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 0:50
Hello, everybody. I'm talking to you shortly after sunrise from the great state of Maine in the US. It is, gosh, it's a beautiful morning. And it's one of those mornings that is so beautiful. And we know there's a there's a winter storm coming later today. And now like stormy weather, as long as it doesn't, you know, is not destructive. I enjoy all kinds of weather, but it gives you some appreciation for the day when it is beautiful right before a storm. It allows you to appreciate the contrast. And I enjoy that as well. It is, as I'm recording this the 15th of February, if you celebrate it, I hope you had a good Valentine's Day, yesterday, or whenever, you know, whenever that was to you. As you're listening to this. Today, I'm going to talk about a topic that I think is incredibly important. And I'm not the only I'm not the only person who thinks this is an incredibly important topic. So it's not just my ego that's speaking to you today, although that certainly is the case as well. And they recognize that. But today we're going to talk about the shadow, the human shadow, what that means, what it consists of what are some of the misconceptions about shadow and how to begin to do some work with your shadow, and why that's important why that's crucially important. So per usual, I like to start with defining what I'm talking about so that we are on equal footing. Now when I say the shadow, the human shadow I'm not talking about if you've never heard of this concept before, it's a psycho analytic, slash psycho spiritual concept. I'm not talking about the shadow eucast when you know, you block the light from the sun. In this case, the word shadow is an apt metaphor. And so the shadow refers to parts of yourself that you have disowned or hidden away. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. You know, the characteristic of the shadow is that these things are unconscious, whether you chose to push these things down into your shadow and have forgotten about them. That sort of thing. So what kinds of things are in your shadow are in everybody's shadow. So if you think about when you're when you're first born as a child, and you had no socialization, you just wanted your needs to be met, and you would scream for food or scream when you were cold or scream when you were, you know, scream and cry when anything sort of didn't go your way. And then you went through life you got socialized you were a child. And when you maybe when you were angry, you hit your sibling or a schoolmate and were chastised, you know, control yourself and that sort of thing. And so we go through this process of socialization that rewards some behaviors and punishes others and really depends on our culture. And culture really enforces norms, right? Like what isn't what do we consider normal behavior and our culture and normal things to feel normal things to think about? And so what happens is we often disown parts of ourselves that have been presented to us as morally bad or morally inferior. And those could be angry impulses, or, gosh, sexual impulses for sure. Right? How many problems do we have in society because
we live in cultures that teach us to repress sexual urges. Right, and that sexual urges are amoral, and sexual thoughts are amoral, and you are bad if you have these things that naturally occur in every, every person, at some point in their life, at least. And you are bad. And so we push a lot of that stuff down into the shadow, we don't look at them, we don't see them, we've disowned them, they're not in our conscious awareness, they're part of our unconscious makeup. Okay, and this could be all kinds of stuff. It's not just the quote unquote, bad stuff, right? It's not just, Hey, I, you know, this guy cut me off in traffic, and I really felt like murdering him. You know, it's not just that stuff, that impulse stuff. Sometimes there are some real gems there, there's some really beautiful things there. I can give you an example of that. So for example, maybe you sang for friends one time and and somebody made fun of you or laughed at you or said your singing wasn't good. And so you put like, you stop singing, and you push that desire to musically express yourself down into your subconscious. It's still there, but you've blocked it out. You're not you're not thinking about that anymore? Or maybe it's loving feelings towards somebody, oh, you shouldn't? You shouldn't treat that person that way. Because they're a bad person, or, or what have you. Okay. I can think of, you know, particularly sometimes, sometimes people who are, you know, I've had friends who have come out to me as gay later, really, really late in life. And I do know that, you know, some of them have expressed to me that they were in the closet, so to speak to themselves for a long period of time. And Gosh, what a, I can't imagine how challenging that must be to not be able to recognize that part of yourself, because it has been impressed into your brain that that is morally bad in your culture, that sort of thing. So we have kind of a modern, modern in recent history, so to speak. Guru shaman, whatever, who spoke a lot about the shadow. And that is Carl young, psycho analyst. And, you know, a lot of what young did a lot of his work was around, making a person more whole, by recognizing and incorporating the shadow aspects of the self. Right, like you can't, you can't be, you can't feel whole, you can't experience wholeness. If there are parts of you that are dissociated from the other parts of you. There are parts of you that you reject. Now, here's the thing. You may be thinking, well, gosh, you know, if I have this impulse to murder somebody who cuts me off in traffic, you know, I can't incorporate that into myself, I can't murder somebody who cuts me off in traffic, that would be horrible, that would be wrong, and I could, you know, go to prison for the rest of my life or, you know, and just, you know, killing somebody else's is, is a is a terrible thing. That impulse is a terrible thing. So maybe it's right to push that down into the shadow. Here's the thing. So in recognizing, incorporating and,
