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 0:45

Hello, hello. How are you everybody? Hello my friends all over the world wherever you are. I will say good morning, even though I have no idea if you're listening to this. But per usual I'm recording this in the morning. And it is a it's a pretty nice day. It's chilly here we are well into spring. But in Maine, sometimes we still have frost overnight. And then we have beautiful days. And I am I'm really enjoying that. And I'm hoping to get some time outdoors. Some prolonged time outdoors very soon, you know, and do some hikes and things like that. Today, I want to talk to you about well, I'm titling this the butterfly effect and karma and the interconnectedness of all things. And per usual, I'll you know, I'll define what I mean. Not that, again, my definitions are perfect, or everybody's definitions are the only way of looking at things because I don't believe that is true. I just, you know, want to come from place of understanding. And so that's why I describe what I'm talking about. So today, when I when I'm talking about is first, let me go into the butterfly effect. If you don't know what that is, there was a movie, by that name. It's often used in movies and TV shows when they talk about things like time travel, right. So if I go back in time, and I change things, even some small amount, you know, I get back to my future. And huge changes have taken place, right? Because there's been this sort of snowball effect, this avalanche effect where one small change kicks off other small changes and that sort of thing. I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons, the cartoon, where I think, and I'm straining my memory here, because there's a long, long time ago, where Homer is fixing a toaster and does something to it, and it turns into a time machine and it keeps going back. And every time he goes back, he does something you know, like he sneezes, and dinosaurs catch a cold and die. And then when he comes back, the whole world is really, really changed. And this is an example of the butterfly effect that a small change. And this comes from, you know, a butterfly somewhere in the world flaps its wings and you know, pollen is kicked up, and then that that has some effect that has some effect. And that has a bigger effect and a bigger effect, until finally, it actually causes a hurricane somewhere. You know, so it's an interesting thought that our small actions can create larger and larger effects in the world. And they do want to talk about why that's important and how that all works, from my perspective on a spiritual level, as well. But especially in the spiritual level. Because physical things can be a little tough to to change. There's a lot of inertia in the physical world, right, which is why people who practice law of attraction don't win the lottery that much there's too much chaos. I guess that's actually momentum. There's also inertia, right? So I can't necessarily move the earth without a great deal of effort. But that doesn't mean I don't have some effect and you know, the gist of the butterfly effect is that you matter in everything you everything you do matters. The way you do everything matters. The thoughts that You have when you do anything matter. So let's talk a little bit about karma. And how that plays in with the butterfly effect. And then I'm gonna talk about how everything is connected to everything, and how this all works together in, in one model of, you know, in one model anyway. So there's this idea about karma and Karma is a word with a lot of baggage, right?

Because there are, you know, patriarchal systems that and, and hierarchical systems that, you know, like the caste system in India that Oh, you were you were born to a lower caste, that's your karma, you did something bad in a previous life, and yada yada, yada, or you were born a woman. So you deserve to be treated less than XYZ. I don't believe that's how karma works, per se, and, you know, karma. One of the ways of looking at it that I don't particularly like, is this sort of storehouse of our deeds that is weighed good or bad. And so, you know, when we look at the, the Egyptian afterlife, right, so when you died in Egypt, your heart was weighed against a feather. And if you were, you know, if you were a bad person, I don't know how you measure that, if you were a bad person, or you did more bad deeds than good, you didn't get to go to the good place, right. And so again, this is a, you know, a concept that sort of carried through into Judeo Christian belief, at least, particularly in Christian belief. And there are some Christian sects that believe, you know, you, you do enough good deeds, you earn your way into heaven, and you don't do enough. And there's St. Peter at the pearly gates, and he looks through the book of your life, and yada, yada. And then there are others where you don't get into heaven, unless you do you know, you are baptized, and you do X, Y, and Z. But that's kind of a it's kind of a view of karma, right? Where you're collecting, you're collecting things in your life. And, you know, we, I like to look at systems like that systems of sin and reward and punishment basically, is what we're talking about, as kind of carrot and stick methods of getting people to behave in a certain way. And sometimes that's okay, right, like sometimes, you know, don't steal, don't kill, those are fine. Those are fine rules. You been there. You know, I know people