EP60 The Ego's Illusion: Unraveling the True Essence of Self in Spiritual Development

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 0:51

Hello, hello, hello.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, whatever

As I record this, it is early on a spring morning in Maine, which means we got fresh snow last night. Not too much of it. But it is very pretty.

this psychological, psychospiritual idea of the ego came from psychoanalysis it came from Freud, right, he had the ID of the ego and the super ego and this, you know, all of these things and how we deal with the world and how we deal with ourselves and our drives and all this stuff. But then of these three components.

But when, when I'm talking about ego from a spiritual perspective, what I'm talking about is basically, our ideas about who we are. It's a little bit more than identity, but identity is a big part of it. When you say AI, what are the stories you tell yourself? About I about that person, I or me? What are the stories? What are the definitions? What are the names? So, most people who know me call me John. And that's a label that my parents gave me when I was born. My daughters call me dad, and my dad or am I John? Well, those are both labels. I might call myself by those names, or answer to those names, and I don't have a nickname, but if I had a nickname that might be another thing I answer to, those are just labels. But in English, very often we say, I am John. Not I am called or My name is. So there's this identification with this attachment to our labels. And you might have that if you have a job or you're called by a title. Right? Maybe you're called doctor or attorney, so and so. Right? Those are labels, they're not who you are. At your spiritual core. What are some other things we identify with? And I'm gonna break down identification in a minute. But what are some things we say when we say I would we think about? Do you think about your body most people do. Most people are very heavily invested in the body is who I am. Right? When somebody dies, when a mind body dies, we say we buried your cousin, down in the old cemetery. We don't say we buried your cousin's body, buried the body that was in use by your cousin. At least we you know, in English, I don't know what other how other languages structure this but say I buried your cousin or your aunt is buried here or that sort of thing.

Not the remains not the body where we really, really identify the body with the person. How do we recognize other people by the shape of their face, the shape and size of their body, their gait, their mannerisms, their voice? I remember I had a friend with just not that unusual, but just a very distinct walk. Right, just the way he held himself. And I was in downtown Boston. And look down this long, long street over actually into South Boston. And which is another city actually, and I don't know about a quarter of a mile away. I see this person walking. And I'm like, I think that's Jimmy. And I stopped and I waved and he waved so couldn't see his face. walk down the street. And sure enough, it was Jimmy. So you know, we recognize people by how they walk, how they stand their physical appearance, their name, somebody says, Oh, you know, Bill, that guy work with having a sip of coffee. But the body isn't who we are. How do I know this? How do I know the body is not who I am? Well, for one thing, this body changes constantly. Right? new cells are added old cells die off. The chemical changes in my body. The changes in my brainwave pattern happen all day long, we have cycles. This is completely changing. Is it? Has it been cohesive so far? Has this body stuck together for my lifetime? Sure. But it's constantly changing, but the sense of I when I say I as an I exist, I am aware I perceive my perceptions change the thing in the things in awareness. Change. awareness does not change. The capacity of awareness does not change. It's the same thing no matter what appear. It's like a stage. It's like an empty stage. Awareness. And awareness is what we are at our core. pure, unadulterated awareness. That doesn't mean we don't have a body we have a body. It's important to take care of your body. It's important to take care of your mind you're using it for now. You got stuff to do. Awareness doesn't do anything. but that's who you are. So by extension, you don't do anything either. Sure feels like we do stuff, though, doesn't it? And that's part of the illusion of the ego. So the ego is this collection of ideas about who we are. That is an illusion. And it is a survival mechanism. It keeps this body and mind alive by making it think this body and mind is important. And the thoughts that this body and mind are having, are actually it's sometimes it feels like we are our thoughts, right? You have an, if you have an inner dialogue, it might sound like it's you talking to yourself in there. It could just be noise. Could be your holy guardian angel. It could be you know, who knows? Right? All kinds of stuff. But it feels like it's us, there's a part of our brain called the default mode network. That gets really busy in times of things like boredom, rumination, daydreaming. And part of it. Part of its function is to constantly, constantly try to determine who we are. It's scanning, things like the environment and social cues and all kinds of stuff for us to determine who we are. So those thoughts that come up those thoughts that arise in awareness, very often feel like they are us, or that least they're coming from us. What if? What if they didn't? What if they just arose?

What if thoughts just arose? You know?

And what if we are just the awareness, the space in which the thoughts arise, the perceptions arise? Even our perceptions of who we are? What if that were the truth of the matter? So I said before the egos function is to keep this body and mind alive, we have all kinds of survival mechanisms, tons of them. We're not born with too many. This body was not born with too many survival mechanisms, it could cry if it was hungry, and it had a fear of falling, and a couple of instincts, but not much more than that. But very early on, in the life of a child. Least a human child. Almost immediately, we start calling children by name. Right? We start saying, Oh, look at little, Bobby isn't little Bobby cute. And if something happens, you know, baby happens to smile or respond to their name. The adults in the room get really excited. Like he knows his name. He knows these little Bobby, right? Or they talked a little Bobby Hailo Bobby Do you want to eat? Right? And we're programmed to want to eat so that we grow and survive. So we very quickly associate the label with who we are with by being rewarded. Right? It's conditioning. Pavlov stuff. So then, you know, our parents, at least in my generation, they put you in clothes that were color coded for the genitals you were born with. If you were a boy, you're a blue. If you're a girl, you wore pink. I realized things are changing. But that was that was the way and then you're given all kinds of rules. You're given rules by your parents. Some of them communicated openly and some of them not. How many of you have a parent who could just give you a look? And you knew that you should stop whatever it was you were doing or a tone of voice, where they punished you. Or they rewarded you. And so you started to learn who you were and you push boundaries. Sometimes you got in trouble for pushing certain boundaries you learned, you are conditioned to be who you are on an ego level. So all of these experiences happened in awareness. But they feel like they are us, we have these stories about our past. I went to school here, I grew up here

that's all ego stuff, all of those stories. There's nothing wrong with them. Other than we get very, very attached to our stories, we get attached to our labels, we get attached to our body, our relationships, our jobs, all of these things that are not who are what we are.

We get attached. That's ego. an ego makes us also think that being attached to it is good. It feels like an existential threat, if anything, challenges our ego. I'll never forget I had a particular relative who's not not in my life anymore. But she was the kind of person who would always start trouble. At family gatherings. She was always angry with someone, she was always not speaking to some member of the family, she would say nasty things to get emotional responses, and it would it would start fights. And I tried. I tried for a really long time not to get riled up by her I knew what she was doing. You know, we've probably all had toxic people like that in our lives. And what she would do is she would hunt for buttons, she would hunt for things that got you upset things that could trigger you. And sit you know, to say them to you because she wanted she felt this, this perverse sense of, of satisfaction, I guess, pleasure. It was absolute pleasure from stirring the pot or saying horrible things to people and getting away with it. And you couldn't call her on anything because she would fly into a rage. In fact, she got she got violent, which is why she's not not a part of my life anymore. I have no tolerance for that this body mind is I'm trying to keep it safe. And so, um, anyway, she felt you know, I would just stay above it all and okay, whatever, she's doing her thing and she wants to get somebody upset. And she looked at me one day and said, You're not a man of your word. And that hit me like an ice pick to the chest. Because I had egoic ly identified myself as somebody who was profound, a very truthful it was part of my identity part of my ideal identity. Even though you know, we talked to the kids about Santa Claus, and, you know, there were certainly untruths, but that wasn't part of my self concept, my idealized self concept. My ego was that I'm, I tell the truth, I'm an honest person, I make an honest effort. She said that and it it I felt my blood boil underneath. You know, when they say getting hot under the collar, that's exactly what it felt like. And she made some reason we had been trying to we had talked about going on vacation with the these members of my family at one point, and it never, it never panned out. You know, I had I had thrown three or four dates across and it never ever, ever, ever came to pass. And that absolutely no fault of mine, or anybody's really whatsoever. We just could not find a mutual time for that to occur. And that's, and that's what she, well, you said, we were going on vacation together and we haven't gone on vacation together and blah, blah, blah, you know, and I was like, hold on a minute, you know, and then I had to, like, get into the thing where I start to fight about facts, and you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, I gave you guys four dates, and none of them worked for you. And then you had a date of didn't work for me and what what's the you know, what's all this stuff? What is all this stuff? This is cuckoo, this is crazy. But it was my ego that was acting up. So the ego wants to keep the body mind alive. It's a survival mechanism. It comes from the fact that human beings are we're individuals, but we're social creatures, we're wired for social socialization, we have to, to survive as a species. We had to team up, we didn't run faster than most animals or climb trees or have sharp teeth or claws. We had to hunt using cooperative hunting, we had to make tools, we had to shelter together for protection. So you know, at some point in the development of prefrontal cortex and whatever, ego became important, seeing oneself as a separate entity living inside a body, or being the body and responding to the names that our tribe mates were calling us. And having esteem, feeling good. Hey, I'm a member of the jab, jab tribe. And you know, the we're better than the guys on the other side of the river who are in a different tribe. They're awful. Look at those people, let's do warfare against them. It's the history of the world right there. They've got something we want. They're not as good as we are, we're gonna go kill all of them and take it. So the ego develops. And again, the problem is not necessarily that you have an ego and that you need to destroy it or kill it or dissolve it or make it go away. Although a little dissolution is not a bad thing. It's that you're attached to the ego at the level of identity. Is it useful for me to be able to respond to the name my parents gave me? Yes, it is, in certain circumstances. Is it useful for me to play the role of dad? Absolutely, and I love my children dearly.

But in the realm of spiritual development of spiritual truth, the ego is a little bit of a trap. It's not an enemy. It's a survival mechanism. It has good intentions. It's just very, very powerful for most of us, and it can take us out of spiritual truth. spiritual truth is the reality that you are pure consciousness. And that there is only one consciousness, there's one awareness. Awareness is one thing.

This is part of non dual thinking or non duality, non dual meaning not to.

At certain levels of spiritual awakening, one can have a persistent experience of non duality where everything feels like everything feels like it's the same thing. That's how you experience you're experiencing. Everything being part of the same experience. So if I'm having a conversation with somebody, awareness is both sides of that conversation. It's just like a little play that's acting out.

