, if I just if I don't want to hike to someplace, you know, if I've never, I'll do it if I've never been there before, for sure. But also places that I go to regularly and have a good, you know, have, I tried to keep a good relationship with the spirits of nature. I don't hike with a bowl of flowers, but I might bring, you know, I might bring some cornmeal with me to offer to, to offer to the, you know, the spirits of place. So, again, there's sacrifice, so there's intention. So when I put these offerings out, I may say a few words, or I may just, you know, mentally have the thought, you know, these are for you, please, you know, please take sustenance, I thank you, and please take sustenance from these. So there is a there's a sustenance level. And you may be wondering, how do how do spirits take sustenance from physical things? And if you are wondering that, that is a very good question. These spirits need to eat and drink. Well, I don't know that they need to, they do seem to enjoy the things that I offer. A dude does seem to help keep a good relationship with them.

But there is a level of sustenance. And the reason for that is in my model of the multiverse. And the way that reality works is that everything that has a spiritual component has a physical component, everything is a spirit. Everything has a spiritual component to it or multiple spiritual components to it. So in front of me, I know you can't see this I'm gonna describe to you I'm holding up a, a jar of tomato salsa from a local artisan. So yes, this jar of salsa can hold in my hands. It has physical reality, it has physical matter. But there is a spiritual component to that in shamanism, we would call that, you know, like a president would have a presence in the middle world. If I were doing a shamanic journey, you know, I wouldn't be able to see this jar still be able to see this jar of salsa is a spiritual component. And there were, you know, probably close, close to if not infinite layers of spiritual reality where things get more and less solid as they move along. So these spiritual spiritual beings who are you know, I described them as spiritual because they, we are spiritual beings, but in this case, I'm referring to spirits as non physical meaning they don't have a presence on the plane of matter. They don't have a material presence. But they might live very, very close to They might live on a layer, if you think about like pages of a book, you know, and page 37 is the physical realm and page, you know, 38, which touches that is another layer and 39, which is on the other side of 38. You know, is is close, but not quite touching. So a lot of spirits, a lot of nature, spirits live on that plane that's touching ours, which is why people who are really sensitive can sometimes see them, they can sometimes have an effect very frequently have an effect on the physical world. If you want your plants to thrive, it's a good idea to to appease the spirits of nature, they will tend to your plants, they do not tend to them in the way that they'll water them for you. But they will tend to the life force of these things in the area. And you know, our ancient ancestors knew this stuff. They worked with this stuff, they would have starved to death if they weren't in touch with the spirits of nature. Right, because human beings don't, we're not particularly fast or strong compared to other predators, we don't have very sharp teeth, or claws, all of these things. So the things that helped us survive were our ability to gather into tribes to make tools to, you know, but also to invent spirituality, which happened very early on in human development. Before way before the advent of any kind of what we would consider civilization. We see cave paintings 10s of 1000s of years old, with religious religious is kind of a weird word, I'll say spiritual symbolism. Religious from the aspect of they were practicing a specific form of spirituality, it wasn't just a belief, it was, it was practice. But not religion in the way that we think of organized religion, but it was in you know, is very survival oriented, like you had to, you know, maybe pray to the spirits to help you find the animals that you hunted to depend on, you know, that you, you had to eat, and you had your tribe had to eat. And so maybe there was some, you know, some things going on there. And that seems to be the case, in a lot of these cave paintings. There, there are, you know, hunting scenes and scenes of, you know, religion, religious activity or spiritual activity. So, spirits can take sustenance in the form of energy from these offerings.