you know, bringing these net, you know, quote unquote negative impulses to light does not mean that you are going to suddenly become a murderer that you are going to forget who you are. That you are going to suddenly act out on impulses that would be harmful or inappropriate. It doesn't mean any of that. It really doesn't. It just means acknowledging to yourself that you have these drives. And when you do when you do this alchemy sorts of this, you know, this alchemy happens and Jung talks a lot about alchemy in his writings, right? These, these conversions these, you know, changing lead into gold sorts of experiences happen. It takes a lot, right, because we're, we're mostly subconscious. The issue with, there are a couple issues with, with the shadow and with shadow material, right. The first is, such as a poet named Robert Bly, who wrote a book about the shadow and he describes the shadow as a black bag that you drag behind you. And if you can imagine dragging a heavy bag behind you, everywhere you go, you can imagine these parts of yourself just pulling on your energy just dragging you down. Right. And so, you know, what young found is when we, you know, when we work with these shadow parts, what actually happens is there's a release a tremendous release of creative energy, and that can be used in wonderful and amazing ways. And as a human, you you just become, you just gain a greater sense of wholeness. And you lower the the sense that there's, gosh, there's something wrong with me. Right? That's a pervasive idea. pervasive in many cultures that I'm, I'm born into this human world, and there is something inherently wrong, bad, sinful, broken. All of those things with me. I think that's one of the greatest services humanity has done to itself, over the years is this shame complex that we all seem to have just by existing. And there are lots of people who would, who love taking advantage of that. So you know, the shadow can be this black bag that we dragged behind us. The other issue comes, and young is famous for saying that which we resist persists. So if we are resisting these things popping up into our consciousness, then they stay with us forever. So I'll use the example again, somebody cuts me off in traffic, and, you know, this flash of anger comes up. And, um, you know, I feel like, gosh, I really want to run that person off the road or do something bad to them. Um, if I recognize that feeling, you know, gosh, that came up for me, and don't judge and don't push that down back into my subconscious, the energy of that impulse can dissipate. Right, it can go nowhere, right, and it can free me up. But if I have to push that down, and say, I can't have that thought, I'm, you know, I'm a spiritual teacher, I need to be floating on a cloud and above these human feelings and all of these things. First of all, I'm engaging in self delusion. And that's not a good thing. That's not a particularly woke attitude to to use a modern phrase. By deluding myself, I'm not doing that. And then the other thing is I need to, to believe that live to believe the lie that I don't have these impulses, because I'm somehow a learner teacher, and I'm above human experience and human feeling. takes a lot of energy, right to push that stuff way down into my shadow, I have to push it there. And I use the metaphor if you've ever been, you know, swimming in a pool or a lake or something and you've been had a rubber ball and inflated ball that floats and you try
to push that ball underwater. It's really really hard. And what will happen is that ball will pop up somewhere and that's what happens. That's what happens with the shadow. That ball is going to pop somewhere and in an unexpected way, and maybe you're going to have some sort of crisis, midlife crisis, psychological crisis, health crisis, I don't know. Maybe you're going to become depressed. Because you're using all of your energy to repress parts of yourself and the split off pieces of yourself, are you gonna feel fragmented or, you know, maybe you're gonna have an, you know, irrational outbursts of anger. And you're gonna have anger control issues. There are lots of ways the shadow material can pop up, but pop up, it will, it will come up somehow. Right, it will manifest itself as addiction or anger issues or depression, or, in some way it will come up, you cannot cut off parts of yourself and expect an experience of true human wholeness. Because it's a lie, because ultimately, you are whole, complete and unbroken. And so maintaining that lie is dangerous to our psyche. Right, maintaining the lie that we are, you know, there are parts of us that are we've broken off because they're bad parts or whatever. That that I think is dangerous to the psyche. I think it's dangerous to the spirits. You know, what is the danger of not engaging in shadow work, if you're a really spiritual person, shouldn't the light you