So

but deeper, even beyond non duality there's more, right? There's more and deeper levels of this experience of being pure, empty caught consciousness, empty awareness. And when I say empty awareness, I don't mean there's nothing there. I mean, there's space there for holding everything. Imagine, imagine a magical box in which you could place everything there is. That's, that's awareness. Now, at deeper levels of awakening, the experience is like the entire universe is peering through a single set of eyes. As I look out from this body through these eyes, it feels like the entire universe is looking through these eyes at this moments like I've, I've gone to, I've gone to a place where there's a peephole and a wall and I'm looking through. And what ego says is that I am the people. Not the one looking through. So what do we do? Like knowing all of this is great. Is it knowing all of this is one thing? What do we do with this, this is just information. There is something to be said for information helping us in the process of development and awakening. But it's not all there is. And it's certainly not the most important thing there is. What's most important is shifting awareness, shifting our paradigm, I realized that paradigm shifting is an overused business term. But what we mean by paradigm shift is an entire a shift in worldview. Everything about how the universe exists shifts for you. And it's about getting in touch with what you are at your core. Now, last night, the night before I recorded this episode, I taught a an hour and 15 minute long. Course in spiritual awakening, just a short webinar an hour, an hour and 15 minutes, that shorter than most, you know that a lot of meditation sessions, there was a little bit of talking. And then we dove into four different meditations in that period of time that were very short. This is gonna sound braggy I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying this in the example will become clear in a moment. But I had people on this webinar, who were some more experienced meditators who had been practicing Buddhism for years and others in various levels of, you know, spiritual development and practice. And, you know, these short experiences were designed to lead people further and further inward. And just disconnect more and more from the ego. And some of the some of the comments that I got back from people, not to pat myself on the back too much because that's ego. But we're, you know, this is profound. I thought it would take years of practice to get here and you went straight to the heart of it. Well, this isn't anything special. It's not me. I'm not a guru. I can't tap you on the head and make you enlightened. It only works that way. Because you're already enlightened. Your core is awareness, pure awareness. It's just a matter of it's not a matter of attaining anything. It's not a matter of learning anything, it's not a matter of I don't know, reaching the fifth dimension or, you know, ascending, or any of that stuff and not that there's not that there's anything wrong with those practices, I don't know anything about them. I'm not putting anybody else's practice down, I'm talking about my approach was not to do any of that. But it was to guide people to relax and sink into the awareness that they already are, that is always present. It's always there. You don't have to seek it. You don't have to seek awareness, it's already there. So what do we have to do to bring that to the forefront? What do we have to do to live from that space? Not much. Part of it involves detaching from the ego detaching, not deleting the ego not having ego death. Although those things can happen in profound spiritual experiences, I still think it can be useful, the ego can be useful as long as we are not letting it run our lives. As long as we are not getting pulled in and attached to it, it is still useful for this body mind to play the role of dad to play the role of teacher to play the role of the lover to play the role of the guy who answers to my name. You know, imagine if I needed to renew my driver's license, and I go into the DMV and they call my name. And I sat back egoless and didn't respond to it. I'd wind up driving on an expired license. So no, these things can be useful. I don't, you know, the people who look at and study these things. There are lots of their, you know, longitudinal academic studies of spiritual awakening and what that experience is like where they've gone and, you know, interviewed 1000s of people over many years and talk to, you know, monks and other people to find out what these experiences the experience of awakening and, and detachment from the ego, spinning the ego down. dissolving the ego a little bit to solving the by the ties that bind us to the ego. And when it seems, is they have not reached a level they've not you know, in in research and study and even in the spiritual writings, it doesn't seem like there is an end to the levels of awakening to the depth. Maybe, you know, at certain levels. From what I've read, and had some experiences in this department, the idea of volition goes away, meaning I'm not even running this body anymore, the body is running itself, this body mind can take care of itself. It can feed itself, it can go out and have a job. It does not need it does not need the help of awareness. It's going it's occurring inside awareness, but it doesn't need any help. It already knows what to do. It's been conditioned really well. Or you know, well to some degree. This body mind can run itself I don't have to put effort into that it feels like you do. What if everything were completely effortless. Now that doesn't mean the body stays all in bed all day and never moves and you know, eventually dissolves. Because your your body isn't efforting.

But what if you abided What if your attention, abided lived from spacious, still blissful, peaceful consciousness which is what you are? What if you lived from that place, all the time. And your body and mind just kept on doing what it was doing appropriately. That's a profound step into spiritual awakening, it's a profound place to land. It's a profound you know, way, I guess it's a profound shift in consciousness for most people. But that's their that's available to you right now

can live from that awakened state, you can, you can reach back right now and touch on that. Just with your intention. You don't need to sit for 20 years and watch your breath. Although I highly recommend meditation. Meditation turns off the default mode network. In other words, it the default mode network being the part of the brain that ruminates on stuff and thinks it's you. Meditation deactivates this to some extent. So it loosens the grasp of ego. It loosens the identification with ego.

Now, one of one of the meditators with me last night, in this workshop that I taught, you know, we did this, you know, we did these series of recitations in the beginning. So just, you know, repeat after me. And part of that go through this series of recitations that were meant to loosen up the grip of ego. And then ask ourselves the question, What am I and rest in that space of whatever comes up? And one of the meditators asked, well, when you had us ask the question, What am I? The word one came up, is that okay? Is that okay? No, that's not No, I'm just kidding. That everything is okay. Everything that comes up, particularly in meditation is okay.

And, you know, that is an accurate, you know, if you're going to put a label on it, if you're going to put a label on, and we have to, to talk about it a little bit. It's hard. A lot of people who were there who were like, I can't really describe the experience too well, and I get it. You know, and they tried, and they like, my edges disappeared. And I said, Ah, yes, boundary lessness are like, Oh, that's it. That's it. So it took a group effort took more than one brain to come up with a good description of what some experienced

and people can just float in this boundary LIS, peaceful, blissful state, and the body doesn't die. The ego might rebel a little bit in the beginning. Because it thinks if you let go of your grasp on the ego, your attachment to the ego, it thinks your body's going to die, or it'll let you know it'll feel like that. Or I won't be me anymore. The me who I think I am will disappear. That's another form of death. So my comments about that are kind of twofold. One is that who said death is a terrible thing. You have a body, you should take care of it and keep it alive. You've got stuff to do. But death isn't all that scary once you realize that you are pure awareness, and that you were never born and will never actually die

the second thing is the, the the eye that you think you are, when you say I am, changes all the time, we've talked about this already in this podcast, this, you that you think you are, is not who you are, but it also changes. You ever get hangry your body chemistry changes, your personality, your perception, your how tired you are, whether you've just exercised physical processes that are changing, you have natural body rhythms, you have a diurnal rhythm. Right, you have all these bio rhythms, you might have a monthly cycle. Right? So does that profoundly change who you are? Well, it can, it can change your experience profoundly from moment to moment. So you're constantly dying and being reborn as something someone new from a from a strict ego perception. So when I stopped doing this episode, I start recording this episode of the podcast if one of my children called me, I would shift into dad mode. And the the me that was recording this podcast would change significantly would go away, would die off to be reborn another day? It's not that serious. It's really not, it's really not that serious. But the ego will have you think the ego will lie to you, you will die if I go away. has no qualms about lying to you to get its way. So what do we do about this? How do we begin to unravel the ego or not the ego itself but attachment to the ego. First of all, let the ego take care of itself. You don't have to add anything, you'd have to take anything away you don't have to fight with it.

But understand that you are pure awareness and everything that comes up including your experience of having a body is coming up in awareness. And that's what you are, you are aware of your body your body is the object in the I have a body I see my body, I is the subject. Body is the object in that sentence. You are not objective, meaning you're not an object. Nothing that arises as an object in your awareness can be you, you are the subject you're the witness, you're the observer. But even those are objects you're the capacity you're the stage you are the movie screen on which life is projected you can have a very direct experience of that in a very with a very short meditation

so what we can do is to start recognizing the egos effect on our perceptions on our life. How does identifying with my name? How does identifying with my self image as an honest person or this kind of person or whatever? How does identifying with the labels or the body? How does that affect my perception of spiritual reality

and being your beingness being what you are at your core doesn't require any effort at all. None whatsoever. It's already who you are. It's sort of like looking at a bird and saying, how much effort are you putting into being a bird? Well, that would be a silly question, right? But we put effort into being our ego, to thinking we are our ego we put effort in, or wear certain clothes that match who I am my style. I, you know, act like, Dad, when I'm in that role, I act like a podcaster. When I'm recording a podcast, the body mind is F is efforting. But the self is not. And there's an expression I really like I don't know where it came from, I learned it from Hale Dwoskin of the Sedona Method, fame, wrote the book, The Sedona Method, and teaches the Sedona Method. And I really like him as a teacher, I've I've been with him live a couple times, and online a whole lot and read his book and really, really liked the teaching of the Sedona Method. But one of the things he says is, and this might have come from his teacher, or somewhere else I don't know, is being not the doer. Be not the doer, meaning the body of mind is doing stuff. Don't identify with that. Don't identify with doing anything, you're not doing anything you're being

you are awareness, and there's no effort in awareness. Look at something wherever you are right now, whether you're listening to this and in your car or somewhere else, you can look at something that's in front of you, even if you're driving, it's totally fine. I'm not going to do any meditation here. Just look at look at something, see something in front of you. Or hear something or touch something doesn't matter perceive something.

How much effort did you put into seeing or hearing or whatever you might have looked you might have directed your awareness at something you might have directed your attention, your awareness, you directed your attention at something. But beyond that you didn't do anything?

How much effort do you have to put into experience the fact that you have a body? No, I know you might put effort it might feel like you're putting your body's putting effort in to maintain your body have to eat things and exercise and drink things and go to the bathroom and what you know, wash your face and all kind of you know, whatever it is that you do that, that feels like effort to take care of the body. And if you didn't, eventually the body would disappear. But I'm talking about right now in this moment. Whatever perception you have, that you have a body whether you you know can feel it or see it or hear some part of it. Some aspect of your body. How much effort is required to perceive the body? None. None. Because awareness doesn't put in effort. awareness does not effort. It is effort less. With that, I'm going to leave you a little bit with a little bit of, you know something to do just start noticing. When ego comes heavily into play, when you're over-identified with the body, and ask yourself what would happen what would I be if I'm not this body? What would I be if I'm not this name that my parents labeled me with or whoever labeled me with? What would I be? If not the thoughts running through my head that change every 10th of a second? What would I be if not these perceptions that arise in my experience?

start looking at that. And your attachment to Eagle will start to unravel a little bit and will take you deeper and deeper. Anyway, I hope you're well I love you all. We'll talk really soon

Announcer 50:47

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact John go to MaineShamain.com That's maineshaman.com

EP57 Navigating The Ego in Spiritual Practice

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, hello, everybody.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever and whenever you might be. Today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics. That is ego, and the ego and spirituality. And I think there is a lot of misunderstanding around what ego is and its role in your life and its role in spirituality. I have heard spiritual people talk about killing the ego. I've heard spiritual people describe the ego as the devil. Um, as you might imagine, my opinion is a little bit different about that. And I think there is a general misunderstanding about the ego and its role in our lives. What it is, what do we do with it? How do we navigate it? How do we navigate our ego we we have egos. I have an ego when I say that, when I say I, what am I identifying? That's really what ego is. So I'm going to break it down for you. I'm going to talk about, I'm going to give you some ideas about what the ego is, and where it is a trap and where it is useful. And, and all of those things and talk about navigating it in your spiritual practice. And I'm going to give some practical stuff today. I'm going to talk to you about not letting the ego rule your life. Let's get into it. What is ego? Well, you know, there is a Freudian definition of ego. Not going to use that. And there is you know, we often use ego and English colloquially, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that word, right. We use it as a term to refer to somebody's inflated self esteem or inflated sense of self esteem, that guy's got a big ego, check out that ego and that guy, and we actually, without maybe knowing it means the opposite. That person is so insecure, that they have, they're acting like they have an inflated sense of self. So but let's talk about, let's talk about a more useful definition of ego and what we mean about ego in spirituality. So, ego is this ego is a collection of stories and beliefs that you hold about who you are. I'll add one more thing. It's stories, beliefs, and labels about who you are. So when I say I am John, and I realize in other languages in many other languages, they don't say I am, and then their name. But in English, we frequently say I am John, we don't say I am called John. Identifying with that label, I have a name. You know, John Moore, does a label that my parents gave to me when I was born, but that's not who I am. And it's really interesting because I've been, I've been talking about ego and a number of areas. Very recently a number of outlets. So I've got a I did a YouTube and Facebook Live broadcast about ego and I did some stuff on Instagram. And then the algorithm of Facebook, a video came up for me to see of Bob Proctor fantastic spiritual teacher really, really plugged in I love, love his stuff. It might not be for you, it might not be for everybody, but but I have not heard him say anything I disagree with. He uses different terminology for things. That's fine, that's great. And he was talking about this very thing. He said, You know, I have this name, that this is just a label my parents gave me and I have this body. Right. And I don't say, you know, hand is going to work today. I say I am going to work today. And what I mean is this body, but you have a body, you are not the body. But as humans, it's very easy to identify as the body. You know, when somebody passes away in this culture, we say, you know, my grandfather is buried in the cemetery. Well, my grandfather's ashes, the remains of the body that he inhabited are there, but he's not in the cemetery. Not from a who he actually was, or who he is now spiritual perspective, is he in the cemetery. So, ego is about the stories that we tell ourselves who we are in, a lot of them come with labels. So for example, one story that I have about myself is that I am a dad, I have children, I play the role of father to them pretty frequently, hopefully doing the best job that I can. I describe myself as an amateur parent. Um, but that, again, is just a label. And I have not always been a dad. Right, there was a, you know, a long period of time in my life, where before I had children, and right now, I'm not talking to you through this podcast, in the same way that I would talk to my children. So that that that role doesn't necessarily apply in this moment. And again, it's a label, and it's a set of stories, whether or not those stories are true. Right, we have true stories, and not so true stories. What are some of the stories that you tell about yourself, about who you are? Well, there's all kinds of stuff, right? It's, you know, about your identity, you know, I'm, I'm a man, I am a dad, I am a boyfriend, I am a resident of the United States, I am this I am that and there are, you know, sort of labels, and there are stories behind all of those things. And there are beliefs, right? If you believe you are your body, that's just a belief. True or not, right? You can have true beliefs. And you can have false beliefs, I don't mean to put down the idea of a belief. Beliefs are important, as is your ego, and I'm going to get to that, but beliefs are important. But having a flexible belief system, understanding that everything you hold to be true, whether or not it is objectively true or not, is a belief. The the idea of belief is a habit of thought that we think is true. So if I, you know, I am recording this podcast right now, that is a belief that I have. Now, the truth of it is, I probably am. But I don't know, I mean, the equipment that I'm using to record this might not be functioning. Right. You know, there's all kinds of things back that right. And you know, we have all kinds of all kinds of beliefs about the truth of things. One of the things that's really interesting if, you know, it's not certainly not everybody's cup of tea, but if you read things by the author Robert Anton Wilson, he talks about everybody living in A reality tunnel, right, which is a description of the another word for this is the paradigm, the belief that you have about everything, right, and we rarely ever step out of that reality tunnel, we are very locked in. Why because it's easier, it's easier to live our lives with a single set of beliefs. And one of the things he, he advocated was not knowing anything, or not placing the belief that you knew anything. I know, I know, I know was like a dirty word to him a dirty phrase, I know.