And that, you know, different things, different material things kind of have different levels of vibration. And so, you know, what you offer does make a difference, right, I'm not going to leave a plastic Tupperware container out for the spirits, because plastic is a really odd vibration that spirits of place probably are pretty unfamiliar with, right? It's like, it's like, if you were to try some kind of food that, like you're not even sure it's food, kind of thing you're a little hesitant about might cause some anxiety. I'm not trying to really anthropomorphize spirits that much, but it's really the only way I can describe how this how this works. Okay, so the other thing that affects the vibration, for lack of a better term, or the energy of the thing that you're offering his intention, and you can and you can imbue the thing you're offering with intention, if you go with gratitude, it transmits the energy of of your gratitude to the spirits that take sustenance from the offering. Mmm, um, so, you know, it's a, it's a good idea to consider anything you're you're offering, the material form of things you're offering, as well as the intention behind it and as well as whatever energy that the thing carry, you know, carries with it. So, so again, like, you know, when we have the bowl of flowers in our class, and I take the flowers out that hopefully have all this great Energy. You know, the spirits really seem the spirits of place, the nature spirits, they all seem to really like that. So where I live in North America, another traditional offering might be corn meal, right in the spirits of place, it's something they're familiar with. tobacco is another one. Okay, so. So that is the sort of what I'm offering. And a little bit of how I'm offering, you know, might offer it with a little prayer, or just a little thought, a little silent prayer, you know, please take sustenance from this, I thank you for sharing your space with me, as simple enough. If there are, you know, obviously, if there are gods and goddesses in your spiritual system, or a god or what have you, again, you know, stick with those traditions, because that's what people traditionally do. Another form of offering that I frequently, somewhat frequently make a little less than just placing things out on altar, replacing things that nature. But you can also you can use, you can use the elements of earth, air, fire and water to make different kinds of offerings. And so you can make offerings to a fire. Obviously, you want those things to be non toxic and consume, you know, consumable by fire and nonpolluting. Um, but, you know, I might, you know, when I've done fire ceremony, or I've participated in fire ceremony, some of the things that we offer to the fire, particularly again, in North America, or the Americas, anyway, some of these things aren't from North America, but you know, tobacco and chocolate or our traditional cornmeal, things like that. And, you know, so you can, you know, fire is obviously a, a very active spirits and fire can also carry prayers. You know, transmute prayers really quickly, fire is rapidly moving. And so, one of the ways that I might make an offering is the, to make a prayer. You know, I'll take, let's say, take a handful of cornmeal. I'll hold it against my heart, I will make a prayer in my mind, that will hold the cornmeal up to my mouth, and I will blow intending to blow the prayer into the cornmeal, and then I will cast it into the fire.

And that will, you know, take the energy of the intention and the prayer and the offering and the fire, especially with cornmeal transmutes that very quickly, burns it up really quickly goes through the material, sort of returning, you know, removing the material component of the energy. incense is also a way that takes advantage of fire and air elements. Because you can, you know, you can use incense as an offering for sure. for lots of spirits, I probably would not burn Frankincense on the altar to the nature spirits in my area, because Frankincense doesn't come from here. And I don't know if that is something they would find enjoyable. But I might burn Frankincense to you know, on an altar dedicated to Hakata or you know, to other spirits, other work that I was doing, might offer in, you know, frankincense up to them. But so I live you know, I live in the state of Maine in the northeast part of the United States. And we are known for pine trees, and it's called the pine tree state as a matter of fact, tons, you know, lots and lots and lots and lots of pine trees everywhere. So, you know, I might find if I were going to offer incense to you know, scented smoke in some way to nature spirits. First of all, I'd be really careful not to start a forest fire that would be that would not be something that would put me in good graces with the spirits, but I might offer something like balsam fir, right, which has a strong pine scent to it and grows in the area. And again, I would use prayer and intention, it would be somewhat of a sacrifice, I'm giving up something, something that I like I like balsam for now huge sacrifice, but it's still giving something over to carry those prayers over to to the spirits of place. So there are all different kinds of ways that you can make make offerings. Some, you know, you can leave food out, you can, you know, you just want to be conscientious, conscientious, wow, I'm having a hard time saying that this morning, conscious will say conscious, you want to be conscious of what you're leaving out and where you don't want to pollute your environment. You don't want if you use food on an you know, internal altar, an altar inside your home or space, you want to dispose of that food, you know, before it rots and creates a health hazard. But the way you dispose of that food might be important as well, do you want to just throw the food in the garbage? You know, sometimes that's the only option. And that's okay. You just want to if you do that, it's a good idea to make a little prayer or have an intention that, you know, okay, I hope I hope you have received this offering and taken sustenance from it, it is it is no, you know, there's no longer an offering. And I need to remove it from the space. So when I have sometimes had food on an altar inside the house, I'm conscious of how long that food stays good. So let's say, you know, in hard boiled egg is something that I have off, you know, made an offering of on an altar before, I know that that is only going to be good for two or three days. So really, on the third day, I'm looking to dispose of that, and what I will do is I will bring that out. Because I because I can and if you can't that, you know, that's completely understandable, you just do something intentional, I bring it out in nature, and place it and have a little prayer when I place it, you know, thank you, I hope you've taken sustenance from this. And you know, now we're moving this offering from the space. And I will leave it in, leave it in nature, you know, continue to enjoy it as you will. doesn't have to be anything overly complicated. I know there are ceremony, there are ceremonies for blessing offerings, I encourage that as well. Again, that imbues energy and intention into the offering, cleansing offering, sometimes offerings are cleansed in the smoke of incense or with water or what have you. Those can be good things to do as well to make sure that the energy is sort of pure, and you know, vibrationally nice for the spirits that you're making offerings to.