know, I'll use the, you know, there are a lot of, in this new age era, there are a lot of light workers out there, right, I hold you in loving light, there's sort of a loving light crowd. And this is not to put the love and light people down at all. There's nothing wrong with that. I love love. I love light to great things. There only becomes an issue when we have this thing called spiritual bypassing, right where I pretend like I am above everything because I hold everything in love and light. Because I convinced myself that I'm all about love and light and I don't have baser human instincts baser human impulses. it's problematic because, you know, I have not met somebody who thought they were above it all who actually was, and I have met. I have met some gurus I have met some you know, very learned spiritual teachers and, and the spiritual teachers I resonate with the most tend to be the most human. So my shamanic teacher, you know, is very open about things that she's experiencing things that she is going through, and you know, is, is very human, and that makes her approachable, understandable, right? It doesn't make her one of the things I love about shamanism is we don't I consider myself a guide and not a guru. You know, you might come to me for healing or to learn something, but you don't worship me. And that wouldn't make me extremely uncomfortable. If you did. You know, and when I've had students who studied with me for a period of time, and you know, maybe start to put me on a pedestal or something, which isn't, you know, which is sort of a natural thing, because we have that experience with spiritual teachers in this world. They're to be put placed above us. And, you know, that sort of thing. I very quickly when I when I recognize that happening, I very quickly moved to make a correction because I, gosh, I don't, I don't want my ego built up. And I don't want to I definitely don't want to build it up on the backs of students or people I'm working with on a healing basis. I don't want to engage in hubris. I don't want to think I'm above it all. I will always be doing my work. I will always be working on my shadow material, I will always be working on my spiritual development
in the realm of spiritual development, oh, well, let me first before before I talk about that, let me go back and talk about these. You know, these gurus, these spiritual leaders who haven't done their Shadow Work, right. We have seen lots and lots of stories of spiritual communities where the leaders take advantage, sexually, economically, are violent towards our, you know, whatever towards their, the people in their community. Right? And why is, you know, why is that happening? I mean, they're these people who have these amazing spiritual insights and you know, are revered by students and and followers and seem to have everything going for them and then they wind up sexually abusing groups of students or, you know winding up in court over financial impropriety or or what have you. So you can go through a significant amount of spiritual development and never clean up your shadow never work on never do the Shadow Work that you need to do. And because so there's just there's a statement that the brighter the light, the darker the shadow, right, so if I shine a really, really bright light on something, it will cast a very dark shadow in comparison. And so, you know, I've I, you know, known teachers who were revered, wrote amazing things and then secretly had suffered with substance addiction, or, you know, I knew a new teacher that wound up committing suicide very, very young. Because they weren't handling the, you know, the stuff that was coming up for them in a good way. So all of these things can happen when you don't, if you do, you know, you're doing spiritual development work, and you tried to ignore your shadow or pretend it doesn't exist, which just makes it darker, which just makes it more inaccessible, but doesn't prevent things from popping up. So you have to bring, you have to bring light to the darkness and darkness into the light. So the modern day philosopher spiritual teacher that I really like Ken Wilber, very prolific writer got lots of programs online, you can watch videos of him on YouTube. And he talks about sort of three aspects of modern spirituality. The first aspect is, you know, waking up, right, waking up, is recognizing truth, right? It's what we call, you know, awakening, woke the Buddha nature, what have you. It's becoming conscious of the truth of the universe, and experience and that sort of thing. Okay, so that's one aspect. And you can be super woke and still have a dark shadow. The other aspects, so he talks about waking up growing up and cleaning up three aspects of modern spiritual development. And growing up really, I won't go into too much, but it's, it's about sort of becoming, becoming conscious and responsible and, you know, connected to connected socially and recognizing that, you know, people need to be taken care of, and that sort of thing. Right. So it's a, it's a perspective of, you know, it's sort of a sort of a collective perspective. But there's, there's more to it at that, but I won't go too deeply into that in this section. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll talk about it in a future episode. And the last part is cleaning up and this is what a lot of people miss so many people miss and cleaning up is all about Shadow Work. It's about cleaning up after yourself cleaning your own house. There's lots and lots of ways to do Shadow Work.