And he advocated for this, you know, sort of radical agnosticism where you don't really this is very philosophical, but where you went around and rare you know, had certain beliefs that allowed you to function in the world but but knew that you couldn't truly know anything, this was his, his thing. That everything we experience in this world, comes to us through our filters, through our conditioning, through filters that were set up from the second we were born. Till till now it comes to us, we you know, we have different cultures, we have maybe different languages, we have different bodies that we inhabit, we have, you know, different histories, different schooling. We've read different things, even our memories, which we you know, a lot of people think your memory is just this recording device that plays things back objectively. We no use that term, we believe very strongly based on scientific evidence, that that is not true, that your memories are reconstructed. Which is why if you ask two people about a single incident that they both witnessed, you might get two very different stories. And both of them are remembering. Right, not only do they have different viewpoints, but they're, you know, they're filtering it through their memory. So when you were born, right, when you were born, you may or may not remember that exact moment. But when you were born, you had no reference, right? And the world like nothing was separate from you. This is the closest thing to enlightenment that many of us will ever experience in this lifetime. Although you can certainly become enlightened in a certain lifetime, in a single lifetime. This is the closest thing to enlightenment, to awakened an awakened state of pure formless consciousness. That places no labels on anything you don't you're, you're, you know, pre verbal, you don't have language to start labeling things. And what happens is, immediately your parents or in the other adults in your life, start referring to you by name. They use your name over and over again, and they feed you you have an instinct to survive, which is, you know, you cry when you're hungry. But that's it. And then eventually you learn that, you know, if you respond to your name, you get fed more you get held, you get, you know, whatever. And so you really, Oh, this must be This must be what I am, who I am. And you're told you're a girl, you're a boy, you're whatever, whatever whatever that never ends, you have all of these stories about who you are, and it starts from birth. And you never kind of unless you work on it really hard, you never really go back to that primordial fluid consciousness because learning and conditioning does that to us. And this is not to say learning and conditioning is bad or evil or the devil or whatever. So. So this is essentially what ego is, it is the you know, simplify it. It is the collection of stories that we hold about who we are. You know, when I say I come from a history of trauma. You know, I grew up with childhood trauma. That's a story. Right? Whether that's true or not, whether that's objectively true or not, that's a story that's part of my identity. It's part of, you know, how I define myself, sometimes it's how I think about myself. So why, why would we have an ego? Why is it? You know, why is this a thing that we've developed? Does it serve us? Well, it must. I mean, that's a belief, but it must serve us somehow. Because otherwise, you know, human beings would have died out. If we, if, you know, having an ego wasn't, didn't serve some purpose. Not only that, let's talk about the spiritual purpose of, of ego and that sort of thing. So one of the things that ego does one of the functions of ego, and I'm talking about ego, like it's a thing now, but ego is a bunch of stuff. It's a series of processes, but it's much easier to talk about it if we lump it in and create a thing out of it. But it's not a thing. It's not, you know, it's it's a, what do you call those, going back to my grammar school days, you know, the, the, it's an abstract noun, right? You can't put ego in a wheelbarrow, or a bucket. So it's an abstract noun, but it's really fluid into collection of things. And your egos is very fluid. For most people. There's some people are really, really locked in. But over time, your ideas about yourself have changed. Think about yourself when you were 13. Think about yourself when you were 18. You know, I don't know how old you are. But I'm 51. Now, I mean, very different person have a very different self concept. I have a lot of more stories now about myself than I did when I was 18 or 13. So your ego changes over time. Right? It's very, very fluid. We don't necessarily think it is. Let's talk about spiritual reality for a minute. And I'm going to use a very, I'm going to use a very specific model. And I'm going to use the word source instead of God or the universe or whatever. If you want to replace that in your mind with the word God with salt when I use source, fine, that's great. I find the word God has a lot of baggage with it. Like, again, people have a lot of ideas, a lot of stories about who or what God is, and some people don't believe in God. And, you know, it's okay, whatever you believe is totally fine. But I'm gonna talk about cosmology a little bit in why ego is spiritual, and it is part of our spiritual development and where does it come from? Okay, and this is one model one perspective, you cannot, words don't adequately describe spiritual reality. So whatever I'm describing to you is just a close approximation of anything, or, I don't know, maybe not so close. And you might have a completely different viewpoint. And I respect that. I am certainly not a you know, fundamentalist of any kind. You you believe in what you believe. But let's, you know, let's go back a minute, let's talk about the origin of everything. So imagine, you know, back before the Big Bang back before, time and space existed, there was a being, but that being was just pure formless consciousness, and we'll call that source, okay. You might call it God, or the intelligence of the universe or whatever, but it is a field of pure consciousness in which nothing exists. Right? So, experience can't really arise in this consciousness. This consciousness is just existence. It's like a it's like a big empty field. And so source or God or whatever does whatever it does. In order to have experience arise in order to explore itself, what would you do? What would you do if you wanted to really explore yourself, you might have to step outside yourself, you might have to ask your friends what you are like you might video or audio record yourself, right, you would have to do some things, really to explore yourself, you can do some level of self exploration, by scanning your body or you know, whatever, but to really, really explore yourself, you've got to kind of get outside of yourself. Well, if you're all there is, what do you need to do.

And I find that one sort of metaphor for source is you think of an infinite beam of white light, right, like a solid beam of white light, in infinite brilliance and infinite length, and, you know, whatever. And if it were passing through the void of space, for example, in space isn't really empty, there's, you know, there's energy, there's all kinds of stuff, you know, cosmic dust and all this stuff. But let's say we're passing through this vacuum of space where there's absolutely nothing, you would see no light. You know, if you shine a flashlight, and there's not dust in the air, you don't see the beam of that flashlight, you only see the flashlight reflected off a wall or surface or whatever. Or there's particles of dust in the air, and you can see the beam, but you don't see the light until it reflects back to you. So this infinite beam of white light can't really see itself, it can't really experience itself. And so what it does is it has to set up limitations, barriers, things for it to bounce off of. And it does that in a couple of ways. One is it splits itself off. So we take that beam of white light, and we put a prism in front of it, right might have done this in school. And it splits that beam of white light that contains all other frequencies of light into a rainbow. Wow. Right. But that rainbow has basically infinite diversity. Which is what we are, what everything in the universe is, you know, as close as we can approximate it infinite diversity in the universe, people are really, really different. But we're also you know, we live on a planet, I can look in my backyard and see, you know, 12 different species of trees. And I know there's going to be dozens of species of fungus growing under the earth and animals and birds and you know, if I go a few miles away, the ecosystem is going to be completely different. Diversity is an observable quality of source, okay. So source or God or whatever, splits itself off and there are models, there are other you know, their spiritual models that talk about this right? The Tree of Life in Kabbalah talks about this, the first thing is just this infinite field of light, the iron soft or and then, you know, intelligence says, you know, let's create reality. Consciousness says let's create reality, and splits itself off in you know, descends down the tree of life, until it gets to physical reality down here. So, this prism happens and then these obstacles up here, right? It sets up source sets up the illusion of individual obstacles. So consciousness can bounce off of those, like light and reflect back. So you, my friend, are undifferentiated. You know, you're differentiated in that you experience a separate identity. This is where ego comes in. But you are connected to source in the same way that everything else is. If you want to describe it. In quantum terms, we are quantum entangled with everything in the universe. Right, scientifically, before the Big Bang there Was this particle, this infinitesimally small particle, smaller than an atom, I guess, that exploded into the entire known universe. They can't even imagine, you know, that created first there was, you know, it split itself out into nothing but hydrogen and then, you know, the hydrogen started grouping together and forming clumps, and then those clumps formed, you know, got denser and denser and denser and formed stars. And then the stars got denser and denser, denser till some of them started forming. Are there elements, right, everything, all of the elements in your body, say for hydrogen. But even the hydrogen in your body at one point was in the belly of a star, all of the carbon, all the stars were the furnaces of creation that created the physical elements that our physical universe is made out of, is pretty amazing.

So, source differentiates itself to have experience. And we are at our core underneath this identity with the body, the our identity with our thoughts, identity with our labels, if we parse through all of that, what we are is a field of consciousness, in which experience arises the experience of having a body, the experience of our thoughts, the experience of the sensations we have, you know, you're hearing my voice right now. Which is, I realize it's an everyday thing, but it is an absolute miracle if you think about it, think about it for a moment I am using muscles in my throat and air for my lungs and making the air in front of my mouth vibrate or you know, inside my throat but coming out of my mouth, the air is vibrating there is a microphone in front of me that converts those vibrations into an electronic signal that goes into a computer that converts that electronic signal into ones and zeros there is nothing else just ones and zeros. Now, you have a computer or a phone or you know whatever but some device some computing device that converts those ones and zeros back to an audible signal something you can hear right so converts that back to an electronic symbol signal. And whether you're listening through headphones or speaker or whatever, there is you know some electronics in there that vibrate the air those vibrations strike your eardrum or eardrums and cause you know nerves to fire in your ear. They go into your brain and what happens is you have this subjective experience of listening to me talk that subjective experience happens inside the field of your consciousness. And that is a beautiful thing to me. The fact that I can you know have some beams of light strike the back of my eyes and I experienced a sunset or you know, my daughter can come up and put her arms around me and electrical signals from my skin and muscles and body give you know out of that out of those electrical signals which are very close to being ones and zeros right because neurons either fire or they don't I have this subjective experience of getting a hug. That's a miracle to me

