Announcer 0:27

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 0:48

Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello, my friends. Thank you for joining me again. I am going to talk today to you about one of Gosh, one of my very favorite topics in the whole world. I've done episodes about this topic before. But you know, I always approach it from a different perspective and bring in different you know, aspects and talk about different ways of experiencing what I'm talking about. So today I'm going to talk about love. Specifically, I'm going to talk about divine love. I'm going to talk about ecstasy. And I realized when we talk about ecstasy and love, very frequently people think about sex. And that's fine. I may touch on that a little bit, but not necessarily what I'm talking about. And I'm going to talk about the perspective. The spiritual perspective, that all love is divine love. I will get into that I will get into what love is from a spiritual perspective, I will get into why we pursue? Why do we pursue the experience of divine love or why many people pursue the experience of divine love, and why we find that within

and that when you become immersed in divine love, it is ecstatic and blissful and freeing. It is a form of spiritual awakening, for sure. So I want to begin by talking about one of my very favorite spiritual teachers. Now, this is not somebody who I had the honor of meeting in this lifetime. He passed away in 1994. I didn't find out about his teachings until sometime in the 2000s. But and he is maybe not as famous as some other teachers. Because he wasn't he wasn't necessarily out there seeking social approval. He was teaching and really he became better known through his students who, who, you know, published his material and to this day there are you know, at least one or two of them out there still teaching his stuff. So anyway, this teacher, his name was Lester Levinson, le ve n s o n if you want to look him up, founder of what is called now the Sedona Method. But his story is a good one. His story is a great one it It illustrates what can happen with anybody. So Lester was a physicist, a staunch material realists maybe an atheist, I don't know. I don't know about that specifically, but not a very spiritual person. And this story Is that in the 1950s Lester was a fairly young ish guy at that period of time, he had a major heart issue that wound him up in the hospital, I don't know if it was a heart attack or you know what, but a major cardiac issue that wound him in the emergency room. And, you know, medicine being what it was back then. The doctors had no way to treat him. And so they sent him home, they sent him home essentially, to die. They said, Go home, and be comfortable and don't even don't even stand, don't even don't walk a flight of stairs that will do you in that little bit of stress on your heart will do you and so less was either in his late 40s or early 50s. And he went home. And he was kind of, you know, he was angry. All of this as one as happens. And he, you know, got angry that these dogs doctors, how dare they send them home to die? That's, you know, whatever. And, you know, he came to the realization that, well, maybe these doctors are doing all they can, you know, maybe I'm being angry at them for no good reason. And he also said, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a scientist, I'm a physicist, I'm a smart guy, I'm educated. How am I going to figure out my life? How, you know, whatever, whatever is left of it? How am I going to figure all of this out? And what he did was, he systematically converted all of his feelings about people, the doctors, starting with the doctors and whoever, into love, into loving feelings. Now, I know this sounds this might, you know, if you're have not studied his teachings, or done any of the practices, this might sound impossible, how do I just convert my feelings into loving feelings? I'm in there, and there are ways to do that. But he had nothing, you know, he had nothing else to do, he was lying in bed waiting to die. And he cured himself. And he lived into his 80s he lived I don't know, you know, 3040 more years after he was supposed to die. And at the time, modern medicine could not treat him. And he wound up living into the mid 90s. And along the way, he went, you know, you're gonna use this expression, he went free. He had a spiritual awakening, he became enlightened. This is, you know, various terms for what, you know, the spiritual awakening that he went through, from essentially diving into a place of love. Now, I feel like at this point, I need to talk a little bit about love. And define it from a spiritual perspective, because there are all kinds of ideas about love, right? We have the Hallmark Channel, romantic idea of falling in love. You know, the fairy tale version of the princess being rescued, falling in love. We have you know, so very often we think of romantic love. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with romance. There's nothing wrong with erotic love. All these expressions of love can be beautiful, and loving and wonderful. And love is a really word weird word in English, because we have this one word that we use for many different experiences, right? So you can love your lover you can love your children, you can love chocolate. Those are not the same things. But we say that right in English. And I know in other languages, there are many words for love and Persian, I think they're 85, something like that. So it becomes this generic catch all for fondness or extreme like or whatever. But when we talk about pure love, from a spiritual perspective, that's not exactly what we're talking about.

When we say love, from a spiritual perspective, what we're talking about is approval and acceptance. I like to use the word holding, but I'll have to describe that a little bit, because that might seem strange. Now, if we look at the universe, all there is what you know, and we think of that as an emanation of Source consciousness, you might say, God, or units of the universe, or Brahman, or whatever. But if we look at the consciousness, that is, everything there is that holds everything, there's it, it holds, everything there is every experience, every individual, every thing is held. And there's no greater like, we can place all kinds of human derived conditioned meanings on all kinds of stuff. But there's nothing in this universe that places more importance on me, than the flowers I'm looking at, or the rock, or another person or anything, everything is just held. In the state of acceptance, we might say approval. And when we display disapprove of others, or things or whatever, we are rejecting part of the universe, we're pushing it away.