My I am extremely lucky to have worked with my shamanic teacher who has a way of working with shadow. shamanic Lee. It's a pretty advanced practice you get well, you know, I think I received it during an apprenticeship or something And it's beautiful and it's highly impactful. Work and it's something I've returned to again and again. Because I don't think I will ever believe that I am done doing my cleanup work. Doesn't matter if I've, you know, written and published books or you know, do a podcast or have students all over the world or whatever, it doesn't matter, I will still always do my cleanup work. And that's part of my responsibility as a teacher, is to make sure that I am as clean a channel as I can be for spirit. There's, you know, there's lots of other ways to work on your shadow work you shadow material, you could, you could go see a union, psycho analysts you could, there are certainly books out there and other programs and that sort of thing. I'll give you a few tips about how to become conscious of your shadow material. And sometimes that's sometimes that's enough, sometimes that just awareness can start the work process. That's not always true. Sometimes there's some deeper stuff going on. I'm also I'm a big fan of parts therapy, have tried internal family systems therapy, I think it is amazing. If you you know, if you are somebody who finds value in doing therapy, those are a couple modalities that deal with parts and perhaps some shadow material, as well. But there's a lot of stuff built on built on top of this stuff. So how do you start to become aware of what's in your shadow. So I had a teacher a few years back, who gave us a wonderful assignment, and this is something you can do and you can return to and that sort of thing. So she had us keep what we what she called a trigger journal, right. And for a period of time, you were to write down all of the things that happened that left us emotionally triggered. And what is emotional triggering, I'm sure they're different, and probably clinical definitions of that, but it's when you know, something happens. And you're you're kind of suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, if you think about a trigger on a gun, you know, you pull it and it like it fires off, right? And so something that triggers you might be you may consider it upsetting or, you know, driving anger all of a sudden, or, you know, just sobbing sadness. You know, anything that triggers your fight flight, freeze response as well. So, there's, there's a couple aspects to this, right. So one, there's probably when you get triggered like that, there's probably some wounding there. Okay, there may be some trauma, and that might be some shadow material. I don't you know, I don't recommend exploring trauma by trying to relive traumatic experiences, I don't think current current psychoanalytic thought thinks that that's a great idea. Personally, personally, it's something I've done. And you know, it's really traumatizing. And unless something really great comes out of it. It's not, it's potentially not worth it. But what you can do is you can examine your responses to things today. Okay, so that that's one way is to look at things that trigger you and maybe you're somebody who's never triggered and that's fine, too. What's another? What's another thing you can look at, to sort of figure out what is in your shadow?
So, think about the things that think about pet peeves, or things that drive you crazy, particularly in other people, right? What is it that drives you crazy about somebody else I can give you I can give you One of mine. Okay, I can give you one thing that, that drives me crazy about other people. So an unwarranted sense of entitlement to the point where people become rude about it, you know, where people think they're entitled to something in an unwarranted way. It drives me, it drives me crazy. And why, like, why can't I just ignore that? Why can't I just, you know, whatever, what is it about that that makes me really upset? Well, there's some part in my shadow that I'm projecting onto those people. And this is what we do. Like we have these parts, and our shadow, and about herself things about ourselves that we don't like that. We project onto other people. And that's how that's one way that our unconscious deals with them. And so this is a way to recognize parts in you, if they're things about other people that you just don't like, there's a resonance with some part in your shadow. This is not to say, like, I really don't like it when people are rude to me, I really don't like it. You know, somebody stole something from me, and they don't like that. No, that's that's different. Right? That's a little bit different. There's actual potential injury there, right. But I just don't like that person who comes off being so entitled, I don't like that entitled nature. Somebody, what is it about me what's in my shadow? That that, that that really bothers me. Right? And does that mean that some part of me has this really entitled? unwarranted nature? Well, it may not be exactly. I may not be an exact match. Right. But what I do know is, you know, because I, you know, I had sometimes not such a great childhood upbringing. I know. There were times where I felt undeserving, or I felt deserving, but like, not getting the