wow what powerful beings we are Are because what whether you're doing it consciously or not, you are creating everything you experience. This is not to say, there isn't a reality outside of you somewhere. But your experience of that reality is created inside your consciousness. And you know, very well how your consciousness how your state of mind or your emotional state, how tired you are, how, you know, whatever, you know how that can change your experience of things, right, you know, that you're affecting the experience that's arising, whether you're doing that consciously on purpose or not. So if I'm really well, I'll tell you a personal story. I was going through processing, some processing some family trauma. And, um, you know, I was dating somebody who was also processing some family trauma at the time. And she said to me, imagine if we had had normal families. And you know, I had been in this state of mind, we're very, you know, lots of ruminations and depressed and all of these things. And it changed, like my consciousness in an instant changed. And I started laughing uncontrollably laughing so hard tears were running down my face, my stomach was hurting, I was having a hard time breathing, you know, red in the face, ugly, crying, laughing. Right. If I had been in another state, my experience, you know, receiving that information, imagine if our families had been normal. Wouldn't have we reacted the same way it wouldn't have had the same subjective experience of exactly the same data. Misses consciousness. But this is also why ego is useful. Because it allows us to have different experiences. Right, it allows us to play with being depressed or being joyous or being whatever. Now we, we. So I'll get into some of the traps of ego, some of the problems of ego and talk about what what we might do about it, if we decide that it's a problem. What are effective strategies for managing our egos and spiritual practice? How do you develop a healthy relationship with your ego? And how does ego affect your spiritual growth and development? So, the Buddha in his four noble truths, talks about suffering, that there is suffering, which is the cause of suffering is way out of suffering. And suffering is in this model, the result of attachment. Right? Attachment, one of the truths of Buddhism, but of you know, just subjective, you know, subjective objective experience is that everything is impermanent. Nothing lasts forever, everything changes. Everything is in a constant state of change. So our attachment to things that are impermanent and in a flux puts us sometimes in a state of suffering. Let me give you a personal example of that. My daughters have twin daughters, they just turned 16. One of my daughter's has her driver's license, the others will have hers very soon. There they have become independent young women. They have both been dating. They both have jobs. And I'm like, oh, man, I miss the days when they were nine years old. And we used to hang out all the time. And, you know, even in the winter, we'd go walk on the beach. And you know, we would spend so much time together. And we were so so close, because, you know, when they were young, when they were little, their, their mom traveled on business quite a lot. So they spent they spent a lot of their time just with me. And I love my daughters. And I love that they're growing up, and they've become wonderful, caring, compassionate, loving people. By God, I'm like thinking back, oh, my goodness, when they were nine, how wonderful was only when they were five, how wonderful it was. And I look at pictures of us. And there's a picture of us standing in a waterfall together, that is one of my favorites. It was a joyous, a joyous day, lots of laughter. But I can look back at that, and mourn or grieve the loss of that time, but it was inevitable that that was going to change. Nobody stays nine years old forever. That relationship has to change, I could, you know, fight to hold my kids back and be strict and not let them explore the world and all of this stuff. But I'd be fooling myself and trying to be attached to that experience. So to the extent to which I am attached to that memory, that experience, there is suffering. Right, in the same thing, so I have this body. And I think back to you know, when I was in college, it was in my late teens, early 20s. And I went to the gym every single day, and I did karate five days a week, and I could eat anything I wanted. As much as I wanted, I would go to the cafeteria at school and get three dinners and then you know, have five glasses of milk and dessert and never put an ounce on. And I was muscular and thin and my waist size was significantly smaller. You know, this body changes, I have white hair in my beard now. In other places I won't talk about but I have white hair and my beard. If I grow my beard out, it's very white, that your body changes constantly over time. You don't even have to try too hard. There's just an aging process. There are lots of people out there that are trying to work on stuff to make people physically immortal. Can you imagine a world where babies are still being born and nobody ever dies? How quickly would we run out of natural resources and this would become this would become a living hell.

So this body changes and and if I'm attached to it too much, eventually I know this body mind will die. Right? If I worry about that I can cause lots of suffering my attachment to this quote unquote life that is just my identification with this body, this mind these beliefs these perceptions that causes suffering.

Now how do we navigate this? Right? So we are very most of us attached to our egos. We are attached to our stories about who we are. We're attached to our labels were attached to our bodies were attached to our belief systems, all of those things were very attached to those things. And it does cause suffering. Right. If you're attached to who you are, and I insult you, or I invalidate you or you know you know all of those things that people do to be nasty sometimes. That can cause suffering can cause a fight. It can cause you know, all kinds of stuff that leads us astray because we're really, really attached. And I remember my daughter, one of my daughter's coming home from school, elementary school, and she was really angry. And I said, you know, What's got you so, let's get you in a huff. Why are you so angry? So and so called me stupid. And I said, Okay, I said, let me ask you a question. She said, Yeah. I said, Are you a chair? And she kind of giggled. Like, I'm not a chair. I'm like, so if I call you a chair, and I say, You're a chair, Sophia. Are you gonna be upset by that? Say, No, that's, you know, that's silly. And they said, Are you stupid? Said No, I'm not stupid. I said, so why are you gonna get upset? When somebody calls you stupid. Right? It's only if you identify with that. It's only if you cling to that identity that somebody is trying to foist onto you. That it causes suffering. Right, our need to be perceived in a certain way our need to self perceive in a certain way. Right. When I don't live up to my own expectations, sometimes that causes suffering and then I have to remind myself, John, I say, referring to my label. You are part of source you are connected via divine spark to infinite consciousness. You are part of the vastness of the universe, part of all there is and your consciousness is a miracle. So give yourself a break, cut yourself some slack. So let's talk about how to navigate ego in spiritual practice. Because there are traps in spiritual practice. There are lots of traps in spiritual practice I've talked about some of them in other podcasts have talked about spiritual bypassing and spiritual egotism, which I'll talk about again now. There is this tendency for some people to simply shift to their ego. Too, say something more spiritual, right. And this is not to say, you know, I identify as a spiritual teacher I identify myself as a person who practices and teaches shamanism. I identify myself as somebody who teaches meditation and spirituality. You know, that is a part of my ego complex but the trap for me would be if I thought I am that makes me special. That makes me better than that makes me you know, think I have transcended my ego Oh, well, I teach spirituality. I no longer have an ego No, sorry, doesn't work that way. I am beyond ego. No, it doesn't work that way.

The Buddha while he was alive, still out of body, still talk to people still referred to himself. You can't do that without some level of ego. So one of the spiritual traps is spiritual egotism, where we just replace our identity with something that we think is more spiritual or at a higher level or lots of stuff about ascension these days. And five d i have no idea what not to put that down. If that's a practice you're doing or something. I don't really know what it means. I don't know you know, But I've talked to people who are ascended or ascending or you know, whatever, and I don't, you know, that's cool, that's great. Don't let it go to your head. Don't let awakening go to your head. Don't let enlightenment go to your head, I think I'm gonna put that on the t shirt. Don't let enlightenment go to your head. It's not about your head. It's not about having an inflated self concept.

You know, I had a client a couple of weeks ago. And I'm super, super careful about not sharing any personal details of clients. So I'm going to talk in a very generalized manner about this person. So this client, this client is in Europe, I have clients all over the world. This client happened to be in Europe and had worked with another. He referred to this person as a shaman. I call myself a shamanic practitioner. In my practice, in my teaching in my school, one does not call oneself a shaman, because it's considered egocentric. It's one way that we try to prevent the spiritual egotism, by slapping a fancy label on ourselves. But he referred to me as his shaman, and that's fine, whatever. But I got on zoom with him. And he's like, in the beginning, he was like, Oh, I'm an all that I'm meeting with you. And yeah, the idea. And I'm like, okay, you know, no, I'm just a guy. And I have some experiences, I have some skills that I'm going to share with you. You do not bow down to me. I'm not a guru. I'm not a god. Well, we're all you know, we're all part of God. We're all little gods. We're all demigods in our own way. But I'm not any more than he is. I don't want all like that. Why? Well, one thing is, I think it's an I think it's unhealthy. If you're the person on the other side, if you're my client, that's not how I work with clients. But also, it's unhealthy for me, like if I start buying into that bullshit, right? Pardon my French, if I start buying into that, you must be in awe of me when I talk to you know, I, you know, I do like a certain amount of social respect. But I think that's common. I like to have the same amount of kindness that I show to my clients, you know, but you know, I also tell my clients if during a session, emotions come up for you, and you feel like yelling at me and calling me names. Fantastic, do that. But I don't want you and I don't do that with my students either. So there are a few traps with students that I try to avoid. One of those things so I teach people, one of the things I teach people how to do is how to do a shamanic journey, and how to get answers from spirit for their spiritual questions. And there's the temptation to ask the teacher to interpret your journeys for you. And I don't do that. Like I don't journey on your behalf and they don't interpret your journeys. I lead you through experiences. My whole point is to empower you to get your own answers. Shamanism is a spiritual system that is all about personal revelation, individual revelation. There's no doctrine or dogma, in shamanism where there's very little dogma. But it is all about getting one's own answers and your answers are as valid as mine. Just because I've been doing this longer than you or have some things to teach you. Doesn't make my answers better than yours. Right. So you know, I don't I tell my Students, I'm a guide, not a guru, I'm here to lead you to have some experiences. I know how to take you to places to have experiences, I know how to sort of sequence the experiences that you could have, and like a tour guide, right? You know, if I go to, I don't know, where's the, where's the place that has a king of England if I go to England, and I hire a tour guide, to show me around London. You know, so I can experience London, and learn about it and have all those things that tour guides, not the king you know, I'm going to show that tour guide. Respect and, and, you know, as a human being, but, you know, and they and I know, that they've, you know, lived in London and studied London and have more experience and knowledge about London than I do. But I'm not going to go into you know, I'm not gonna go into a pub, and order fish and chips and eat them and ask the tour guide did I like that? Right. That's the kind of the same thing about getting answers from spiritual teachers. I mean, yes, answers about practice, but not deep spiritual answers. And my particular bent of shamanism, I am personally focused on mysticism, which is about merging your consciousness with source. So what do we do? What do we do? You're some you know, you're in spirit, you have spiritual practice. Maybe you meditate, maybe you practice shamanism, maybe you do something else, you pray. What do we do about the ego getting in the way of that? Well, first, the first step is to recognize that you have an ego and understand what it is. Right? And I've just described that to you, it's a set of stories about who you are, but who you who you are at your core is nothing to do with your ego. You just you You are consciousness, you experience the ego. Understand that you are not your body, anything that you have. You cannot be I have a body, I have a name. I have roles that I play out, as you know. I have thoughts, I am not my thoughts. There is a part of the brain called the default mode network is not a part it's actually a bunch of parts of the brain that work together, called the default mode network. And when you are not in meditation is one of the things that takes this offline a little bit. But when you are when your mind is wandering, which is most of the day, believe it or not really hard to focus all day long. But when your mind is wandering, and you have all these thoughts come up and ruminations and all of this stuff. That's the default mode, network processing things. And part of the default mode networks job is to figure out who you are. Right? And so all of these thoughts that you're having, feel like they are you have these ruminations, all of these beliefs, all of the stuff that's coming up, it feels like it's coming, first of all, that it's coming from you. And secondly, you're you know, feeling like your thoughts are you at least to some extent. And, and, and it's just static. It's like picking up a radio station. And thinking that there's somebody inside the radio talking to you you know, your brains picking things up. But that's not where you live. That's not you, right. The brain think of the brain as a receiver of consciousness much like the radio receiving signal holes. And yeah, if you take, if you mess with the brain, it can mess up those signals Absolutely, or mess up the processing of those signals. But subjective consciousness cannot be reduced to brain activity. And that's an it's an interesting problem for science to call it the consciousness problem. And there are lots of people studying it. And there are people who will say, Oh, we've located consciousness in the brain.