So what one of the things that Lester did was to, you know, ask himself, can I give this person approval for no good reason, just give them approval, because they are a part of the universe. Over and over again, he asked himself, and it really was just an invitation to give approval. Now, at this point, I know there are people out there, I can sense it, that there are people out there saying, Well, what about this person who abused me or harmed me? Or what about serial killers? Or, you know, this politician or this horrible person from history or whatever? And yeah, there, you know, there is that there is that but you know, and I come from into my spirituality from a history of childhood trauma. So, can I approve of the, you know, the the ones at whose hands I suffered? And then the answer that actually is Yes, I can. And not doing so is more harmful to me than anything else. So this is where forgiveness comes in. And again, I can sense that, well, you know, why would I let so and so off the hook for having done such horrible things? And the answer is you're not you're not letting them off the hook. That is not what forgiveness is. You know, I can forgive the person who stole from me and still take them to court and tried to return my, you know, get my property returned or have the police intercede or whatever. But I'm not disapproving of them as a person. I don't have to accept bad behavior. Right. So when my children were small, one of the things I tried to do and not always successful I was, and still am an amateur parent and not perfect in any way, in any way like that. We all have perfection within us. But, you know, as an, you know, as I, as beingness express myself as this body in this mind, I do things that are sometimes not intended or, you know, wish I hadn't. It's all part of learning, though. But what I would tell my children when they were little, and they were acting up, I would say, I do not like your behavior, I love you. But your behavior is not okay. But I love you, and your behavior does not change how I feel about you as a person. And yeah, I realize it's hard to get there. I do. You know, I've been in an abusive relationship where my partner was, mentally and physically abusive towards me. And I wanted them out of my life. And they are out of my life. How do I you know, hold them in my consciousness when I think about that person. Well, you know, when, when everything happened when this person you know, and I, when we broke up, and they left my life, and I had been severely traumatized by that whole experience, and it had brought up my childhood trauma. You know, one of the things that I recognized was that the emotional charge that I held about this person, the anger and the hurt, and the sadness, and everything all balled into one and anyone who's been through this knows that there's even though the relationship ended dramatically and horribly, and there was abuse and all of these things. And even after the relationship ended, this person was doing things to try to harm me. There was still grief over the loss of the relationship. Isn't that weird? But it's not that's what happens. I realized that holding on to this emotional charge was a not keeping me safe from anything. Because it wasn't that charge was not keeping that person out of my life. In fact, that charge was making me think about that person more and just making me continue to hurt and continue to suffer. So I made it a point to let go of the emotional charge, the negative emotional charge and hold that person in love in my consciousness, not romantic love. Not I want to get back together with this person. Not that I ever want this person back in my life because of the behaviors. But my consciousness of this person is lighter and it's free. Oh my gosh, the freedom the hurt and the anger and the sadness and the grief. Were like heavy chains weighing me down

and now I feel very free of that and that in in I would. I would want this for everyone. I want this feeling for everyone. So again, it's the same thing with, you know, people who have abused me in the past or done, you know, done, done things to me to this body this mind and let go of the emotional charge, and I work, you know, I work to do that whenever it comes up again, I'm not to say, not to say I'm done with my work, I will continue to work on myself for the rest of this lifetime anyway. But it is so freeing, and it's blissful. And it can be ecstatic. So, this love this acceptance, this you know, all of these things. So there's a thing going on in, particularly in the US, currently. And it concerns me that people don't see exactly what has happened, but I'm going to talk politics a little bit. So what happens very frequently in politics is that people have realized that you can gain power over people by having them focus on a common enemy. This is what the Nazis did, right? pre World War Two, they used all kinds of propaganda to turn people against the Jews and the gypsies and people with disabilities and you know, Freemasons and you know, the the Jews primarily, but it was more than that. These people are out to get you they're about to take things that you know, they're going to take things from you x y, z, whatever the thing in the associated them with animals they're inhuman, and which led to you know, of course, the Holocaust, horrible atrocities. And I see this going on right now in American politics, where the enemy of the day has shifted. And people don't even realize it. You know, the new the new enemy for one political faction is you know, trans people. Trans people, drag shows they're out to get your children blah, blah, blah. Creating a threat creating an enemy, so that they can Oh, go with us. We're gonna save you from this enemy that's out to get you. There's been drag shows forever Shakespeare plays were all the female characters were men in drag. You know, and we have, you know, remember the TV show Bosom Buddies and that wasn't the first media thing where people were in drag. It's been going on forever. Suddenly, it's a problem suddenly that you know

look out when people try to tell you who your enemy is. Look out. They do not have your your best interest at heart. They are about controlling you. That being said, let's go back to love and acceptance and approval.