So I've sort of talked about the how and the practical and really general terms and how I do it. And again, you know, if your tradition is different, that's perfectly fine. I have no qualms with that whatsoever. And I've talked about the components of offerings, you know, the physical component, the intention, and the idea of the idea of sacrifice and also the, you know, the energy, the vibration, the imbuing of the offering with spiritual energy, the to, you know, provide sustenance for the spirits are offering. I want to talk about why you might make offerings, and I've touched on some of it right, I've touched on, you know, making offerings to the spirits of place. That's a really loose term spirits of place. Because there are lots of different places, you know, lots of different places. Nature, you know, nature spirits are one form of spirit that exists in certain places, but I'm talking about spirits that are tied to specific locations. And even if I'm not, you know, I live in a house and there are there are spirits that reside here with me. I know this because I have seen and communicated with them as has as have other people, I'm not just imagining things. These are not necessarily what what one might consider ghosts. But in the, in the Greek in the ancient Greek belief, belief, it is what might be called the daemon, which is where we get the word demon from these are not demons, they're not evil, fallen angels or anything like that. They're just spirits that reside in the house, because who knows? Somebody built a house here, however, many years ago, and, you know, spirits came along with a wood that went into the house and there were spirits that lived on the land that were displaced by the building of the house and all of these things, but they you know, they're they're little people. Like fairies like elves and gnomes and I've did a podcast previously I don't remember which number it was this point but I did one on nature spirits before which I recommend if you have any questions about that sort of thing, sir the spirits that live in the house, the house you know not just ghosts people talk about hauntings. I think usually when we're talking about hauntings we're talking about disembodied humans. We're talking about humans who have passed away that got stuck in the middle world somehow. And I've worked. I've worked on a number of hauntings, we'll say we'll put it that way. As a shamanic practitioner to help these spirits Move, move from their place move to where they from where they are stuck to where they're supposed to be. I'm taking it if you hear something weird, I'm taking a sip of coffee right about now. Very good. love coffee? Um, yeah. Um, so if I were somewhere where coffee was grown, I might make coffee sacrifices or it sacrifices to the area where coffee, you know, the spirits that live in the area where coffee grows to help with the crop. I don't know if there is a if there's any traditions where there are specific gods and goddesses associated with coffee, but I should drink enough I should set up an altar. We're very big on our coffee here. In the in the northeast of the United States. I think it's because it's cold. A lot of the year and a lot of the year we spend a lot of time in darkness. So we want a little bit of caffeine to help us wake up and warm beverages. Although iced coffee does really well, too. So anyway, coffee is super, super big here. And there, coffee shops everywhere. coffee shops and micro microbreweries beer and coffee and beer are really big everywhere. So anyway, so why might we want to make offerings, I've touched on a couple of reasons why I'm one true, you know, traditional reason is to sort of curry favor with spirits. And that is just to get in the good graces of the spirits that you're working with. The spirits, you might pray to the spirits, you might ask things of.