No, we haven't. But yes, if I take the brain apart, it will stop receiving the signal of consciousness, but consciousness never goes away. Because it's all all there is. It's the background in which all experience arises. Not to go down, you know, too far down the metaphysical pathway. But you know, this is a spiritual podcast, we're talking about spiritual things. We can talk about metaphysics. So understand that you have an ego understand what it is that it's just stories you tell about yourself, understand that it's sometimes useful. When this body mind needs to interact with my children, taking on the identity of dad is useful. But attachment to any part of that, or the whole thing, or whatever, that's the problem. Thinking that's who I really am at my core, that's the problem that takes us away from our spiritual reality. It's not a problem, it's just a thing to understand. And you can have glimpses of awakening, you can have moments of non dual experience. Many of us have this very frequently. And you can be in a persistent state of, there's a scientific term for it, it's actually like persistent non symbolic experience or something like that. But there is, you know, there's a there are ways you can experience non duality, but that doesn't mean your body and mind stop operating. And this is a lie that the ego, the ego is there for the body survival, right? In part, one of its roles is to keep the body alive by saying, oh, you know, there's a threat to your body, this is an existential threat. If something kills your body, you die. Right, so that's one of the you know, the body doesn't stop existing, when you have persistent, non symbolic non dual experience. When you live from that state of non duality, this identity, this ego doesn't go away, it just kind of moves to the background, in my normal state of consciousness is one of non separation. And it's blissful, right non duality is blissful. Because there, it releases the suffering of attachment to ego. And that is the the most the closest attachment you can have is attachment to your self identity. So when we identify with things that we are not, or we identify with things that we have, you know, you probably you're not like, I remember when I was a kid, and sneakers were a big deal. Right? The brand of sneakers that you owned, were a big deal. And I grew up in a family, we didn't have a lot of money, you know, in a really salon and people say that, um, you know, we weren't, we weren't the poorest people around but we didn't, you know, I wore secondhand clothes, my mom sewed patches into my pants and I don't know that I, you know, maybe on Christmas and a birthday, I might get new, you know, a new shirt and new socks and stuff. But mostly I got hand me downs from older, my older brother and older cousins and you know, you know, there were feast and famine times anyway. So anyway, that's the way I grew up. But my aunt I worked in a shoe factory and was able to buy at certain times of the year I was able to buy shoes basically at cost. So my mom or somebody gave my aunt a little bit of money, maybe $10 which was, you know, still significant those days. And I got a pair of Reeboks because she was sewing, you know, insoles in the shoes or something. I got a pair of Reeboks boy did I love those shoes. And I remember wearing them out and somebody saying hey, Reebok, right, like calling me the name of the brand of my shoes. And what I'm getting at is I'm not a pair of Reeboks, and those Reeboks you know we're, you know, kids Reeboks, I couldn't wear them today. What if I identified as my shoes, I mean, that seems silly, right? Or identify with your car. And you might have an attachment to your car, you might love your car. Some people have cars, they're really really into cars, and they love them. You know, some people identify with the car, some people identify with their house, some people identify with their job. These are things you have they're impermanent. It gives you this sort of spiritual, what I call spiritual schizophrenia, this break from reality. This that affects your identity, affects your personality affects your mood. So, meditation is a great practice, I highly recommend it. Certain types of meditation, such as mindfulness, help to disrupt the identification patterns of the default mode network, we've got brain scanning research about this. So this is, you know, this is why meditation has been practiced forever. And people use it to come to spiritual awakening and spiritual realization. So we do that we meditate. Know that you have an ego. Anytime you find yourself over identifying with anything that isn't you just remind yourself I have a name. I'm not my name. I am you know, I have a body. I am not my body. I have thoughts. I am not my thoughts. Emotions, I am not my emotions. I have sensations, I am not my sensations, right? So we start to dis identify or detach from the ego. And again, the spiritual trap is just replacing that with a different set of stories about yourself. I am a 15th level Ascended Master. I live on a cloud. I shoot laser beams out of my fingertips. I don't know. I don't mean to, you know, I am I am joking. I'm not making fun of anybody's particular system. I don't know enough about them to do that. But what I what I do see a lot is this

this lack of humility, which underlies a lack of understanding about who you really are. If you knew who you really were at an experiential level, that you are an infinite, undying, unborn being that is beyond time and space that is interconnected with everything in this universe that is a part of source that carries a divine spark. You are part of God you are part of source you're part of the universe. You would have real self esteem. You would have real self esteem. Maybe I'll do a whole podcast on spirituality and self esteem. Anyway, I have been talking for longer than an hour. I am going to wrap this up. I hope you are happy and healthy. I hope this has been very interesting information for you. And I will talk to you very soon

Announcer 1:05:19

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact John go to maineshaman.com That's maineshaman.com

Ep22 Ego and Spiritual Identity

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.

As usual, I feel the urge to say good morning, although I don't know what time it is where you are, it is morning here. I like to record these things early, I don't know, I am an early morning kind of person. I get a lot of energy in the morning. And I like to, I like to get things done sometimes before most of the rest of the world is awake. there's a there's a clarity that happens in the morning. So the world, you know, the world has an aura, we have auras, we have, you know, astral bodies, and the theory of bodies and all of these things. And, you know, we are if you are sensitive, and we're all sensitive to some degree or another, we pick up on the, you know, the quote, unquote, vibe around us. And morning times before for me, before everybody is awake, the vibe is cleaner. You know, there's people aren't up and busy, and it's, you know, it tends to feel a little calmer for me. And so this is a good time for me to do these things. Some people are late night people, I think, I think my daughter's fall into that category. And it's probably similar where, you know, it's, you know, the vibe gets calmer, after most people are asleep. And, you know, not going about the worries of the day, and, and whatnot. So today, it is. And again, I don't know when you're listening to this, but it is June, it's the beginning of June, as I record this. For us on the in the Northern Hemisphere, we're coming to the end of spring, in a couple of weeks and into into summer. We're having certainly having some summer ish weather here, where I live in Maine in the northeast of the United States. It tends to be when there's a really weird thing. We have an expression, I realize other people say the same thing. If you don't like the weather, wait a minute of it changes. Some people have have related our temperatures to the lottery numbers where they go up, up and down all the time. So we'll have a day of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and then another day of 40 degrees Fahrenheit The next day, and it'll go back and forth quite a lot until it sort of stabilizes a little bit. When summer hits, and even then, it's it's a little bit crazy. We sometimes get snow into May. It's a little rare, but it has happened. And you know, but I love it. I love I love weather. I love to observe weather and you know, I always talk about the day here. I feel like it's something I hope it feels it feels like a connection. It feels like you can understand a little bit what my environments like when I'm talking to you. It's a little bit overcast today, which I am you know I'm totally cool with. Obviously I like all kinds of weather. sunny days do make me happy but soda rainstorms. Anyway, today we're going to talk about ego and what is ego and different ideas about ego? And do you have a big ego, a little ego all of these things? It's an important and popular topic. And at least you know in an English in the United States that word is used very loosely, right. So there is the the you know, Freudian definition of ego There's the union definition of ego there people have spiritual ideas of what ego is. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what ego is, is ego. Bad? Is it something that you need to get rid of? Excuse me, cough there. I don't edit these in general. So, you know, sometimes I cough.

And then I have a little sip of coffee. Um, that helps me a little bit. Um, so let's talk about ego, and, and we're gonna get into identity and spiritual identity and sort of ideal identity, that that sort of thing. And I talk a lot about all of these things, because I think it becomes confusing. When if you're a spiritual seeker, it can become super confusing. And you sort of wonder, what the heck are these people talking about? And I've heard the word ego, I've heard people say, the ego is the devil, and you've got to get rid of it, you've got to get rid of your ego, and all of these things. So I'm going to give you my definition of ego. And it may or definitely may not correspond with what other people how other people define ego and minds probably closest to the psychoanalyst young. Ego is simply your sense of identity, the sense of who you are, your sense of eye, most of the time as a separate being in the world. Okay. So when I say I went to the store, my concept of who that I is, as my ego, right, it's my, it's my self concept is another sort of idea there that fits. And so it is, again, how I operate in the world, as an individual, where this becomes sticky from a spiritual perspective is that people, well, there's a number of places and I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk about them. But where becomes the stickiest from the spiritual perspective is the over identification with the ego. And that simply means that this is, you know, my idea of, I'm a body and a mind, and I'm moving through the world as a separate being. And that's all there is, separates me from identifying as part of the whole identifying as part of divinity as part of the entire universe as interconnected to everything. And that's where trouble kind starts to creep in. From a spiritual perspective. Right? When we have when we don't think we are connected to everything. We become less ethical, for example, right? We don't treat people and beings in the planet that we live on very well, because we feel like we are separate from that. We feel like we're not affected by how we treat others. And this is where this is where karma comes in. Right? This is when as the effects we create in the universe are the effects we are creating for ourselves. Because we are part and parcel and not separate from everything. But we have an ego we come into the world, sort of undifferentiated, right as babies, we, you know, everything is sort of an extension of us. And then we learn, you know, the ego is primarily learned our self self concept, our idea of ourself is learned over time. We learn we have a name, and we identify with that name. When somebody says our name, we pay attention. We learn the adults bring us you know, bring us food and change us and do all of these things as a baby. So they seem separate from us, even though they're perhaps responding to us crying or whatever. And so the idea of separation happens fairly early on, in human development. I can't give you the you know the exact range but it's it's early When we're first born, and then we know that we grow up and we we add to our self concept, things happen to us. We think of ourselves and that make us think of ourselves in certain ways. We also have this ideal self concept. And this is something something I'm doing some work around right now some exploratory work around right now in meditation, and in doing shamanic journeying

is that we all, you know, if, if I were to ask you to describe yourself in your, and how it relates to your values, right? I have this ideal self, where I say, you know, I'm a good person, I am a, I'm an honest person. I am, you know, a good father, I'm a good this, I'm a good that. And so, you know, we have this version of our selves and our self concept that is, kind of, you know, that has to do with our values and our ideals. And sometimes we don't always live up to those. Right? Sometimes, um, sometimes I'm not 100% honest, to be to be 100% honest with you. I am not always 100% honest. And that is something, you know, I don't, in general, I do not tell lies, or mislead people or steal things, or do any of you know, do any of that. But, you know, if I'm at somebody's house, and they serve me some food, and I don't think it's the greatest thing, I've, you know, I've ever eaten, and they, you know, ask me how it is, I'm gonna say, wow, this is, you know, this is great, this is great, you've done a good job here, I'm not going to I'm not going to hurt their feelings. Right? And that's, you know, that's a choice. And it's part of my value system. Do I value honoring their feelings more than, you know, telling a white lie now? And then? And some people would not, some people would say, No, I'm sorry, I don't like this. And, you know, feelings would get hurt. And that is a value choice. So these ideals that we have tie into our values, and how do I feel about myself, when I don't necessarily live up to my values, like I, you know, one of my ideals is that I think I'm a good parent, right, I have a great relationship with my daughters. And I like to think I'm a good parent. Um, anybody who's listening to this, as a parent knows that sometimes you fail, sometimes you make a choice, and it turns out to be the wrong one. And parenting is hard. making choices, some people just sort of give up and have set these like, strict rules for no reason. And don't put a lot of fun to it, I put a significant amount of thought into parenting. And I have a great relationship with my daughters. And sometimes that means I make choices that I'm not happy about afterwards. And how does that affect me? When I don't live up to my ideals? Right? Does that affect my self esteem? This is another component. Another component of ego is how high highly I regard myself, or how highly you regard yourself. And ultimately, when I'm speaking of I, I'm talking about ego here. So we know and I've talked about this in earlier podcasts about divinity and all of these things that inside each of us, at the core of each of us, we have a mind and we have a body and we have a soul and we have a spirit and we have you know, an astral body and an etheric body and a mental body and all of these different systems and levels and, you know, types of spiritual reality and consciousness, all of these things. And underneath, all of it is this spark of pure divinity, this spark of the creator of the universe, whether you want to call that God or the universe or what have you. And that spark is is the piece that is the same as everything. Everything you see, is made out of the same stuff from a spiritual perspective. Even material reality, it's all made out of the same stuff. There's different flavors of it, there's different frequencies of it. But the substance of material reality, when you get down to it, it's all it's all energy and information. So we are at our core this divinity, and we are divinity expressing itself as individual.

And people have been trying to make sense of that for ever. Like, why is that? Why, like, if I'm a divine being, at my core, if I am, if I am the universe, essentially, I'm a part of that. Why? Why even have an ego? Why even differentiate into into this human form for this incarnation? And, you know, lots of people have answered that question. I'll give you I'll give you a take or two on that. And I'm gonna be 100% honest with you. Who knows, right? who really knows? It just is. And, you know, I know they're part of being human is wanting to understand everything and wanting to understand why, the answer to why. And sometimes it's really hard to parse out and this one is, in, in particular, very hard to parse out. So one story is that the, you know, the formless Creator of the universe, just decided it is being playful, right is creating this whole universe to sort of experience play. And that might sound weird, if you've been through tragedy and trauma, as we all have. This doesn't feel very playful. But you have to think of things on a universal scale, or multiversal scale, right? There's more than one universe. Probably infinite universes for all I know. So that's one idea that this universal consciousness had the idea that it wanted to, it wanted to play. And I thought, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know about ascribing human activities, universal consciousness. One of the things one of the characteristics of human beings is that we tend to anthropomorphize everything, meaning we turn everything, we look at everything through the lens of being human, right? When we think about when we think about aliens. And this is probably this may sound like a tangent, but it's probably good in the realm of discussing ego, right? We talk about aliens from, from outer space, or wherever they happen to be from, could be in other dimensions or what have you, let's say they, let's say they exist. I've never, I've never met one. But let's say that you know, that aliens exist. Well, you know, our scientists and all these people like, Oh, you know, some of them are like, well, if, you know, if aliens exist, we shouldn't contact them, because they could just wipe us out, or, you know, come and take all our resources and all this stuff. And they put a very human slant on things, right? They look at, they look at us, as if we, you know, they look at aliens, as if they are us, looking at other creatures that we've maybe wiped off the planet or that sort of thing. And you have to think if there is if there are advanced, alien civilizations that grew up outside of the, you know, grew up with completely different biology than us and, you know, came up without the same social structures as us. We have no idea how or what they think or what their motivations might be. We just don't and look, you know, we can't, I think trying to understand what they might be like, by using human beings as an example is, you know, completely wrong. Whatever, whatever they're like, it's not going to be like us. It's it's going to be, quote unquote, alien. So Alien that we may have a difficult time understanding it because it'll be so outside of our experience that we can't necessarily put ourselves in their shoes. If they wear shoes, who knows? Maybe they don't wear shoes.