Imagine living in a world where everybody felt safe just being who they are.

Imagine if you always felt safe being who you are expressing who you are expressing or just living your life. And you didn't have to hide anything or justify anything. And if you live like that now congratulations. That's what we should want for everyone. So, I go back to what I call observable qualities of source of God of the universe. There is room for everyone, everyone is held in the universal consciousness, everyone and everything is held without more importance being placed on one thing or another. There's no hierarchy, hierarchy hierarchies are constructed is not part of unconditioned consciousness. Part of spiritual awakening is involves undoing a significant amount of our conditioning, we're conditioned away from being you know, being one with the universe we're conditioned towards being experiencing consciousness as an ego as an individual unconnected from the rest of the universe, but we're all part of the same thing. We are all a part of divinity and you can experience that you can go inside and experience the reality of that you don't have to take my word for it. At initial levels of spiritual awakening, what happens is you get an experience of being interconnected with all things at later levels you know are deeper and more profound levels, you have experiences of non duality, non dual meaning not to not experiencing self and other or subject and object but experiencing everything as one at even deeper levels you experience yourself when you say i your i am Ness your beingness as the entire universe you just happen to be looking through one set of eyes your the entire universe peering through your eyes underneath all of this separation, ego separation and there's subject and object and

underneath all of that is oneness and this is why I say that all love is self love. When I am being loving towards others I am experiencing love here's the secret not necessarily that much of a secret but it's a secret if you want to experience more love and who doesn't become more loving Isn't that an amazing idea? If you want to experience more love don't seek love be loving be in love

now that doesn't mean that you wander around the world starry eyed you know we the we have this stereotypical I know hippie I guess for lack of a better term from movies and TV. You know, throwing flowers on everyone and whatever you don't have in there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to be like that. It's just when you encounter any experience other beings. You work towards generating the feeling of love towards them. Until that becomes your natural state How do you know that is your natural state? Well, you will feel this warm sense of bliss of peace. Of, of ecstasy. Now I'm not talking necessarily about sexual ecstasy, although that can be a part of it when, you know, when you're with a partner, or by yourself or with multiple partners, whatever, you know, and again, our sexual morality is about kin cultural conditioning. So we let go of, we let go of judgment.

And we become more sex positive, we say, you know, as long as pleasure seeking is consensual by all parties. And consent is pretty straightforward. Everybody has to agree to everything at all times, anybody can stop agreeing at any time, everybody needs to be an adult. Children can't consent animals can't consent. People who are unconscious can't consent. That's kind of it. If you are having sexual activity, whether that is alone, or with a partner, or with more than one person, other person, and you can hold yourself and anyone else involved in love, and complete acceptance and utter approval, that's when you get this intimacy.

Right, that will make the experience deeper, and more blissful. And I would say, spiritual. If you have never experienced that in your sex life, you're you know, you're in, you're in for something life changing. We'll put it this way. And if you know, again, if you're, if you're asexual, that's fine. If you're, you know, if you're alone, if this you can do this, you can do this practice during masturbation. And that's, you know, that is also a beautiful experience. It's an experience of self love. But here's the thing. And I said this before, and I'll I'll explain that all love is self love. What do I mean by that? Well, I go back to the idea that we're all we all come from the same source. We're all expressions of beingness. Of, of consciousness. You know, I remember they're listening to a recording an audio recording of Lester Levinson, who I talked about at the beginning of the podcast. And he had been like, he went to some spiritual conference. And he didn't know that he was going to be asked to speak. But they asked him to speak and he's in it basically, imperturbable you couldn't, you know, mess this guy up? So he's like, sure, you know, whatever. And he got up and he said, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about me, or talk about you. Like, talk about me talk about you? What's the difference? And people kind of laughed. And he was using humor, as he often did. And I liked that. I like the use of humor to explain spiritual principles and get to understanding. There's so much out there that spirituality, spirituality is sacred and you know, laughter, laughter and joy and all of these things don't belong in spirituality. It's hogwash. There are times for all of it. There. There's times for all of that experience laughter and love and joy are all part of all you know, all a part of it. And when you get to a certain level, all of your experience is spiritual, all of it. Your very consciousness isn't is in, you know, an experience of spirit. No matter how we get trapped in the 3d, physical world, you realize that even that is spiritual, even the expression of this physical world in our consciousness is a spiritual experience. You're having a spiritual experience right now not just because not because you're listening to me talk on a podcast that would be very egoic of me, right? Anytime you listen to me is a spiritual experience. True, but not because listening to anybody else is not a spiritual spiritual experience, all experience a spiritual all love is self love. Because there is no difference between you and I underneath at all. So when I love you, I am loving myself