things that I needed. There was some, you know, there was some child abuse, domestic violence, neglect, that that sort of stuff going on in my early childhood. And probably, if I had to guess I haven't, you know, again, I'm always doing my work and trying to try and look at these things. If I had to guess, I would say that I probably had this feeling like, don't I deserve x, because I see my friends getting x, I see my friends getting these great expensive toys for their birthday, or I see my friends, you know, doing this. And don't I deserve that too. And what child doesn't think that right? What child doesn't look with jealousy. And I, you know, if I had to think about it, I would probably repress that because I wasn't getting those things. And so it was painful for me to think about. Think about what shame is right? Shame is about thinking that you are undeserving that you are less than that you are bad that you're broken, that there's some parts of you are wrong, and that sort of thing. And so if I felt deserving. But I felt like I wasn't, you know, I felt like I wasn't getting the things that I deserved, it was probably really painful. So I probably pushed that deservingness down into my shadow as a child. And so when I see people who are like, well, I deserve this, and it's unwarranted and people are feel entitled, like, I'm probably projecting all of that stuff onto them. Well, how dare you act deserving? How dare you? not deserving. But how dare you act entitled. So that's something that comes up for me, and it's something I work on, and it's something I will continue to work on, you know, at least for a while, at least until I don't
you know, it releases somewhat in me I have that I can reach a level of equanimity about it a level of what this spiritual teacher Lester Levinson called heartlessness. I don't give a hoot don't don't try, it doesn't bother me anymore. I will continue to work on that. So Those are two big ways that you can recognize some things that are in your shadow. Right? You can also just recognize impulses that you have, that you would not act on. Right. So these could be, you know, sexual impulses or impulses about food, or substances or impulses around anger or impulses around, you know, any, any sorts of behavior that you're like, Oh, I would never do that. I wish I could, but I would never do that, or not even I wish I could just, I had this impulse come up, and I need to stop myself. Right? Because it's not, you know, it's not okay for me to be that way. And again, when you work with you, you're, you know, I can, you know, I can tell you firsthand, because I do shadow work all the time, when I work on the shadow pieces of myself, it doesn't turn me into, you know, I don't become Jacqueline Hyde. I don't embrace impulses. And become a violent person, or suddenly, you know, start acting out sexual impulses that would not be acceptable to the people I love or the culture I live in. Or, you know, I don't, I don't do those things. And those things don't happen when you're doing actual Shadow Work. Those things happen when you don't do your shadow work, right. So this is, this is sort of a lie that your unconscious might tell you, oh, if I bring these things up, I'm going to act and I'm going to be powerless against them. Well, you're really powerless against the things that you can't see the things you are unaware of. And they do, in a way, run your life. If you look at a lot of mistakes you've made or you know, things that you wish you could have done and didn't do, and that sort of thing, these unconscious parts of you until you make them conscious will be in the background, manipulating your thoughts, manipulating your behavior, they're not evil. They're just disowns. Right there. Sometimes they're like little children that are trying to gain your attention. Pay attention to me, I'm, you know, I'm part of you. I deserve light too. And, you know, a really beautiful thing can happen when you do the work when you do Shadow Work. And you know, you know, I highly recommend, I highly recommend doing it, whether it's reading about how to do Shadow Work, or, you know, doing seminars with people who are really good at it, or getting one on one with a teacher who's trained in this type of work. The beautiful thing that happens is the shadow parts can become transformed. And a lot of them, are they all these parts, they all have some sort of best interest. At heart, they might, it might not seem of it seemed like it right? Like, how does a violent impulse have my best interest at heart? Right? I want to, I want to punch the guy who cut in line in front of me. How does that impulse have an impulse positive? Well, obviously punching somebody for cutting in line for view, would not be a good income, you know, a good outcome. And a good result would not come from that. But the impulse, if you think about it, what's the intention behind it, the intention is protective. I'm going to protect my space, I want you to see that I am important. When you cut in front of me, you're saying that I am less important than you and I am enforcing this boundary. And so when you work with these pieces, you can recognize what that impulse is what the positive impulse is, and they can be transformed. So it doesn't necessarily show up as the impulse to punch somebody.