And so I do find it. I do find it really interesting that there's a lot of UFO Disclosure coming out from the government right now, a lot of video footage from military planes and showing stuff right now. It makes me feel like they're on the verge of releasing some information that they've had for a long time. Who knows? I find it interesting that this stuff is starting to get leaked out. And, you know, people are like, yeah, it's funny, because for so long, there was a thought that oh, you know, when aliens, you know, when the government reveals their aliens, people are gonna freak out about it, people are gonna panic, it's gonna lead to people questioning their belief systems and all this and that. And the truth is, it's barely made news. Like, it's bear like, not that these are necessarily aliens, but they're, they're, you know, the government leaking all kinds of UFO Footage. Um, you know, it's just, it's just funny like, that people are like, yeah, you know, all right. We're cool. All right, we're not gonna, you know, we're not even going to pay attention, we got other things going on pandemics going on. The political situation around the world is chaotic, as always, that sort of thing. So the other thing, the other sticky part about ego is that when we over identify with it, again, we're saying, this is all you know, ego is all I am. My sense of self as being separate, is all I am. We tend to act in ways that aren't necessarily ethical. Because we do not care for other beings as we care for ourselves. We we tend to become self centered, right, we pollute, we are cruel to other people, we may use harsh words. And I just think of the I think of the, you know, I think of the Buddhists call it the eight, is it the Eightfold Path, I may be speaking incorrectly, you'll have to pardon me if I do. But, um, you know, the Eightfold you know, the eight rules of Buddha, Buddhist, you know, that Buddha spoke about which are, you know, things like, right speech, right? Well, why does that matter? Why does it matter if I speak in what is the right, you know, and what is right speech, but in general, I can, you know, I can hurt people with my words. And if I do that, I am seeing them as separate from myselves. Right. So this is all about busting through this illusion, that I am not connected, that I am not a part of other people, that we're not connected to the hole together in the same way. And that we don't have the same sort of the over soul, the Brahman and Sanskrit, right? That we're all swimming in the same, the same water. And to use a crude metaphor, it's like, I'm peeing in the pool, and I'm expecting it only to affect you. We're all in the same pool. Right? And so when I mess up the environment, or I use cruel words to somebody, or I hurt somebody, or I'm, you know, I'm cruel to animals, or all of these things. I'm in the same pool. These, you know, I am a part of all of those. And so, that reality, that sort of weakening of that ego wall tends to make us act in ethical ways. Right? What the golden rule Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, is you know, and and if you come from a Christian background, you know, that, you know, that comes from Christianity, but the Buddha spoke the same, you know, almost Most identical words to that 500 years earlier, in there is

spiritual wisdom there. It's not just an ethical guideline, there's spiritual wisdom, because when you understand that you are one with everything, and everyone treating others badly, means you're treating yourself badly. But the stronger you identify with your ego, the less you care about others. So an extreme example of that is sort of the narcissistic sociopath. And you can, you know, just look at very recent politics to see that sort of that sort of thing. Right? The narcissistic sociopath cares about no one but themselves, and they have an over inflated sense of themselves. At least, at least in the United States, we use the expression, he's got a big ego, right, he's got a big ego. I don't know how you measure ego. But what we mean is, this person has an inflated sense of themselves, right? Sometimes, that is used to put down somebody who has a significant amount of self confidence. And there's nothing wrong with genuine self confidence. Right. So that's the other side of that's the other side of identifying with the Divinity is that there is a certain sense of self confidence that comes from that, when I know that I'm connected to the entire universe, when I know that I have a divine self. And then I am divinity, expressing itself through this human form through my emotions, my mind and my body. When I know that there is a certain self confidence, a sense of confidence, but it's not. It's not the kind of confidence that brags it's not hubris, it is not the kind of confidence that seeks out more confidence in the form of material things, or accolades or praise. That's, that's fake confidence. Real confidence is I am real confidence manifests itself manifests itself as becoming less, less attached, and less averse, right? Less attached to things, right, I don't care about things anymore. Unless averse I'm not pushing away things that I that I don't desire. So attachments are that I'm clinging to the things that I desire, and aversions or I'm pushing away the things that I don't desire. So spiritual self confidence happens when you know, I stop, I identify less and less with my ego self, that doesn't mean that your self goes away. It just means I don't think that that's all I am. And, and so attachments and aversions start to dissipate. And again, this is spoken about by Buddha and it's spoken about and other certainly other forms of spirituality. Sometimes it's really hidden in there, sometimes you have to dig for, for that. You know, in other spiritual teachings, because there's cultural background to the teachings, there's, you know, there's stuff going on there. And people have to be taught in certain, certain ways. I'm, I'm speaking very, I think I'm hoping that I'm speaking very plainly about this stuff. Because for me, to, for me to grasp this stuff. I've got to define it for myself in the simplest of terms, and I tried to do that for this, this podcast especially.

Right, um, you know, if you're a regular listener, one of the things I do is, you know, if I throw a term out there, like ego as I will always sort of define it, so that we're so that you understand what I mean. When I'm saying stuff, not that I'm trying to define you know, be The source of truth of you know, this is what this word means, just so that you, you know, I have to put these terms in a simple form, so that we understand each other. So when I when I, when I talk about ego, and you're hearing me talk about it, that you know what I mean, when I talk about it. So there's not, you know, hopefully not creating more confusion. That is, that's just my goal is to speak very clearly. So, I tend to take these things and put them into simpler terms so that I can understand them. I'm not, you know, I studied lots of things, but I wouldn't consider myself a religious scholar, per se. But I certainly look at lots of other forms of spirituality, I don't read Sanskrit, I don't read Pali, I don't read Latin. He took four years of Latin in high school. I don't remember much of it. I hate to say that, but that's, that's true. And so, you know, I'm often relying on translations of stuff and lots of different sources and analyses by people smarter than I am. And when I do that, I'm, you know, and then I try to take things and break them down into my own terms. And, you know, this is the thing that I think most people would benefit from, right, when you're reading scripture, or you're reading. And that may be sacrilegious for you for Pete to suggest that, excuse me, that you that you break things down into terms that you can understand, I don't know, hopefully not, hopefully not. And I don't really, you know, I'm not trying to change anybody's belief system, or religion or anything like that. That's not the goal here. You know, my own my own viewpoints or my own viewpoints, my opinions are my opinions. You know, and you may certainly disagree about my definitions of things. And, and I'm okay with that. Because again, like that's, hopefully, hopefully, it's part of me, loosening the grip that ego has on me and identifying less and less with that sense of self. So the way that ego can come through is we see that in these ideological wars, right? religious wars, people fighting it out, I mean, that's going on in the world right now. People fighting over religious differences, which, you know, ultimately, when we see we see conflict, like Israel and Palestine that's going on right now. You know, it's about all kinds of things. It's about land and water rights and history and the ability for people to self govern and all of these things underneath it all. There of course, of course, in that part of the world, there's a religious component to the warfare, right there is this sense of I deserve this because I am, you know, from the people that God has denoted this land belongs to, there is that justification habit on on both sides of that conflict? I am right because I, you know, I am the chosen one, we are the chosen people. God Himself said this, this piece of land belongs to me. Um, and I'm not going to speak about the truth or falsehood of that, but there is. To me, there is less God in that conflict than ego. Right, there is when ego acts up, it is very defensive. There's this strong identification of and there's this othering that happens, those people over there are others.

Okay, they don't believe the same things. I do. So they are others and therefore inferior, right. So what happens for a lot of people and this is, I see this little drama playing out everywhere, right. So we see this with racism, with nationalism with all kinds of bigotry, all kinds of hatred stems out of this othering. And what's going on there frequently is that people have, so we have our individual identity, and then we frequently tie that to a group identity. Right. So in order to have some self esteem, I'm going to relegate some of my identity. So I am, you know, I'm a citizen of the United States, we call ourselves Americans, even though I know there are other Americas, right? There's North America, South America, Central America. You know, in the United States, we refer to ourselves as Americans, which is itself separating, saying that, you know, other people, people from other countries are not Americans. But, you know, we don't have I know, in other languages, it exists to say, you know, these are you United States, essentially, but we don't have that phrase. And so, you know, people strongly identify with that, and people want to say, whatever country they're from, is number one, America is number one, or number, you know, wherever you're from, is number one, we're the best at something, we take pride in who we are, and, you know, that sort of thing. Um, a lot of religious spiritual writings about the dangers of pride. Right. And again, pride isn't necessarily like, Hey, I'm proud, you know, I'm proud of my kids, they did, you know, did a great job in school this year. That's not necessarily what we're talking about. We're talking about is, again, building up this ego, building up this esteem from I'm associated with this country, and so people from other countries are inferior to me, or other countries are inferior to me. What a load a to tell you, it's a load of crap. And I don't care where you're from, or what your religion is, or what your ethnicity is, or whatever, it's all crap. All of it is all just more and more separation. And the more you tie your sense of self worth, to some group identity, whether that be religious or ethnic, or, you know, national, or you tie your identity to a sports team. Look at these, you know, all over the world. There are riots after sports games, whether your team wins or loses people are burning cars in the street and rioting. What's that all about? Well, what that's about is people have given up, given up their self esteem, and this is pride, this is the danger of pride. Right? pride in where it doesn't belong, especially in some sort of group identity, some sort of nationalistic or ethnic or sexual identity. Right. We have to show dominance in a violent way. Well, that's, you know, that's a perversion of the divine masculine, right? It's this violent impulse, I'm gonna have power over somebody else, and that is a major cause of the ills in the world. A major cause? Right, ethnic cleansing. genocide, pretty much the same thing. You know, you know, riots over sports games.

The violence we saw in the Capitol in the United States, in, you know, earlier in the year where people broke, you know, people identified with a single politician, again, giving up their individuality, to act as part of a mob Right, so they have ego but part of that ego is over identified with a group enough to do things they probably normally wouldn't do when you look at some of them. We look at some of the people who are arrested for the violence in the capital of the United States are like, Oh, I don't you know, that person's, you know, a local business owner and has never been violent never been arrested in their lives. And some of them are, were definitely rabble rousers who, who have, you know, belong to violent extremist groups. And those people I believe, were manipulating the mob. And so were the politicians who were who were spurring them on. Because a mob, a mob are people who have in an unhealthy way, given up a lot of their individual identity, and just sort of going along for the ride. And mobs are capable of almost anything, any level of violence. You know, moms or moms are really dangerous in that way. They have an ego of their own, so to speak. And a lot of people have been arrested for that violence, or, like, I don't know, I just got caught up. Right, that's what happens. That's what happens when you don't you know, you have this ego, but a big portion of it is identified with in the in a wrong way, with a mob or a group or, you know, a nationality or an ethnicity. You know, when it when when it's over identified with ethnicity, you get hate groups, when it's over identified with, you know, sports teams, we get riots after sports events, happens all over the world. That's crazy to me. So, what's, what then is healthy is, you know, this sense of, Okay, I have an understanding, I have an ego, I have this sense of self as a separate thing. But again, it's like I have a body, but I am not the body. I have a mind, but I'm not the mind, I have an ego, but I am not the ego. I am this, ultimately, this divine spark, that is part of everything. And everything that I do affects me, because I am interconnected. Right? I'm peeing in the pool. And if I assume that I'm the only other people are affected by me peeing in the pool, that's a pretty wrong assumption. So the goal then is or not the goal, but you know, one of the ways through this one of the ways of spiritual development is to start to dis identify with that which you are not right? I am not the ego, I have the ego. This is not to say that you delude yourself into pretending that you do not have an ego. That is a different thing. I have an ego. If I did not, I would not be able to speak to you, from a sense of who I am as an individual. I just don't think that my ego is underneath at all who I am. I think it's a thing that I have. Right? And the universe has many, many egos. Billions, maybe trillions, who knows? Have egos and they're all you know, through it all. They're all interconnected. It's sort of like a really good metaphor. I hope it's a good metaphor to communicate this is that if you look at mushrooms growing in the forest, right. You see these mushrooms popping up from the soil.