who are absolutely materialist, materialist, atheists, believing nothing beyond this physical world exists. And they don't kill or murder anybody. They have a strong ethical code that doesn't necessarily come from religion. And there's this idea that all of our morality comes from spiritual and religious belief. And I just don't, I don't think that's true. Or the human race would have died out, because humans, you know, the religions that anybody practices are no more than a few 1000 years old. Unless we're talking about shamanism, which is spiritual practice, but not really religion. You know, at the most the religion you practice is a few 1000 years old, which seems like a long time. But that's a blink of an eye in the whole, you know, in all of human existence. And humans have always had to cooperate and live together to survive. We aren't particularly fast. We don't have sharp claws, sharp teeth. We only survive through cooperative living, cooperative hunting, you know, that sort of thing. We don't climb trees very well. We have very few characteristics that that help us survive other than the two biggest things that we have are a the use of tools and be cooperative, hunting and gathering. And if we needed religion, if we needed dogma from religion, I'm not saying we don't need religious thought, because that seems, spiritual thought seems to have evolved about the same exact time as everything else in humanity. There is you know, there's reason for spiritual thought, spiritual symbolic thought there's reason there are reasons for evolutionary reasons. Good Reasons why that came about. But if you need dogs, if we needed dogmatic code to not to not murder each other, steal from one from one another, etc, then we would not have survived as a species, there's no way we could not have gotten along cooperatively. Right? Because human beings can see smart and stupid boy, it's stupid to kill other people. Because A, they're going to kill me back. When I try and be I'm going to run out of tribes people pretty darn quickly.

This is not to say that people haven't killed each other throughout time, that certainly seems to be the case. But just as a general overarching rule, people seem to, to get that people seem to understand that to a degree. And cultures that enjoy these dogmatic beliefs, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, certainly did a whole lot of killing and stealing throughout history. We have genocides, we have all kinds of stuff. So we'll get away from that. So the idea of the karmic storehouse, you know, doesn't kind of you know, where you are judged by somebody at the end of your life. And, you know, I don't love that concept. If you do, if you subscribe to that, it's totally fine. It's not my favorite, favorite idea. My idea is that karma is almost most of the time. Instantaneous, meaning Sokar karma is basically cause and effect, when I do something, it has an effect, everything I do, right Butterfly Effect, here's where we tie these together, everything I do has some effect. If I switch on a light in my house, I use a certain amount of electricity that has to be generated somewhere, that also increases my electricity bill, it has, you know, that small act of switching on a light has a huge effect beyond just switching on the light, right? Because, you know, the company that generates my electricity makes a little bit more money, I have a little bit less money. There's illumination in my house, I'm, you know, I see stuff, I act differently. We, everything we do, has results, even when we do nothing that has results, right. Inaction also, also has has an effect. So, you know, karma is basically the stuff that you do has an effect. And I think it's fairly immediate, it can be hard for us to see this if we don't take perspective, right. And one example of that is, there are people that we see, who get away with doing, let's say, you know, to reduce this down to black and white terms, to get away with bad things who do bad things are people out there who kill and steal and, you know, do all kinds of horrible things to other people. And sometimes it looks like they get away with that. And, you know, when we view that from a very surface level, that seems to be the case. But I don't think that's the case. I think people who live a life like that, who kill and Rob Robin still are basically experiencing suffering on a significant level at all times. So if I'm, if I'm, you know, if I'm a criminal, right, if I make money, doing crimes, robbing banks, or whatever, I would I live my life looking over my shoulder, always worried that somebody's going to catch up to me, somebody's going to turn me in somebody, you know, something's going to happen. That effect is almost that effect is immediate. Right? I am not living a fantastic life. The other part of that is I don't know what I'm missing out on. Were I to contribute in a positive way to society around me. So if instead of robbing and stealing, I chose to do something different that had a more positive effect on the world around me. The benefit from that would have been larger, and just not just in general. But to me as well, I would be living a happier, more fulfilled better life. The issue is that, that is not always clear to people, people don't, people don't see that if they did, they wouldn't do some of these things that they some of the things that they do. But they would be living a much different life. And that is, that is one way that karma works.