But it might show up as Hey, you know, it's not okay that this person violated this boundary. And I'm going to speak up for myself, or, okay, I got angry, this person violated a boundary of mine, I recognize what this is. And I've decided, you know, I've made a choice, that it's not worth it for me to interact with this person. Or I can look at it with more clarity. Oh, this person just didn't pay attention and you know, probably probably cut in line didn't realize that we're cutting in line. Or this person is in a real Hurry, and you know I'm not and, but it allows you to have some discretion. If you just have stuff popping up that you have no, absolutely no control over, absolutely no knowledge of just popping in from your unconscious, it's like unwanted guests who just show up at your door and say we're here feed us. Right? You don't have any control over that. But if you can invite the guests over, or if they're guests that you know, and you like, and, you know, like, Hey, we're here, we're hungry, but we could order out or we could do this, or we could do that, um, you know, that's a little healthier, it's a little bit of a healthier relationship. So it's really important to pay attention to the clean up part of your spiritual development, a talk about this a lot, because I see it, I see it in the world of spiritual teaching, where there are a lot of spiritual teachers who are have very great deals of hubris. They lack humility, and they think that they are untouched by the world and, and all of these things and, and, you know, part of that is they have, I believe that most of these teachers have deluded themselves. And they may be able to achieve these really high states of consciousness, right, where, you know, most of the time, they're not there, they're high right from these spiritual states of consciousness. And they don't have to experience the crap that comes up the utter crap that comes up for them. And again, like I'm using a derogatory term crap, because that's how it's gonna show up, if we don't deal with it. And it's not to say that everything in your again, not, not everything in your shadow in your shadow parts are not junk, they're not crap. But when it pops up in unexpected ways, and you are powerless, and wind up acting out over it. That's when it's crap. That's when it's bad. That's when bad results happen. And, you know, can, you know, real problems can come out of this stuff. Really big problems. I recently watched a couple of documentaries on these cult groups. One was the Jim Jones cult, you know, decades ago that went up committing mass suicide. I think it was 900 900 people died. It's horrific. And the other was this Heaven's Gate cult that you know, a little bit more recent than that. Well, again, wound up in mass suicide. Mmm hmm. You know, and I, I have compassion for those people. Those followers I do think that the, the leaders of those groups we're not dealing with they're clearly not dealing with their shadow stuff. Jim Jones, especially the the, you know, the Jonestown the Jonestown stuff was horrific. He was clearly working right out of egoic unconscious impulse and what a, you know, what a terrible tragedy that was Heaven's Gate stuff, you know, a little, a little bit of the same, you know, quite a different sort of interpretation. But, um, you know, watching the watching the documentary about it, I was overcome with how people were expected to be celibate and not act on sexual impulses. And they thought that, you know, sexual impulses were to be quashed, and, you know, to the point where,
you know, some people opted to, you know, some males opted to get castrated, so they wouldn't have to struggle with these impulses anymore. It's pretty destructive. Right? And not to judge not to judge their beliefs too much, but they clearly, were trying to repress something that is quite natural in humans sexual impulse. Everybody has it. And we see in societies where that is heavily repressed, lots of acting out. You know, we see lots of sex abuse scandals in organized religions where sexuality is heavily repressed. And that's the shadow, that's the shadow acting out on these repressed impulses. can be a clear case for that. So this isn't to say that it's okay to go out in, you know, again, I'm not casting judgment, but I'm not saying you have to go out and be promiscuous or act on all of your sexual impulses, certainly not any that involve non consensual activity, right? We live in a society where all sexual activity needs to be, needs to be consensual between adults, and, you know, whatever, I'm not telling you what other than that, I'm not telling you, you should act, I'm not the moral authority, I'm just telling you that if you know you have, you have these impulses, and pushing them down into your unconscious is a recipe for disaster. So that is the shadow in a nutshell, and how to start to become aware of your shadow material, a couple of tips for that. I hope that's incredibly useful, I hope that you'll start looking at some of these things, both looking at your triggers, particularly things that surprise you, as well as pet peeves, or things or qualities or characteristics or things that in other people that drive you bonkers, drive you crazy, that you find upsetting and don't really have a great explanation. Why? Right. You know, I gave you the example of entitled, you know, sense of entitlement for me. It is something I'm working on, I promise, I promise to continue working on my shadow material, if you promise to keep working on your shadow material. I thank you so much for joining me, I look at the statistics of this podcast pretty closely on a regular basis just to see who's you know, to get a sense of where people are from. And I'm really excited to see that there are people listening from, you know, Russia and Bangladesh and Nepal and the UK and the US, obviously, and Canada, and Norway and Japan. And I just want to say that I love each and every one of you. And I'm so glad that you you know, I'm grateful that you have taken some time to listen to this. And I strive to make this as useful as possible and honor that you have given me your time and attention in a day and age where time and attention are absolute commodities, right. And I promise to keep doing the best work that I can do on this podcast. I'm looking looking forward to having some guests on here. So it's not just me talking, going into the future that should happen fairly soon. And I'm always happy to listen to suggested topics if there's something you want me to talk about as long as I can. As long as I have have something to say about it. I will be happy to do that. You can contact me through my website, which is MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com.
Announcer 49:19
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