And you look at they look like individual mushrooms. But underneath the soil is this huge network of mycelium. Right? And the mushrooms that are popping up, you know, let's say 100 mushrooms pop up and you know a spot in the forest floor. Right. And they all look like individual beings. And they could be regarded as such. And if you know, let's say they're edible, and you pick each one and they're individualized mushrooms, but when they're growing underneath all of that is one network of mycelium. If you don't know what mycelium is it's like the equivalent of roots for mushrooms like the roots of trees grow every right when you know mushrooms grow the moat the most of what you see above ground is not the majority of what a mushroom is. Mushrooms are a fungus and they grow on substrate which could be all kinds of things but you know, some grow in soil and have these huge there are you know, the largest living being on earth that we know of, is a patch of mycelium that's miles wide, right? So there's a living one living being that's you know, miles and miles wide. And, um so this is a little bit what what ego is like, right? So you know, the, the oversold the Brahman as you were, maybe we think of that as the mycelium. So, it's everything there is and everything interconnected. And, you know, under, that's underneath everything, and then we pop up, our little ego pops up a little, you know, our body pops up, pops into existence. And, you know, we appear as individuals, individual mushrooms, but underneath it all, we're all interconnected. Everything we do ripples out, like dropping a stone, in a pond, that ripples go everywhere. So I started this by talking about why I like to do these in the morning. And why I'm a morning person is that I don't experience a lot of the ripples of the people who are, are around me. And because they're asleep. You know, they're primarily asleep when I not everybody, but but more people are. So even on an energetic level, you know, the thoughts we put out into the world, the words we put out into the world, affect everything around us. And that includes us, right? We often don't include ourselves in things like when we do exercises on compassion. You know, when we give love to others, we don't always give love to ourselves. Seems kind of weird. But frequently when I see clients, either from, you know, doing a shamanic healing session with somebody or you know, coaching or mentoring people have these frequently have these horrible inner dialogues, and we say things to ourselves that we would not accept from a stranger, or someone we loved speaking to us in things that we would never say to someone that we loved. Right. So that's really negative. That's, you know, negative self talk is about negative self esteem. You know, underneath that all that real level of, you know, and some people overcompensate for that stuff, right. Some people overcompensate for negative self esteem by, you know, buying flashy clothes or a flashy car, or, you know, they give this outward appearance of being more than they are. Or they brag a lot or what have you. Underneath that is a real sense of I'm broken, I'm unworthy. You know, which is sad to me, because the ultimate truth is, again, we're that mycelium under the mushrooms, we're just where the mushrooms popping up. But underneath it all We are, we are the universe. underneath it all We are everything there is we're no less a part of the universe than anybody or anything else. We're no less a part of the universe than the sun.

Right? So with that, I'm going to wrap up I hope that you enjoy this I hope that you'll subscribe and whatever, using whatever podcasting listening channel you use, whether that's you know, Spotify or iTunes or something else. Hopefully Subscribe, I hope you'll visit my website I hope you'll interact. You know, send me send me messages if there are topics you're interested in, or guests you'd like me to talk to, because I do this, I do this for you. And I love that I have listeners all over the world and it it helps give me that greater sense of connection. Right, that sense of connection to everything there is into the whole universe. With that, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And I will talk to you real soon.

Announcer 51:04

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShamon.com that's maineshaman.com

Ep03 Spirit, Soul, and Ego

Announcer 0:29

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 0:49

Hello, everybody. I'm talking to you just after sunrise. It's a beautiful morning. It's a little overcast here. But I always try to greet the sun, the provider, the source of life on Earth, in one, you know, in on a physical level and a spiritual level. My topic for today, I'm going to talk about spirit, soul and ego and what those are and how they relate. And Gosh, I hope I have some good news for you today, not news. But I hope I have some good information for you that I'm going to do my best to inspire a little bit today. And the reason for that is, you know, the global situation is pretty crazy right now, we have, we're obviously in the middle of a global pandemic, that is affecting every human being on this planet. At this moment, whether you are sick have been sick know, people who've been sick, known people who have died, all these things, and I'm talking to you from the United States. I know I have listeners all over the world. And that's fantastic. And I and I greet you and thank you for listening and tuning in to me. Special greetings to my friends in India. But wherever you are, know that you are loved and appreciated. And I, you know, I do this for you. And I do this to reach out. And I do this to help hopefully bring us together and you know, maybe bring a little bit of light, where things may seem dark. And I'll talk a little bit about that as well. In my last podcast, I talked about the divine masculine, divine feminine, and what they look like and how they how they take place. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that today. But in the context of what we might call spiritual development. spiritual development is a big topic. Obviously, if you walk into any bookstore, there's a huge section of books on spiritual development, there are courses online, there's everything you can think of every type of practice meditation, shamanic journeying, you know, everything, everything you can think of out there. So I'm going to start today, and I'm going to give you my definitions of spirit, soul and ego. And I realized that my definitions may not match up with your definitions or other people's definitions. And that's fine. we sort of have to be okay with that. Right? Words are models. And I'm gonna talk a lot about models today. But models are not the things right, if I say the word dog, that is a word that represents the animal dog, but that is that word is not the dog. Right? We say the map is not the territory is a pointer. It's a reference to something. And, you know, the spiritual realm is primarily invisible. Not to everyone but it you know, for for most people as we go around in our daily lives, we experience sort of 3d reality where time flows in one direction only and effects have causes and, and all of those things. And so, the definitions of things can be sort of loose. And the other thing that happens is that everything we experience on a spiritual level

is filtered through our culture. It's filtered through our ego, we're going to talk about what that is today through our own personal experiences, all of those things. And so there's, there's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong. If your definitions of things differ from mine, it's, I'm going to give you mine so I can have. So you know, I can have a common language with you. So, when you're listening to me, you know what I'm talking about. So you're not, you know, hopefully less confused when I use these terms, because I may be using them in a way that you haven't experienced before. And of course, my, my definitions, my you know, they're not necessarily mine, they come from my shamanic practice, and were given to me by my teachers and that sort of thing. When I say my, I'm just saying the ones that I'm using, not things that I have made up, I don't want you to think that I've invented some new system of explaining reality, there's nothing new about what I'm talking about. I have a perspective, but even that is informed by my culture, my my teachings, my, you know, studies that I've done journeys that I've done as a shamanic practitioner, all of those things are, so I don't, I don't claim ownership to them when I say mine. And that's the difficulty with words, right? In English. When I say my this, it could describe ownership, or it could describe, you know, just something I've I've adopted. So let's talk a little bit about spirit and soul first, and then we'll talk about ego after that. And then a minute, spend a little time on what, you know how to sort of go a little deeper if you're interested, how to go a little deeper into this into this learning. And so my first, before I get into spirit, soul, and ego, I'm going to talk to you about what I mean, when I say the word spiritual, right? This is speaking spirit. This is a podcast when I talk about spiritual topics, and what is what do I mean when I use the word spiritual? To me, spiritual is anything that gives you a connection with something greater than yourself. something beyond your physical self, your ego, that sort of thing. And that's a very broad definition, right? Because for some people walking in nature, might give them a deeper connection. Would I describe that as spiritual? Absolutely. No, it wouldn't be a spiritual experience. Meditation when you go inside, and touch a part of yourself that is connected to the entire universe. Absolutely, spiritual. If you pray, if you're a religious person, and you pray, and that gives you a sense of connection to deity, absolutely, that is spiritual. That's a spiritual practice. When I hug my children, and I feel this unconditional love for them, and from them. Absolutely, that is a spiritual moment for me. lovemaking, sex can be a very spiritual experience. It doesn't have to be. But it certainly can be if it gives you again, this sense of greater connection. So that's my take on, you know what the word spiritual means. And I have this theory that the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And I'll give you a few examples. I have practice martial arts since I was about five or six years old. I'm in my late 40s right now. So it's a lot a lot of years. And in the beginning, you learn punches and kicks and you know, arm bars and all of those things. But the more you go into it, the more spiritual it becomes, the more connected you feel, the more in rhythm you feel, even with your opponent. Even you know, when you're practicing techniques that may seem, you know, violent, you know, hopefully, with practice, you become more peaceful and you become it seems like a contradiction, but it's true. You become more peaceful. You abhor violence you become softer, you become more connected with energy.

When I see somebody who isn't for example, in a Amazing basketball player. And they're what we call in the zone, right? Where they're just in rhythm and flow with what's going on, that seems like a very, I'm not a great basketball player. But that seems like a very spiritual experience for me. Recently, I was watching a cooking show, and Chef on the show was talking about how for him, cooking was all about finding this moment. And the second, he described that I'm like, Oh, he's having a deeply spiritual experience with cooking food with preparing food. He's got this emotional connection to what he's doing this spiritual connection. So the deeper you go into anything, the more spiritual it becomes. And when I talk about, you know, in a moment, when I talk about soul and spirit, I'm talking about how going deeper into yourself is probably about the, you know, the most spiritual thing you could do. So let's talk about those. Okay, so again, these are my definitions. And again, when I say my, I mean, adopted from my teachers, and that sort of thing. And I recognize that some people use these words interchangeably. So some people use spirit and soul to describe the same thing. And some people use spirit and soul with sort of opposite definitions of the way I used them. But I just want to give you these definitions so that again, we can have a common language so you, I'm not confusing you by what I'm talking about. So when I say spirit and soul, so in the shamanic world, one of the main practices that we do is called soul retrieval. And this is in response to some sort of trauma that somebody has experienced or an injury to a limb or shock to the system. And you know, this jives actually really well with modern psychological models of trauma, there's a splitting off, there's part of your soul breaks away. So your soul is this sort of body of spiritual energy that you carry around with you. And it is affected by your life experiences, it reincarnates with you, when you go from life to life, and it's, you know, can can sort of take on wounds and injuries and carry those, carry those along. So a lot of the work we do in shamanism is healing those parts, right finding, you know, recollecting and reuniting and integrating those parts. And this jives really well with sort of union part psychology, you know, family, internal family systems, therapy, those sort of modern psychological models, right, of this fractionating of the self, the soul. Okay, and, you know, we, you, we all have a soul and is closely in close contact with our body. So what happens, you have a physical body, you have lots of different bodies, right, you have a physical body, you have a soul body, a spirit body. When your soul body, completely leaves. That's when that's when you die, right? That's when your physical body dies. Your soul body does not die, and neither does your spirit. But your soul body can carry sort of baggage wounds, that sort of thing. It's affected by your life experiences. You know, it gains experience and it can be wounded, it can be healed. It can be developed, this is most this is what we're talking about. When we talk about spiritual development. We're talking about developing the soul or astral body, that non physical part of you. And so when I talk about spirit, what I'm talking about in so in, in Sanskrit, there's the word Atman, which is this like internal dwelling, undying slice of divinity. This is your this is your Divine Self. The part of you that is absolutely undying, indefinable, does not get wounded does not is not affected by life experiences. It is just this divine light that is at the center of you.