I will, I'll give you an example, from my own life. So, some time ago, I was in a relationship with somebody, a spiritual person, who is, you know, a healer and a teacher. Like me, and, you know, this relationship ended, ended badly. This, you know, I, I honestly think the person has undiagnosed and untreated, mental illness, and I feel compassion for this person. But this person did some horrible things. To me, like, you know, taking my things, ruining my ruining my things, spreading untrue rumors about me. And, you know, it got back some of the things that happened got back to me through channels in the community, this person saying these things about you, these, this person's doing things about you. And I had a long think about that. I had to think, what, what, if anything, am I going to do about this? Because while I have compassion for this person, they are trying to harm me. And then, you know, when I examined the actual effect, I thought, you know, things are replaceable. And, you know, this person had, you know, start started some rumors that got back to me about things that were untrue. Well, you know, people, people who know me, people know my heart and know that these things are untrue. And that's why they got back to me. And this person has wound up cutting off people from her life, who would have been sources of strength for her. So she, you know, people, first of all, aren't believing these things. And second of all, you know, she is not just doing this to me, she's doing this to other people. And it's, you know, it's really, it's really sad, because she's lost contact with and the support of many, many people in her life, who could be sources of support for her and she is suffering, and she's caused her own suffering. And it's unfortunate that maybe she doesn't see that, and maybe he doesn't understand that. But for my part, I'm fine. You know, when I really looked at it, at first, it was upsetting. You know, like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this person, you know, is out there still doing, you know, the relationships been over for a very long time, and this person is still out there cause trying to cause trouble in my life. But it's fine. I'll deal with it. People will know me by the good work that I do. I'm going to put positivity out there. And that will be my butterfly effect, right, that will that will affect my karma. When I do good things. I live in a good environment. I have good relationships with people. I am happier. So you know, that's just a little example from my own life. This person has created life circumstances where she is incredibly and she's a very unhappy person. And I feel compassion for that. There's nothing I can do about it, of course. But other than wish her well and see her surrounded, you know, I visualize her surrounded by love and I hope that someday, someday she gets whatever it is she needs and lives a happier life than she's living but she has created a life for herself that seems very unhappy. And that is karma. That's what happens. When you do things like this and it happens. It is immediate or very close to immediate. These effects did not take a lifetime to show up. We do carry these things with us from lifetime to lifetime if you don't heal them if you don't take care of them. It does have an effect. Fact across lifetimes. And so this is where the maybe the storehouse idea comes from the storehouse of karma. And, you know, what happens is that I carry this energetic wounding or something else around and, you know, the, you know, this energetic pattern travels with me from lifetime to lifetime. And it's my job to fix that.