so again, you know, the question sometimes arises, what about serial killers? Or people who committed genocide? Or, you know, these people who did these horrible things? Yes, we can agree that these things that they did were horrible. But, you know, and coming from a place of ego, a place of delusion. Because to do that, to do something horrible like that. You have to experience others as separate from you. Right. And when we do horrible things to other people, we're doing it, we're doing it to ourselves, because there is no difference. But how do we like, there's so much emotional charge with somebody who's done these horrible things? How do we hold them in love and again, we don't we don't approve of those things. We don't say, oh, you know, I need to be in love. So genocide is okay, or being a serial killer or you know, being an arsonist or you know, doing those things, we don't have to be okay with that. Underneath the people underneath that behavior underneath the, the ego, the twisted conditioning is pure beingness. And we're attached to that. As much as we might, you know, as much as our egos might not like to be we're attached at a level of pure spirit and ultimately, holding on to anger and hatred and all of those things that harms nobody but us.

Right now the ego. The ego is a trickster. It's your very own trickster spirit. Congratulations. how useful the ego says if I give these things up, you will be unsafe. It feels that way, doesn't it? If I give up my anger if I give up my hatred, I will be unsafe. This body might die. Well, I've got a little bit of news for you. If you have a body It will eventually die. The body that I am using to speak to you on this podcast will die. I know there are people out there who are like, Oh, we're, you know, if we can study sharks that live for 600 years and, you know, find out, you know, tweak genetics and whatever, we might be able to prevent people from dying forever. Can you imagine what a hellhole on earth that would create in about a single generation when there's not enough food or water for everybody to live? And wars breakout? Because there's, I mean, people would start dying from warfare, that's for sure. But nobody ever, you know, grew old and died

imagine doubling the earth's population every 10 years or so.

You know, so I can't, I can't imagine that. I'm not, you know, I'm part of that the quest for physical immortality. Foremost is ego. Now, there are stories of spiritual masters like Baba Ji, for example, in the Himalayas, said that he's been alive for hundreds of years that people still sometimes run into him and study with him. I don't know the truth of the matter there. You know, but you know, this, if that is a true story, and it does almost doesn't matter if it is or isn't because the, the teachings are good and all of that. This is not somebody who's, you know, populating, you know, having a bunch having 20 Kids and populating the earth and then those kids are living forever and having each one of them having 20 kids and you know, it's different. It's different situation. Anyway, um, I want to talk a little bit about my grandmother for a moment. Now, my grandmother passed away a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago, at the end of February, a few days after my birthday in February, she passed away. She was 106 years old. And I absolutely love my grandmother. Wonderful, interesting, quirky, lady, very religious, very spiritual woman. Not from a judgy perspective, or whatever. Just her faith was really important to her. And as I still remember this as a child, this lesson that she taught me because she taught, she taught in her church for many years, she teach Bible lessons. She was a reader in her church, and she taught, she taught Sunday school, I went to Sunday school with her and she would always, she would bribe us with candy bars after if we went to Sunday school with her. So she said, somebody had asked her, you know, what is her idea of heaven? And what is her idea of hell? And she said, when I am angry with somebody, when I'm full of hatred and rage, and and all of these things, I'm in hell, I'm in hell right here. I'm suffering right here on Earth. That's what hell is like. But when I am loving, when I am being loving, and when I am when I am being kind and generous and loving towards others than I am in heaven. What a brilliant piece of wisdom from, you know, from this woman who was born in 1916 in rural Maine. And what a brilliant piece of wisdom she was talking about her own consciousness and her ability to experience heaven and hell right here on Earth. As I speak to you right now, I just I have to say this I'm looking at my back window. There are three deer that just trotted through my backyard and what a beautiful I just love to see wildlife and these beautiful Oh 345 There's more trotting through now. I love to see this I love to see wildlife and so I thought I would share that with you. It just creates this beautiful feeling in me when I see these beautiful beautiful animals walking through and I love I love where I lived for that and just lovely just lovely. Anyway I thought I would share because i i Am I being loving towards you, my my dear listener. Anyway, this is where I will leave this for today. And I hope you will put some of this into prayer practice into mind think about it a little bit. I hope you're happy and healthy. I wish you all the best. And I do love you

Announcer 46:22

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 maineshman.com