And there's some really amazing meditational practices that happen. There's one taught by the shamanic teacher Sandra ingerman, called transfiguration. Which is an absolutely beautiful, beautiful practice and, and simple and extremely deep and profound spiritual experiences do not have to be complex, or take years of training. Some of them can be extremely simple and experienced by anyone. Why because we all have this indwelling Spirit, this this part of ourselves. And this, I hope is a little bit of light, if you're experiencing some of the tumult of the world right now, in any sort of way that is painful to know that there's a part of you that is completely unaffected, that is just perfect love and perfect peace at your center, if you want to visualize this, you can visualize this as just an intense light, somewhere in the center of your body, usually in your, in your chest area, just that shines in all different directions at all times, and can never be dimmed can never be injured or affected. And this is your connection to divinity. So let's talk about let's talk about your bodies, let's talk about your different, different bodies. And so, again, all of this comes from a cultural context, right. So in you know, if you go back and you look at ancient Egyptian religion, they described all of these soul parts, and they had these, you know, huge system of religion around funerary rites, and this part of the soul did this and this part of the soul that this, you know, went off, and there's, you know, that that whole funerary ritual thing was about their, their model of, you know, the afterlife, and the parts of the soul and that sort of thing, right. And, again, this, this is filtered through their culture. In Norse belief, there's, again, soul, there's all different parts of the soul, right? There's, you know, there's a part of the soul that gives you luck, for example. And it's located, it's like a backpack in your back. And, you know, that's recognized in many different cultures. So the way I like to look at it, a metaphor that works really well for me, is that human beings are like an onion, a multi layered onion, we have so many layers that you can peel back, one after another after another after another, right, we have a physical body. But when you get beyond, you know, when you you know, that's a super oversimplification of even our physical presence, right, because we have, you know, a circulatory system and a skeletal system and a neurological system. And then we have all kinds of biochemistry going on. And we have all of the processes that go on we have, you know, respiration and cellular energy production, and all of that stuff, right? The stuff that goes on just to give us this body that we have in this physical world, and your, your other bodies, your soul body, your energy, body, all of these things are equally complex. So you could study these for many lifetimes and never get to the end of them, which is why we create these super oversimplifications. We say we have a body, we have a mind we have you know, we have a spirit we have a soul. Those are super oversimplifications. But it's necessary so that we can have a conversation about it so that we can talk about it. Again, I can talk about I can use the word dog, but I, you know, which represents it's a pointer to the animal dog, but I can't, you know, I could spend the rest of my life describing every thing that makes up a dog from you know, behavior to history to how their, you know, their body, you know, it could go into Veterinary Science, all of those things. So, just just an oversimplification, we have all of these bodies, and I view them as these overlapping layers and the

they really blend into each other. Right? So for example, we all we know about, we know that humans have an energy body, okay, this is how a lot of energy healing works, how a lot of you know, acupuncture or Reiki or any of those things, work on the level of the human energy system. The human energy body is close to overlaps with, interacts with the physical body very close very, very closely. And they overlap in such a way that it's almost impossible to really pull them apart and differentiate them. Right. So some of the meridians, some of the acupuncture meridians closely follow, you know, the nervous system and some, some do not. And so trying to separate those out is a little bit, you know, it's necessary if you're studying, studying something like acupuncture to think of them as separate things, but they're really not. Okay, and the same is true. The same is true for the soul body, right, you have the soul body, which is a little bit removed from the energy body. It's a little bit further inside that onion. Right, but they overlap, they interact and and they and they affect they can affect the physical body. So a lot of shamanic healing works on the level of the soul body. So we've talked about soul retrieval, there's other, there are other, many other practices that shamans do all over the world, that affect the soul body. And that can provide a template for physical healing a template for mental healing, a template for, you know, healing, you know, some of that comes through the energy body, some of it does not. You know, again, we could study this for forever and get to the bottom of it. And that's, to me, that's a really cool thing to think about how amazing we are as human incarnations, how lucky we are to have incarnated in the physical body. And I realize some religious systems say that that's a terrible thing to have to incarnate because we have to experience pain and loss and suffering and all of those things. And I get that. And we we do like having a body is not, it's not a walk in the park, right? It's not, it's not all pleasure, it is certainly the ability to experience pleasure and pain and all of those things. And those dualities exist in the human body, but we're lucky because we do get to interact on this plane, we do get to do things that develop our soul body that develop our astral body that develop our mind develop our these things. So that's my takeaway. And I promised I was going to talk about ego and I will talk about ego a little bit. And ego is one of those things. At least in the US, it's a little bit of a dirty word. In that when you describe somebody as having a big ego, for example, that is not a compliment, right? We say that little check out that guy's ego, um, you know, meaning that they have an inflated sense of self that they think very highly of themselves and perhaps should not should you know, that this is a judgment about somebody not showing humility. And humility isn't humility, humility, humility is a wonderful trait to have. So what are we talking about when we talk about ego? So ego ism is a mental construct. So it it takes place, sort of, it's not its own body. And my my take it is simply your sense of who you are, your sense of I, and all of the sort of complex things that that comes with, right? So when I think of myself, you know, my, my name is john, something my parents gave me when I was born.

That's a part of, but something that I you know, I happen to like, if somebody says, john, I'm gonna turn around, right? Because I identify with it. That's my name. That's one part of my ego, but I'm also a dad, that's a concept that I have about myself. So it's about your self concept. It's about who and how you I identify, okay. So, we can develop problems with our ego, right, we can develop problems. One problem is we can develop hubris, right? We can develop this inflated sense of self. And that certainly can happen with some types of spiritual development. And so the astral body, the soul body, is has this sort of hubris effect on the ego because it does affect the mental body. Certainly, it affects our consciousness. And I certainly have known people who consider themselves ascended or above others or beyond. You know, beyond flaw and that that sort of thing in that is a real trap. That is a super serious is a terrible trap to fall into. In spiritual development. If you ever think that your work is done, you are probably wrong, you're most likely wrong. Unless you are the Buddha or, or are actually, you know, some sort of enlightened master The problem is that people think they are, and they aren't. And they might have developed amazing spiritual abilities, you know, we think about, um, you know, I think about a Buddhist teacher that I studied with decades ago, who was considered by some of his students enlightened and had all kinds of special abilities and things like that. And, you know, he, he wound up taking his own life later, which is both tragic, but also an indicator that he hadn't done the work that was necessary to clean up, you know, cleanup is the shadow parts, which I, I talked about in my first podcast on darkness and light being two sides of the same coin. You know, the Shadow Work is super important. And if you don't do it, it will, it will come, it will come back and bite you, you have to do that, you're gonna come back again and again and again, and have to work on the same thing over and over again. So that can, that can definitely happen. And that's a problem that can happen with ego. Where, and this is where I hope there's a little bit of light pouring in here as to what I'm talking about not just warnings. What can happen though, is you do the work. So he goes about identification, right? It's about identifying who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Right? You can ask that you can use that as a mantra, who or what am I could be a mantra that you repeat. And the the, you know, the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi. You know, that was his mantra, that's what he taught his students to repeat over and over again, to get at the, to get at the core of the self, this feeling of being unified with divinity with being unified with a source and that's where you can go with, I think, almost any spiritual practice that helps you turn inside. And in my last podcast, I talked about the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And so, um, you know, and again, there's no one is better than the other, there's no, they are, they're co they're co equal, as long as they are treated as such, as long as they aren't misinterpreted or, or, you know, as long as there's not power over, right? There's power with, okay. So, divine masculine spiritual practices are the things that we do, outwardly, such as making offerings, praying to a deity, you know, setting up an altar, you know, all of those things are these sort of outward expressions of spirituality, divinity. And they are, they are absolutely valid, and they are in a prayer, chanting, anything that that comes from within to without

equally valid is the turning inside, right? Remember, I said, the more you go inside something, the more spiritual it becomes. And that includes yourself, the deeper you go into yourself, and you reach that point where you identify this is where the ego comes into place, right? The ego is a tool that, when used correctly, allows you to identify more and more with that divine part of yourself. And that is the Divine Feminine part of spiritual development. And hey, you don't have to choose just one avenue, you can do both things. You can make offerings, and you can meditate and turn inside. You can pray to a deity and you can take up shamanic journeying and, you know, get more insight by by turning into the inner realms. You can do both at the same time, and it's a very, very powerful combination. This divine masculine and divine feminine practices, the outward practices, the inward practices. And if you separate them out too much, if you focus on one area, a little too much, they can become out of balance. Right? I mean, you know, we all know I've lots of friends who grew up in a religion and may even Don't go to church every week and don't actually really believe or practice, they just, it's a thing that they do. It's this, it's this, you know, well, you know, I went to church every week as a child, and I still go to church, but I don't really practice and we don't really believe, you know, which to me, is it unfortunate and a missed opportunity, right, either to dive deeper into that religion or to find one that you do believe in and can practice both externally and internally, right, there's not much spiritual development going on there. Unfortunately, this is not a judgement, you're free to do whatever, whatever you want, I just see it as a missed opportunity, it makes me a little a little bit makes me a little bit sad, although, you know, I'm sure there's a benefit from that I'm sure. People who do that are able to make some kind of connection, at least on a social level. And, you know, ritual is important ritual is any sort of symbolic action that we take, right. And ritual is important. Even on a psychological level, we actually, in the Western world, I think are missing a lot of ritual that exists in other places. We stripped that out of our daily lives a little, a little too much, in my opinion. So you know, a lot of people are starting to bring that bring that back, a lot of people are starting to explore more here. But we became, you know, we went through the Industrial Revolution, and we spend a lot of time working and focused really on day to day physical survival stuff. And it's an interesting note, I realized this is a complete tangent, but it's an interesting note that studies show that, you know, in previous times pre Industrial Revolution, you know, even during hunter gatherer times, people had more free time, right, they didn't, they weren't hunting and gathering all day, you know, eight hours a day, every day, they had more free time to do things like develop art and music and, and religion and culture and, you know, build giant stone monuments, places and things like that. They had the cycles to do that we don't in this modern world, because we spend a third of our time sleeping a third of our time working, and the other third of the time, usually, you know, some, hopefully, some of that, you know, resting, relaxing, going inside doing development, but it's a very limited window for that sort of activity. Right. And we have all of the other things we have to do, we have to go shopping and feed the kids and you know, just day to day life stuff, clean the house. And so it becomes a little bit out of balance. So when you can, when you do have the opportunity, it's important. It's an important part of spiritual hygiene, it's as important to me as brushing your teeth, which is very important to spend some time daily in spiritual refresh, reflection, spiritual practice, any of those things. So with that, I'm going to bring this podcast to a close. You know, we talked a little bit about what I mean by spirit, soul and ego.

I hope, I hope that you learn something, I hope that you, I can, you know, maybe give you a little push to spend a little more time turning inside, finding that divine part of yourself. I don't care who you are, I don't care what your life experience is, is a real beautiful thing to me that everyone every single individual on this planet. And that includes people who no longer have bodies and may still be around have that divine spark they have that they have that divine aspect, that divine nature that they are absolutely connected to the unity that is the universe. And and it's, it's absolutely beautiful. It's an absolutely beautiful thing. If you can get any sort of experience of that it will it will change you it will change it for the better. So if you would like more information about me or what I do, or this podcast or if you're listening to this somehow and don't have access to previous episodes, you can go to my website, which is named shaman comm that's MaineShaman.com. And I mean like the state because that's where I live. In March, I am co-teaching a an introduction to shamanic journeying class online. You can find more information about that on my website. And I'm co teaching that with three other really amazing shamanic teachers. And we're doing this because we are in the middle of a global pandemic, and I am not teaching in person at this, you know, at this time and so this is a good opportunity, if you have ever wanted to learn about shamanic journeying to do that, and will take place over a weekend at the end of March. And again, there's, there's more information on my website, you can check that out. If you have, you can contact me through there. If you have questions or suggestions for podcast topics. Gosh, I would love that I would love to make this more about what you want to hear about. And or guests. I'm, I am fully intending on having having guests so it's not just you listening to the sound of my voice and me listening to the sound of my voice in the future. I want to thank you so much for listening. It's it's very important to me right now to be reaching out to other people in in any way that I can. And I do love you and I don't care who you are. And that may sound a little weird. But you know if people can there's a saying that if if people can hate people they have never even met that I can choose to love people I have never met and and just know that that that you are loved no matter who you are, no matter where you are. And I'm I am going to be a part of that I'm going to be a part of the ones who are who are loving in this in this crazy world and bring hopefully some healing and sanity to the to the world as it's being shaken up. With that I will leave you have a blessed day.

Announcer 37:33

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.