It's my job to do my own work and fix that stuff. So I don't have to go through it again, in the next lifetime. And I can, you know, next in my next life, if I choose to come back, you know, I don't have to learn the same lessons. And I can just focus on making the world a better place. And I will, I'm going to talk about that in a moment as well and what you can do right now. So I've talked about the butterfly effect, I've talked about karma, and how it is cause and effect and almost instantaneous. And now I want to talk about this on a spiritual level, and give you a model for understanding this a little bit better. from a, from a spiritual perspective, everything is connected to everything, and every one. So I am connected to the rocks and the trees and the birds and the bees and the rivers. And every individual that I've ever come into contact with, and every individual they've ever come into contact with, forever and ever and on into an infinity. And the way that I like to visualize this that makes sense is if you think about a net, so I would, you know, my individual self, in this lifetime, am a node in this net, or web, right, which is where some strings crossed together, there's a very complex net, because there's basically an infinite number of strings stretching out in all directions into infinity. And the people really close to me represent nodes that are very close to me on the same net. So if you just imagine maybe a to d nets where two lines cross, that's where I sit. And, you know, the people that are the people that are close to me, the closest to me, are at crossed lines that are adjacent to my node, the place where the those lines cross, and the people that they're connected to are, you know, a layer away and layer away and layer away. And if you understand six degrees of separation, you understand that we're actually much closer than that we are usually about three or four hops away from contacting any person in the world. You know, when I look at my social media accounts, you know, they're not that I'm in direct contact with everybody, I'm connected within social media, but there's 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people on my social media accounts. And I can put out a good message and cause a cause a huge effect. So imagine what happens if I cause a disturbance in that net, right. So if I grab the node that I'm on, and I pick it, and I pick it up, and I pick it straight up, what happens is that it lifts the other nodes in the net, lifts, the other parts of the net, and the net, the parts of the net that are closer to me get lifted higher with me, right and the ones that are farther away, not quite as much. So, when I create a ripple, like dropping a stone in the pond, you know, it creates a big ripple that gets smaller and smaller and smaller as it goes out. But essentially, it goes to infinity or to the edge of the edge of the pond, which will represent infinity for our for our sake. So, the same is true, the same is true for you and I the way that we are in that in connection with everything in the universe. And every person in the universe when we when we act we are causing ripples when we when we don't act we are causing an effect, our thoughts cause effect and those ripple along this network. Now this is not my model. This is a model that is used in many belief systems, many spiritual systems this model of a net or weaving together or a web. So from Buddhist belief, we have Indras web, which is this, you know, web of jewels, interconnecting everything.

In Norse belief, we have the web of weird, right? Which is fate weird in this case not meaning weird, like strange, but weird meaning like fate. And there, there's usually weavers, the fates, weaving things together, weaving is a very common sort of model metaphor for what's happening here. Because the, you know, our ancient ancestors viewed this as a net, a tapestry, a cloth of interconnected strands. Right. So, same thing with same thing with the fates in in Greek, Greece and Rome, and the Norns, in Norse mythology, and you know, so there's, there's, there's this web, or there's this tapestry that we're all connected to, and this plays highly into the the butterfly effect and the karma that I've already talked about. So when there's a concept in shamanism, there are a couple of concepts in shamanism that play in here. One is this idea that when I heal myself, I heal the world. And I firmly, firmly believe this to be true. And I have witnessed this myself, in doing my own healing work, it has a powerful effect on the people around me, particularly an observable effect on the people who are closest to me. And we know this from modern research that when parents have children, one of the best things they can do for their children's mental health, is to take care of their own mental health. Right, this is a prime example. It almost this is so true, it almost seems like common sense, right? If I don't take care of my mental health, I can't take care of my kids, I can't be there for them emotionally, I don't model good behavior for them. And that affects them. And then that affects, you know, their mental health and how they behave and which affects the people around them. And we can very easily see how this, this is the case. On a very ordinary level, not not even talking about spirit, spirituality here. Just talking about taking care of myself, when I take care of myself, I'm better able to take care of my children, I'm better able to take care of my relationships with people I care about. I can tell you having gone through some very harsh periods with my mental health, which is what brought me into shamanism. You know, personal relationships, were not so great during those times. And, you know, as I alluded to, in the story, before, you know, this