And this isn't necessarily up here exchanged thing. Like if I want to pray to Zeus, to avoid Thunder on my home, it's going to cost me three cows and six chickens. Maybe I'm sure there are systems where that is a thing. But if I want to, you know, pray to Thor or pray to Zeus to protect my home from lightning, I might make offerings over time, on a regular basis or something, just to establish a good relationship with them. Okay, and so offerings are frequently about establishing good relationships. Now I talked about hauntings a little bit, right and if you if you don't have experience with you know, let's say you live in a place that is haunted by spirits and you don't have a lot of experience with quelling ghosts or helping to somebody movies parmi disembodied spirits move on, I definitely need more coffee today. I'm getting a little bit Tongue Tied sometimes or pronouncing things incorrectly. If you don't have experience with helping things move on, sometimes you can leave offerings to the spirits too. And they will quiet down. Because you start to have a relationship with them. They're not just trying they're like, you know, they can be they all have different personalities, but they can't be like, Oh, you've seen me, you know, I'm here. I don't need to cause trouble anymore. And oh, by you know, gosh, thank you. So that's one way one reason to leave offerings. You know, you can call in a shamanic practitioner to do some psycho pump work which psychopomp is moving, currying spirits to where they're supposed to go. And that work that all shamanic practitioners should have training in at some point should have training and experience with at some point. So that's definitely something that you can so that that you can do you know, make, you know make offerings for I would make offerings if you are working With a particular pantheon of gods and goddesses or spirits, or you know, what have you, over time, I would definitely make make offerings. You know, it will just smooth things along, it helps to build a relationship. And shamanism in particular is all about relationship. It's about how we relate to spirit, how we relate to nature, how we relate to other human beings. And so this is a way to maintain a good relationship. It's like, you know, I often find little gifts for my girlfriend when I'm out and about, and I see something that, you know, reminds me of her or I'm like, that she'd be interested in that. You know, and it's not necessarily something I go overboard with. I'm not, you know, I'm not a wealthy man, I'm not buying her cars and houses and stuff, but it's stuff that I'm, you know, I'm demonstrating that I'm thinking of her. Right, little gifts. And the gifts can be the gifts can be time and prayer as well. Right, those things are also important. sacrificing your time in service of spirit is also a good thing, you want to make spirits of place, really happy. Go pick up garbage on the side of the road, clean up a space, maintain a space, help animals that have been rescued in the area. Okay, you can give up your time doesn't have to be something, it doesn't have to be something that you've purchased at a store or, or what have you. But do it with intention, do it with love, do it with gratitude. And intention is important too, because you have to maintain the correct emotion. Spirit, the spiritual plane is very close to our emotional body in this way, in that, you know, if I, if I hand, if I do an offering with Sam putting some fruit outside, and I would do local fruit, if I'm you know, I'm not going to put a pineapple outside that doesn't grow anywhere near here.

But let's say an apple, see, I'm going to offer an apple to you know, on my on an altar outside or leaving in nature or what have you. I don't want to have a heart full of anger when I do that. I don't want to be take this, you know, kind of thing because whatever I'm coming with sort of gets imbued that you know that it gets imprinted with my emotional energy. There is one kind of exception to this, that I think is important to note, in that sometimes we can make offerings to help us with grief. And I don't like if you are grieving, you know, at you should know that grieving is a process. It's nonlinear. Meaning that you know they People always talk about the five stages of grief while I've moved from this to this and now I'm you know, never going back to that. No, it's not the way it happens. I can think of think of people that I've lost, for example, and still have experience of this reality. So little bit of denial there. Oh, yeah, that that friend is a friend passed away last year. And again, still feel some depression about that. So these things can be somewhat cyclical, it does grief, grief does get better over time, if you treat it. If you respect yourself, if you give yourself space and love. You can make offerings in a time of grief. And I think that's totally fine and appropriate, and the spirits will understand that. And the way I might make an offering if you know let's say I lost a friend you know, a friend passed away I might make an offering and say you know I am I am grieving and I know this is part of my process. I'm not asking you to take my grief away because that would be artificial and not really great, but can you please You know, help my friend on his journey to make sure that he's okay and well taken care of and anything You can do to smooth, smooth over that, you know, the the grief that I'm feeling