person, this person who I was in relationship with, and not taking care of her stuff has so many ruptured disrupted interpersonal relationships, and, you know, has become, unfortunately, like, a main topic of conversation with people that she has been in ruptured relationships with. So, her rumor spreading has caused rumors about her to spread. This is karma. This is how it works. So, on a spiritual level, there's this idea that what you put out comes back to you like a boomerang effect. And in Wicca, they have the three fold rule, like, whatever energy comes back, you put out comes back to you three times over. And this is again, this is one of these dogmatic rules to try to keep people from doing harm to each other. Right, if I send out curse energy than curse, energy is going to come back to me three times over. That's a pretty modern invention, and I don't necessarily agree with it. People have been cursing forever and I'm not going to argue that cursing is good or bad. I don't I don't do it. But you know, I know there are there are systems like hoodoo for example, which is

I want to describe it and this is very Redux. Just want to describe it as African American folk magic. Because it come, it combines elements from, you know, sort of during slavery and post slavery and that sort of thing. So here was a group of people, you know, African Americans who, you know, we're enslaved, and even after slavery oppressed, and we're the subject of violence, horrific, horrific violence, and, you know, laws meant to keep them down and all of these things, who had no recourses frequently to protect themselves, other than using folk magic, in ways that we might think of as cursing, right. So I'm, you know, in this case, we could think of it as defensive, right. So I come from a martial arts background, I studied martial arts since I was about six years old. And I'm 50. Now. So that's a very long time, decades of study and teaching and all kinds of stuff. And I abhor violence, I really, really dislike violence. That would always, always be an absolute last resort. For me. I don't settle issues with violence I have had. I've had people try to mug me when I lived in the city I've had, you know, people on the subway threatened to kill me and want to fight me and all kinds of stuff. And I have never had to resort to violence to defend myself in these cases. And I'm happy about that. It's the thing that makes me proud. I was able to keep my cool because I and take care of the situation in a non violent way. Because I had the training and the ability to backup what I was doing if I had to. This is not to say you should not defend yourself. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that I have had many situations where self defense, physical self defense would have been justified. But I always use it as an absolute last resort. And so no, getting into the ethics of using, you know, being we'll call them painful spiritual techniques, painful magic, cursing and Hexing and jinxing. All of these things. You know, it's a really weird, ethical area, it can be right if I'm just causing harm to cause harm. And that's not good. And you definitely are putting harmful energy out there that you have to be, you have to be really careful that it doesn't doesn't affect you on a spiritual level. If you're a kind of person, you're just hurling curses at people because you're angry at them, that energy is going to stick around you and cause some Cosmo effects. But, you know, if I were if I were African American, and growing up, maybe in the south, you know, post slavery during Jim Crow era, when there were, you know, lynchings and you know, the kk k, I mean, they're still around, but, you know, they were doing parades and threatening and terrorizing and all kinds of stuff. And not to say that doesn't still go on. But I'm just talking historically here. What would I do to protect my family? What would I do to protect my life and the people I care about? Would I use whatever defensive techniques and things I had at my disposal? Even if that involved attacking? Most likely? Most likely I would and is that bad? Is that ethically bad? If somebody is threatening the life of my family, and I do something spiritually to prevent that, and that causes some harm to that person? I don't know it's a gray area, we could probably bring somebody on and have a big huge debate about this. But there is this concept that doing

and I get it like the spiritual is seen as sacred by many people and it is but um, you know, My, my body and my life are also sacred. And so somebody wanting to cause harm, you know, I can punch them in the nose, or I can, you know, use defensive spiritual techniques. You know, and I, you know, I think protecting yourself shows, shows a type of love a type of self love, I'm worthy of protecting that sort of thing. I'm not taking anything away from anybody who decides to do things another route, I'm just not going to judge people for whom this is what they resorted to because they had to. So I don't know about that three fold rule. It's not been my experience. I also know people who do basically magic professionally, and you know, they might do put something on an altar for something. And you know, we'll talk about cursing and does that come back on you three times over? And is it okay to curse people? And, you know, we could get into a whole thing about that spiritually. But, you know, one story that came from somebody who does this professionally for other people, is there was a, there's a woman who is being stalked, physically stalked, and threatened. Her physical well being was being threatened, her mental health was being affected, because she was living under constant fear. And, again, if I were African American living in the South, during Jim Crow era, I'm sure