would be, would be helpful. And that can help you. I think that can help in a very real way, on a spiritual level and on a psychological level, because it feels like you are honoring your loved one that you're grieving, feels like you may be honoring, you know, your feelings. And that's really important with grief. Too many people try to push through grief. Well, I've grieved for this period of time, so my grieving period is done. It just doesn't work that way. It never has worked that way, it will never work that way. It is counter to the way human beings work. So I think is perfectly fine. Even if you are in deep grief, to make an offering, even if, you know, you feel like oh, this isn't the right emotional state to make make an offering. Just do it. Just do it with the right intention at that point, right. The intention is, you know, I am grieving. I want to, you know, I want to go through this grieving process in a way that, you know, not necessarily less painful, you know, you don't necessarily want to have them take away your pain, the grief processes, and all of it is important. But I want to transition smoothly through this grief process. And I want my friend who I've lost to being, you know, taken care of, and looked down upon and, and to understand that I love and miss them. And I think that act in and of itself will help you through the grief process, it has helped me in times when I have been grieving things. And you can grieve more than people you can grieve the loss of a relationship, you can grieve the loss of a job, you know, it may not be as as impactful as the loss of a loved one. But, you know, there's still a little bit of a grief process that you go through in those things. And so, some other you know, the the main reason to make offering, you know, is definitely to

create better relationship with spirit. That's primarily it, you can you can do it as part of an ask for, you know, and ask for specific favors. If you're asking specific favors of spirit, please heal me, please. You know, help me find a new job, please. Any of those things, I think offerings are offerings are appropriate at that time. Because again, it's your, you're asking something, there's an exchange, and I promised I was going to talk about exchange, and I'm so I'm coming to that. So there's a little bit of an exchange, but it's not, I don't think it's great to think of relationships, most relationships as completely transactional. In that, you know, spirits are not, even though we have these legends of the genies as wish granting machines, they're not they don't exactly work that way. They still work within sort of prescribed bounds and, you know, may want to help you or may not, or you know, what have you, but you're making an offering as appropriate, and you can't make it from the perspective of I'm giving you this, you must do this for me. You have to go with some humility. And, you know, please help me with this. I am trying to find a new job, I would appreciate any help that you can give me I think that's I think that's appropriate. Not I want $125,000 a year job, and they want to offer to me on Tuesday, and I want to be put in charge of you know, I don't know, put in charge of this division and I want this person fired and blah, blah, blah. Um, you know, and that being said, there are you know, I am aware of traditions where that is fairly normal, a fairly normal practice i'm not i in no way want to get into any arguments with people who do that sort of thing. I'm aware of certain things, you know, Voodoo and hoodoo, for example, where, you know, very specific petitions are made to very specific spirits and that's fine. You know, I don't I don't know enough about them to, and I don't judge other people's systems of belief or spiritual practices. Um, and in that case, as far as I know, there would, there would always be very appropriate offerings, and everything would be very prescribed, how you would do it, what days you would do things on, what were the conditions, all kinds of stuff like that would have to go on, you have to do things over a certain period of time. Interestingly, I think candles, while people do you know, candle magic, or they like candles and church as a prayer, you know, that sort of thing. candles are an interesting form of offering, right, because you're actually you're, you're burning something away, you're transmuting something. by burning it away, you're burning the wax and the wick, and you're giving off light at the same time, giving off the vibration, you know, some light vibrations, and you may pray over the candle. In some traditions, they might rub specific oils in the candle to give it a certain vibration. So, you know, burning candle, when done in a specific way is an interesting, and in my opinion, perfectly valid form of offering. So I want to, you know, I want to wrap up this podcast and talking about exchange and spiritual exchange and talk about urinary, you know, totally my feeling about how spiritual professionals wanting to get paid for their work is completely fine. And has been going on forever. Every once in a while I run into on social media or over email or talking to people in person or what have you. I run into people who have this idea that