and there are people, you know, there are people today who fear for their life because of the color of their skin on a daily basis. I recognize my privilege in not having to live that way. You know, I don't I'm, you know, I'm a, I'm a white man living in the Northeast, and I don't ever have to think when I leave my door that somebody is going to attack me because of the color of my skin. So I know that I can't understand exactly what that's like. And but when I think about it, I can understand that gosh, what, what a stressful existence that must be. So anyway, this, this woman was being stalked, and she contacted this person, this person who, you know, does spiritual work for other people. And this person said, Alright, I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to do I'm going to look into this, did some divination work, and then said, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do some defensive magic to what we might consider a curse, I guess. But preventative, right, prevent this person from stalking. And what happened, as the story goes, is that this stalker, got a ladder, put it up to the second floor of the place where this person was living, and was climbing it going to break into their house while they were asleep. And do who knows what. And they fell off the ladder and broke their leg. And also wound up in trouble with the law because they were attempting to break into this person's house and had been stalking and probably there was a protective order in place. So is that bad? Is that cursing bad? I mean, some people might judge and say, Oh, no, we can't do that magically. But if somebody were about to break into your house and kill you, and you push the ladder over with your hands and they broke their leg and got arrested, same effect, not using spiritual methodology, is that difference? I would argue, no, it isn't. It's not it's not effectively different because the effect it's just a different mechanism. Okay, if I you know, if I'm cooking some vegetables, and I roast them in the oven, or a roast them on my grill are the vegetables are still roasted, they might taste a little different. But I've used different methods but it's the same. They're roasted, right.

So karmically inter, you know, this interconnection exists, and it does allow us to do do wonderful things, do horrible things. You know, it is it is our thinking. That makes things bad or good in general, we, we can have agreement, we can have consensus about what kinds of things are bad. We can look at the effects of doing things like murder and genocide, and that sort of thing and say, these are some of the worst things we can do and what a horrific effect that has had on, you know, on the world and our own lives, and they you look at, you know, you look at these dictators, who are doing horrible things on a very large scale. You know, you look at Vladimir Putin, for example, who is, as I, as I am, you know, doing recording this, there is war in Ukraine. Russia has an in vated Ukraine, and their propaganda is saying, Oh, we're, you know, we're destroying the Nazis in Ukraine, which doesn't make any sense, because, first of all, that's not true. And second of all, the leader of Ukraine is Jewish. And third of all, they're, you know, they're a sovereign nation. They're not, they didn't attack Russia, Russia attack them. You know, I don't want to get into a whole political thing, but that's going on. Right. And we think about, oh, you know, Vladimir Putin, he's one of the wealthiest man in the world. He's, you know, got all these billions of dollars. He's got all these oligarchs sucking up to him. He's got a whole country at his disposal, he rules with an iron fist. He's controlling them all of the media through propaganda. There was some thing this morning that said that 83% of Russians polled agree with the war in Ukraine. The reason that is is because they're everything they think about it, everything they they find out about it has been controlled by Putin. And they're throwing, you know, they're throwing journalists in jail who use the word war. So you can't even say war in Russia. So regardless, though, we think about this, he's doing these horrible things, and he's killing all these people. And yeah, it's horrible, it is horrible. And, but these dictators, all of them, everyone throughout history, they, they live in constant fear, and they have to control everything around them, and then become more and more isolated, which is already happening with Russia, Russia, all these sanctions are cutting them off from the world stage from, from access to their money from, you know, their economy is going to take it is already taking a huge hit, but it's going to take an even bigger hit. And, you know, Putin has got to be afraid of the people around him potentially staging a coup. Right? It's gonna live live like that. So these people who do these horrible things live in horrible fear, and it never, it never winds up well for them. You look at Saddam Hussein, you look at Hitler, Mussolini. It's not going to end well, for Putin, even if he lives along life, he's gonna he is he is suffering. Imagine if he put all of the time effort and resources into building up building Russia up not as an adversary of the entire planet. But to build the economy instead of having these oligarchs with $600 million yachts with to hella pads and that sort of thing? What if he built his economy? What if he built relations with foreign nations? What kind of a world could we live in? What kind of a world could he live in? And the people around him who are losing all their stuff right now? And I realize it'll take a while before these oligarchs really feel everything and Putin's family feels everything and all kinds of stuff. But you know, they sanctioned his daughter's yesterday.