spirituality needs to be 100% divorced from money in every way. And that it is wrong to charge people for spiritual teaching or spiritual healing or spiritual services. And that's an interesting idea. And I don't exactly know where it comes from. Because this is not a tradition that I am aware of coming from anywhere. And yes, money. Money can be problematic. Money is a patriarchal system, it was in, you know, pretty much invented by armies, so they didn't have to, they could, you know, when they were invading territories didn't have to lug supplies with them, they could just lug coins with them, and then exchange it and then exchange those. So it was a, it was a method method of exchange. But we get so weird, so wrapped up in money, and we've heard money is the root of all evil. The real saying is the love of money is the root of all evil. And people kill over money and people fight over money and families break up over money. And yeah, there is all of that. Money itself is not inherently good or bad. Money is a tool of exchange. It's basically a way for me to turn my labor into the goods that I need, that I want and need. I need to live in a house or you know, I don't live in apartment, I live in a house, I could live in an apartment, but I need to have a shelter, you know, shelter to live in. And you know, I live in the modern world, and I don't have survival skills to live in a cave somewhere. But I so I need to purchase food, I need electricity. And I couldn't do this podcast if I wasn't able to buy a microphone and have internet access. And if and if I in trust me when I say that if I could do shamanism, if I could, you know, do shamanism for free every single day of my life for the rest of my life. I certainly would. Because I love it. And it's my path. And I love sharing this with the world. It's one of the reasons you know, I write and I do this podcast and everything because I just want to share what I love with the world. And I'm happy to do that. But I need to live. And so I have you know I've spent many, many years of my life countless hours studying training, practicing doing apprenticeships and going through ordeal. being initiated, I have spent, I don't know how many dollars of my time, you know how many dollars of my money on training, travel to training all of these things. So to expect that I would somehow be able to operate in the world without money, because somehow it's bad, wrong or evil to charge money for things just doesn't fly. And, you know, there aren't too many spiritual traditions were going back to, you know, however far in humanity, you can look where there wasn't compensation for spiritual professionals. So if you were the village, shaman, and people went to you, they would bring you stuff, they would feed you and clothe you, and give you a place to live. because there wasn't money. If you were, you know, if you were, you know, gosh, if you were running a, you know, some sort of, you know, temple back in, you know, almost anywhere, people would bring animals to you to sacrifice and survive on they would donate, you know, donate time, and food and labor and all of these things. So, would, would I potentially live that, you know, there aren't too many situations like that, that these days, that aren't abusive as well, right? Where you have these, you know, big communes with gurus running them, who wind up abusing their people, and their, you know, people work day in and day out, you know, kind of slave labor kinds of situations, that exists all over these days.

And unless we want spiritual teaching, to just kind of die out, unfortunately, you know, to have to have spiritual professionals, really, the only way really, the only way is to is to exchange something, and the method of exchange that is most common in the world is his money. Um, you know, I have had people offer other things to exchange with me, not usually in a position to, to accept that and it creates these, you know, complicated interdependencies. That being said, I do give away a tremendous amount of my knowledge. as do many of the teachers and practitioners I know. You know, people contact me for help over email all the time. And, you know, I spend a lot of time answering email. I write articles based on people, what people want, that are available for free, I do this podcasts, you know, I pay for this podcast to be hosted. And so, you know, the, you know, that's one aspect, the one you want to aspect is if you want people to be doing this work, they have to be able to live you know, you don't want somebody to be financially abusive, to take advantage. You know, and unfortunately, you know, the situations that would create, if we're like, okay, you know, all spiritual teaching needs to be free, are the kinds of situations where people get financially sexually, physically, emotionally abused, in a lot of play, a lot of times in a lot of places where people go live in these compounds, and, you know, the guru walks around, doesn't have to think about money and all of these things. That's not me, and I never want to, I don't ever want to be in that situation. I mean, I wouldn't abuse people, but I don't want to, I don't want to live in an environment like that. So that's fine. So we can, we can disagree about whether you know, and whether whether I'm getting paid or not, I don't water down. Anything that I'm doing, or any of my teachings or any of my knowledge, you don't hold anything back. I don't you know, oh, you're gonna get the really secret stuff for for 1995. And, you know, for just $10 more in shipping and handling, you can get XYZ. No, it's not like that. Okay, there are people I see out there that are