They're sanctioning the people around him confiscating their money and, and all of these things. And this is not to compare to the suffering the husband caused in Ukraine, but I'm just going to say that in no way shape or form is Vladimir Putin enjoying any of this. He has to live his life in constant fear he has to jail Al has political opposition. That's never a good sign. You know, he's jailed him, he's also poison them, have them killed all kinds of stuff. And the entire world knows what kind of a horrible human being he is. So, there is an effect, there is karma, it is already affecting him, it is immediate. The suffering that he is causing is going to be reflected back upon him. It's just really, really hard for us to see that we don't see inside his mind, we don't see his emotions, we don't see what's going on with his health. There are rumors that he's sick, which may be true. We don't see how paranoid and isolated he is, which, you know, I've certainly seen, I've seen pictures of him sitting with his advisors. And there's this like, 30 foot long table, and he's sitting at one end, and everybody else is huddled at the other end. You know, what's that tell you about how he lives? It's crazy, right? It must be, it must be horrible, must be a horrible life, even with as much wealth and power as he controls. He can't just, you know, walk out in public or go to a restaurant or, you know, whatever. And he's got to worry about people close to him, poisoning him or staging a coup or, you know, whatever, or him eventually winding up in prison. Because that could happen as well. So, from a spiritual perspective, this net model works really well as a metaphor. Obviously, it's, you know, no metaphor is perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect metaphor. There is, you know, there's always missing pieces and whatever, but but it works for me anyway, to sort of visualize this interconnectedness. Another way I like to view this is, and this can be hard to get your mind around as well, is that we all have this Divine Spark, at our core, we all have this connection to divinity, and it doesn't matter, you know, from the holiest of saints to the worst serial killers in history. That is, you know, that is persona level stuff, that's ego level stuff, that is a very gross level looking at things, but beyond that, below that, beneath that, and, and through that is the same Divine Spark, we all have this divine spark. And the way I the model that I use to think about and visualize this is, you know, when I think of source, you might say God, or the universe or divinity, or whatever, I visualize it as this infinite, bright white beam of light that has no beginning and no end and is infinitely bright. And then, you know, to, to experience things to experience because it is this light is conscious, it is all consciousness, it contains all consciousness is the source of all consciousness. And consciousness is contains everything contains everything there is. So this white light, consciousness decides I want to observe myself from Infinite viewpoints. And so it differentiates. And so there's, you know, if you can imagine a white light hitting a prism, right, and, you know, if you shine a light, a white light on a prism, it breaks it off into this whole spectrum of light. So breaks it into these, you know, infinite amount of beams coming from this white light. And all of these beams look like they're different colors. Right? There's this there's an infinite variety. Well, that's us and everything that exists are these different beams from this infinite spectrum. But we all come from the same source. If you take away the, the prism that differentiates all of us, we are all the same white light.

If you were to turn off the white light, we would everything ceases to exist. You turn off source, everything ceases to exist. That includes physical reality. So in in my view in in, you know, the, the spiritual level, there's no difference We talk about the sort of the spiritual planes and the spiritual overlay as being separate from physical reality. And that's one way to understand them. But you can't pull spiritual reality away from the material plane and the material have the material plane still exist, it wouldn't, because everything co exists simultaneously, at all times in all places in all of space and every spiritual plane and an infinite amount of universes. And I realized that's a tough thing to get your brain around. Watching sci fi watching Science Fiction really helps with this watching stuff about time travel, and alternate universes, kind of helps you get your brain around some of this some small aspect of this. But one of the nice things about shamanism is that it recognizes the material world as being as important as the spiritual world. Now, the Gnostic view is that the material world doesn't mean steak, that the spiritual world is the real reality that the, the, you know, physical universe was created, either by a the Demiurge, which is sort of the Antichrist, or as some kind of mistake. You know, not to take any, you know, not to argue anybody's beliefs, but that it's not my experience of things. You know, I think this, I think the physical world is wonderful, as long as you have some perspective that it's not all there is. Because it is, but everything is connected, the physical world and the spiritual world are inseparable. This is like, for we human beings, mind, body, and spirit are not really separate things, right? Where does my mind, stop and my body begin and vice versa? Right, we have gut feelings. We have heart ache, when our you know, we have thoughts that in our prefrontal cortex, and we have consciousness and we have, so we can't separate these things really. And your mind affects your body, your body affects your mind, your spirit affects both your body and mind and vice versa. All of these things, interpenetrate, interconnect, everything's connected to everything. The closer you are to something, the closer your connection, you can't be closer to your body, mind and spirit than you are. So everything that you do spiritually affects you physically, affects you mentally, and vice versa. Right, which is why in, in many traditions, physical purification is an important part of spiritual practice. I think about the Think about Judaism, for example, right? Jewish religion, where purity is important. And there are, you know, ritual baths, and there are dietary restrictions and specific items of quote, depending on you know, what branch of Judaism you come from, if you're orthodox or Hasidic, or, you know, what have you and I'm not an expert, so I don't want to speak out of turn, but there are specific items of clothing that you were in certain circumstances and, you know, you do prayers in certain ways and that sort of thing. So, the physical aspects of spiritual practice are important. Same thing with with shamanism, because those things are connected. Shinto is another one, right? So Shinto is very animist and purification through water is really important. Right, so ritual bathing and washing. There's a ritual where you rinse your mouth out and wash your hands before entering

a temple. I believe again, I'm not an expert, but so these are spiritual systems that recognize this interconnection and how important it is and how nothing is nothing can be really separated out. Without it ceasing to exist as we know it. So if we We delete our divinity, we just cease to exist. It's not possible to delete your divinity, because it is borderless and deathless. But if it were possible and you were to take away your Divine Spark, somehow your physical body and your spirit would cease to exist. However, your physical your physical body can, can certainly die. That is a part of physical reality, that is change and transformation happens constantly. And on your soul, actually changes, evolves, can be wounded can be healed all of those things, but your spirit, which is that divine spark, that is the part of you, that is eternal, and timeless and interconnected with everything. It is imperturbable, it is unwinnable on Harmel. It's pure, and the more you know, a big part of many spiritual traditions is identifying with that divine aspect of that divine spark. More and more and more and more, until you reach a state where you, the rest of you is sort of undifferentiated from divinity. And, you know, all kinds of things happen. At that point. I haven't gotten there yet. So I'm not quite sure. But you know, one step one step along that path is what we refer to as enlightenment. And many people think of enlightenment as the final step, but I don't know, you know, enlightened, human beings still have physical death. Frequently, unless they unless they just physically disappear. And we have all these stories about being, you know, ascending, ascending to the heavens. Right? We have that from Jesus to Allah. To other spiritual, Allah, I'm sorry, Mohammed, pardon me, I'm sorry, I misspoke. Mohammed, ascending to the heavens, we have all these stories about the, you know, physical ascension. And so I think my theory is that this is something that happens when we completely identify with our divine nature, so much so that the physical body like the physical body just sort of dissolves back into source. And we just kind of realize our Godhood, for lack of a better term. So anyway, I am going to I've been talking for about an hour, I'm going to wrap this up. I realize it's been a really long time since I've done one of these, I've been incredibly busy. And I am about to, you know, I've put out a bunch of really interesting things interesting to me recently, and I'm about to launch something really big as well that I've been working on this taken a lot of my time. So I you know, might do this a little more infrequently for a little while, until I can, you know, get thing the things that are about to be launched are launched and you'll hear about them here. So stay tuned, make sure you subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast subscription service. I hope you stay happy and healthy and I will talk to you really soon.

Announcer 59:23

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