doing some sketchy things, but it's not for me to go after them or comment on them or What have you, you know, most, none of the people I'm associated with, or have been associated with, or know, personally do anything along those lines, I think everybody's fairly reasonable. So the other aspect is the idea of exchange. And I can tell you this, like I, I have I taught martial arts for I mentioned this before, for a couple of decades, over 20 years, I'm not sure how long now I've lost track. for a really long time, I taught martial arts, and I didn't want to necessarily run a martial arts school. And it's a hard thing, particularly where I live and earn a lot of people here, you have to have a fairly Metropolitan, you know, somewhat somewhat city like area, to get enough people in your door. And then you have to set up all of these programs and, and kit, you know, and kids and, and, you know, all of this stuff. And I just like, you know, martial arts is something I love I grew up with it is my form of exercise and stress relief, and inform, you know, my spirituality informs it and it informs my spirituality and all these things, right. So it's just a thing that I love, and that I love to share. And I have taught for free for many years, over 10 years a Teach for free. Um, one of the reasons I do that is that I get to pick the students that I want to teach. You know, I actually, you know, very carefully that the people I want to teach, but I'll tell you, what happens is that, you know, one point I had 15 or 16 students, and then over time, that would dwindle down to like one student. And

part of that is that I don't advertise commercially, and I don't, you know, I'm not running a big commercial school with a storefront and all these things. The other part of it is, when there is no exchange, when people are giving nothing for what they're getting, the do not, this is just human nature, they do not value it, they do not place a greater value on it. You know, I was towards, you know, when I was training with my teacher, you know, towards the end, 20 years ago, I think I was paying like $150 a month to go train was pretty expensive training class. And I would go to every single class, because I had made an investment, not just in my time, but it made my money and all of these things, I made an investment in myself, I'd sacrificed some of myself, so I was taking advantage of that. Um, I have had experiences with people from time to time, I have been convinced to work with people on a sliding scale, you know, somebody comes to me for shramana healing, and they're like, Ah, you know, I really need this, but I have, you know, have no money. And I've had people lie to me about that. I've had people who I, you know, have found out they were not broke, and we're running very successful businesses and stuff. A lot, you know, lie about that and say, I don't have any money and I'm like, Okay, well, you know, I really want to work with you and I'll work with you on a sliding scale and I'll accept half of my fee when that happens, those people miss appointments. Don't show up on time get angry with me if I you know, don't don't allow them to reschedule a no show. You know, I had clients that I have fired because they no showed after I gave them you know, huge break on on my fees. And, um, you know, these people are not, unfortunately, you know, in my experience are not taking this seriously. Now, it is something I will continue to do probably, you know, if somebody is really hard up and they and they seem absolutely serious, and I would have to have a conversation with them first. You know, I think all people deserve healing and all people deserve service. But that exchange is really important that energy exchange is really important. And, and I can't, you know, I and other practitioners can't just continually give of ourselves with getting getting nothing back, you know, and it's not that I don't get nothing from sharing, you know, from sharing, sharing and teaching and healing and all those things I do, like, I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of it, but it is very draining. You know, I'm exhausted when I'm done with a session with a client. And to, to get, you know, to get nothing back to sustain me to sustain my life would just be very off balance. So you may disagree with me, you may have this strange idea out there that all spiritual workers should be impoverished and charge nothing for their work and live in a hut somewhere, I can tell you that I couldn't, you can't even live in a hut around here for nothing, because, you know, when they find when they find people, you know, living on public land or on other people's property in makeshift huts around here, which happens more often than you might think, actually getting arrested and evicted. So that that's not even, you know, it's not even in the realm of reality. It's so, so out of touch with reality. So anyway, I realized I got a bit personal here, and I've gone way over time. But I did want to talk about offerings. I wanted to talk about exchange, I did want to talk about all the things that I've talked about today, and why it's important. So with that, I will leave you. I love you all. I hope you have hope you stay safe and sane and happy and healthy. And I will talk to you next time.

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You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to Maineshamon.com that's ma i n e s haman.com